initial commit of ebook 1312HEADmain

8 files changed, 53446 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/1312-0.txt b/old/1312-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0733d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12783 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Selected Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1312]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+MIGGLES
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+MLISS
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing,
+into four quite distinct parts. First, we have the precocious boyhood,
+with its eager response to the intellectual stimulation of cultured
+parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility;
+devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving,
+Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable success, attempted
+various forms of composition. Then, compelled by economic necessity, he
+left school at thirteen, and for three years worked first in a lawyer's
+office, and then in a merchant's counting house.
+
+The second period, that of his migration to California, includes all
+that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving in
+California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-teacher, drug-store
+clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. He
+worked for a while on the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he was
+dismissed for objecting editorially to the contemporary California sport
+of murdering Indians), then on the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved
+his first moderate acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswold
+of New York. In 1864 he was given the secretaryship of the California
+mint, a virtual sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.
+The first volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES,
+CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS
+were published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which
+had aspirations of becoming “the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West,” was
+established, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he wrote
+most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF ROARING
+CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES,
+among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor and
+Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel material,
+with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editors
+began to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointed
+him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him
+the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to one
+year's literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the ascendant.
+
+However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
+policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed, were
+the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the OVERLAND
+MONTHLY. Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the East, he
+left California (permanently, as it proved). The East, however, was
+financially unappreciative. Harte wrote an unsuccessful novel and
+collaborated with Mark Twain on an unremunerative play. His attempts
+to increase his income by lecturing were even less rewarding. From
+his departure from California in 1872 to his death thirty years later,
+Harte's struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and
+to these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of “a
+peculiarly characteristic Western American literature.” Henceforth Harte
+accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, “the role of entertainer, and as an
+entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an artist.”
+
+The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
+appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a
+throat cancer. He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--perhaps
+intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him when
+circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his death, the
+separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained permanent. Harte,
+however, continued to provide for them as liberally as he was able. In
+Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION,
+and UNSER KARL. In 1880 he transferred to the more lucrative consulship
+of Glasgow, and ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of
+his stay there. In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably
+for political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.
+He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his death.
+
+Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp. His mining
+experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his portraits of
+mining life are wholly impressionistic. “No one,” Mark Twain wrote,
+“can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and
+shovel and drill and fuse.” Yet, Twain added elsewhere, “Bret Harte got
+his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
+both of them into his tales alive.” That is, perhaps, the final comment.
+Much could be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over
+the life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings
+are obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
+Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that “There
+are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons which
+we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte.” The figure is
+perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for admiration. First,
+Harte originated a new and incalculably influential type of story: the
+romantically picturesque “human-interest” story. “He created the local
+color story,” Prof. Blankenship remarks, “or at least popularized
+it, and he gave new form and intent to the short story.” Character
+motivating action is central to this type of story, rather than mood
+dominating incident. Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful
+one, admirably suited to his subjects. He can manage the humorous or the
+pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more remarkable than
+his excesses. His sentences have both force and flow; his backgrounds
+are crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures have
+their own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of the
+theatric finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings down
+his curtain dramatically and effectively.
+
+ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+
+There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,
+for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire
+settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but “Tuttle's
+grocery” had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
+calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot
+each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp
+was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.
+Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman
+was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the
+camp,--“Cherokee Sal.”
+
+Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to
+be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman
+in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she
+most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and
+irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear
+even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her
+loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation
+which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so
+dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a
+moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she
+met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet
+a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy
+Tipton thought it was “rough on Sal,” and, in the contemplation of her
+condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and
+two bowers in his sleeve.
+
+It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no
+means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had
+been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of
+return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced AB
+INITIO. Hence the excitement.
+
+“You go in there, Stumpy,” said a prominent citizen known as “Kentuck,”
+ addressing one of the loungers. “Go in there, and see what you kin do.
+You've had experience in them things.”
+
+Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes,
+had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to
+some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp--a city of
+refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and
+Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the
+extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked
+its pipe, and awaited the issue.
+
+The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these
+were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were
+reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives
+and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion
+of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and
+intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous
+man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an
+embarrassed, timid manner. The term “roughs” applied to them was a
+distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of
+fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but
+these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The
+strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had
+but one eye.
+
+Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around
+the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a
+river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that
+faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman
+might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding
+like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
+
+A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By
+degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely
+offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that “Sal would
+get through with it;” even that the child would survive; side bets as
+to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an
+excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and
+the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines,
+the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp,
+querulous cry,--a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The
+pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to
+crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.
+
+The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a
+barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
+mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
+discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some
+other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had
+climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so
+passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think
+that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as
+to the fate of the child. “Can he live now?” was asked of Stumpy. The
+answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex
+and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some
+conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less
+problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and
+apparently as successful.
+
+When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the
+door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed
+themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or
+shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below
+the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed,
+and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at
+Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was
+soon indicated. “Gentlemen,” said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of
+authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--“gentlemen will please pass in
+at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as
+wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy.”
+ The first man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he
+looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In
+such communities good and bad actions are catching. As the procession
+filed in comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather
+to Stumpy in the character of showman; “Is that him?” “Mighty small
+specimen;” “Has n't more 'n got the color;” “Ain't bigger nor a
+derringer.” The contributions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco
+box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a
+very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst the
+gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin,
+with the remark from the giver that he “saw that pin and went two
+diamonds better”); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a
+golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not
+the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England
+note for 5 pounds; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During
+these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead
+on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his
+right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious
+procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the
+child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger,
+and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed.
+Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten
+cheek. “The damned little cuss!” he said, as he extricated his finger,
+with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed
+capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows
+as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the
+same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to
+enjoy repeating it. “He rastled with my finger,” he remarked to Tipton,
+holding up the member, “the damned little cuss!”
+
+It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the
+cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night.
+Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his
+experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of
+the newcomer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of
+sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When
+everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and
+whistled reflectingly. Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin,
+still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood-tree he
+paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down
+to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at
+the door. It was opened by Stumpy. “How goes it?” said Kentuck, looking
+past Stumpy toward the candle-box. “All serene!” replied Stumpy.
+“Anything up?” “Nothing.” There was a pause--an embarrassing one--Stumpy
+still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which
+he held up to Stumpy. “Rastled with it,--the damned little cuss,” he
+said, and retired.
+
+The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp
+afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was
+a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her
+infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an
+animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing
+for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument
+partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions
+were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should
+send the child to Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female
+attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce
+and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed
+parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained.
+“Besides,” said Tom Ryder, “them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and
+ring in somebody else on us.” A disbelief in the honesty of other camps
+prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places.
+
+The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection.
+It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring
+Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that “they didn't want any more
+of the other kind.” This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as
+it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the
+camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain
+delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in
+office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and “Jinny”--the
+mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There was
+something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased
+the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to
+Sacramento. “Mind,” said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust
+into the expressman's hand, “the best that can be got,--lace, you know,
+and filigree-work and frills,--damn the cost!”
+
+Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of
+the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature
+took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the
+Sierra foothills,--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal
+cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,--he may have found food and
+nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime
+and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter
+and good nursing. “Me and that ass,” he would say, “has been father and
+mother to him! Don't you,” he would add, apostrophizing the helpless
+bundle before him, “never go back on us.”
+
+By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became
+apparent. He had generally been known as “The Kid,” “Stumpy's Boy,”
+ “The Coyote” (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's
+endearing diminutive of “The damned little cuss.” But these were felt
+to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another
+influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and
+Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought “the luck” to
+Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful.
+“Luck” was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater
+convenience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was
+unknown. “It's better,” said the philosophical Oakhurst, “to take a
+fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair.” A day was
+accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this
+ceremony the reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of
+the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies
+was one “Boston,” a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the
+greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days
+in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
+allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand
+godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music
+and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar,
+Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. “It ain't my style to spoil
+fun, boys,” said the little man, stoutly eyeing the faces around him,
+“but it strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's
+playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that
+he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any godfathers
+round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights than me.” A silence
+followed Stumpy's speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that
+the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped
+of his fun. “But,” said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
+“we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas
+Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of
+California, so help me God.” It was the first time that the name of the
+Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in the camp. The form
+of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had
+conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed.
+“Tommy” was christened as seriously as he would have been under a
+Christian roof and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion.
+
+And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost
+imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to
+“Tommy Luck”--or “The Luck,” as he was more frequently called--first
+showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and
+whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered. The rose wood
+cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy's way of putting it,
+“sorter killed the rest of the furniture.” So the rehabilitation of the
+cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging
+in at Stumpy's to see “how 'The Luck' got on” seemed to appreciate
+the change, and in self-defense the rival establishment of “Tuttle's
+grocery” bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The
+reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to
+produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a
+kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of
+holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck--who, in the
+carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had
+begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's,
+only sloughed off through decay--to be debarred this privilege from
+certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of
+innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a
+clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral
+and social sanitary laws neglected. “Tommy,” who was supposed to spend
+his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be
+disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp
+its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of
+Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity.
+Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout
+the camp a popular form of expletive, known as “D--n the luck!” and
+“Curse the luck!” was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing.
+Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing,
+tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by “Man-o'-War Jack,” an
+English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular
+as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of “the
+Arethusa, Seventy-four,” in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged
+dying fall at the burden of each verse, “On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa.”
+ It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side
+to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval
+ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his
+song,--it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious
+deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the desired
+effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees
+in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in
+the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral
+happiness pervaded the camp. “This 'ere kind o' think,” said the Cockney
+Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, “is 'evingly.” It reminded
+him of Greenwich.
+
+On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from
+whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket
+spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the
+ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower
+with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would
+bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted
+blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact
+that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they
+had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering
+mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of
+the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened,
+and were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many
+treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that “would do for Tommy.”
+ Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had
+before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be
+serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a
+contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried
+Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once,
+having crept beyond his “corral,”--a hedge of tessellated pine boughs,
+which surrounded his bed,--he dropped over the bank on his head in
+the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that
+position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was
+extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other
+instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the
+statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge
+of superstition. “I crep' up the bank just now,” said Kentuck one
+day, in a breathless state of excitement “and dern my skin if he was
+a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was,
+just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each
+other just like two cherrybums.” Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine
+boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to
+him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed.
+Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between
+the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp;
+she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and
+resinous gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily,
+the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
+
+Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were “flush times,” and
+the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp
+was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No
+encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion
+more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that
+surrounded the camp they duly preempted. This, and a reputation for
+singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring
+Camp inviolate. The expressman--their only connecting link with the
+surrounding world--sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He
+would say, “They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over
+any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses,
+and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on
+strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby.”
+
+With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.
+It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite
+one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who
+might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this
+concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in
+regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for
+by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve
+could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority
+meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.
+And it did.
+
+The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow
+lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river,
+and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a
+tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant
+trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had
+been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. “Water put
+the gold into them gulches,” said Stumpy. “It been here once and will
+be here again!” And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its
+banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.
+
+In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber,
+and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the
+fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp.
+When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was
+gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but
+the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared.
+They were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled
+them.
+
+It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they
+said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did
+anybody know them, and did they belong here?
+
+It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed
+and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As
+they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was
+cold and pulseless. “He is dead,” said one. Kentuck opened his eyes.
+“Dead?” he repeated feebly. “Yes, my man, and you are dying too.” A
+smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. “Dying!” he repeated; “he's
+a-taking me with him. Tell the boys I've got The Luck with me now;” and
+the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to
+cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever
+to the unknown sea.
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+
+As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker
+Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was
+conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding
+night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he
+approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull
+in the air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked
+ominous.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
+indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was
+another question. “I reckon they're after somebody,” he reflected;
+“likely it's me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which
+he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat
+boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
+
+In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately
+suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and
+a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,
+quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked
+it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper
+persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then
+hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in
+the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to
+say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however,
+to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in
+such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to
+sit in judgment.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
+category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible
+example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets
+of the sums he had won from them. “It's agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler,
+“to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry
+away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the
+breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst
+overruled this narrower local prejudice.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the
+less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was
+too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an
+uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the
+dealer.
+
+A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to
+the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to
+be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed
+escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman
+familiarly known as the “Duchess”; another, who had won the title of
+“Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and
+confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the
+spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch
+which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader
+spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at
+the peril of their lives.
+
+As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
+few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother
+Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The
+philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother
+Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements
+of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths
+that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the
+easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging
+his own riding horse, “Five Spot,” for the sorry mule which the Duchess
+rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy.
+The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble,
+faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five Spot” with
+malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping
+anathema.
+
+The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
+regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some
+invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It was
+distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon
+passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into
+the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and
+difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the
+ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party
+halted.
+
+The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater,
+surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped
+gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley.
+It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been
+advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy
+Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned
+for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a
+philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before
+the game was played out.” But they were furnished with liquor, which in
+this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.
+In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or
+less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
+state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton
+snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock,
+calmly surveying them.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which
+required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own
+language, he “couldn't afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent fellow
+exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life,
+his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred
+himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and
+other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a
+moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and
+more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not
+help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was
+most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He
+looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the
+circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley
+below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard
+his own name called.
+
+A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the
+newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the
+“Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over
+a “little game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire
+fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth. After
+the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind
+the door and thus addressed him: “Tommy, you're a good little man, but
+you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again.” He then handed
+him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a
+devoted slave of Tom Simson.
+
+There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting
+of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek
+his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had
+run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that
+used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged
+a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away,
+and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they
+were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
+company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout,
+comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she
+had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with
+propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.
+He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle
+Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough
+to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not
+bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying
+further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no
+provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met
+this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra
+mule loaded with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a
+log house near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,” said the
+Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”
+
+Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
+bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire
+up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the
+joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of
+his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he
+found them seated by a fire--for the air had grown strangely chill
+and the sky overcast--in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was
+actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who
+was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many
+days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect,
+to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into
+amiability. “Is this yer a damned picnic?” said Uncle Billy with inward
+scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the
+tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the
+alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular
+nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist
+into his mouth.
+
+As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the
+tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
+The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart
+for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a
+kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the
+swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were
+probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,
+and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the
+men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and
+cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
+strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave
+it--snow!
+
+He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers,
+for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been
+lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse
+to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they
+were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in
+the snow.
+
+The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with
+his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
+peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin
+Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended
+by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his
+shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly
+in a whirling mist of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What
+could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He
+looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two
+words--“snowed in!”
+
+A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,
+had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious fingers of
+Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might
+last ten days longer. “That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the
+Innocent, “if you're willing to board us. If you ain't--and perhaps
+you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with
+provisions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring
+himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the
+hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally
+stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother
+Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.
+“They'll find out the truth about us all when they find out anything,”
+ he added, significantly, “and there's no good frightening them now.”
+
+Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.
+Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.
+“We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll
+all go back together.” The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and Mr.
+Oakhurst's calm, infected the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine
+boughs extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess
+directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and
+tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their
+fullest extent. “I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat,”
+ said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that
+reddened her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
+requested Piney not to “chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a
+weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter
+echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first
+naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cached. “And
+yet it don't somehow sound like whisky,” said the gambler. It was not
+until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still-blinding
+storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it
+was “square fun.”
+
+Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as something
+debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain
+that, in Mother Shipton's words, he “didn't say cards once” during that
+evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat
+ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some
+difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney
+Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to
+an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the
+crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting
+hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and
+vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing
+to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to
+infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:
+
+“I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+
+And I'm bound to die in His army.”
+
+The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
+group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of
+the vow.
+
+At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
+stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
+professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
+amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed
+to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself
+to the Innocent by saying that he had “often been a week without sleep.”
+ “Doing what?” asked Tom. “Poker!” replied Oakhurst, sententiously; “when
+a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired. The luck
+gives in first. Luck,” continued the gambler, reflectively, “is a mighty
+queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to
+change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you.
+We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you come along,
+and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along
+you're all right. For,” added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
+
+“'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+
+And I'm bound to die in His army.'”
+
+The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
+valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
+provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that
+mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry
+landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
+drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted,
+trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the
+castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of
+the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw
+it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
+direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and
+perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
+It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. “Just you go out
+there and cuss, and see.” She then set herself to the task of amusing
+“the child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney
+was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair
+thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
+
+When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
+accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
+flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching
+void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
+Piney--storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
+caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed
+too but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray
+copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed
+to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly
+mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current
+vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric
+demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in
+the winds, and the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath
+of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.
+Most especially was he interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the
+Innocent persisted in denominating the “swift-footed Achilles.”
+
+So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
+over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
+from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
+closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from
+their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty
+feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish
+their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in
+the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary
+prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst
+settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess,
+more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother
+Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At
+midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. “I'm going,”
+ she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, “but don't say anything
+about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and
+open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for
+the last week, untouched. “Give 'em to the child,” she said, pointing to
+the sleeping Piney. “You've starved yourself,” said the gambler. “That's
+what they call it,” said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again
+and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
+
+The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
+forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
+snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of
+snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. “There's one
+chance in a hundred to save her yet,” he said, pointing to Piney; “but
+it's there,” he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. “If you can reach
+there in two days she's safe.” “And you?” asked Tom Simson. “I'll stay
+here,” was the curt reply.
+
+The lovers parted with a long embrace. “You are not going, too?” said
+the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him.
+“As far as the canyon,” he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the
+Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid
+with amazement.
+
+Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
+whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone
+had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.
+The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
+
+The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
+faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
+position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
+Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
+night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
+protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
+
+Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
+gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
+closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: “Piney, can you
+pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
+exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
+spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
+head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
+
+The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
+shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and
+settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
+looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace
+of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully
+flung from above.
+
+They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices
+and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
+brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from
+the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even
+the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them
+still locked in each other's arms.
+
+But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they
+found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore
+the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
+
+              BENEATH THIS TREE
+               LIES THE BODY
+                     OF
+               JOHN OAKHURST,
+         WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
+          ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
+                    AND
+             HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
+          ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
+
+And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his
+heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
+once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
+
+
+
+
+MIGGLES
+
+
+We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the
+passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle
+over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last poetical
+quotation. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed
+through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it--altogether a
+limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut
+down too late. The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet in
+a half-conscious propriety of attitude, shown even in the disposition
+of the handkerchief which she held to her forehead and which partially
+veiled her face. The lady from Virginia City, traveling with her
+husband, had long since lost all individuality in a wild confusion of
+ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls. There was no sound but the rattling
+of wheels and the dash of rain upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped
+and we became dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently in the
+midst of an exciting colloquy with someone in the road--a colloquy of
+which such fragments as “bridge gone,” “twenty feet of water,” “can't
+pass,” were occasionally distinguishable above the storm. Then came
+a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the parting
+adjuration:
+
+“Try Miggles's.”
+
+We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of a
+horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our way to
+Miggles's.
+
+Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our authority, did not remember
+the name, and he knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe traveler
+thought Miggles must keep a hotel. We only knew that we were stopped by
+high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was our rock of refuge.
+A ten minutes splashing through a tangled by-road, scarcely wide enough
+for the stage, and we drew up before a barred and boarded gate in a
+wide stone wall or fence about eight feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and
+evidently Miggles did not keep a hotel.
+
+The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely locked. “Miggles!
+O Miggles!”
+
+No answer.
+
+“Migg-ells! You Miggles!” continued the driver, with rising wrath.
+
+“Migglesy!” joined the expressman, persuasively. “O Miggy! Mig!”
+
+But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles. The Judge,
+who had finally got the window down, put his head out and propounded
+a series of questions, which if answered categorically would have
+undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, but which the driver evaded by
+replying that “if we didn't want to sit in the coach all night, we had
+better rise up and sing out for Miggles.”
+
+So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately. And when
+we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called for
+“Maygells!” whereat we all laughed. While we were laughing, the driver
+cried “Shoo!”
+
+We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of “Miggles” was
+repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and
+supplemental “Maygells.”
+
+“Extraordinary echo,” said the Judge.
+
+“Extraordinary damned skunk!” roared the driver, contemptuously. “Come
+out of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don't hide
+in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,” continued Yuba Bill,
+now dancing about in an excess of fury.
+
+“Miggles!” continued the voice. “O Miggles!”
+
+“My good man! Mr. Myghail!” said the Judge, softening the asperities of
+the name as much as possible. “Consider the inhospitality of refusing
+shelter from the inclemency of the weather to helpless females. Really,
+my dear sir--” But a succession of “Miggles,” ending in a burst of
+laughter, drowned his voice.
+
+Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he
+battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure.
+We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that
+we could distinguish was that we were in a garden--from the rosebushes
+that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves--and
+before a long, rambling wooden building.
+
+“Do you know this Miggles?” asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.
+
+“No, nor, don't want to,” said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage
+Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.
+
+“But, my dear sir,” expostulated the Judge as he thought of the barred
+gate.
+
+“Lookee here,” said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, “hadn't you better go
+back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in,” and he
+pushed open the door of the building.
+
+A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the
+large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and
+the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; somebody
+sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we
+crowded together into the room, after the driver and expressman.
+
+“Hello, be you Miggles?” said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.
+
+The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward
+it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face. It was a
+man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which
+there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had
+sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face
+to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous object,
+without further recognition.
+
+Bill restrained himself with an effort.
+
+“Miggles! Be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know”; and Yuba Bill
+shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.
+
+To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable
+stranger apparently collapsed--sinking into half his size and an
+undistinguishable heap of clothing.
+
+“Well, dern my skin,” said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and
+hopelessly retiring from the contest.
+
+The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious invertebrate
+back into his original position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to
+reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that from the helplessness of
+this solitary man there must be attendants near at hand, and we all
+drew around the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, and had
+never lost his conversational amiability--standing before us with his
+back to the hearth--charged us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:
+
+“It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has reached
+that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,'
+or has suffered some premature abatement of his mental and physical
+faculties. Whether he is really the Miggles--”
+
+Here he was interrupted by “Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!” and, in
+fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key as it had
+once before been delivered unto us.
+
+We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm. The Judge, in
+particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to come
+directly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon discovered in
+a large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and
+who immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence which contrasted
+singularly with his previous volubility. It was, undoubtedly, his voice
+which we had heard in the road, and our friend in the chair was not
+responsible for the discourtesy. Yuba Bill, who re-entered the room
+after an unsuccessful search, was loath to accept the explanation, and
+still eyed the helpless sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in
+which he had put up his horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical.
+“Thar ain't nobody but him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar
+damned old skeesicks knows it.”
+
+But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based. Bill had
+scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the porch,
+the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and with flash of
+white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony or
+diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned
+back against it.
+
+“Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!”
+
+And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman, whose
+wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of the feminine
+curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of whose head, topped
+by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little feet and ankles, hidden
+somewhere in the recesses of her boy's brogans, all was grace--this was
+Miggles, laughing at us, too, in the most airy, frank, offhand manner
+imaginable.
+
+“You see, boys,” said she, quite out of breath, and holding one little
+hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of
+our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose
+features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile
+cheerfulness--“you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed
+down the road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the
+whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--and--and--I'm out of
+breath--and--that lets me out.”
+
+And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with
+a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us;
+attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt;
+laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on
+her lap.
+
+The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant
+compliment.
+
+“I'll trouble you for that thar harpin,” said Miggles, gravely. Half
+a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing hairpin was
+restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the room, looked
+keenly in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes looked back at hers
+with an expression we had never seen before. Life and intelligence
+seemed to struggle back into the rugged face. Miggles laughed again--it
+was a singularly eloquent laugh--and turned her black eyes and white
+teeth once more toward us.
+
+“This afflicted person is--” hesitated the Judge.
+
+“Jim,” said Miggles.
+
+“Your father?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Brother?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Husband?”
+
+Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady passengers
+who I had noticed did not participate in the general masculine
+admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, “No; it's Jim.”
+
+There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers moved closer to each
+other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and the
+tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at this
+emergency. But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious, broke the
+silence. “Come,” she said briskly, “you must be hungry. Who'll bear a
+hand to help me get tea?”
+
+She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba Bill was engaged
+like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the expressman was
+grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the arduous duty of slicing
+bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each man his good-humored
+and voluble counsel. And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and
+our Hibernian “deck passenger,” set the table with all the available
+crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of the rain that beat
+against windows, the wind that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies
+who whispered together in the corner, or the magpie who uttered a
+satirical and croaking commentary on their conversation from his perch
+above. In the now bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were
+papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and
+discrimination. The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from candle
+boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the skin of
+some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious variation
+of a flour barrel. There was neatness, and even a taste for the
+picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the long low room.
+
+The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a social
+triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in
+guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet bearing
+throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any concealment on
+her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our prospects, of the
+journey, of the weather, of each other--of everything but our host and
+hostess. It must be confessed that Miggles's conversation was never
+elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she employed expletives
+the use of which had generally been yielded to our sex. But they were
+delivered with such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually
+followed by a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest
+that it seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.
+
+Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy body
+against the outer walls of the house. This was shortly followed by a
+scratching and sniffling at the door. “That's Joaquin,” said Miggles, in
+reply to our questioning glances; “would you like to see him?” Before
+we could answer she had opened the door, and disclosed a half-grown
+grizzly, who instantly raised himself on his haunches, with his
+forepaws hanging down in the popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked
+admiringly at Miggles, with a very singular resemblance in his manner to
+Yuba Bill. “That's my watch dog,” said Miggles, in explanation. “Oh,
+he don't bite,” she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into
+a corner. “Does he, old Toppy?” (the latter remark being addressed
+directly to the sagacious Joaquin). “I tell you what, boys,” continued
+Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA MINOR, “you
+were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when you dropped
+in tonight.” “Where was he?” asked the Judge. “With me,” said Miggles.
+“Lord love you; he trots round with me nights like as if he was a man.”
+
+We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind. Perhaps we
+all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking through the rainy
+woods, with her savage guardian at her side. The Judge, I remember, said
+something about Una and her lion; but Miggles received it as she did
+other compliments, with quiet gravity. Whether she was altogether
+unconscious of the admiration she excited--she could hardly have been
+oblivious of Yuba Bill's adoration--I know not; but her very frankness
+suggested a perfect sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the
+younger members of our party.
+
+The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to the
+opinions of those of her own sex who were present. In fact, the repast
+over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers that no pine
+boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth
+could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and, suddenly declaring that
+it was time to “turn in,” offered to show the ladies to their bed in an
+adjoining room. “You boys will have to camp out here by the fire as well
+as you can,” she added, “for thar ain't but the one room.”
+
+Our sex--by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger
+portion of humanity--has been generally relieved from the imputation of
+curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say
+that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than we crowded together,
+whispering, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises,
+and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her
+singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic,
+who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene
+indifference of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels.
+In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and
+Miggles re-entered.
+
+But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had flashed
+upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment on
+the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left behind
+her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a moment before. Coming
+into the room, she drew a low stool beside the paralytic's chair, sat
+down, drew the blanket over her shoulders, and saying, “If it's all the
+same to you, boys, as we're rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight,”
+ took the invalid's withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon
+the dying fire. An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory
+to more confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous
+curiosity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the roof, wandering
+gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary brightness, until, in a
+lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly lifted up her head, and, throwing
+her hair over her shoulder, turned her face upon the group and asked:
+
+“Is there any of you that knows me?”
+
+There was no reply.
+
+“Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53. Everybody knew me there, and
+everybody had the right to know me. I kept the Polka saloon until I came
+to live with Jim. That's six years ago. Perhaps I've changed some.”
+
+The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned her
+head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she again spoke,
+and then more rapidly:
+
+“Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's
+no great harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim
+here”--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--“used to know me,
+if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he spent all
+he had. And one day--it's six years ago this winter--Jim came into my
+back room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and
+never moved again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and never
+seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said as how it
+was caused all along of his way of life--for Jim was mighty free and
+wild-like--and that he would never get better, and couldn't last long
+anyway. They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he
+was no good to anyone and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was
+something in Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I
+said 'No.' I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen
+like yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
+bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel,
+you see, and I brought my baby here.”
+
+With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke, slowly
+shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the ruined man
+between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if
+she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and
+expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten
+with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm around
+her.
+
+Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:
+
+“It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about yer, for
+I was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any woman to help
+me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the Indians hereabout,
+who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North
+Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The Doctor would run up from
+Sacramento once in a while. He'd ask to see 'Miggles's baby,' as
+he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd say, 'Miggles; you're a
+trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem so lonely after that. But
+the last time he was here he said, as he opened the door to go, 'Do you
+know, Miggles, your baby will grow up to be a man yet and an honor to
+his mother; but not here, Miggles, not here!' And I thought he went away
+sad--and--and--” and here Miggles's voice and head were somehow both
+lost completely in the shadow.
+
+“The folks about here are very kind,” said Miggles, after a pause,
+coming a little into the light again. “The men from the fork used to
+hang around here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the women are
+kind--and don't call. I was pretty lonely until I picked up Joaquin in
+the woods yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and taught him to beg
+for his dinner; and then thar's Polly--that's the magpie--she knows no
+end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of evenings with her talk,
+and so I don't feel like as I was the only living being about the ranch.
+And Jim here,” said Miggles, with her old laugh again, and coming out
+quite into the firelight, “Jim--why, boys, you would admire to see how
+much he knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he
+looks at 'em just as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're
+sitting alone, I read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord!” said
+Miggles, with her frank laugh, “I've read him that whole side of the
+house this winter. There never was such a man for reading as Jim.”
+
+“Why,” asked the Judge, “do you not marry this man to whom you have
+devoted your youthful life?”
+
+“Well, you see,” said Miggles, “it would be playing it rather low down
+on Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then, too, if we
+were man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound to do what I do
+now of my own accord.”
+
+“But you are young yet and attractive--”
+
+“It's getting late,” said Miggles, gravely, “and you'd better all turn
+in. Good night, boys”; and, throwing the blanket over her head, Miggles
+laid herself down beside Jim's chair, her head pillowed on the low stool
+that held his feet, and spoke no more. The fire slowly faded from the
+hearth; we each sought our blankets in silence; and presently there was
+no sound in the long room but the pattering of the rain upon the roof
+and the heavy breathing of the sleepers.
+
+It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream. The storm had
+passed, the stars were shining, and through the shutterless window the
+full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines without, looked into
+the room. It touched the lonely figure in the chair with an infinite
+compassion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood the lowly head of
+the woman whose hair, as in the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him
+she loved. It even lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba
+Bill, half-reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
+savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then I fell asleep
+and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me, and “All
+aboard” ringing in my ears.
+
+Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone. We
+wandered about the house and lingered long after the horses were
+harnessed, but she did not return. It was evident that she wished to
+avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we had
+come. After we had helped the ladies into the coach, we returned to
+the house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic Jim, as solemnly
+settling him back into position after each handshake. Then we looked for
+the last time around the long low room, at the stool where Miggles had
+sat, and slowly took our seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked,
+and we were off!
+
+But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six
+horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk. For
+there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her hair
+flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and her white
+teeth flashing a last “good-by.” We waved our hats in return. And then
+Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination, madly lashed his horses
+forward, and we sank back in our seats. We exchanged not a word until we
+reached the North Fork, and the stage drew up at the Independence House.
+Then, the Judge leading, we walked into the barroom and took our places
+gravely at the bar.
+
+“Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?” said the Judge, solemnly taking
+off his white hat.
+
+They were.
+
+“Well, then, here's to MIGGLES. GOD BLESS HER!”
+
+Perhaps He had. Who knows?
+
+
+
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+
+I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
+certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in
+1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were
+derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of “Dungaree
+Jack”; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in “Saleratus Bill,”
+ so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread;
+or for some unlucky slip, as exhibited in “The Iron Pirate,” a mild,
+inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate
+mispronunciation of the term “iron pyrites.” Perhaps this may have been
+the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that
+it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own
+unsupported statement. “Call yourself Clifford, do you?” said Boston,
+addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; “hell is full of such
+Cliffords!” He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened
+to be really Clifford, as “Jay-bird Charley”--an unhallowed inspiration
+of the moment that clung to him ever after.
+
+But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other
+than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and
+distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he
+left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He
+never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by
+a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his
+meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile
+not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over
+his upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He
+followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast
+and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of the peace,
+and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be
+made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy
+Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all sentiment was modified by a
+strong sense of humor.
+
+Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason
+that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took occasion to
+say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said,
+she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--this time as far
+as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to
+housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's
+Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his
+fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned
+from Marysville, without his Partner's wife--she having smiled and
+retreated with somebody else--Tennessee's Partner was the first man to
+shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered
+in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their
+indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look
+in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous
+appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to
+practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.
+
+Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar.
+He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these
+suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued
+intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be
+accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last
+Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his
+way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled
+the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically
+concluded the interview in the following words: “And now, young man,
+I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see
+your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a
+temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was
+San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call.” It may be stated here that
+Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
+could wholly subdue.
+
+This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
+against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
+fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him,
+he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the
+crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon; but at its
+farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The
+men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both
+self-possessed and independent; and both types of a civilization that
+in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the
+nineteenth, simply “reckless.” “What have you got there?--I call,”
+ said Tennessee, quietly. “Two bowers and an ace,” said the stranger,
+as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife. “That takes me,”
+ returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers' epigram, he threw away his
+useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.
+
+
+It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
+going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
+evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with
+heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth
+faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce
+passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank
+of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.
+Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the
+express office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless
+panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
+deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark
+firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter
+passionless stars.
+
+The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a
+judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
+their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The
+law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and
+personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their
+hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they
+were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their
+own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any
+that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged,
+on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense
+than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more
+anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took
+a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. “I don't take any
+hand in this yer game,” had been his invariable but good-humored reply
+to all questions. The Judge--who was also his captor--for a moment
+vaguely regretted that he had not shot him “on sight” that morning,
+but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial
+mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said
+that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was
+admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the
+jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed
+him as a relief.
+
+For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a
+square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
+“jumper” and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect
+under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even
+ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he
+was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and
+inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched
+had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he
+advanced with great gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each
+person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious,
+perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
+complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and
+thus addressed the Judge:
+
+“I was passin' by,” he began, by way of apology, “and I thought I'd
+just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--my
+pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the
+Bar.”
+
+He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological
+recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket handkerchief, and for
+some moments mopped his face diligently.
+
+“Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?” said the Judge,
+finally.
+
+“Thet's it,” said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. “I come yar
+as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet
+and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but
+thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness
+as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez
+you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez you, 'Do you know
+anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--confidential-like, as
+between man and man--'What should a man know of his pardner?'”
+
+“Is this all you have to say?” asked the Judge impatiently, feeling,
+perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize
+the Court.
+
+“Thet's so,” continued Tennessee's Partner. “It ain't for me to say
+anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants
+money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner.
+Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches
+that stranger. And you lays for HIM, and you fetches HIM; and the
+honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you,
+gentlemen, all, as far-minded men, ef this isn't so.”
+
+“Prisoner,” said the Judge, interrupting, “have you any questions to ask
+this man?”
+
+“No! no!” continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. “I play this yer hand
+alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has
+played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer
+camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more; some
+would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a
+watch--it's about all my pile--and call it square!” And before a hand
+could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the
+carpetbag upon the table.
+
+For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their
+feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to
+“throw him from the window” was only overridden by a gesture from the
+Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement,
+Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with
+his handkerchief.
+
+When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use
+of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be
+condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue,
+and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled
+slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the
+gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated
+sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the
+belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and
+saying, “This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,”
+ he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him
+back. “If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it
+now.” For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
+strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and,
+saying, “Euchred, old man!” held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took
+it in his own, and saying, “I just dropped in as I was passin' to see
+how things was gettin' on,” let the hand passively fall, and adding that
+it was a warm night, again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and
+without another word withdrew.
+
+The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled
+insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak,
+or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that
+mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and
+at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the
+top of Marley's Hill.
+
+How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
+perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,
+with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future
+evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was present, and
+to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty
+of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky,
+the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and
+promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled
+through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social
+lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life,
+with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the
+misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the
+flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the
+RED DOG CLARION was right.
+
+Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous
+tree. But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular
+appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road.
+As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable “Jenny” and
+the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner--used by him
+in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner
+of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the
+perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he
+had come for the body of the “diseased,” “if it was all the same to the
+committee.” He didn't wish to “hurry anything”; he could “wait.” He
+was not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the
+“diseased,” he would take him. “Ef thar is any present,” he added, in
+his simple, serious way, “as would care to jine in the fun'l, they
+kin come.” Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already
+intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar--perhaps it was from something even
+better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation
+at once.
+
+It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of
+his Partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that
+it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a section of
+sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was
+further decorated with slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye
+blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner
+drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow
+seat in front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey
+forward. The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which
+was habitual with “Jenny” even under less solemn circumstances. The
+men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled
+along beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the
+homely catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the road or some
+present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to the
+rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external show
+of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a
+funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from
+a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not having, perhaps, your true
+humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.
+
+The way led through Grizzly Canyon--by this time clothed in funereal
+drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in
+the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth
+benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,
+surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the
+ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain
+a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their
+wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of
+Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
+
+Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
+cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
+the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the
+California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay
+superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,
+which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity
+had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we
+approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a
+recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.
+
+The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of
+assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed
+throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back and
+deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down
+the board which served as a lid; and mounting the little mound of
+earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his
+handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech; and they
+disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.
+
+“When a man,” began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, “has been running free
+all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And
+if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do?
+Why, bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we
+brings him home from his wandering.” He paused, and picked up a fragment
+of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: “It ain't
+the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now.
+It ain't the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he
+couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have
+waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home,
+when he couldn't speak, and didn't know me. And now that it's the last
+time, why”--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--“you
+see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen,” he added,
+abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, “the fun'l's over; and my
+thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble.”
+
+Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave,
+turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments' hesitation
+gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy
+Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's
+Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his
+knees, and his face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief. But it was
+argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief
+at that distance; and this point remained undecided.
+
+
+In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
+Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had
+cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a
+suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on
+him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses. But from
+that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline;
+and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were
+beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took
+to his bed. One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in
+the storm, and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the
+roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's
+Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, “It is time to go for
+Tennessee; I must put 'Jinny' in the cart”; and would have risen from
+his bed but for the restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still
+pursued his singular fancy: “There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old
+girl. How dark it is! Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,
+old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down right
+in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill.
+Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--all by himself,
+sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!”
+
+And so they met.
+
+
+
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+
+Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much
+the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long
+he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long
+he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered.
+A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and
+saturated his moral being.
+
+The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular,
+was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to
+attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a
+temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, “Effects
+of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods,” with a hand pointing to
+McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire,
+personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process
+rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this
+facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,
+released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and
+sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep
+sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty
+boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one
+eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
+and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.
+
+Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until
+they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with
+gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted
+by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon
+the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred
+not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other
+philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.
+
+“Miss Mary,” as she was known to the little flock that she had just
+dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
+afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
+azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking her
+way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of
+disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon
+Sandy!
+
+Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she
+had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and
+halted for a moment--at least six feet from this prostrate monster--with
+her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither
+sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then
+overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered “Beasts!”--an epithet
+which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the
+entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of
+certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated
+the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly
+celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps
+fairly earned the reputation of being “stuck-up.”
+
+As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
+heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature,
+and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to
+place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly
+as his eyes were open. Yet she did it, and made good her retreat. But
+she was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was
+removed, and that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.
+
+The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied
+that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from
+childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but
+condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right
+to dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the
+statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward
+expression was vague, being limited to a repetition of the following
+formula--“Su'shine all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?”
+
+Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of
+distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
+
+“Wass up? Wasser maar?” continued Sandy, in a very high key.
+
+“Get up, you horrid man!” said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; “get
+up, and go home.”
+
+Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
+trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
+
+“Wass I go home for?” he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
+
+“Go and take a bath,” replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with
+great disfavor.
+
+To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest,
+threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly
+forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.
+
+“Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!” said Miss Mary; and then,
+with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked
+herself in.
+
+That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's
+wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got
+drunk. “Abner,” responded Mrs. Stidger, reflectively, “let's see: Abner
+hasn't been tight since last 'lection.” Miss Mary would have liked to
+ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold
+bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation,
+which she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with
+opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger--a fine
+specimen of Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject
+altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston:
+“I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least
+objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
+anything that could make the women tolerable.”
+
+In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that
+her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another
+direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of
+azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not
+strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and
+invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines;
+but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the
+azaleas. A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest
+to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous
+laughter that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss
+Mary could get from him was, that someone had been “looking in the
+winder.” Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle
+with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came
+plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly
+sheepish and guilty-looking.
+
+These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in
+her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also,
+that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was
+amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored,
+silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor
+or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on
+her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with
+receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the
+gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom,
+her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And
+then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all
+unconsciously very happy.
+
+It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged boys
+came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,
+which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary
+compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At
+the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm
+dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both
+embarrassed and angry. “If you carried more of that for yourself,” she
+said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes
+to its owner, “you'd do better.” In the submissive silence that followed
+she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that
+he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which
+Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
+The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
+mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.
+
+Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
+“Profane Bill,” driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
+newspapers for his “gallantry” in invariably offering the box seat to
+the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
+that he had a habit of “cussin' on upgrades,” and gave her half the
+coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden
+with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a
+confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother
+of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this
+astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but
+content to worship the priestess from afar.
+
+With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,
+glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red
+Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.
+Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of
+the firs “did her chest good,” for certainly her slight cough was less
+frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending
+lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful
+or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill,
+and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling
+shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap
+finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass,
+and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such
+localities--what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged
+rock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting
+woods opened their long files to receive them! How the children--perhaps
+because they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the
+bounteous Mother--threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with
+uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary
+herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity of
+spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran like a crested
+quail at the head of her brood until, romping, laughing, and panting,
+with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbon
+from her throat, she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the
+forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!
+
+The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensued
+need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had
+already established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough that
+he was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with that
+quick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized a
+friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and
+took other liberties--as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had
+built a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of
+woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such
+foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the
+schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the sloping
+hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same
+attitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the similitude
+greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature that had found
+a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding an
+equal intoxication in love.
+
+I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he
+longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage,
+or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,
+gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in a heroic
+attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being
+only withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction
+that it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my
+fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some
+uninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who
+rescues, will forgive the omission.
+
+So they sat there, undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead and
+the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.
+What they said matters little. What they thought--which might have been
+interesting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how
+Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house, to come to
+California, for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an
+orphan, too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived
+a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which,
+from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and
+a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and
+when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
+the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the
+outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her weary
+life.
+
+As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of Red
+Gulch--to use a local euphuism--“dried up” also. In another day Miss
+Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know her
+no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on
+her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss
+Mary--I fear to the danger of school discipline--was lately in the habit
+of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland
+memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a
+gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
+remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more
+distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door.
+On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose
+dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.
+
+Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
+pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;
+but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled
+her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.
+It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a
+moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the
+dust beside the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long
+bench. Her voice was husky as she began:
+
+“I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
+couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my
+Tommy.”
+
+Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
+attention she could give him.
+
+“Thank you, miss; thank ye!” cried the stranger, brightening even
+through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her “war paint,”
+ and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
+schoolmistress. “I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,
+there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't
+much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives
+than he's got.”
+
+Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
+shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
+
+“It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,” she
+went on, hurriedly. “It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
+do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,
+but for the darling boy.”
+
+Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her
+lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees,
+she went on, in a low voice:
+
+“You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I
+ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of
+sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing
+a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
+right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And O, miss, he loves
+you so much; and if you could hear him talk about you, in his pretty
+way, and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse
+him.
+
+“It is natural,” she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
+strangely between pride and humility--“it's natural that he should
+take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
+gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I ain't
+goin' to cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy--God
+bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--to--take him
+with you.”
+
+She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
+fallen on her knees beside her.
+
+“I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some good
+school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to forget his
+mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be kindness
+to what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this wicked life,
+this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will; I know you
+will--won't you? You will--you must not, you cannot say no! You will
+make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown up, you
+will tell him his father's name--the name that hasn't passed my lips
+for years--the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy! Miss
+Mary!--do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You will take
+my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to look on
+such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!”
+
+Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her way to
+the open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, her
+eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky.
+There was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on her
+white collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly away.
+The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her.
+
+“I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but I
+cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see it in
+your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in
+your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!”
+
+The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with something
+of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Red
+Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded pleasantly.
+
+“I will take the boy. Send him to me tonight.”
+
+The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. She
+would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not.
+She rose to her feet.
+
+“Does--this man--know of your intention?” asked Miss Mary, suddenly.
+
+“No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it.”
+
+“Go to him at once--tonight--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell him
+I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the child
+again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, he
+must not follow! There, go now, please--I'm weary, and--have much yet to
+do!”
+
+They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.
+
+“Good night.”
+
+She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the
+young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure
+breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.
+
+
+It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill
+took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for the
+schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, in
+obedience to a pleasant voice from the “inside,” he suddenly reined up
+his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy hopped out at the command of
+Miss Mary. “Not that bush, Tommy--the next.”
+
+Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a tall
+azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.
+
+“All right now?”
+
+“All right.”
+
+And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
+
+
+
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+
+A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and boot
+heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evident that
+one of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the part
+of loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and some
+concern in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further
+indicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the
+box seat, noted with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that he
+depreciated the sex, but that he recognized therein a deceitful element,
+the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equally
+uncertain blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr.
+Hamlin was a professional exponent.
+
+So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down,
+he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil was
+fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and grave
+indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing to good
+breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he
+was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish
+restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate
+of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his overflowing vitality, his
+intense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled
+with crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside
+this lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric
+gravity.
+
+The driver called “All aboard!” and Mr. Hamlin returned to the coach.
+His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the level of the
+open window, when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to be the
+finest eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped down
+again, addressed a few words to one of the inside passengers, effected
+an exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin
+never allowed his philosophy to interfere with decisive and prompt
+action.
+
+I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the other
+passengers--particularly those who were making themselves most agreeable
+to the lady. One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed to
+her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's profession in a single epithet.
+Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he recognized in the informant
+a distinguished jurist from whom, but a few evenings before, he had won
+several thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed no
+sign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the
+legal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of
+his neighbor. An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from his
+maternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling wheels
+rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the stage drew up at
+the International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentleman and a member of
+Congress leaped out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess,
+while Colonel Starbottle, of Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and
+shawl. In this multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion
+and delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach,
+took the lady's hand--with that decision and positiveness which a
+hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire--and in an instant had
+dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again lifted her
+to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from
+that other cynic, “Yuba Bill,” the driver. “Look keerfully arter that
+baggage, Kernel,” said the expressman, with affected concern, as he
+looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the
+triumphant procession to the waiting-room.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled, and
+awaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and
+out into the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one leaving
+pleasant fancy behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by the roadside
+shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after him, recognizing the
+man by his horse, and speculating what “was up with Comanche Jack.” Yet
+much of this interest centered in the horse, in a community where
+the time made by “French Pete's” mare in his run from the Sheriff of
+Calaveras eclipsed all concern in the ultimate fate of that worthy.
+
+The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself. He
+checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used as a
+cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly from
+his fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape changed and
+became more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosed
+some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering vine trailed over the
+porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled babe under the roses
+of another. A little farther on Mr. Hamlin came upon some barelegged
+children wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a
+badinage peculiar to himself that they were emboldened to climb up
+his horse's legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop an
+exaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some
+kisses and coin. And then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all
+signs of habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so
+singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender, that I
+wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin's voice was not
+cultivated; the subject of his song was some sentimental lunacy borrowed
+from the Negro minstrels; but there thrilled through all some occult
+quality of tone and expression that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it
+was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of
+cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before
+him through the dim woods with a plaint about his “Nelly's grave” in a
+way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from
+his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit,
+stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority of
+man. With a superior predatory capacity, HE couldn't sing.
+
+But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and at his
+former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps,
+and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and
+indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in
+sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was
+clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic
+ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and
+dismounted before the gilded windows of the “Magnolia” saloon. Passing
+through the long barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a
+dark passage, opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in
+a dimly lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the
+locality, showed signs of abuse. The inlaid center table was overlaid
+with stained disks that were not contemplated in the original design.
+The embroidered armchairs were discolored, and the green velvet lounge,
+on which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was soiled at the foot with the red
+soil of Wingdam.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, looking at a highly
+colored painting above him representing a young creature of opulent
+charms. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that he had never
+seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he should, he would not,
+probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he was thinking of another
+style of beauty. But just then someone knocked at the door. Without
+rising, he pulled a cord that apparently shot back a bolt, for the door
+swung open, and a man entered.
+
+The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust--a vigor not borne out in
+the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and disfigured by
+dissipation. He appeared to be also under the influence of liquor, for
+he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, “I thought Kate was here,”
+ stammered, and seemed confused and embarrassed.
+
+Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam
+coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.
+
+“You didn't come up on the stage,” continued the newcomer, “did you?”
+
+“No,” replied Hamlin; “I left it at Scott's Ferry. It isn't due for half
+an hour yet. But how's luck, Brown?”
+
+“Damn bad,” said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of weak
+despair; “I'm cleaned out again, Jack,” he continued, in a whining tone
+that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure, “can't you help me
+with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup? You see I've got to send money
+home to the old woman, and--you've won twenty times that amount from
+me.”
+
+The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack overlooked
+it, and handed the sum to his visitor. “The old-woman business is about
+played out, Brown,” he added, by way of commentary; “why don't you say
+you want to buck agin' faro? You know you ain't married!”
+
+“Fact, sir,” said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere contact
+of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some dignity to his
+frame. “I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if I do say it--in the
+States. It's three year since I've seen her, and a year since I've writ
+to her. When things is about straight, and we get down to the lead, I'm
+going to send for her.”
+
+“And Kate?” queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.
+
+Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
+confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but poorly
+carried out, and said:
+
+“Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know. But
+come, what do you say to a little game? Give us a show to double this
+hundred.”
+
+Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. Perhaps he knew that
+the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred that it should
+flow back into his own coffers rather than any other. He nodded his
+head, and drew his chair toward the table. At the same moment there came
+a rap upon the door.
+
+“It's Kate,” said Mr. Brown.
+
+Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened. But, for the
+first time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved and
+abashed, and for the first time in his life the hot blood crimsoned his
+colorless cheeks to his forehead. For before him stood the lady he had
+lifted from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown--dropping his cards with a
+hysterical laugh--greeted as:
+
+“My old woman, by thunder!”
+
+They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her
+husband. I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the story.
+And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head of “Touching
+Reunion,” said: “One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar
+to California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of
+Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the effete civilization of the East
+and its inhospitable climate, resolved to join her noble husband
+upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention,
+she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the
+husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said
+to have been indescribably affecting. We trust her example may be
+followed.”
+
+
+Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful
+speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily
+improved. He bought out his partners in the “Nip and Tuck” lead, with
+money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two after his
+wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's theory that Brown
+had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have been furnished by Mr.
+Jack Hamlin. He built and furnished the “Wingdam House,” which pretty
+Mrs. Brown's great popularity kept overflowing with guests. He was
+elected to the Assembly, and gave largess to churches. A street in
+Wingdam was named in his honor.
+
+Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate,
+he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased,
+he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he
+was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social
+liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and
+only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him
+into silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex
+whom she had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which,
+like most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,
+whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered,
+too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the
+unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps not more
+ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished an older Greek
+democracy. I think that Brown was dimly conscious of this. But his only
+confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX reputation naturally precluded
+any open intimacy with the family, and whose visits were infrequent.
+
+It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,
+large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense
+of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense
+which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent. Beside her sat Colonel
+Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a later addition to her court in
+the shape of a foreign tourist. She was in good spirits.
+
+“What do you see down the road?” inquired the gallant Colonel, who had
+been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's attention
+was diverted.
+
+“Dust,” said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. “Only Sister Anne's 'flock of
+sheep.'”
+
+The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther back
+than last week's paper, took a more practical view. “It ain't sheep,” he
+continued; “it's a horseman. Judge, ain't that Jack Hamlin's gray?”
+
+But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was
+growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the parlor.
+
+Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after dinner.
+Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's companions; perhaps,
+like other weak natures, he found pleasure in the exercise of absolute
+power over inferior animals. He had a certain gratification in the
+training of a chestnut mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased
+him, which he couldn't do with Mrs. Brown. It was here that he
+recognized a certain gray horse which had just come in, and, looking
+a little farther on, found his rider. Brown's greeting was cordial and
+hearty, Mr. Hamlin's somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request,
+he followed him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to
+a small room looking out upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished
+with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.
+
+“This yer's my home, Jack,” said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw himself
+upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair. “Her room's t'other
+end of the hall. It's more'n six months since we've lived together, or
+met, except at meals. It's mighty rough papers on the head of the house,
+ain't it?” he said, with a forced laugh. “But I'm glad to see you,
+Jack, damn glad,” and he reached from the bed, and again shook the
+unresponsive hand of Jack Hamlin.
+
+“I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable; though,
+for the matter of that, it's all round town. Don't strike a light. We
+can talk here in the moonshine. Put up your feet on that winder, and sit
+here beside me. Thar's whisky in that jug.”
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. Brown of Calaveras
+turned his face to the wall and continued:
+
+“If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind. But it's loving her,
+and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate, and no one to put
+down the brake; that's what gits me! But I'm glad to see ye, Jack, damn
+glad.”
+
+In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his
+companion's hand again. He would have detained it, but Jack slipped it
+into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked, listlessly, “How long
+has this been going on?”
+
+“Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
+Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't know how
+much I loved her till then. And she hasn't been the same woman since.
+
+“But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about, and
+I'm glad you've come. It ain't that she doesn't love me any more; it
+ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along, for, perhaps, I
+staked her love and lost it, as I did everything else at the Magnolia;
+and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some women, and thar ain't no great
+harm done, 'cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think--I think she loves
+somebody else. Don't move, Jack; don't move; if your pistol hurts ye,
+take it off.
+
+“It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and lonesome,
+and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I've ketched her
+lookin' at me sort of timid and pitying. And she writes to somebody.
+And for the last week she's been gathering her own things--trinkets,
+and furbelows, and jew'lry--and, Jack, I think she's goin' off. I could
+stand all but that. To have her steal away like a thief--” He put his
+face downward to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound
+but the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and
+moved to the open window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and
+the bed and its occupant were in shadow. “What shall I do, Jack?” said
+the voice from the darkness.
+
+The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: “Spot the
+man, and kill him on sight.”
+
+“But, Jack?”
+
+“He's took the risk!”
+
+“But will that bring HER back?”
+
+Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.
+
+“Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table. It's a
+comfort to see ye, if nothin' else.”
+
+Jack hesitated, and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from his
+pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown's face was
+turned to the wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he cut them,
+and dealt one card on the opposite side of the table and toward the bed,
+and another on his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce,
+his own card, a king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time “dummy”
+ had a queen, and himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third
+deal. It brought his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. “Two
+out of three,” said Jack, audibly.
+
+“What's that, Jack?” said Brown.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and his
+imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes confusing.
+
+Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the
+anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept.
+Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on the town
+of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully--its harsh outlines softened and
+subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that
+flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the
+ditches, and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked
+up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling
+field. Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to
+Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star
+should fall--He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the
+phenomenon was not repeated.
+
+The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached the
+table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the flickering
+candlelight. It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in a
+woman's hand:
+
+“Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three.”
+
+The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke. “Are you there Jack?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Don't go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times. I thought
+that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack,
+was--who do you think?--you!”
+
+The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed--the paper still in
+his hand.
+
+“It's a good sign, ain't it?” queried Brown.
+
+“I reckon. Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?”
+
+The “old man,” thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the
+assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.
+
+“Smoke?”
+
+Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.
+
+“Light?”
+
+Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his
+companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped
+the fragment--a fiery star--from the open window. He watched it as it
+fell, and then returned to his friend.
+
+“Old man,” he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, “in ten
+minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We won't see each
+other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice: sell out all you've
+got, take your wife with you, and quit the country. It ain't no place
+for you, nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go, if she won't.
+Don't whine because you can't be a saint, and she ain't an angel. Be a
+man--and treat her like a woman. Don't be a damn fool. Good-by.”
+
+He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like
+a deer. At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler and
+backed him against the wall. “Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I'll--”
+ The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.
+
+“The missis said you was to have the buggy,” stammered the man.
+
+“Damn the buggy!”
+
+The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded
+hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.
+
+“Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?” said the man, who, like all his class,
+admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his
+welfare.
+
+“Stand aside!”
+
+The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the
+road. In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes, he was but a
+moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a star just loosed
+from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.
+
+But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles away,
+heard a voice, pure as a skylark's, singing afield. They who were asleep
+turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and love and olden
+days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased
+their labors and leaned upon their picks, to listen to a romantic
+vagabond ambling away against the rosy sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+
+When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
+was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and
+tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open
+bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their
+scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if
+you choose to indulge your fancy--although the flat monotony of the
+Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line of scattered drift gave
+an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters, and made the dead
+certainty of the returning tide a gloomy reflection which no present
+sunshine could dissipate. The greener meadowland seemed oppressed with
+this idea, and made no positive attempt at vegetation until the work of
+reclamation should be complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry
+bushes one might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled
+and soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.
+
+The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
+depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
+curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
+teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled
+complaint of the “killdeer” plover, were beyond the power of written
+expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful
+and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron standing mid-leg deep in the
+water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet
+and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or
+the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal
+contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher--an ornithological
+Marius--reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to
+and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't
+make up his mind whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited
+in the reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
+give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a glance that
+the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and
+that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling
+of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of extravagant
+anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless
+at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was
+strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering
+expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another
+tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous
+line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees
+arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings,
+drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal
+at the falling tide or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the
+legend; when the glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor
+furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and
+shut out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
+when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way, started
+at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the boat's keel, or
+shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like the floating hair
+of a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were lost upon Dedlow
+Marsh and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that--then you
+might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.
+
+Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never failed
+to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.
+Although the event was briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the
+story, in all its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor.
+I cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar coloring of
+feminine delineation, for my narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give
+at least its substance.
+
+She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-sized
+river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed by
+the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which constituted the
+southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was
+a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout piles, and
+was three miles distant from the settlements upon the river. Her husband
+was a logger--a profitable business in a county where the principal
+occupation was the manufacture of lumber.
+
+It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb of a
+high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower
+end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the
+voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and
+she remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that they must
+endeavor to complete their voyage before the coming of the southwesterly
+gale which he saw brewing. And that night it began to storm and blow
+harder than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees fell
+in the forest by the river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.
+
+But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew that
+one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand, and
+that had he feared for her he would not have left her. This, and her
+domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep
+her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of course, to hope that
+he was safely harbored with the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance.
+But she noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and
+look after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their
+garden-patch, and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles
+away, she could hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would
+like to have someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that
+if it had not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable,
+she would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
+nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he might have returned in the
+storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long exposure
+for baby, who was croupy and ailing.
+
+But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like sleeping
+or even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but she still “sat
+and sat,” and even tried to read. I don't know whether it was a Bible or
+some profane magazine that this poor woman read, but most probably the
+latter, for the words all ran together and made such sad nonsense that
+she was forced at last to put the book down and turn to that dearer
+volume which lay before her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf
+as yet unsoiled, and try to look forward to its mysterious future. And,
+rocking the cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still
+was wide-awake as ever.
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her clothes.
+How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke with a dreadful
+choking in her throat, and found herself standing, trembling all over,
+in the middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast, and she
+was “saying something.” The baby cried and sobbed, and she walked up
+and down trying to hush it when she heard a scratching at the door. She
+opened it fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their
+dog, who crawled, dripping with water, into the room. She would like to
+have looked out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to
+see how things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
+could hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and then walked
+up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a little while.
+Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she thought she heard
+once or twice something scrape slowly against the clapboards, like the
+scraping of branches. Then there was a little gurgling sound, “like the
+baby made when it was swallowing”; then something went “click-click”
+ and “cluck-cluck,” so that she sat up in bed. When she did so she was
+attracted by something else that seemed creeping from the back door
+toward the center of the room. It wasn't much wider than her little
+finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and began
+spreading all over the floor. It was water.
+
+She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing but
+water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw nothing
+but water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that open, she saw
+nothing but water. Then she remembered hearing her husband once say that
+there was no danger in the tide, for that fell regularly, and people
+could calculate on it, and that he would rather live near the bay than
+the river, whose banks might overflow at any time. But was it the tide?
+So she ran again to the back door, and threw out a stick of wood. It
+drifted away toward the bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it
+eagerly to her lips. It was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not
+the tide!
+
+It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither faint
+nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his merciful
+hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful moment--that fear
+dropped from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased. It was then
+and thereafter that she never lost her self-command, through all the
+trials of that gloomy night.
+
+She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a table
+upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the floor
+was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so
+perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew
+open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall,
+and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near
+the road at the upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the house.
+Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as
+rapidly as the current, for had it struck the house in its full career,
+even the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not have withstood
+the shock. The hound had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched
+near the roots shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her
+mind. She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about
+the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung
+again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
+leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining a
+footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots,
+she held in the other her moaning child. Then something cracked near the
+front porch, and the whole front of the house she had just quitted fell
+forward--just as cattle fall on their knees before they lie down--and at
+the same moment the great redwood tree swung round and drifted away with
+its living cargo into the black night.
+
+For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her crying
+babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of
+her situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water-swept
+cabin. She remembered even then, and she wonders how foolish she was to
+think of it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress
+and the baby's best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would
+be spared so that he, when he returned, would have something to come to,
+and it wouldn't be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what
+had become of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint.
+But she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
+long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half a
+revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water. The hound, who kept
+distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last
+fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time beside her,
+and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he “acted silly”
+ and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her
+baby were left alone. The light which had burned for a few minutes
+in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then
+tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white dunes on the
+peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a
+line with the river. It must be about slack water, and she had
+probably reached the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the
+overflowing waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was
+present danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to
+sea or crushed in the floating drift. That peril averted, if she were
+carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
+of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till daylight.
+Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from the river, and
+the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again it was only
+the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her heart. She found at about
+this time that she was so chilled and stiffened in her cramped position
+that she could scarcely move, and the baby cried so when she put it to
+her breast that she noticed the milk refused to flow; and she was so
+frightened at that, that she put her head under her shawl, and for the
+first time cried bitterly.
+
+When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind her, and
+she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped up the water to
+cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt as her tears. There
+was a relief, though, for by this sign she knew that she was drifting
+with the tide. It was then the wind went down, and the great and awful
+silence oppressed her. There was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed
+sides of the great trunk on which she rested, and around her all was
+black gloom and quiet. She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak,
+and to know that she had not lost her voice. She thought then--it was
+queer, but she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the
+night when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
+creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of mariners
+clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to rafts, and
+beaten to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank God that she was
+thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby, who had fallen into a
+fretful sleep. Suddenly, away to the southward, a great light lifted
+itself out of the gloom, and flashed and flickered, and flickered and
+flashed again. Her heart fluttered quickly against the baby's cold
+cheek. It was the lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet
+wondering, the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and
+then seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and the current
+gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by the position of the
+light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.
+
+Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not been
+for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would have
+felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to make all her
+impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock
+of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the plover
+flew up and piped mournfully as they wheeled around the trunk, and at
+last fearlessly lit upon it like a gray cloud. Then the heron flew over
+and around her, shrieking and protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt
+legs only a few yards from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white
+bird, larger than a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled
+around and around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite
+over her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
+neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that she
+thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to attract her
+attention. But when she did so, the child was so chilled and cold, and
+had such a blue look under the little lashes which it didn't raise at
+all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird flew away, and she fainted.
+
+Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much, after
+all, to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses it was bright
+sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused noise of guttural
+voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an Indian “hushaby,” and
+rocking herself from side to side before a fire built on the marsh,
+before which she, the recovered wife and mother, lay weak and weary. Her
+first thought was for her baby, and she was about to speak, when a young
+squaw, who must have been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and
+brought her the “mowitch,” pale but living, in such a queer little
+willow cradle all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that
+she laughed and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw
+showed their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
+“Plenty get well, skeena mowitch,” “wagee man come plenty soon,” and she
+could have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then she found that
+they had been gathering berries on the marsh in their queer, comical
+baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown fluttering on the tree from afar,
+and the old squaw couldn't resist the temptation of procuring a new
+garment, and came down and discovered the “wagee” woman and child. And
+of course she gave the garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and
+when HE came at last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older
+in his anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to
+the canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
+the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman was
+his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away back home,
+although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another house, using the
+old tree for the foundation and props, and called it after her, “Mary's
+Ark!” But you may guess the next house was built above high-water mark.
+And that's all.
+
+Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the Dedlow
+Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at
+high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog, as I have,
+to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to appreciate duly the
+blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.
+
+
+
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+
+As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night,
+a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the
+reader that I have no ulterior design in making this assertion. A
+long course of light reading has forewarned me what every experienced
+intelligence must confidently look for from such a statement. The
+storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such obvious beginnings; who is
+to the expectant reader in danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or
+frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his ladylove for the
+first time, deserves to be detected. I am relieved to say that none of
+these things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew
+no other banditti than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had
+not yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free
+will in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
+she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these depressing
+circumstances long enough to have made the slightest impression on me.
+
+I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on the
+vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible on its
+roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion clung tenaciously to
+its wheels. I opened the door; the stage creaked easily, and in the
+gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly hands, to come
+in now and have my sufferings out at once.
+
+I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which struck
+me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,
+who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected with the stage
+company, gravely descended, and walking toward the conveyance, tried
+the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated in the carriage, and
+returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed
+his position when another individual, equally disinterested, impassively
+walked down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it,
+expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to
+the hotel. A third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of
+the Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a
+moment in serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then
+returned to his column. There was something so weird in this baptism
+that I grew quite nervous.
+
+Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal annoyances,
+winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk at the stage
+office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had not predisposed
+me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka House, from a social
+viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion--so
+common to many honest people--that a serious style of deportment and
+conduct toward a stranger indicates high gentility and elevated station.
+Obeying this principle, all hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper,
+and general remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of
+several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left
+the dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively
+on mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A
+piano, harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to
+a diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an
+old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy
+curls. “I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the face is open
+disgrace.'” I heard no more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere
+expression on the subject of female loveliness, I walked away, checking
+the compliment that otherwise might have risen unbidden to my lips, and
+have brought shame and sorrow to the household.
+
+It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me that
+I stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about to mount,
+was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the hotel. He had
+the wearied look which was the distinguishing expression of Wingdam.
+Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and receipted for, he took no
+further notice of me. I looked longingly at the box seat, but he did
+not respond to the appeal. I flung my carpetbag into the chasm, dived
+recklessly after it, and--before I was fairly seated--with a great
+sigh, a creaking of unwilling springs, complaining bolts, and harshly
+expostulating axle, we moved away. Rather the hotel door slipped behind,
+the sound of the piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved
+solemnly upon us.
+
+To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity
+that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely
+distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
+peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the
+open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that,
+leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the fragrant sigh
+of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon the highway we
+had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our progress, more the
+guidance of some mysterious instinct than any apparent volition of
+our own, gave an indefinable charm of security to our journey that a
+moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of the driver would have
+destroyed.
+
+I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that rest
+so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion.
+When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary
+conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were
+distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms
+on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently
+composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs
+of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat
+which began to absorb my attention painfully. Slowly this thumping
+merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious female of
+the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into this awful and
+benumbing axiom--“Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.
+Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.” Inequalities of the road only
+quickened its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating length.
+
+It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no
+use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the many
+instances where praise to the face had redounded to the everlasting
+honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell sentimentally
+on modest genius and courage lifted up and strengthened by open
+commendation; of no use to except to the mysterious female, to picture
+her as rearing a thin-blooded generation on selfish and mechanically
+repeated axioms--all this failed to counteract the monotonous repetition
+of this sentence. There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was
+about to accept it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of
+darkness and necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some
+other annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
+moments. How quiet the driver was!
+
+Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not lying
+gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with blackened face
+who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither? The thing is perfectly
+feasible. And what is this fancy now being jolted out of me? A story?
+It's of no use to keep it back--particularly in this abysmal vehicle,
+and here it comes: I am a Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because
+the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better adapted to
+romantic incident--a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in
+the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my
+country seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep
+and tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
+angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so dark that
+when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who holds the
+carriage door. But what of that?--PESTE! I am heavy with sleep. The same
+obscurity also hides the old familiar indecencies of the statues on the
+terrace; but there is a door, and it opens and shuts behind me smartly.
+Then I find myself in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has
+quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There
+is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say,
+“PARBLEU!” draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two
+after outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through
+my ruffled linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I
+am rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
+assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an intimate
+friend.
+
+Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing the
+driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. I
+could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky woods, relieving a
+lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this picture glimmered sadly.
+I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene
+faces; and I hope that the vandal who first applied the flippant
+“twinkle” to them may not be driven melancholy-mad by their reproachful
+eyes. I noticed again the mystic charm of space that imparts a sense
+of individual solitude to each integer of the densest constellation,
+involving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of
+this calm and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern.
+When I awoke the full moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
+indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full moon of
+NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so palpably to
+a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the CASTA DIVA is
+sung--the “inconstant moon” that then and thereafter remains fixed in
+the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated
+by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that
+improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills
+ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping
+springs essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of
+the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast
+improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond delusion.
+
+My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A familiar
+sound had assured me of his presence in the full possession of at least
+one of his most important functions. Frequent and full expectoration
+convinced me that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of
+highwaymen, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted from my
+mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana, who left, as when
+she visited Endymion, much of her splendor outside my cavern--I looked
+around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I
+picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated. There was no
+scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No
+bend or twist in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's
+character. I tried to think that it might have been “Mariar's.” I tried
+to imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might
+have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which provoked the
+wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was reticent and unswerving in
+its upright fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through my fingers.
+
+I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
+contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I was
+unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my childish
+recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist those
+impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens,
+had begun to separate the formless masses of the shadowy landscape.
+Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages, changed places before
+my window. The sharp outlines of the distant hills came back, as
+in daylight, but little softened in the dry, cold, dewless air of a
+California summer night. I was wondering how late it was, and thinking
+that if the horses of the night traveled as slowly as the team before
+us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden
+spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings,
+like a pack of Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage
+leaped forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
+white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
+It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I addressed the
+driver:
+
+“I thought you changed horses on the road?”
+
+“So we did. Two hours ago.”
+
+“That's odd. I didn't notice it.”
+
+“Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully place
+for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!”
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+
+His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us,
+in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous way. He
+probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows
+would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and how
+sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show daguerreotypes and
+locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the man of no account used to
+sit by and listen with a pained, mortified expression on his plain face,
+and say nothing. I think he had nothing to say. He had no associates
+except when we patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal
+of sport to us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind.
+He never got his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how
+we all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,
+and--But you know that time-honored joke. And then we had such a
+splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the sight of
+him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a fancy to him,
+and send him little delicacies and books from the cabin. You ought
+to have witnessed the rich scene that took place when he came up,
+stammering and very sick, to thank her! Didn't she flash up grandly and
+beautifully and scornfully? So like “Medora,” Rattler said--Rattler knew
+Byron by heart--and wasn't old Fagg awfully cut up? But he got over it,
+and when Rattler fell sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him.
+You see he was a good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and
+spirit.
+
+He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly by,
+mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring apostrophe
+of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite seriously, if he
+thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember Rattler's reply, but I
+know we all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was something good
+for Rattler was smart.
+
+When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand “feed.”
+ We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course we
+didn't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary,
+you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old
+Fagg, as we called him--he was only about twenty-five years old, by the
+way--was the source of immense amusement to us that day. It appeared
+that he had conceived the idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and
+actually started off afoot. We had a good time, and shook hands with one
+another all around, and so parted. Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet
+some of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each
+other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know that
+we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker swore
+he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a very
+contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money
+at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter in a restaurant,
+didn't like to meet such people.
+
+When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at Mugginsville,
+in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it. I stopped at the
+Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and rode round the town and
+out to the claim. One of those individuals whom newspaper correspondents
+call “our intelligent informant,” and to whom in all small communities
+the right of answering questions is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed
+out to me. Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and
+he never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and
+added: “You see, stranger,” (he addressed the bank before him) “gold is
+sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his pick)
+but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his
+pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period).
+He was green, and let the boys about here jump him”--and the rest of his
+sentence was confided to his hat, which he had removed to wipe his manly
+brow with his red bandanna.
+
+I asked him who was the original proprietor.
+
+“His name war Fagg.”
+
+I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer. He had worked
+hard, he said, and was getting on “so-so.” I took quite a liking to
+him and patronized him to some extent. Whether I did so because I was
+beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as Rattler and Mixer is
+not necessary for me to state.
+
+You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
+shareholders were done! Well, the next thing I heard was that Rattler,
+who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at Mugginsville keeping
+bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville Hotel, and that old Fagg had
+struck it rich, and didn't know what to do with his money. All this was
+told me by Mixer, who had been there, settling up matters, and likewise
+that Fagg was sweet upon the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid
+hotel. And so by hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old
+Robins, the hotel man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie
+Robins and Fagg. Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing,
+and would do just as her father wished. I thought it would be a good
+thing for Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man
+he might be of some account. So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to look
+after things.
+
+It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for
+me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had
+tried to snub me two years ago. I talked to him about old Fagg and
+Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful. He never
+liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't. Did Nellie
+like anybody else? He turned around to the mirror behind the bar and
+brushed up his hair! I understood the conceited wretch. I thought I'd
+put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry up matters. I had a long talk
+with him. You could see by the way the poor fellow acted that he was
+badly stuck. He sighed, and promised to pluck up courage to hurry
+matters to a crisis. Nellie was a good girl, and I think had a sort of
+quiet respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already
+taken captive by Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and
+pleasing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I. We are more
+apt to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic
+worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them, quite
+as convenient. The difficulty with women is that their feelings are apt
+to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you know, reasoning is out
+of the question. This is what old Fagg would have known had he been of
+any account. But he wasn't. So much the worse for him.
+
+It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when in
+walked old Fagg. I was surprised to see him down, but we talked over the
+current topics in that mechanical manner of people who know that they
+have something else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that formal
+way. After an interval Fagg in his natural manner said:
+
+“I'm going home!”
+
+“Going home?”
+
+“Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States. I came
+to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I have executed
+a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs. I have some papers I'd
+like to leave with you. Will you take charge of them?”
+
+“Yes,” I said. “But what of Nellie?”
+
+His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in one
+of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld. At length he
+said:
+
+“I shall not marry Nellie--that is”--he seemed to apologize internally
+for the positive form of expression--“I think that I had better not.”
+
+“David Fagg,” I said with sudden severity, “you're of no account!”
+
+To my astonishment his face brightened. “Yes,” said he, “that's it!--I'm
+of no account! But I always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved
+that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than she did
+me, and would be happier I dare say with him. But then I knew that old
+Robins would have preferred me to him, as I was better off--and the
+girl would do as he said--and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the
+way--and so I left. But,” he continued, as I was about to interrupt him,
+“for fear the old man might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough
+to set him up in business for himself in Dogtown. A pushing, active,
+brilliant fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be
+in his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know, if
+he doesn't. Good-by.”
+
+I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be at all
+amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to attend to
+it, and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer arrived, and a
+terrible incident occupied the papers for days afterward. People in all
+parts of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful shipwreck, and
+those who had friends aboard went away by themselves, and read the long
+list of the lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant,
+the noble, and loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was
+the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the “man of no account”
+ had “gone home!”
+
+
+
+
+MLISS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,
+and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
+mountain, stands “Smith's Pocket.” Seen from the red road at sunset,
+in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the
+outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside. The red stage topped
+with red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the
+tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and
+vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably
+owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger
+at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance.
+Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident
+traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the impression that
+it lies in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel
+men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers
+with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
+“Civilization and Refinement,” plodding along over the road he had just
+ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.
+
+An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
+disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
+fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling
+more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of
+man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and
+disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some
+forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road,
+hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a
+clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and here and
+there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone left intact
+and the hearthstone open to the skies.
+
+The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a
+“pocket” on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were
+taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were
+expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling. And
+then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject like
+other pockets to depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of the
+great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last
+return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets,
+and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.
+Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
+hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloonkeeping.
+Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it
+was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then people began to
+think, as they are apt to, that he had never been anything else. But the
+settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily
+not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected
+tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with
+its two fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its
+two first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was
+overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
+imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making outraged
+Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface, look still more
+homely, and putting personal insult on that greater portion of the
+population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely
+the necessity of cleanliness without the luxury of adornment. Then there
+was a Methodist Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond,
+on the mountainside, a graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.
+
+“The Master,” as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night
+in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully
+making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the
+extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as
+“Riches are deceitful,” and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity
+of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a
+gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during
+the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening of the
+door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look
+up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty
+and shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed,
+lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms
+and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was
+Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.
+
+“What can she want here?” thought the master. Everybody knew “Mliss,”
+ as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
+Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable
+disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way
+as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as
+philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought
+the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She
+followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met
+her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the
+mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with
+subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.
+Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.
+The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, “stated” preacher, had placed her in the
+hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
+her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally
+at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
+guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so
+inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution
+that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
+morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families,
+the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
+antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the
+master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding
+feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
+commanded his respect.
+
+“I come here tonight,” she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard
+glance on his, “because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when
+them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. You keep
+school, don't you? I want to be teached!”
+
+If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled hair
+and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master would
+have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But
+with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his species, her
+boldness awakened in him something of that respect which all original
+natures pay unconsciously to one another in any grade. And he gazed at
+her the more fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on that door
+latch and her eyes on his:
+
+“My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
+father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with him.
+Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!”
+
+“Well?” said the master.
+
+Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for
+no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the
+master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped; she began
+to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line
+of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered
+slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush struggled up
+to her cheek and tried to assert itself through the splashes of redder
+soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward,
+calling on God to strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless,
+with her face on the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart
+would break.
+
+The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass. When,
+with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs the MEA
+CULPA of childish penitence--that “she'd be good, she didn't mean to,”
+ etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left Sabbath school.
+
+Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why? Oh, yes. What did he
+(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell her
+that God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to go to
+Sabbath school for? SHE didn't want to be “beholden” to anybody who
+hated her.
+
+Had she told McSnagley this?
+
+Yes, she had.
+
+The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in the
+little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the
+sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected himself with
+a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a
+moment of serious silence he asked about her father.
+
+Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for her?
+Why did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks say, “Old
+Bummer Smith's Mliss!” when she passed? Yes; oh yes. She wished he was
+dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her sobs broke forth anew.
+
+The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could what you
+or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories from childish
+lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I the unnatural
+facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow
+of her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his
+shawl around her, and, bidding her come early in the morning, he walked
+with her down the road. There he bade her “good night.” The moon shone
+brightly on the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the bent
+little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited until it had
+passed the little graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it
+turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against
+the far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines
+of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of never-ending
+road, over which childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and crying into
+the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he
+shut the door and went home.
+
+The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed, and her
+coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb,
+in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone
+occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.
+Then began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in which
+master and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence
+and sympathy between them. Although obedient under the master's eye,
+at times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss
+would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,
+finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek
+the master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
+dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on
+the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil
+companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the master
+in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that
+seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back afterward, the master
+drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it
+were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had
+set her feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the
+experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock
+of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
+But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those
+few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older,
+the wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
+that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes,
+it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had
+made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was enabled to assume
+the garments of respect and civilization; and often a rough shake of
+the hand, and words of homely commendation from a red-shirted and burly
+figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the young master, and set him to
+thinking if it was altogether deserved.
+
+Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and the
+master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious
+copies, when there came a tap at the door and again Mliss stood before
+him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps
+but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his
+former apparition. “Are you busy?” she asked. “Can you come with
+me?”--and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she
+said, “Come, then, quick!”
+
+They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they
+entered the town the master asked her whither she was going. She
+replied, “To see my father.”
+
+It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or
+indeed anything more than “Old Smith” or the “Old Man.” It was the first
+time in three months that she had spoken of him at all, and the master
+knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him since her great change.
+Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose,
+he passively followed. In out-of-the-way places, low groggeries,
+restaurants, and saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses, the
+master, preceded by Mliss, came and went. In the reeking smoke and
+blasphemous outcries of low dens, the child, holding the master's hand,
+stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one
+absorbing nature of her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing
+Mliss, called to the child to sing and dance for them, and would have
+forced liquor upon her but for the interference of the master. Others,
+recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour slipped
+by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a cabin on the
+other side of the creek crossed by the long flume, where she thought he
+still might be. Thither they crossed--a toilsome half-hour's walk--but
+in vain. They were returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume,
+gazing at the lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly,
+sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear night air. The echoes
+caught it, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the
+dogs to barking all along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and move
+quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream
+rippled quite audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from
+the hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
+the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to fall
+thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master turned toward Mliss with an
+unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had gone. Oppressed by
+a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail to the river's bed, and,
+jumping from boulder to boulder, reached the base of Red Mountain and
+the outskirts of the village. Midway of the crossing he looked up and
+held his breath in awe. For high above him on the narrow flume he saw
+the fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in
+the darkness.
+
+He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central
+point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of
+awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the child appeared,
+and, taking the master's hand, led him silently before what seemed a
+ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited
+manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected
+event had at last happened--an expression that to the master in his
+bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were
+partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
+to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late
+occupant. The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent
+over them. It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a
+bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a “change of
+heart” supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described
+in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had
+“struck a good lead.” So when there was a new grave added to the
+little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board
+and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite
+handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of “our oldest
+Pioneers,” alluding gracefully to that “bane of noble intellects,” and
+otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. “He leaves
+an only child to mourn his loss,” says the BANNER, “who is now an
+exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley.” The
+Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,
+and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
+her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial
+effects of the “silent tomb,” and in this cheerful contemplation
+drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the
+pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse
+to be comforted.
+
+The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
+whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
+breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
+in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and
+hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of
+a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers
+plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude
+wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
+formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in
+their desks, intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,
+and the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the
+dark-blue cowl of the monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something
+in the odd association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
+occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic
+sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came
+upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on
+a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches,
+her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to herself one of
+the Negro melodies of her younger life. Recognizing him at a distance,
+she made room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave
+assumption of hospitality and patronage that would have been ridiculous
+had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab
+apples. The master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious
+and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her
+lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as long
+as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had tested her
+integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had
+overcome him on seeing them died away.
+
+Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known,
+the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted
+specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the
+“Per-rairie Rose.” Being one of those who contend resolutely against
+their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and
+struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to
+principles of “order,” which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope,
+as “Heaven's first law.” But she could not entirely govern the orbits
+of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own
+“Jeemes” sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature asserted
+itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard “between
+meals,” and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those
+important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted
+walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were “keerless” of their
+clothes. So with but one exception, however much the “Prairie Rose”
+ might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance,
+the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling. That
+one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She was the
+realization of her mother's immaculate conception--neat, orderly, and
+dull.
+
+It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that “Clytie” was
+a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher
+threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was “bad,” and set her up
+before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,
+therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to
+school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss
+and others. For “Clytie” was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's
+physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
+Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket,
+to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and
+languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour
+of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.
+
+Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes
+to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that
+in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were
+uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the
+request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat
+disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that
+she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on
+his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung
+back her blond curls when she did so. I don't remember whether I have
+stated that the master was a young man--it's of little consequence,
+however; he had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie
+was taking her first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible
+curves and factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he
+was. Perhaps an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this
+asceticism. He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she
+returned to the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and
+did not find it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he
+endeavored to make himself particularly agreeable--partly from the
+fact, I imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
+already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.
+
+The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to school.
+Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared
+that they had left the school together, but the willful Mliss had taken
+another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he called on
+Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had
+spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace that might
+lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice,
+but that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with his
+innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the child
+would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was almost as terrible,
+muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at
+heart, the master returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and
+seated himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him addressed
+to himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be written on a
+leaf torn from some old memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious
+trifling, had been sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost
+tenderly, the master read as follows:
+
+
+RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.
+NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my
+Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco-box] to
+Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don't
+you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she is
+perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present from
+
+Yours respectfully,
+
+MELISSA SMITH.
+
+
+The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon lifted
+its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the trail that
+led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the coming and going
+of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he tore the missive into
+fragments and scattered them along the road.
+
+At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike
+fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its
+form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who
+had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge
+where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and
+tasseled branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what
+might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling
+limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered
+itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,
+found the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he
+met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other without
+speaking. She was first to break the silence.
+
+“What do you want?” she asked curtly.
+
+The master had decided on a course of action. “I want some crab apples,”
+ he said humbly.
+
+“Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?”
+ (It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional
+syllables to that classical young woman's already long-drawn title.) “O
+you wicked thing!”
+
+“I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I am
+famished!” and the young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned
+against the tree.
+
+Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life
+she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his
+heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:
+
+“Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind you
+don't tell,” for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and squirrels.
+
+But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
+hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she
+peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:
+
+“If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch me?”
+
+The master promised.
+
+“Hope you'll die if you do!”
+
+The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid down
+the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the munching of the
+pine nuts. “Do you feel better?” she asked, with some solicitude. The
+master confessed to a recuperated feeling, and then, gravely thanking
+her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone far
+before she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white,
+with tears in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right
+moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking
+in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, “Lissy, do you remember the first
+evening you came to see me?”
+
+Lissy remembered.
+
+“You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
+something and be better, and I said--”
+
+“Come,” responded the child, promptly.
+
+“What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was
+lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and
+teach him to be better?”
+
+The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited
+patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
+raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them.
+A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and
+there stopped.
+
+“We are waiting, Lissy,” said the master, in a whisper, and the child
+smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long
+pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the
+doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the
+master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but
+the master, putting the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her;
+and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest
+odors into the open sunlit road.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss
+still retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps
+the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little
+breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline
+offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions
+were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and
+irrepressible form.
+
+The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
+conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many
+other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a
+priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's
+doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a
+secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time
+companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering.
+Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and
+anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in
+days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers
+had been. Mliss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
+endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It
+was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only
+allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her
+doll, as she would to herself, it knew no luxuries.
+
+Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll
+and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The
+master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a slight resemblance
+in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became
+evident before long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance.
+Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was
+alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from
+school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion
+of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge
+of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's
+excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of
+the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that “fetish”
+ ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away
+and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.
+
+In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing
+in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous
+perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.
+Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of
+course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing
+beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around
+her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are
+not better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the
+little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,
+and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own
+experience and judgment.
+
+Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained
+his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see
+that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but
+one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition--the
+faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though
+not always an attribute of the noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both
+fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
+synonymous.
+
+The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had
+arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that
+he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined
+to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
+humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he
+thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps
+with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that
+had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a
+complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked
+back his dislike and went to McSnagley.
+
+The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed
+that the master was looking “peartish,” and hoped he had got over the
+“neuralgy” and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been troubled with a dumb
+“ager” since last conference. But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”
+
+Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
+of curing the dumb “ager” upon the book and volume of his brain,
+Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. “She is an
+adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young family,”
+ added Mr. McSnagley; “and there's that mannerly young gal--so well
+behaved--Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect
+him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The
+master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced
+contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there
+was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs.
+Morpher's earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile
+efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another
+engagement, and left without asking the information required, but in his
+after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the
+full benefit of having refused it.
+
+Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close
+communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in the master's
+manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long
+postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked
+full in his face with big, searching eyes. “You ain't mad?” said she,
+with an interrogative shake of the black braids. “No.” “Nor bothered?”
+ “No.” “Nor hungry?” (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that might attack
+a person at any moment.) “No.” “Nor thinking of her?” “Of whom, Lissy?”
+ “That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who
+was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) “No.” “Upon your
+word?” (A substitute for “Hope you'll die!” proposed by the master.)
+“Yes.” “And sacred honor?” “Yes.” Then Mliss gave him a fierce little
+kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after
+that she condescended to appear more like other children, and be, as she
+expressed it, “good.”
+
+Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket, and as
+his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually
+becoming the capital of the State not entirely definite, he contemplated
+a change. He had informed the school trustees privately of his
+intentions, but educated young men of unblemished moral character being
+scarce at that time, he consented to continue his school term through
+the winter to early spring. None else knew of his intention except his
+one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people
+of Wingdam as “Duchesny.” He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,
+Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of
+a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
+the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never
+really believed he was going to do anything before it was done.
+
+He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,
+which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,
+romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do
+better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was
+nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would
+be a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed
+letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister
+of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of
+leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few
+months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the
+master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some
+loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better
+guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
+Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
+afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent
+Clytemnestra, labeled “the white girl,” to prevent mistakes, and impaled
+them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
+
+When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered
+in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few
+ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or
+Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were
+gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children
+in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a witness box. As
+usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the
+lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the
+present instance Mliss and Clytie were preeminent, and divided
+public attention; Mliss with her clearness of material perception
+and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike
+correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and
+blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the
+greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents
+had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose
+athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded
+faces looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
+an unexpected circumstance.
+
+McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing
+entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and
+most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and
+Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our
+spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the
+spheres, and defining the tethered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley
+impressively arose. “Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of
+this yere yearth and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it
+had been a doing of it since the creashun, eh?” Mliss nodded a scornful
+affirmative. “Well, war that the truth?” said McSnagley, folding his
+arms. “Yes,” said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips tightly. The
+handsome outlines at the windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a
+saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging
+to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and
+whispered, “Stick to it, Mliss!” The reverend gentleman heaved a
+deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at the master, then at the
+children, and then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman softly
+elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a
+gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest
+worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary
+silence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big
+eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin
+rested softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
+master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:
+
+“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!” There
+was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on
+McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and a comical look of
+disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over
+her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst
+from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, a
+yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk,
+with the emphatic declaration:
+
+“It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!”
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were
+visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests
+exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, the
+ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland
+which climbed Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the
+monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook
+its dark-blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and
+green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.
+The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
+and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
+reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General superstition
+had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.
+
+There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that,
+at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for
+a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and “screaming farces”; that,
+alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a
+grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These
+announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk,
+and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the
+master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of
+thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous
+evening the master and Mliss “assisted.”
+
+The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
+melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
+But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt
+something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her
+excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of
+her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted
+to give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and
+arched her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities
+of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly
+affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief,
+as was the tender-hearted “Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller”
+ and ogling the master at the same moment. But when the performance was
+over, and the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a
+long deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a
+half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, “Now take me
+home!” and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more
+in fancy on the mimic stage.
+
+On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to ridicule
+the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss thought that the
+young lady who acted so beautifully was really in earnest, and in love
+with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love
+with him it was a very unfortunate thing! “Why?” said Mliss, with an
+upward sweep of the drooping lid. “Oh! well, he couldn't support his
+wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine clothes,
+and then they wouldn't receive as much wages if they were married as if
+they were merely lovers--that is,” added the master, “if they are not
+already married to somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty
+young countess takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain,
+or snuffs the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As
+to the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and must
+cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of that
+mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for I bought
+some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty
+good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think people
+ought to take advantage of it and give him black eyes and throw him in
+the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a
+long time, before I would throw it up in his face, as the fellow did the
+other night at Wingdam.”
+
+Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his
+eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint
+idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic
+humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But
+the young man continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs.
+Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving
+the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading
+his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren
+glances, he excused himself, and went home.
+
+For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company, Mliss
+was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was
+for once omitted, owing to the absence of his trustworthy guide. As he
+was putting away his books and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a
+small voice piped at his side, “Please, sir?” The master turned and
+there stood Aristides Morpher.
+
+“Well, my little man,” said the master, impatiently, “what is it?
+quick!”
+
+“Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
+agin.”
+
+“What's that, sir?” said the master, with that unjust testiness with
+which we always receive disagreeable news.
+
+“Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
+talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now; and
+please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a speech
+as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted right off by
+heart,” and the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.
+
+“What actor?” asked the master.
+
+“Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold chain,”
+ said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke out his
+breath.
+
+The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness
+in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted
+along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the
+master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped
+up against him. “Where were they talking?” asked the master, as if
+continuing the conversation.
+
+“At the Arcade,” said Aristides.
+
+When they reached the main street the master paused. “Run down home,”
+ said he to the boy. “If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.
+If she isn't there, stay home; run!” And off trotted the short-legged
+Aristides.
+
+The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building containing
+a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young man crossed the
+plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by turned and looked
+after him. He looked at his clothes, took out his handkerchief, and
+wiped his face before he entered the barroom. It contained the usual
+number of loungers, who stared at him as he entered. One of them looked
+at him so fixedly and with such a strange expression that the master
+stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only his own reflection in
+a large mirror. This made the master think that perhaps he was a little
+excited, and so he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of
+the tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
+advertisements.
+
+He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and into the
+billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter apartment a person
+was standing by one of the tables with a broad-brimmed glazed hat on his
+head. The master recognized him as the agent of the dramatic company;
+he had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, from the peculiar
+fashion of wearing his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his
+search was not there, he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had
+noticed the master, but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in
+which vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand,
+he pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The master
+stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their glances met,
+the master walked up to him.
+
+He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to speak,
+something kept rising in his throat and retarded his utterance, and his
+own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and resonant. “I
+understand,” he began, “that Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my
+scholars, has talked with you about adopting your profession. Is that
+so?”
+
+The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an imaginary
+shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions. Then, walking round
+the table, he recovered the ball and placed it upon the spot. This duty
+discharged, getting ready for another shot, he said:
+
+“S'pose she has?”
+
+The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table in
+his gloved hand, he went on:
+
+“If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her guardian,
+and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do the kind of
+life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I have already
+brought her out of an existence worse than death--out of the streets and
+the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like
+men. She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking
+to give her an equivalent for these?”
+
+The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
+looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.
+
+“I know that she is a strange, willful girl,” continued the master, “but
+she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over
+her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further
+steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I
+am willing--” But here something rose again in the master's throat, and
+the sentence remained unfinished.
+
+The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his
+head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:
+
+“Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!”
+
+The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance
+than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The
+best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master
+felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in
+the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow
+sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove
+and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up
+the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his
+beard for some time to come.
+
+There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many
+feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
+followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about
+his opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking
+bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone
+was holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding
+from the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a
+glittering knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.
+
+The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master
+to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well
+as he could with his parched throat about “Mliss.” “It's all right,
+my boy,” said Mr. Morpher. “She's home!” And they passed out into the
+street together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had
+come running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him
+out, saying that somebody was trying to kill the master at the Arcade.
+Wishing to be alone, the master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not
+seek the agent again that night, and parted from him, taking the road
+toward the schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door
+open--still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
+
+The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most sensitive
+organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
+adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he thought, that
+such a construction might be put upon his affection for the child,
+which at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily
+abnegated his authority and affection? And what had everybody else said
+about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last
+obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had
+been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked
+his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the
+people say? What would his friends say? What would McSnagley say?
+
+In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to meet was
+Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk, told the child, in
+a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to be alone. As she
+rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, buried his head in his
+hands. When he looked up again she was still standing there. She was
+looking at his face with an anxious expression.
+
+“Did you kill him?” she asked.
+
+“No!” said the master.
+
+“That's what I gave you the knife for!” said the child, quickly.
+
+“Gave me the knife?” repeated the master, in bewilderment.
+
+“Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit him.
+Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why
+didn't you stick him?” said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle of
+the black eyes and a gesture of the little red hand.
+
+The master could only look his astonishment.
+
+“Yes,” said Mliss. “If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with the
+play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you wouldn't
+tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doctor so.
+I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers. I'd rather die
+first.”
+
+With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
+character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding
+them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and in the queer
+pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into when unduly excited:
+
+“That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the
+play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I won't
+stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you let me, if
+you didn't hate and despise me too!”
+
+The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over the
+edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the corner of
+her apron as if they had been wasps.
+
+“If you lock me up in jail,” said Mliss, fiercely, “to keep me from the
+play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why shouldn't
+I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always carry it
+here,” and she struck her breast with her clenched fist.
+
+The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
+the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his and
+looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:
+
+“Lissy, will you go with ME?”
+
+The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, “Yes.”
+
+“But now--tonight?”
+
+“Tonight.”
+
+And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that had
+once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it seemed
+she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered brightly above
+them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them the
+school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+
+The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
+southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by
+the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam
+clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air
+was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante,
+Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the
+Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a
+color into his smoke-dried cheeks.
+
+The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window of
+the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the year now
+about to pass away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there
+was little to review; the year, like its predecessors, had been
+uneventful--the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple
+duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring
+feasts and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the
+rare transport ship and rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of
+his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly
+no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the
+wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations,
+the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last
+earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the
+other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short, it
+was that glorious Indian summer of California history around which so
+much poetical haze still lingers--that bland, indolent autumn of
+Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican
+independence and the reviving spring of American conquest.
+
+The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire that
+burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the
+work of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the
+leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture
+text--the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos--an audible
+commentary fell from his lips: “'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah,
+little one, excellent!--'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ!
+that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see
+it!” A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right,
+alas! twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed
+it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: “'The
+Ishmaelites having arrived--'”
+
+He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
+threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,
+the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned quickly toward
+the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But
+it was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen that
+weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant
+son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented
+himself with frowning upon the intruder.
+
+But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful. He
+was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of
+a mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there was little about
+him that was peculiar.
+
+His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent
+than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of
+the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on
+a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather
+into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale
+under the headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he
+did not need, having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict
+surveillance of the Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign
+vessels, and would do nothing against the severe discipline and good
+order of the settlement. There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone
+as he glanced toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the
+open unguarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had
+discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and was
+then sound asleep in the corridor.
+
+The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he was
+accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order
+issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there
+was no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
+humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to
+the Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not
+weigh with his decision. He would have denied with equal disregard of
+consequences that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded
+so gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only
+that there should be no communication between the ship and shore. “For
+yourself, Senor Captain,” he continued, “accept my hospitality. The
+fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your distinguished
+presence”; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of
+withdrawing from the guardroom.
+
+Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort,
+the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the
+shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer
+literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let
+slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely
+reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transaction checked
+him. He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely
+drew a settle before the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the
+black-silk handkerchief that bound his grizzled brows.
+
+What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me
+not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate.
+I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under
+the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became
+still more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years' budget
+of gossip! The Commander learned, for the first time, how Great Britain
+lost her colonies; of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon,
+whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the
+Commander's superiors would have liked. And when Peleg turned
+questioner, the Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself
+master of the gossip of the Mission and Presidio, the “small-beer”
+ chronicles of that pastoral age, the conversion of the heathen, the
+Presidio schools, and even asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!
+It is said that at this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced
+from about his person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled
+trifles, and even forced some of them upon his host. It is further
+alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of
+aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in
+a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown Spanish
+poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers madrigals and
+heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a
+“little one” who was his, the Commander's, “soul”! These allegations,
+perhaps unworthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should be received
+with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the
+Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest
+the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous
+manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of
+this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
+protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated,
+took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT.
+When the day broke the ship was gone.
+
+I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that the
+holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the
+plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for
+many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement;
+that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were
+found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several
+bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but
+were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender, were discovered
+in the stable of the blacksmith. But when the reader reflects upon the
+sacredness of a Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of
+the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my
+countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at
+once reject this part of the story.
+
+
+A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander. The sun
+was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in bed, and
+through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of
+the previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran
+to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden thought seemed to
+strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with this, he
+consulted the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There
+was no mistake; the Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as
+good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.
+
+Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but
+one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles
+vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen,
+through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their
+beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the
+recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly. The
+Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood--he dared
+not tell the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed
+that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise and
+discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in his life the
+Commander thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text
+which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of
+being “all things to all men.” Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!
+
+For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement.
+The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise
+a baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could look at it without
+winking. It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that,
+it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing
+through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The
+soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their
+commander, and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.
+The servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that
+seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched
+their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize
+pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood
+beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity
+took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos.
+Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.
+
+Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
+miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only
+saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg
+had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most trusty retainers
+stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,
+confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses
+and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The very children that he
+loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be conscious of some hidden
+sin. The result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.
+For the first half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at variance.
+He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however,
+his voice took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,
+impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain
+that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the
+Commander.
+
+It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
+solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the
+right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of
+the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency
+of Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo
+Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local
+authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no
+power over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual
+advice failed signally. He retired baffled and confused from his first
+interview with the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction
+in the fateful power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted
+himself, exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is
+asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies. When the
+Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that
+skeptical and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined. Even the
+power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the
+affections of the people and the good order of the settlement departed
+from San Carlos.
+
+As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white
+walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern
+jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his
+dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight
+had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed
+and ardently prayed for, came not. The sky was as tearless as the
+right eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and
+plotting among the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the
+more firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and
+looked up his Toledo.
+
+The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the hour
+of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer attended
+the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such times to some
+solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The
+firelight played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed
+figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand
+touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little
+Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of all,” said the Commander,
+with something of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing
+diminutives of his native speech--“sweet one, what doest thou here? Art
+thou not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?”
+
+“No,” said the little Indian, readily, “not in the dark. I hear your
+voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I see not
+your eye, Senor Commandante. That only I fear--and that, O senor, O my
+father,” said the child, lifting her little arms towards his--“that I
+know is not thine own!”
+
+The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself, he
+kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A few hours
+later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own
+couch and slept peacefully.
+
+At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the
+low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting
+through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he
+not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and
+listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in
+the firelight as the savage lifted his arm; another moment and the sore
+perplexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when
+suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The
+Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and
+unaltered, glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the
+earth in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.
+
+To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast upon
+the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of a moment.
+Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily
+driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a
+blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ,
+it was gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or
+bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Commander.
+
+With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The rain
+returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored between
+priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over the sere
+hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their martial
+preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral
+content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos. And
+far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master, Peleg Scudder,
+trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering glass
+eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to the chiefs.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+
+PART I--IN THE FIELD
+
+It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably
+conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and
+my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape
+affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
+performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena--a California sky.
+The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures
+in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and the
+herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering
+stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have
+removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long
+since given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
+
+It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under
+that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons
+were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry
+atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic
+which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical
+for such thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the
+spectator, with the old diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted
+features.
+
+In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any
+but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and
+the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was
+consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,
+with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the
+plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I
+urged my horse forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought me to a
+corral, and a little beyond a house, so low and broad it seemed at first
+sight to be half-buried in the earth.
+
+My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like some
+monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the
+vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls
+for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
+projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle,
+or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking
+tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the
+sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded
+existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed
+against the rattling wind.
+
+To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the
+rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a
+slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and
+met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led
+the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were
+reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect
+repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound
+started from a dark corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by
+the old man into obscurity, and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I
+instantly received the impression that for a long time the group by the
+fire had not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly
+stated my business.
+
+Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo
+Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so
+as to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been
+some intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted
+adjacent--“settled land warrants,” interrupted the old man. “Ah, yes!
+Land warrants--and then this was Mr. Tryan?”
+
+I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other
+public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face. It was
+certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of
+that mining operation known as “ground sluicing”; the harder lines of
+underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and
+soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.
+
+There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere
+of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement of the contest,
+with a fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent and
+unrestrained expression. He told me--what I had already learned--that
+the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the
+loose phraseology of the DESENO as beginning in the VALDA or skirt
+of the hill, its precise location long the subject of litigation.
+I listened and answered with little interest, for my mind was still
+distracted by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as
+by his odd face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the
+silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the
+wind was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark
+addressed to the recumbent figures.
+
+“Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar's,
+tomorrow?”
+
+There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided
+answer.
+
+“Kin you go, Kerg?”
+
+“Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?”
+
+This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
+hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was
+lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.
+
+“Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?”
+
+“Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to pack
+her and the baby agin.”
+
+I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for
+the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the
+finest things I had ever seen.
+
+“Wise?”
+
+Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched
+boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.
+
+“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down
+the river.”
+
+“Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum teeth
+to get the money from you even then.”
+
+There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's parsimony,
+and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in
+honorable retirement.
+
+“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with wimmin
+and children, p'r'aps you'll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,
+intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.
+
+Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:
+
+“Got no saddle.”
+
+“Wot's gone of your saddle?”
+
+“Kerg, there”--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might
+have worn at the sacrifice.
+
+“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.
+
+Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his
+head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met
+his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side,
+and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take
+the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance
+that I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his
+voice:
+
+“Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and introduce you
+to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler.”
+
+The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic
+allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a
+light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger
+present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again,
+and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped
+lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly
+on mine.
+
+Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made
+upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he
+cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.
+
+The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the
+prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame, listening
+to the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair
+which had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered
+a crazy table in one corner, with an ink bottle and pen; the latter
+in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and
+farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked
+the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild
+flavor of the horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the
+inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the shadowy
+gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it difficult to
+believe I had ever known a different existence. My profession had often
+led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained
+habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable
+I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts--which I think occur
+naturally to people in like situations--that this was the general rule
+of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It
+was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl
+caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark
+platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was
+occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed woman was
+already taking her repast as she at the same time gave nourishment to
+a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed
+with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat
+without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace,
+and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and
+dried apples.
+
+The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the
+table often betrayed the presence of the “wellspring of pleasure.” The
+conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing
+notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a
+vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that when a chance
+allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder
+Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed
+bitterly against the system of ranch-holding by the “greasers,” as he
+was pleased to term the native Californians. As the same ideas have
+been sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be
+worthy of record.
+
+“Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer doors.
+Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants--most of 'em
+made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More fools the 'Merrikans for
+lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan and blood money.
+
+“Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot
+for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not
+so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home
+and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and
+crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wurent
+allowed in Mizzoori.”
+
+At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and
+met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act did not
+escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the
+rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.
+
+“It was agin Nater, and agin God,” added Tryan. “God never intended
+gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.
+That's why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate
+for lazy lopers. She never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and
+smoked away.”
+
+How long he continued and with what further illustration I could not
+say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I
+was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a
+smaller room, and pointed to a bed.
+
+“You'd better sleep there tonight,” he said; “you'll be more
+comfortable, and I'll call you early.”
+
+I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were
+then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.
+
+A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The “boys”
+ returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was
+thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it
+did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it
+lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by
+day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its
+owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed
+George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and
+shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the
+wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place
+insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly
+into the night.
+
+The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind,
+whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar
+faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran
+not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house
+was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before
+me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I
+noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress
+was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as
+resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of
+the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous
+interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears,
+and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought the
+house again.
+
+But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The
+door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside
+the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as
+though he were hunting up prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to
+enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying
+beside the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy
+slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had
+given up his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake
+him, but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I
+went to bed with a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil
+figure soothing me to sleep.
+
+
+I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and
+grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed,
+ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the
+day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been
+magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash
+of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin basin, helped to
+brighten me. It was still early, but the family had already breakfasted
+and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in the distance showed that the
+unfortunate Tom had already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more
+cheerful--there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of
+a good night's rest. After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,
+in a few moments we were mounted and dashing down the plain.
+
+We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked
+with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its
+banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride, the
+far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the
+crisp dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by
+the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and
+picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed,
+untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty
+were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which
+levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel
+bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.
+
+Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we
+again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be “Chu Chu,” staid and
+respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of plank
+roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white
+feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust. “Give her her
+head; don't you see she likes it?” and Chu Chu seems to like it, and
+whether bitten by native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of
+the roan, “blood” asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude
+of years is beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek
+widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side,
+carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are
+scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded together in vast
+restless herds. George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as
+if to include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, “Ours!”
+
+“About how many, George?”
+
+“Don't know.”
+
+“How many?”
+
+“'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head,” says George, reflecting. “We don't
+know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run.”
+
+“What are they worth?”
+
+“About thirty dollars a head.”
+
+I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing
+George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan
+household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says,
+apologetically:
+
+“I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says
+it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact,
+he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through,
+and we'd have to get up and move stakes further down.”
+
+Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
+passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center of
+the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and in a few
+moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
+“TORO!” shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a
+way for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their
+spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering flank.
+
+Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might
+have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of
+Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to
+meet the exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to
+wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.
+
+“That's not our brand,” says George; “they're strange stock,” and he
+points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of
+Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But
+the herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again
+recourse to the authoritative “TORO,” and with swinging riata divides
+the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When we are free, and breathing
+somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack
+anyone.
+
+“Never horsemen--sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but
+curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a
+chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the
+pursuit of knowledge. But,” adds George, “here's the lower bench of the
+foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that White building you see
+yonder is the casa.”
+
+A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe building,
+baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the
+charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the
+sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable
+coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water,
+from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the center of a
+low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied
+about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving
+his gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added to
+the cathedral gloom of the building.
+
+As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
+advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness
+and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much
+devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by
+the effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white
+teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we
+entered.
+
+It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which
+would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had
+just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened
+calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the smoke curling
+placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had
+finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation.
+George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in
+broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity.
+When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far
+the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his
+black-silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native
+Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he
+was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in
+half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again “loping” in the
+staring sunlight.
+
+But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by
+restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by
+way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further
+intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned
+with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “QUE
+BUENO?--Your courts are always just.”
+
+The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing
+monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find
+the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview
+the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I
+was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as
+clearly as my recollection served.
+
+“The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this initial
+point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.”
+
+Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried
+grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose
+from his stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph
+Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:
+
+“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land
+in the fashion of my country.”
+
+He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
+
+“I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take the
+LLANO!--and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till
+their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it
+be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it
+of mine!”
+
+We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the
+passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill
+concealing his triumph, interrupted:
+
+“Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than the
+cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side
+of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.”
+
+Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet
+sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his
+native invective.
+
+“Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!--open not, I say, your lying, Judas
+lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-r-r-ramba!”
+
+With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant
+thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had
+been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle and
+galloped away.
+
+George turned to me:
+
+“Will you go back with us tonight?”
+
+I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and
+the roaring wind, and hesitated.
+
+“Well then, goodby.”
+
+“Goodby, George.”
+
+Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far when I
+turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was
+already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it,
+and a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last
+indistinct impression of George Tryan.
+
+
+PART II--IN THE FLOOD
+
+
+Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was again
+in the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation
+had erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had
+obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of
+1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning, I took
+my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.
+
+There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the
+GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the
+pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks,
+and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they
+silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to
+friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed soberly on
+the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by curiosity
+listened eagerly to newer details. But with that human disposition to
+seize upon any circumstance that might give chance event the exaggerated
+importance of instinct, I was half-conscious of something more than
+curiosity as an impelling motive.
+
+The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted
+us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of
+Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the
+hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a
+dripping rubber-cased mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself in a
+shining cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as
+court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his
+boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to
+most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between
+us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the
+city, stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee.
+
+We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy
+thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water
+which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles
+in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on
+the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses
+on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or
+by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in
+and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the
+fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels
+and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as
+roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the
+visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed
+to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the occasional
+splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life
+and habitation.
+
+With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie
+lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to
+the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of
+the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of
+earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors
+of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion,
+occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca
+or Laura had been snatched, half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is
+otherwise peculiar, and refuses the proffered fare, for--am I not a
+citizen of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering
+cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard
+Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money. Still, if I
+must spend it, there is the Howard Society, and the women and children
+without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.
+
+I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal, bleak
+place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,
+and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here
+Giuseppe tells me of the “Relief Boat” which leaves for the flooded
+district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has
+taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of
+others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the
+afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from
+me until I stand on the slippery deck of “Relief Boat No. 3.”
+
+An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was once
+the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by
+tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a
+vast inland sea. Stretches of “tule” land fertilized by its once regular
+channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The
+cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in
+symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the
+turbid flood. The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and
+there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows
+an undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds
+waiting the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or
+swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are
+stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the
+moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the
+lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows,
+hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in
+rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their
+suggestive quiet and concealment.
+
+As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
+oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the
+few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary
+rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual
+misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number
+of our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report
+to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles
+beyond the bar. There is a voluntary contribution taken among the
+generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company
+with a hearty “Godspeed” on either side. But our signal lights are not
+far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable
+Yankee cheer--which scatters the gloom.
+
+Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks
+far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us--the
+wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward
+the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we
+penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our
+party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I
+borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise
+am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way
+northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.
+
+It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars
+in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer
+is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken
+by the “bow oar”:
+
+“Light ahead.”
+
+All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling
+light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the
+shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon
+us.
+
+“Stern, all; a steamer!”
+
+“Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!” is the reply of the coxswain.
+“It's a house, and a big one too.”
+
+It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the
+darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a
+window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back
+to me with it as I listen with beating heart.
+
+“There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside.
+Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's
+another!”
+
+In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor
+to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end
+of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in
+one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I
+spring toward him with an exclamation:
+
+“Joseph Tryan!”
+
+He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on
+his shoulder, and say:
+
+“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The
+boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?”
+
+He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
+involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance,
+free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling
+through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no
+further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their
+peace. I make one more effort:
+
+“Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your
+ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!”
+
+He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he
+repeated to himself “The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--Espiritu
+Santo” over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to
+fix in his memory.
+
+I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully
+by the hand and said:
+
+“Hush!”
+
+We were silent.
+
+“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, “I'm a
+MOVING OFF!”
+
+“Moving off?”
+
+“Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you
+hear?--there! listen!”
+
+We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.
+
+“It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night.
+I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to
+move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the
+door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why
+don't they quit?”
+
+I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further
+traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so
+much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious
+feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them
+briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:
+
+“Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone, gone
+for the hides and hoofs,” and he groans bitterly.
+
+“There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and
+perhaps the family are safe by this time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.
+
+We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to
+the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its
+strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the
+stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky
+shows the coming day.
+
+I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had
+seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket
+near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of
+the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about
+George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened
+at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one
+of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board.
+
+“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.
+
+“Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is,” adds the engineer,
+with a smile at some luscious remembrance. “You'll find him for'ard.”
+
+I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
+irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and
+rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.
+
+He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes
+that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that
+circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me
+at my ease by at once addressing me:
+
+“These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's
+become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!”
+
+The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
+admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at
+last pulled on his feet.
+
+“So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must
+have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old
+woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!”
+
+At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was
+evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the
+contending emotions to ask about George.
+
+“Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about
+the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved
+suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you,” to a
+passing boatman, “when are you goin' to give us some grub? I'm hungry
+'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn butcher when things is
+dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”
+
+I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
+climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.
+
+“Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?” I ask.
+
+“Thar ain't much to do now,” says the practical young man. “I'll have to
+lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain't
+worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the
+ole man'll drive stakes next.”
+
+“I meant as to your father and George, Wise.”
+
+“Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the old
+woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween this and
+Altascar's ef he ain't thar now.”
+
+I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
+
+“Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if
+George helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built
+too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah,” says Wise, with
+reflective admiration, “those greasers ain't the darned fools people
+thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy.”
+ But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody short.
+
+“I shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to find George.”
+
+Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon
+him.
+
+“I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage--workin' on
+shares, eh!”
+
+I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me,
+and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might
+warrant, I walked away.
+
+From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of George's
+self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he had helped
+and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen
+him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the
+foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade
+farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting
+by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head
+swung round, pulled by sturdy and willing hands.
+
+It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay
+nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the
+creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns
+were seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming
+implements.
+
+We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the “LLANO DE ESPIRITU
+SANTO.” As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water
+into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October
+over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant
+hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing
+silently, and I find my mind, released from its tension, growing
+benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too, is getting more shallow
+as we leave the banks of the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly
+over the thwarts, I detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide
+to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to the north of
+the line of alder, making an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the
+right to avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside and I call to the
+men to stop.
+
+There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, “L. E. S.
+I.” Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was George's. It
+had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of
+the mound was deeply dented with horses' hoofs. The stake was covered
+with horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.
+
+The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
+resting and rowing by turns, and oftener “poling” the shallower surface,
+but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My recollection of the
+old survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings
+of the creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to
+determine the distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability.
+Night overtakes us in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more
+dangerous than it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still
+new in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of
+perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about
+eight o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few
+hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white
+walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving
+in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose characterizes
+the building.
+
+One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar met
+me on the corridor.
+
+I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had
+dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously
+held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him about George and
+my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely
+laid his hand on my shoulder.
+
+“POCO A POCO, senor--not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you have
+cold. Necessary it is you should have peace.”
+
+He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he
+gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves
+before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was
+intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the
+corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity
+was deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as
+the whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn
+inheritor.
+
+Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two
+smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my men
+ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept
+down the instincts of hunger.
+
+I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.
+
+“You have eat?”
+
+I said, “Yes,” to please him.
+
+“BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always.”
+
+He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his
+countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than
+a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly
+before him.
+
+“It was made by me, senor.”
+
+“I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,” I said. “If I could find
+him--”
+
+“He is here.”
+
+“Here! and”--but I could not say “well!” I understood the gravity of
+the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the
+building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the
+broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor
+to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before
+the window.
+
+In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and
+sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the
+humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their
+household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him
+once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that he
+had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.
+
+“He was honest and brave,” said the old man, and turned away. There
+was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful
+outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her
+downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently,
+left the loving and loved together.
+
+When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows
+of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the
+horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he
+found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his
+person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and
+that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that
+help he had so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed
+his horse. These incidents were corroborated by many who collected
+in the great chamber that evening--women and children--most of them
+succored through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
+above.
+
+He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange perennial
+greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty plain. A
+little slab of sandstone with the initials “G. T.” is his monument,
+and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the
+“Espiritu Santo Rancho.”
+
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+
+In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a
+quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion,
+and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness.
+She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the
+latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes,
+when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a
+small scar left by a single drop of vitriol--happily the only drop of
+an entire phial--thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that
+reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer
+had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was
+generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek
+was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of
+THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was “an exaggerated
+dimple.” Colonel Starbottle was instantly “reminded of the beautifying
+patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the
+blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank
+eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a
+scar--a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And
+this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent
+your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I
+said to her, 'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar,
+blank you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
+that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I
+did, blank me.' These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it
+a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank sum you can name and prove
+it, blank me.”
+
+Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in
+love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love
+was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone
+had been known to express skepticism.
+
+The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was
+Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this
+Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted
+that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made
+it perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have
+it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of
+its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the
+occasion of her second divorce), “The cold world does not understand
+Clara yet”; and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the
+exception of a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul
+than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read
+those lines entitled “Infelissimus,” commencing “Why waves no cypress
+o'er this brow?” originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
+signature of “The Lady Clare,” without feeling the tear of sensibility
+tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his
+cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT
+INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character
+of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable
+answer to the query.
+
+Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical
+manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the
+newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick.
+Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a
+too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which
+an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced
+in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a
+six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out
+the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a
+certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
+reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several mining
+camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the dreariness of the
+dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in
+sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as
+brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities--they were
+married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
+“Fideletown,” as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
+
+The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.
+Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
+freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that
+which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery
+and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to
+beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to
+a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr.
+Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly
+to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel
+Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the
+genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a
+two-columned criticism, signed “A. S.,” also published in the AVALANCHE,
+and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess
+a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
+numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel
+Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept
+the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language with which the
+colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to
+be familiar. Indeed, the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile
+doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly
+written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing
+eulogium signed “A. S. S.”
+
+The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the
+AVALANCHE. “An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last,
+between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the
+well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon.
+Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although
+it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the
+calves of his legs from the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which
+were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of
+Melican man's firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known,
+although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that
+points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have
+often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are
+posted.”
+
+Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying
+circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. “The old man's
+head is level,” said one long-booted philosopher. “Ef the colonel
+kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel,
+Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure thing.” During
+this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her
+husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the
+clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during
+which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the
+strictest propriety.
+
+It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended,
+left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of
+dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few
+loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the
+Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick
+reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation.
+Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the
+main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
+It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The
+dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she
+was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
+
+The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port
+which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and
+his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm,
+swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,
+vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes;
+and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his
+place at her side.
+
+“The coast is clear,” said the colonel, “and Tretherick is over at Dutch
+Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you
+need fear no trouble from him. I,” he continued, with a slight inflation
+of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, “I will see that
+you are protected in the removal of your property.”
+
+“I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!” simpered the
+lady as they walked along. “It's so pleasant to meet someone who
+has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and
+heartless as this.” And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not
+until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.
+
+“Yes, certainly, of course,” said the colonel, glancing nervously up and
+down the street--“yes, certainly.” Perceiving, however, that there
+was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.
+Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the
+possession of too much soul. That many women--as a gentleman she would
+excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--but many beautiful women
+had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely
+deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two
+natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of
+a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a
+hypocritical society--when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled
+in poetical union, then--but here the colonel's speech, which had been
+remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost
+inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have
+heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
+Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite
+virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.
+
+It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very
+pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost
+files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in
+which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,
+uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At
+the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there
+was no other sign of occupancy. “The coast,” as the colonel had said,
+was indeed “clear.” Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel
+would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. “Come for me
+in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed,” she said,
+as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it
+with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the
+gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as
+smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had
+gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted
+hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
+
+Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
+dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
+when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she
+had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were
+half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay
+her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her
+I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened
+with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to
+the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers
+the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came
+upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty
+head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast
+in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned
+away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where
+hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
+suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,
+thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant
+lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness
+to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time
+sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could
+not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the
+dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she
+became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And
+then the child's voice repeated, “Is it Mamma?”
+
+Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a
+little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was
+torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled
+seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque
+little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain
+self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much
+to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently
+of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
+cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long
+shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders
+and swept the floor.
+
+The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had
+but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in
+the doorway, again asked, “Is it Mamma?” she answered sharply, “No, it
+isn't,” and turned a severe look upon the intruder.
+
+The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,
+said in deliciously imperfect speech:
+
+“Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?”
+
+But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the
+child's shoulders, and said angrily:
+
+“How dared you take my things, you bad child?”
+
+“Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!” she
+continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had
+dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was
+dancing up and down before her.
+
+“What's your name, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the
+small and not very white hands from her garments.
+
+“Tarry.”
+
+“Tarry?”
+
+“Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.”
+
+“Caroline?”
+
+“Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.”
+
+“Whose child ARE you?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to
+keep down a rising fear.
+
+“Why, yours,” said the little creature with a laugh. “I'm your little
+durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn
+away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I
+live wid you and Papa.”
+
+“How long have you been here?” asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
+
+“I fink it's free days,” said Carry reflectively.
+
+“You think! Don't you know?” sneered Mrs. Tretherick. “Then, where did
+you come from?”
+
+Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a
+great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:
+
+“Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last week.”
+
+“Last week! You said three days just now,” returned Mrs. Tretherick with
+severe deliberation.
+
+“I mean a monf,” said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness
+and confusion.
+
+“Do you know what you are talking about?” demanded Mrs. Tretherick
+shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her
+and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
+
+But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs.
+Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.
+
+“There now--stop that sniffling,” said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
+her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly
+uncomfortable. “Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.
+Stop,” she continued, as Carry moved away. “Where's your papa?”
+
+“He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn”--she hesitated--“two,
+free, days.”
+
+“Who takes care of you, child?” said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
+curiously.
+
+“John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.”
+
+“Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,”
+ said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. “Stop--where
+are you going?” she added as the child began to ascend the stairs,
+dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
+
+“Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.”
+
+“I ain't your mamma,” shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
+re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
+
+Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to
+work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her
+best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched
+her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an
+indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to
+herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first
+wife--this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care--just
+to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would
+follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn,
+but RED--of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother,
+and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been
+prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
+kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when
+needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--business, as he
+said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East.
+Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to
+dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious,
+also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely
+no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched
+a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among
+the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful
+attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious
+coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon
+the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem
+describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came
+upon her husband and “another” flaunting in silks and diamonds. She
+pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a beautiful
+wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the
+AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all
+this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He--she
+laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her
+face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.
+
+What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so
+quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied
+that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings
+and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor
+above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been
+used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly
+upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.
+
+Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small
+window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the
+barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's
+glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor
+with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking
+to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was
+rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the
+doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its
+stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.
+Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation
+almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had
+informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the
+interview she added pathetically, “that if she was dood, very dood, she
+might be her mamma, and love her very much.”
+
+I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of
+humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected
+her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her
+cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.
+The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose
+very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,
+the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these
+touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.
+She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and
+thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the
+room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
+dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she
+suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of
+the colonel's cane.
+
+She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the
+hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated
+statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. “Don't
+tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!”
+ she almost screamed. “And think,” she added, “of the heartlessness of
+the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.”
+
+“It's a blank shame!” stammered the colonel, without the least idea
+of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to
+comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of
+her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He
+stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but
+all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a
+sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.
+
+“It's of no use,” said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer
+to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from
+the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. “It's of no use:
+my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I
+shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I
+will put him face to face with his infamy.”
+
+I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
+convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded
+by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in
+his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle
+to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental
+nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing
+above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
+
+“That's her,” said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions,
+in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical
+construction.
+
+“Ah!” said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection
+and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. “Ah! pretty
+little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find
+yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?” The colonel's impulse
+also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to
+him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven.
+Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further
+discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick
+and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
+Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into
+an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
+resemblance to the “Madonna and Child.” Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but
+did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a
+moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child,
+said in a whisper: “Go now. Don't come here again, but meet me tonight
+at the hotel.” She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly
+and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.
+
+“Do you think,” said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a
+prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls just
+visible in the folds of her dress--“do you think you will be 'dood' if I
+let you stay in here and sit with me?”
+
+“And let me tall you Mamma?” queried Carry, looking up.
+
+“And let you call me Mamma!” assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
+embarrassed laugh.
+
+“Yeth,” said Carry promptly.
+
+They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught sight of
+the trunk.
+
+“Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?” she said with a quick nervous look,
+and a clutch at the woman's dress.
+
+“No-o,” said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.
+
+“Only playing your dowin' away,” suggested Carry with a laugh. “Let me
+play too.”
+
+Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and presently
+reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely proceeded to
+pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A
+question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from
+the child; and before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in
+possession of all her earlier history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick
+had been obliged to take Carry upon her lap, pending the most
+confidential disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs.
+Tretherick had apparently ceased to be interested in Carry's
+disclosures; and when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle
+on unheeded, and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls.
+
+“You don't hold me right, Mamma,” said Carry at last, after one or two
+uneasy shiftings of position.
+
+“How should I hold you?” asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
+half-embarrassed laugh.
+
+“Dis way,” said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm around
+Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--“dis
+way--dere.” After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small
+animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
+
+For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in
+that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in
+the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her.
+She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old
+horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled
+days of sickness and distrust--days of an overshadowing fear--days of
+preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented,
+with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have
+been--she dared not say HAD been--and wondered. It was six years ago;
+if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were
+folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten
+their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a
+half-sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
+sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if
+she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the gust that
+shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.
+
+A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily in
+her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to do it
+now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might
+have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining
+sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and abandonment, yet a
+desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay, or despair.
+
+
+Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
+vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks,
+he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes and sunbeams.
+
+When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr.
+Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much
+diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER openly
+alluded to the “forcible abduction” of the child with the same freedom,
+and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized
+the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps
+a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not,
+however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the
+INTELLIGENCER. The majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that
+Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty
+slippers was enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair
+abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick as
+an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to
+openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an
+ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent
+man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons,
+and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display
+of sentiment. “She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel,” said one
+sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great
+readiness of illustration; “and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away
+someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU,
+Kernel, diet she should jist shake you--is what gits me. And they do
+say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them
+corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered
+in and out o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?” It was another generous
+and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
+on the colonel's wounds. “The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
+prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the
+stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and
+offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud
+employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well, I'll tell the boys
+it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories DO get round.”
+
+Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
+Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
+stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further
+deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach,
+and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was
+true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted
+it. Even those who were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize
+the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced
+unconcern. But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of
+this veracious chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.
+
+It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that
+Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing
+Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped with long
+poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation
+at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother Mongolians--a conversation
+characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity
+which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who
+did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with
+which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was
+passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply
+kicked them out of his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a
+stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips
+of yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
+small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim
+solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed,
+ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials “C. T.”
+ Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash
+his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.
+
+Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. “Me no likee
+Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now.” Mr. Tretherick violently
+suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.
+
+Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
+Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
+interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a
+letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. “If you bring me an answer, I'll
+double that--sabe, John?” Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental,
+with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another
+gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the
+AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance
+on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after
+trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into
+accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother
+Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony
+of Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten
+side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
+clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his
+letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry
+of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly
+affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the
+levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details
+of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the
+difficulties that subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
+
+On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of
+the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose
+moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.
+At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger--purely an act of
+Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known
+hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on
+suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe
+reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of
+justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public
+schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened
+progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese
+quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the
+strong arm of the law.
+
+The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and
+on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy
+Fook's several clients.
+
+It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill
+of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the
+summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy. There
+was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or
+without, only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over everything.
+There was a fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets: there was a
+dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of
+the hill, the Mission Ridge was already hidden, and the chill sea
+breeze made him shiver. As he put down his basket to rest himself, it
+is possible that, to his defective intelligence and heathen experience,
+this “God's own climate,” as was called, seemed to possess but
+scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah
+Fe illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
+schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at this
+hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and turning a
+corner, at last stopped before a small house.
+
+It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the little
+strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and
+above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat. Ah Fe rang
+the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly
+admitted him, as if he were some necessary domestic animal. Ah Fe
+silently mounted the stairs, and entering the open door of the front
+chamber, put down the basket and stood passively on the threshold.
+
+A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with a
+child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe instantly
+recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his immobile face
+changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly. She
+evidently did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes. But
+the child, curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.
+
+“Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in Fiddletown.”
+
+For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The child
+clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said shortly: “Me
+John--Ah Fe--allee same. Me know you. How do?”
+
+Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at Ah Fe.
+Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Carry's
+perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows.
+With a recollection of past pain, and an obscure suspicion of impending
+danger, she asked him when he had left Fiddletown.
+
+“Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San Flisco.
+Likee washee. Likee Tally.”
+
+Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to consider
+how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his curt directness
+and sincerity. But she said, “Don't tell anybody you have seen me,” and
+took out her pocketbook.
+
+Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe,
+without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily furnished.
+Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy, saw that both Mrs.
+Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet it is my duty to
+state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly and firmly over the
+half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to him.
+
+Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of extraordinary
+contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from apparently no
+particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon the basket with the
+remark:
+
+“One piecee washman flagittee.”
+
+Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his efforts
+were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right ear, a
+many-folded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this carefully, he at
+last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he handed to Mrs.
+Tretherick.
+
+“You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money. Me
+fetchee money to you. All lightee.”
+
+“But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John,” said Mrs.
+Tretherick earnestly. “There must be some mistake. It belongs to some
+other person. Take it back, John.”
+
+Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's extended
+hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.
+
+“Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He say,
+'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.' Me no takee
+back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me fetchee money you.
+Me no takee back.”
+
+Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she MIGHT
+have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event, she had no
+right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by refusing it. So she
+said: “Very well, John, I will keep it. But you must come again and see
+me--” here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated with a new and sudden revelation
+of the fact that any man could wish to see any other than herself--“and,
+and--Carry.”
+
+Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic laugh
+without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he shut the door
+carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower hall he, however,
+found an unexpected difficulty in opening the front door, and, after
+fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment, looked around for some help
+or instruction. But the Irish handmaid who had let him in was
+contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and did not appear.
+
+There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall simply
+record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a scarf,
+evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was lying.
+As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested lightly on the
+table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own volition, the scarf began to
+creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up
+his sleeve slowly, and with an insinuating, snakelike motion; and then
+disappeared somewhere in the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying
+the least interest or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated
+his experiments upon the lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red
+damask, moved by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered
+itself under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same
+hidden channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
+for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
+enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps upon
+the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but patiently
+shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind him again, and
+stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that now shrouded earth
+and sky.
+
+From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's figure
+until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present loneliness, she
+felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may have ascribed to
+the higher emotions and the consciousness of a good deed that certain
+expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of the bosom, that was really
+due to the hidden presence of the scarf and tablecloth under his blouse.
+For Mrs. Tretherick was still poetically sensitive. As the gray fog
+deepened into night, she drew Carry closer toward her, and, above
+the prattle of the child, pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic
+recollection at once bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah
+Fe linked her again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary
+interval between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
+thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry stopped
+suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw her small arms
+around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.
+
+Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever dedicated
+to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs.
+Tretherick's own theory of this interval and episode, with its feeble
+palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak
+apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard.
+Her slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she
+found that the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest
+emotions of the human heart, and compelling the editorial breast to the
+noblest commendation in the editorial pages, was singularly inadequate
+to defray the expenses of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage,
+but failed signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was
+different from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it
+was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was
+not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough
+in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience.
+In this strait, it occurred to her that she had a voice--a contralto of
+no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching;
+and she finally obtained position in a church choir. She held it for
+three months, greatly to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much
+to the satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
+her during the singing of the last hymn.
+
+I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that slanted
+through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall very tenderly on
+her beautiful head with its stacked masses of deerskin-colored hair, on
+the low black arches of her brows, and to deepen the pretty fringes
+that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet. Very pleasant it was to watch
+the opening and shutting of that small straight mouth, with its quick
+revelation of little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly
+deepen her satin cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very
+sweetly conscious of admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered
+herself under your eye like a racer under the spur.
+
+And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano--a
+little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment
+of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful; that her
+conceit was unbearable; that, if she considered the rest of the choir
+as slaves, she (the soprano) would like to know it; that her conduct on
+Easter Sunday with the basso had attracted the attention of the whole
+congregation; and that she herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up
+during the service; that her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her
+singing in the choir with a person who had been on the stage, but
+she had waived this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs.
+Tretherick had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child
+who sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to
+me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a note
+at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger longer with
+the congregation--an act that could be attributed only to a defective
+moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular dry goods clerk on
+weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently behind his eyebrows on
+the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would put up with it no longer.
+The basso alone--a short German with a heavy voice, for which he seemed
+reluctantly responsible, and rather grieved at its possession--stood up
+for Mrs. Tretherick, and averred that they were jealous of her because
+she was “bretty.” The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel,
+wherein Mrs. Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement
+and epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to
+be supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act was
+marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the usual
+soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with triumph, but
+on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they were beggars
+henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the very bread out
+of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a flood of penitent
+tears. They did not come so quickly as in her old poetical days; but
+when they came they stung deeply. She was roused by a formal visit from
+a vestryman--one of the music committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long
+lashes, put on a new neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She staid
+there two hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that
+the vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When
+Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the glass
+and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.
+
+It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies received a
+powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's wife. That lady
+called upon several of the church members and on Dr. Cope's family.
+The result was that, at a later meeting of the music committee, Mrs.
+Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to the size of the building
+and she was invited to resign. She did so. She had been out of a
+situation for two months, and her scant means were almost exhausted,
+when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was tossed into her lap.
+
+The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
+shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
+Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had slipped away
+unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in
+her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her back to an active
+realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was wont to scan
+the advertisements in the faint hope of finding some avenue of
+employment--she knew not what--open to her needs; and Carry had noted
+this habit.
+
+Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights, and
+opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following paragraph
+in the telegraphic column:
+
+
+FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this place,
+died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was addicted to
+intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble.
+
+
+Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another page of
+the paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in a book. Mrs.
+Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was
+unusually silent and cold. When Carry was undressed and in bed, Mrs.
+Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, taking
+Carry's flaming head between her hands, said:
+
+“Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?”
+
+“No,” said Carry, after a moment's thought.
+
+“But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give you
+nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?”
+
+Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. “Should YOU, Mamma?”
+
+Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. “Go to
+sleep,” she said sharply, and turned away.
+
+But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around her,
+and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was
+broken up by sobs.
+
+“Don't ky, Mamma,” whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of their
+recent conversation. “Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new papa, if he
+loved you very much--very, very much!”
+
+A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
+married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
+elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils of the
+State. As I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by
+the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture to quote some of
+his graceful periods. “The relentless shafts of the sly god have been
+lately busy among our gallant Solons. We quote 'one more unfortunate.'
+The latest victim is the Hon. C. Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair
+enchantress in the case is a beautiful widow, a former votary of
+Thespis, and lately a fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most
+fashionable churches of San Francisco, where she commanded a high
+salary.”
+
+THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact
+with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press. “The
+new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately advented in the
+legislature with a little bill to change the name of Tretherick
+to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate down there. Mr.
+Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we presume the gallant
+colonel is not afraid of ghosts.” It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick
+to state that the colonel's victory was by no means an easy one. To
+a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the
+impediment of a rival--a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who
+had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theater and church, his
+professional habits debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and
+indeed any other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As
+this gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
+of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous rival.
+Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in professionally to lay
+out a brother senator, who had unhappily fallen by the colonel's pistol
+in an affair of honor; and either deterred by physical consideration
+from rivalry, or wisely concluding that the colonel was professionally
+valuable, he withdrew from the field.
+
+The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward incident.
+During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the charge of
+Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the city, immediately on
+reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle announced her intention of at
+once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's to bring the child home. Colonel
+Starbottle, who had been exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness
+which he had endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally
+buttoned his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking
+unsteadily once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife
+with his most imposing manner.
+
+“I have deferred,” said the colonel with an exaggeration of port that
+increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of speech--“I
+have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash my duty ter
+dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal happ'ness, to
+bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by unpleasht revelashun.
+Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now. The chile is gone!”
+
+“Gone!” echoed Mrs. Starbottle.
+
+There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
+drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment nearly
+sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.
+
+“I'll splain all in a minit,” he said with a deprecating wave of the
+hand. “Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly event
+wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish releash
+you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile. The mom't Tretherick
+die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too. Thash law. Who's
+chile b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead. Chile can't b'long dead
+man. Damn nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh your chile? no! whose chile
+then? Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Unnerstan?”
+
+“Where is she?” said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a very
+low voice.
+
+“I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm lawyer,
+leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as leshlator, and
+'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother at any coss--any
+coss.”
+
+“Where is she?” repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed on
+the colonel's face.
+
+“Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by fav'rin
+gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!”
+
+Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly
+collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to beam
+with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her
+as she sat.
+
+“Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
+Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's.” The colonel paused,
+and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently in his
+breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles, on
+the woman before him. “Why should dark shed-der cass bligh on two sholes
+with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good chile, but summonelse chile!
+Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht,
+you all's have me!”
+
+Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. “YOU!” she cried, bringing out a
+chest note that made the chandeliers ring--“You that I married to give
+my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I whistled to my side to
+keep the men off me--YOU!”
+
+She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had
+been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom, and then
+suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a burning fire
+over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and
+mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening of the head.
+
+“Listen!” she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. “Hear me! If
+you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child. If you
+ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back.
+For where she goes, I go; you hear me! Where she has gone, look for me.”
+
+She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her
+arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary
+bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door.
+Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear
+of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady
+foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two
+unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from
+time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests,
+until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions,
+and the narcotic quantity of his potations.
+
+Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables
+and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course
+of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her
+mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if
+she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard
+once more a childish voice asking, “Is it Mamma?” But the epithet now
+stung her to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed
+it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced
+that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper
+with a broken sandal string. She uttered a great cry here--the first she
+had uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
+and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her
+sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through
+her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing
+that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish
+lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede
+before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and staggering to the
+bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed
+to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and
+there was a spot upon her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still
+another on the white counterpane of the bed.
+
+The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white
+curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the
+roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-wrapping all things
+in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very
+quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the
+other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary
+couch, snored peacefully.
+
+
+A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
+State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any other
+time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm
+that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole,
+played around this soft Italian Capital, whirled in and out of the great
+staring wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the
+cold green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff,
+dark figures in its streets. From the level of the street, the four
+principal churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their
+misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near
+the railroad station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to
+an enormous locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a
+pyramidal row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for
+a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter
+location. But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for Young
+Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola plainly
+from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue. There was
+no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it was a public
+institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty face at its window,
+were clearly visible all over the township.
+
+The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express brought
+but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger
+alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting sleigh toward the
+Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again, with that passionless
+indifference to human sympathies or curiosity peculiar to express
+trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into the station again; the
+station door was locked; and the stationmaster went home.
+
+The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
+of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
+surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and confectionery
+saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the admirable
+regulations of the Institute failed to entirely develop the physical
+and moral natures of its pupils. They conformed to the excellent dietary
+rules in public, and in private drew upon the luxurious rations of their
+village caterer. They attended church with exemplary formality, and
+flirted informally during service with the village beaux. They received
+the best and most judicious instruction during school hours, and
+devoured the trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was
+an aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young
+creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even Mistress
+Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant
+spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of
+“them young things” did her good, and had even been known to shield them
+by shameless equivocation.
+
+“Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll
+be missed,” said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with an aquiline
+nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader, as she rose
+from her seat. “Have you got the books, Addy?” Addy displayed three
+dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof. “And the provisions,
+Carry?” Carry showed a suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack.
+“All right, then. Come, girls, trudge--Charge it,” she added, nodding to
+her host as they passed toward the door. “I'll pay you when my quarter's
+allowance comes.”
+
+“No, Kate,” interposed Carry, producing her purse, “let me pay; it's my
+turn.”
+
+“Never!” said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, “even if you do
+have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California. Never!
+Come, girls, forward, march!”
+
+As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their feet.
+Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. “Sakes alive, galls! ye mussn't
+go out in sich weather. Better let me send word to the Institoot, and
+make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor.” But the last sentence was
+lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks as the girls, hand in hand,
+ran down the steps into the storm, and were at once whirled away.
+
+The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast. It
+was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow. For
+some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience kept them
+bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut from the highroad
+across an open field, their strength gave out, the laugh grew less
+frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's brown eyes. When they
+reached the road again, they were utterly exhausted. “Let us go back,”
+ said Carry.
+
+“We'd never get across that field again,” said Addy.
+
+“Let's stop at the first house, then,” said Carry.
+
+“The first house,” said Addy, peering through the gathering darkness,
+“is Squire Robinson's.” She darted a mischievous glance at Carry that,
+even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick blood to her cheek.
+
+“Oh, yes!” said Kate with gloomy irony, “certainly; stop at the squire's
+by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home after by your
+dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from Mrs. Robinson, and
+hopes that the young ladies may be excused this time. No!” continued
+Kate with sudden energy. “That may suit YOU; but I'm going back as I
+came--by the window, or not at all” Then she pounced suddenly, like a
+hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a tendency to sit down on a snowbank
+and whimper, and shook her briskly. “You'll be going to sleep next.
+Stay, hold your tongues, all of you--what's that?”
+
+It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the
+darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. “Hold down your heads,
+girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost.” But it was not, for a
+voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked
+if its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him,
+they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing
+a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same
+material, disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen
+dark eyes. “It's a son of old Santa Claus!” whispered Addy. The girls
+tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh; they had regained
+their former spirits. “Where shall I take you?” said the stranger
+quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, “To
+the Institute.” They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic
+building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. “You
+know the way better than I,” he said. “Where do you go in?” “Through the
+back window,” said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. “I see!”
+ responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting quickly, removed
+the bells from the horses. “We can drive as near as you please now,”
+ he added by way of explanation. “He certainly is a son of Santa Claus,”
+ whispered Addy. “Hadn't we better ask after his father?” “Hush!” said
+Kate decidedly. “He is an angel, I dare say.” She added with a delicious
+irrelevance, which was, however, perfectly understood by her feminine
+auditors, “We are looking like three frights.”
+
+Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from
+a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There
+was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he handed his fair
+companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense
+though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window,
+and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and
+somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window.
+“Thank you and good night!” whispered three voices. A single figure
+still lingered. The stranger leaned over the window sill. “Will you
+permit me to light my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck
+a match outside.” By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate
+very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out
+in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had
+detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the
+head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years' tuition?
+
+The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
+eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
+was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,
+affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of
+Carry, her neighbor. “HE has come,” she gasped in a thrilling whisper.
+“Who?” asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when
+Kate was in earnest. “Who?--Why, the man who rescued us last night! I
+saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in
+a moment--there!” she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand
+pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.
+
+“What can he want?” asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. “I don't
+know,” said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. “Possibly to
+put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and
+warn her against us.”
+
+“He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,” rejoined
+Addy thoughtfully.
+
+“That was his art, you poor creature!” returned Kate scornfully. “You
+can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful. Besides,
+it's just my fate!”
+
+“Why, Kate,” began Carry, in serious concern.
+
+“Hush! Miss Walker is saying something,” said Kate, laughing.
+
+“The young ladies will please give attention,” said a slow, perfunctory
+voice. “Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor.”
+
+Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
+letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the
+somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the “reception parlor” and
+privately to the pupils as “purgatory.” His keen eyes had taken in the
+various rigid details, from the flat steam “radiator,” like an enormous
+japanned soda cracker, that heated one end of the room to the monumental
+bust of Dr. Crammer that hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's
+Prayer, executed by a former writing master in such gratuitous variety
+of elegant calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious
+value of the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute,
+which nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher;
+from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English letter, so
+gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human interest, to a
+large photograph of the senior class, in which the prettiest girls were
+Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each other's heads
+and shoulders. His fingers had turned listlessly the leaves of
+school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer, the POEMS of Henry Kirke
+White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF CELEBRATED WOMEN. His
+fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had gone over the partings
+and greetings that must have taken place here, and wondered why the
+apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of humanity; indeed, I
+am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his visit when the door
+opened, and Carry Tretherick stood before him.
+
+It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier even
+than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of some
+disappointment, without knowing exactly why. Her abundant waving hair
+was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a peculiar flowerlike
+delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of seaweed in deep water. It
+certainly was not her beauty that disappointed him.
+
+Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her
+part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men
+whom the sex would vaguely generalize as “nice,” that is to say, correct
+in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and
+feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he
+was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as
+the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract
+people, she was not entirely prepossessed in his favor.
+
+“I can hardly hope,” he began pleasantly, “that you remember me. It is
+eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl. I am afraid I cannot
+even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that might exist between a
+child of six and a young man of twenty-one. I don't think I was fond
+of children. But I knew your mother very well. I was editor of the
+AVALANCHE in Fiddletown when she took you to San Francisco.”
+
+“You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know,” interposed
+Carry hastily.
+
+Mr. Prince looked at her curiously. “I mean your stepmother,” he said
+gravely. “I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother.”
+
+“No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years.”
+
+There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its distinction
+that began to interest coldly Prince after his first astonishment was
+past.
+
+“As I come from your stepmother now,” he went on with a slight laugh,
+“I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point. After your
+father's death, your mother--I mean your stepmother--recognized the fact
+that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick, was legally and morally
+your guardian and, although much against her inclination and affections,
+placed you again in her charge.”
+
+“My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and sent
+me home,” said Carry with great directness, and the faintest toss of her
+head.
+
+Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically, that
+Carry began to like him. With no other notice of the interruption
+he went on, “After your stepmother had performed this act of simple
+justice, she entered into an agreement with your mother to defray the
+expenses of your education until your eighteenth year, when you were to
+elect and choose which of the two should thereafter be your guardian,
+and with whom you would make your home. This agreement, I think, you are
+already aware of, and, I believe, knew at the time.”
+
+“I was a mere child then,” said Carry.
+
+“Certainly,” said Mr. Prince, with the same smile. “Still the
+conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your mother;
+and the only time they are likely to give you the least uneasiness will
+be when you come to make up your mind in the choice of your guardian.
+That will be on your eighteenth birthday--the twentieth, I think, of the
+present month.”
+
+Carry was silent.
+
+“Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if it
+be already made. I only came to inform you that your stepmother, Mrs.
+Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will pass a few days at the
+hotel. If it is your wish to see her before you make up your mind, she
+will be glad to meet you. She does not, however, wish to do anything to
+influence your judgment.
+
+“Does Mother know she is coming?” said Carry hastily.
+
+“I do not know,” said Prince gravely. “I only know that if you conclude
+to see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's permission. Mrs.
+Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the agreement, made ten years
+ago. But her health is very poor; and the change and country quiet of
+a few days may benefit her.” Mr. Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon
+the young girl, and almost held his breath until she spoke again.
+
+“Mother's coming up today or tomorrow,” she said, looking up.
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.
+
+“Is Colonel Starbottle here too?” asked Carry, after a pause.
+
+“Colonel Starbottle is dead. Your stepmother is again a widow.”
+
+“Dead!” repeated Carry.
+
+“Yes,” replied Mr. Prince. “Your stepmother has been singularly
+unfortunate in surviving her affections.”
+
+Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so. Mr. Prince smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+Presently Carry began to whimper.
+
+Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.
+
+“I am afraid,” he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a
+singular dropping of the corners of his mustache--“I am afraid you are
+taking this too deeply. It will be some days before you are called upon
+to make a decision. Let us talk of something else. I hope you caught no
+cold last evening.”
+
+Carry's face shone out again in dimples.
+
+“You must have thought us so queer! It was too bad to give you so much
+trouble.”
+
+“None whatever, I assure you. My sense of propriety,” he added demurely,
+“which might have been outraged had I been called upon to help three
+young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night, was deeply gratified
+at being able to assist them in again.” The doorbell rang loudly, and
+Mr. Prince rose. “Take your own time, and think well before you make
+your decision.” But Carry's ear and attention were given to the sound of
+voices in the hall. At the same moment, the door was thrown open, and a
+servant announced, “Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson.”
+
+The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant protest at
+stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the outskirts of the
+town, and drove toward his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive
+of a dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small
+economic farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious
+taste, had, I fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind.
+He would have even avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the
+door; but that functionary waylaid him on the steps. “There's a lady
+in the sittin'-room, waitin' for ye.” Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and
+entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew toward him.
+
+She had changed sadly in the last ten years. Her figure was wasted
+to half its size. The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders were
+broken or inverted. The once full, rounded arm was shrunken in its
+sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists almost
+slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed convulsively
+around Jack's. Her cheekbones were painted that afternoon with the
+hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of those cheeks were buried
+the dimples of long ago, but their graves were forgotten. Her lustrous
+eyes were still beautiful, though the orbits were deeper than before.
+Her mouth was still sweet, although the lips parted more easily over the
+little teeth, even in breathing, and showed more of them than she was
+wont to do before. The glory of her blond hair was still left: it was
+finer, more silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to
+cover the hollows of the blue-veined temples.
+
+“Clara!” said Jack reproachfully.
+
+“Oh, forgive me, Jack!” she said, falling into a chair, but still
+clinging to his hand--“forgive me, dear; but I could not wait longer. I
+should have died, Jack--died before another night. Bear with me a little
+longer (it will not be long), but let me stay. I may not see her, I
+know; I shall not speak to her: but it's so sweet to feel that I am at
+last near her, that I breathe the same air with my darling. I am better
+already, Jack, I am indeed. And you have seen her today? How did
+she look? What did she say? Tell me all, everything, Jack. Was she
+beautiful? They say she is. Has she grown? Would you have known
+her again? Will she come, Jack? Perhaps she has been here already;
+perhaps”--she had risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at
+the door--“perhaps she is here now. Why don't you speak, Jack? Tell me
+all.”
+
+The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an
+infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed them
+capable of. “Clara,” he said gently and cheerily, “try and compose
+yourself. You are trembling now with the fatigue and excitement of your
+journey. I have seen Carry; she is well and beautiful. Let that suffice
+you now.”
+
+His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often done
+before. Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, “Did Carry ever
+write to you?”
+
+“Twice, thanking me for some presents. They were only schoolgirl
+letters,” she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his eyes.
+
+“Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
+sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes and
+jewels, of your--”
+
+“No, no!” interrupted the woman quickly: “no! How could she? I have no
+enemy cruel enough to tell her that.”
+
+“But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it? If Carry thought
+you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might influence
+her decision. Young girls are fond of the position that wealth can give.
+She may have rich friends, maybe a lover.”
+
+Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence. “But,” she said eagerly,
+grasping Jack's hand, “when you found me sick and helpless at
+Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to help me to
+the East, you said you knew of something, you had some plan, that would
+make me and Carry independent.”
+
+“Yes,” said Jack hastily; “but I want you to get strong and well first.
+And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit to the
+school.”
+
+It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the interview
+already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion that shames
+my own account of that proceeding. Without suppressing a single fact,
+without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to throw a poetic veil
+over that prosaic episode, to invest the heroine with a romantic roseate
+atmosphere, which, though not perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear,
+exhibited that genius which ten years ago had made the columns of THE
+FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not
+until he saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of
+his eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach. “God help her
+and forgive me!” he muttered between his clinched teeth; “but how can I
+tell her ALL now!”
+
+That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her pillow,
+she tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment sleeping
+peacefully in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it was a rare
+comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she was so
+near. But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of her bed,
+half-undressed, pouting her pretty lips and twisting her long, leonine
+locks between her fingers as Miss Kate Van Corlear--dramatically
+wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes sparkling, and her
+thoroughbred nose thrown high in air--stood over her like a wrathful and
+indignant ghost; for Carry had that evening imparted her woes and her
+history to Miss Kate, and that young lady had “proved herself no friend”
+ by falling into a state of fiery indignation over Carry's “ingratitude,”
+ and openly and shamelessly espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.
+“Why, if the half you tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons
+are making of you not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.
+Respectability, forsooth! Look you, my family are centuries before the
+Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and then
+asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them down the
+wind;” and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black brows, and
+glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van Corlear.
+
+“You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
+Prince,” said Carry.
+
+In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way
+into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as she
+afterward expressed it, instantly “went for her.”
+
+First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one
+shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like
+a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely exaggerated
+classic stride. “And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a
+gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know that among a thousand
+such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers
+as Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent,
+individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray
+to Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and
+grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you
+such a friend as Kate Van Corlear.” Yet, after an imposing dramatic
+exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed
+Carry between the brows, and was gone.
+
+The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince. He was convinced in his
+mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness from
+Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal degree of
+apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to
+divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that
+Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to
+admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring
+clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind--to put off day
+by day from contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner
+consciousness. He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his
+management. He recalled every incident of his interview with Carry, and
+half-believed that its failure was due to himself. Yet Mrs. Starbottle
+was very patient and confident; her very confidence shook his faith in
+his own judgment. When her strength was equal to the exertion, she was
+propped up in her chair by the window, where she could see the school
+and the entrance to the hotel. In the intervals she would elaborate
+pleasant plans for the future, and would sketch a country home. She had
+taken a strange fancy, as it seemed to Prince, to the present location;
+but it was notable that the future, always thus outlined, was one of
+quiet and repose. She believed she would get well soon; in fact, she
+thought she was now much better than she had been, but it might be long
+before she should be quite strong again. She would whisper on in this
+way until Jack would dash madly down into the barroom, order liquors
+that he did not drink, light cigars that he did not smoke, talk with men
+that he did not listen to, and behave generally as our stronger sex is
+apt to do in periods of delicate trials and perplexity.
+
+The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind. With
+the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow. She was still content
+and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to the fire,
+she explained to him how that, as the school term was drawing near its
+close, Carry was probably kept closely at her lessons during the day,
+and could only leave the school at night. So she sat up the greater part
+of the evening, and combed her silken hair, and as far as her strength
+would allow, made an undress toilet to receive her guest. “We must not
+frighten the child, Jack,” she said apologetically, and with something
+of her old coquetry.
+
+It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received a
+message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to see him
+for a moment downstairs. As Jack entered the grim, dimly lighted parlor,
+he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the fire. He was about to
+withdraw again when a voice that he remembered very pleasantly said:
+
+“Oh, it's all right! I'm the doctor.”
+
+The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and
+black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.
+
+“Don't ask any questions. I'm the doctor, and there's my prescription,”
+ and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing Carry in the
+corner--“to be taken at once.”
+
+“Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?”
+
+“Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady,” replied Kate saucily.
+
+“Then how did you get away?” asked Prince gravely.
+
+“BY THE WINDOW.”
+
+When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he
+returned to the parlor.
+
+“Well?” demanded Kate.
+
+“She will stay--YOU will, I hope, also--tonight.”
+
+“As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth, and
+as I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't.”
+
+“Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through the
+window again?”
+
+When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a low
+stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet. Her head was in her stepmother's lap,
+and she had sobbed herself to sleep. Mrs. Starbottle put her finger
+to her lip. “I told you she would come. God bless you, Jack! and good
+night.”
+
+The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,
+principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently
+respectable, called upon Mr. Prince. There was a stormy meeting, ending
+in a demand for Carry. “We certainly cannot admit of this interference,”
+ said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed, indistinctive-looking
+woman. “It is several days before the expiration of our agreement; and
+we do not feel, under the circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs.
+Starbottle from its conditions.” “Until the expiration of the school
+term, we must consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its
+rules and discipline,” imposed Dr. Crammer. “The whole proceeding is
+calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of Miss
+Tretherick in society,” suggested Mr. Robinson.
+
+In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle, her
+absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the pardonable
+and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance that they were
+willing to abide by her decision. And then, with a rising color in
+his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a singular calmness in his
+speech, he added:
+
+“One word more. It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance which
+would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr. Tretherick,
+in fully resisting your demands. A few months after Mr. Tretherick's
+death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his employment, it was
+discovered that he had made a will, which was subsequently found among
+his papers. The insignificant value of his bequest--mostly land, then
+quite valueless--prevented his executors from carrying out his wishes,
+or from even proving the will, or making it otherwise publicly known,
+until within the last two or three years, when the property had
+enormously increased in value. The provisions of that bequest are
+simple, but unmistakable. The property is divided between Carry and
+her stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall
+become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all details
+stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS.”
+
+“What is the value of this bequest?” asked Mr. Robinson. “I cannot
+tell exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say,” returned
+Prince. “Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of Miss Tretherick
+I must say that her conduct is as judicious as it is honorable to her,”
+ responded Mr. Robinson. “I shall not presume to question the wishes,
+or throw any obstacles in the way of carrying out the intentions, of my
+dead husband,” added Mrs. Tretherick; and the interview was closed.
+
+When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised Jack's
+hand to her feverish lips. “It cannot add to MY happiness now, Jack; but
+tell me, why did you keep it from her?” Jack smiled, but did not reply.
+
+Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were concluded, and
+Carry was restored to her stepmother. At Mrs. Starbottle's request, a
+small house in the outskirts of the town was procured; and thither they
+removed to wait the spring, and Mrs. Starbottle's convalescence. Both
+came tardily that year.
+
+Yet she was happy and patient. She was fond of watching the budding
+of the trees beyond her window--a novel sight to her Californian
+experience--and of asking Carry their names and seasons. Even at this
+time she projected for that summer, which seemed to her so mysteriously
+withheld, long walks with Carry through the leafy woods, whose gray,
+misty ranks she could see along the hilltop. She even thought she
+could write poetry about them, and recalled the fact as evidence of her
+gaining strength; and there is, I believe, still treasured by one of the
+members of this little household a little carol so joyous, so simple,
+and so innocent that it might have been an echo of the robin that called
+to her from the window, as perhaps it was.
+
+And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so tender, so
+mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and alive with the
+fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and bounteously overflowing
+with an awakening and joyous resurrection not taught by man or limited
+by creed, that they thought it fit to bring her out and lay her in that
+glorious sunshine that sprinkled like the droppings of a bridal torch
+the happy lintels and doors. And there she lay beatified and calm.
+
+Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.
+Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head. Presently
+she called Jack to her side.
+
+“Who was that,” she whispered, “who just came in?”
+
+“Miss Van Corlear,” said Jack, answering the look in her great hollow
+eyes.
+
+“Jack,” she said, after a moment's silence, “sit by me a moment; dear
+Jack: I've something I must say. If I ever seemed hard, or cold, or
+coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved you, Jack, too
+well to mar your future by linking it with my own. I always loved you,
+dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of you. That is gone now. But
+I had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish woman's dream--that you might find
+what I lacked in HER,” and she glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl at
+her side; “that you might love her as you have loved me. But even that
+is not to be, Jack, is it?” and she glanced wistfully in his face. Jack
+pressed her hand, but did not speak. After a few moments' silence, she
+again said: “Perhaps you are right in your choice. She is a goodhearted
+girl, Jack--but a little bold.”
+
+And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her struggling
+spirit, she spoke no more. When they came to her a moment later, a tiny
+bird that had lit upon her breast flew away; and the hand that they
+lifted from Carry's head fell lifeless at her side.
+
+
+
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+
+A bird twittered! The morning sun shining through the open window was
+apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had only caused
+the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his blankets. Barker's eyes
+opened instantly upon the light and the bird on the window ledge. Like
+all healthy young animals he would have tried to sleep again, but with
+his momentary consciousness came the recollection that it was his turn
+to cook the breakfast that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of
+his bunk to the floor. Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and
+stepped outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by
+the Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold
+water that stood by the door. Then he began to clothe himself, partly in
+the cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse between the putting
+on of his trousers and coat which he employed in bringing in wood.
+Raking together the few embers on the adobe hearth, not without a
+prudent regard to the rattlesnake which had once been detected in
+haunting the warm ashes, he began to prepare breakfast. By this time the
+other sleepers, his partners Stacy and Demorest, young men of about his
+own age, were awake, alert, and lazily critical of his progress.
+
+“I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for breakfast,”
+ said Stacy, with a yawn; “and you needn't serve with red wine. I'm not
+feeling very peckish this morning.”
+
+“And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish
+mackerel for ME,” said Demorest gravely. “The fact is, that last bottle
+of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am this morning.”
+
+Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no direct
+reply. Presently, looking up from the fire, he said, “There's no more
+saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit is extra heavy. I told
+you we had none when you went to the grocery yesterday.”
+
+“And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with,” said Stacy, who
+was also treasurer. “Put these two negatives together and you make the
+affirmative--saleratus. Mix freely and bake in a hot oven.”
+
+Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down to
+what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the mountain
+air and the regretful fastidiousness born of the recollection of better
+things. Jerked beef, frizzled with salt pork in a frying-pan, boiled
+potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed the repast. The biscuits,
+however, proving remarkably heavy after the first mouthful, were used
+as missiles, thrown through the open door at an empty bottle which had
+previously served as a mark for revolver practice, and a few moments
+later pipes were lit to counteract the effects of the meal and take
+the taste out of their mouths. Suddenly they heard the sound of horses'
+hoofs, saw the quick passage of a rider in the open space before the
+cabin, and felt the smart impact upon the table of some small object
+thrown by him. It was the regular morning delivery of the county
+newspaper!
+
+“He's getting to be a mighty sure shot,” said Demorest approvingly,
+looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper, rolled
+into a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began to
+straighten it out. This was no easy matter, as the sheet had evidently
+been rolled while yet damp from the press; but Demorest eventually
+opened it and ensconced himself behind it.
+
+“Nary news?” asked Stacy.
+
+“No. There never is any,” said Demorest scornfully. “We ought to stop
+the paper.”
+
+“You mean the paper man ought to. WE don't pay him,” said Barker gently.
+
+“Well, that's the same thing, smarty. No news, no pay. Hallo!” he
+continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper. Then, after the
+fashion of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the interesting
+item to himself. When he had finished he brought his fist and the paper,
+together, violently down upon the table. “Now look at this! Talk of
+luck, will you? Just think of it. Here are WE--hard-working men with
+lots of sabe, too--grubbin' away on this hillside like niggers, glad
+to get enough at the end of the day to pay for our soggy biscuits and
+horse-bean coffee, and just look what falls into the lap of some lazy
+sneakin' greenhorn who never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are
+WE, with no foolishness, no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do
+credit to twice that amount of luck--and seem born to it, too--and we're
+set aside for some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to
+sit down on his office stool and hold on to a bit of paper.”
+
+“What's up now?” asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of
+familiarity with his partner's extravagance.
+
+“Listen,” said Demorest, reading. “Another unprecedented rise has taken
+place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension Mine' since
+the sinking of the new shaft. It was quoted yesterday at ten thousand
+dollars a foot. When it is remembered that scarcely two years ago the
+original shares, issued at fifty dollars per share, had dropped to only
+fifty cents a share, it will be seen that those who were able to hold on
+have got a good thing.”
+
+“What mine did you say?” asked Barker, looking up meditatively from the
+dishes he was already washing.
+
+“The Yellow Hammer First Extension,” returned Demorest shortly.
+
+“I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them still,”
+ said Barker musingly.
+
+“Yes,” said Demorest promptly; “the paper speaks of it here. 'We
+understand,'” he continued, reading aloud, “'that our eminent fellow
+citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as “Get Left Barker” and
+“Chucklehead,” is one of these fortunate individuals.'”
+
+“No,” said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, “it can't
+say that. How could it know?”
+
+Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: “You didn't hear all.
+Listen! 'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his apparently
+useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for corn plasters,
+at a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'”
+
+“You may laugh, boys,” said Barker, with simple seriousness; “but I
+really believe I have got 'em yet. Just wait. I'll see!” He rose and
+began to drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk. “You see,” he
+continued, “they were given to me by an old chap in return--”
+
+“For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward blew
+up,” returned Demorest briefly. “We know it all! His hair was white, and
+his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares in yours, saying, and
+you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young man--and'--”
+
+“For lending him two thousand dollars, then,” continued Barker with
+a simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out the
+valise.
+
+“TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!” repeated Stacy. “When did YOU have two thousand
+dollars?”
+
+“When I first left Sacramento--three years ago,” said Barker,
+unstrapping the valise.
+
+“How long did you have it?” said Demorest incredulously.
+
+“At least two days, I think,” returned Barker quietly. “Then I met that
+man. He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those shares. He
+died afterward.”
+
+“Of course he did,” said Demorest severely. “They always do. Nothing
+kills a man more quickly than an action of that kind.” Nevertheless
+the two partners regarded Barker rummaging among some loose clothes
+and papers with a kind of paternal toleration. “If you can't find them,
+bring out your government bonds,” suggested Stacy. But the next moment,
+flushed and triumphant, Barker rose from his knees, and came toward them
+carrying some papers in his hands. Demorest seized them from him, opened
+them, spread them on the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures,
+and transfers, glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked
+wildly at Stacy and then at Barker, and gasped:
+
+“By the living hookey! it is SO!”
+
+“B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!” echoed Stacy.
+
+“Twenty shares,” continued Demorest breathlessly, “at ten thousand
+dollars a share--even if it's only a foot--is two hundred thousand
+dollars! Jerusalem!”
+
+“Tell me, fair sir,” said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, “hast still left
+in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links of fine
+gold? Peradventure a pearl or two may have been overlooked!”
+
+“No--that's all,” returned Barker simply.
+
+“You hear him! Rothschild says 'that's all.' Prince Esterhazy says he
+hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand dollars.”
+
+“What ought I to do, boys?” asked Barker, timidly glancing from one to
+the other. Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for many
+a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish joy and
+affection at that supreme moment.
+
+“Do?” said Demorest promptly. “Stand on your head and yell! No! stop!
+Come here!” He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand, and ran out
+into the open air. Here they danced violently with clasped hands around
+a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then returned to the cabin,
+grave but perspiring.
+
+“Of course,” said Barker, wiping his forehead, “we'll just get some
+money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which belongs to
+old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the indication.”
+
+“We'll do nothing of the kind,” said Demorest decidedly. “WE ain't in
+it. That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property acquired
+before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is to be damned
+before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this Godforsaken hole. No!”
+
+“But we're partners,” gasped Barker.
+
+“Not in THIS! The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it ill
+becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with Dives--is
+perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass of Malvoisie, at
+some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got things fixed, in honor of
+your return to affluence. But more would ill become us!”
+
+“But what are YOU going to do?” said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
+half-frightened smile.
+
+“We have not yet looked through our luggage,” said Demorest with
+invincible gravity, “and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to my
+portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been disturbed
+since I left my ancestral home in Faginia. There may be a few First
+Debentures of Erie or what not still there.”
+
+“I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the other
+day, but belike they are but poker chips,” said Stacy thoughtfully.
+
+An uneasy feeling crept over Barker. The color which had left his fresh
+cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away. Yet he had
+seen nothing in his companions' eyes but affection--with even a certain
+kind of tender commiseration that deepened his uneasiness. “I suppose,”
+ he said desperately, after a pause, “I ought to go over to Boomville and
+make some inquiries.”
+
+“At the bank, old chap; at the bank!” said Demorest emphatically. “Take
+my advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE. Don't breathe a word of your luck
+to anybody. And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to sell just now; you
+don't know how high that stock's going to jump yet.”
+
+“I thought,” stammered Barker, “that you boys might like to go over with
+me.”
+
+“We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're only
+two to work today,” said Demorest, with a slight increase of color and
+the faintest tremor in his voice. “And it won't do, old chap, for us to
+be seen bumming round with you on the heels of your good fortune. For
+everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later everybody'll know you
+WERE rich even when you first came to us.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Barker indignantly.
+
+“Gospel, my boy!” said Demorest shortly.
+
+“The frozen truth, old man!” said Stacy.
+
+Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the door.
+Here he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to communicate
+itself to his partners. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then
+Demorest suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a grip that was
+half a caress, and walked him rapidly to the door. “And now don't stand
+foolin' with us, Barker boy; but just trot off like a little man, and
+get your grip on that fortune; and when you've got your hooks in it hang
+on like grim death. You'll”--he hesitated for an instant only, possibly
+to find the laugh that should have accompanied his speech--“you're sure
+to find US here when you get back.”
+
+Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his hat
+on his head and walked quickly away. The two partners stood watching him
+in silence until his figure was lost in the underbrush. Then they spoke.
+
+“Like him--wasn't it?” said Demorest.
+
+“Just him all over,” said Stacy.
+
+“Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and never
+even bothering his dear old head about it!”
+
+“And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten
+hillside with us!”
+
+“And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again. That's
+Barker.”
+
+“Dear old man!”
+
+“Good old chap!”
+
+“I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him? He's
+just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,”
+ said Stacy.
+
+“The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,”
+ said Demorest almost fiercely. “There will be knaves and fools enough
+who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart
+without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be
+himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the
+money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God
+put into him and make him more like others.”
+
+The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that
+Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: “Well! we shall miss him on the
+hillside--won't we?”
+
+Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched
+off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the
+leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in
+the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: “Come, let's
+get to work!” and strode away.
+
+Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
+manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost
+sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were
+less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the
+eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of
+his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with
+him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him
+had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this
+money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared
+so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was
+the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over
+a prospective “strike” in mining and speculated what THEY would do
+together with the money! And now that “luck” had occurred to one of
+them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not
+make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now
+of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was
+rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free
+now to think only of himself and Kitty.
+
+For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity
+and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his
+FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of his wealth was of
+a young lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at
+Boomville, who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted.
+That a pretty girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that
+he was now a rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners,
+whom he would still have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his
+half-hurt, half-vengeful state, that they had often joked him about
+Kitty, and perhaps further confidence with them was debarred. And it was
+only due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.
+
+This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the
+economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the
+hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the
+other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat.
+For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met
+with in Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original
+refinement of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast
+a doubt on the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of
+the other, yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained
+that she was slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her
+stumpy, commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
+dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The
+three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and
+refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some
+occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious
+or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker was particularly
+favored.
+
+He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose
+before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not
+better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance
+on them to buy a new necktie or a “boiled shirt” in which to present
+himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his
+word to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present,
+he abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected
+confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions
+of secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that
+breach of faith.
+
+But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The
+dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of breakfast and
+before the flow of the preparation for the midday meal. He could not
+have his interview with Kitty in that dreary waste of reversed chairs
+and bare trestlelike tables, and she was possibly engaged in her
+household duties. But Miss Kitty had already seen him cross the road,
+and had lounged into the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of
+casually examining it. At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in
+the sweetest and freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.
+Then, partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through
+the working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with
+a simple inquiry for her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled
+slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the office. Opening
+the door, without raising her lashes to either her father or the
+visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of the professional
+manner, “Mr. Barker to see you on business,” and tripped sweetly away.
+
+And this slight incident precipitated the crisis. For Barker instantly
+made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for his partners
+of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to confide to him the
+details of his good fortune, and as a proof of his sincerity and his
+ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly. Carter was a shrewd business
+man, and the well-known simplicity of Barker was a proof of his
+truthfulness, to say nothing of the shares that were shown to him. His
+selling price for his claim had been two hundred dollars, but here was
+a rich customer who, from a mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt
+willing to pay more. He hesitated with a bland but superior smile. “Ah,
+that was my price at my last offer, Mr. Barker,” he said suavely; “but,
+you see, things are going up since then.”
+
+The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity. Barker,
+thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened at his own
+presumption--not for the amount of the money involved, but from the
+possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--quickly took
+advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE. “No matter, then,” he said
+hurriedly; “perhaps I had better consult my partners first; in fact,”
+ he added, with a gratuitous truthfulness all his own, “I hardly know
+whether they will take it of me, so I think I'll wait.”
+
+Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do! He recovered himself
+with an insinuating smile. “You pulled me up too short, Mr. Barker;
+I'm a business man, but hang it all! what's that among friends? If you
+reckoned I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred--why, I'm there! Say no more
+about it--the claim's yours. I'll make you out a bill of sale at once.”
+
+“But,” hesitated Barker, “you see I haven't got the money yet, and--”
+
+“Money!” echoed Carter bluntly, “what's that among friends? Gimme your
+note at thirty days--that's good enough for ME. An' we'll settle the
+whole thing now--nothing like finishing a job while you're about it.”
+ And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor could protest, he had
+filled up a promissory note for Barker's signature and himself signed a
+bill of sale for the property. “And I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like
+to take your partners by surprise about this little gift of yours,” he
+added smilingly. “Well, my messenger is starting for the Gulch in five
+minutes; he's going by your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o'
+sale, as a kind o' settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything,
+see! There's nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things.
+And don't you hurry 'bout them either! You see, you sorter owe us
+a friendly call--havin' always dropped inter the hotel only as a
+customer--so ye'll stop here over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old
+woman is busy, why Kitty will try to make the time pass till then by
+playin' for you on her new pianner.”
+
+Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and opportunity,
+Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as mechanically
+addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to Demorest, which Carter
+gave to the messenger. Then he followed his host across the hall to the
+apartment known as “Miss Kitty's parlor.” He had often heard of it as a
+sanctum impervious to the ordinary guest. Whatever functions the young
+girl assumed at the hotel and among her father's boarders, it was
+vaguely understood that she dropped them on crossing that sacred
+threshold, and became “MISS Carter.” The county judge had been
+entertained there, and the wife of the bank manager. Barker's admission
+there was consequently an unprecedented honor.
+
+He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in
+various charming little ways of the young girl's presence. There was
+the cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the backs of
+mules from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon head of Minerva
+done by the fair occupant at the age of twelve; there was a profile
+of herself done by a traveling artist; there were pretty little china
+ornaments and many flowers, notably a faded but still scented woodland
+shrub which Barker had presented to her two weeks ago, and over which
+Miss Kitty had discreetly thrown her white handkerchief as he entered. A
+wave of hope passed over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr.
+Carter's roughly playful voice introduced him:
+
+“Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch, Kitty.
+You kin let him see what you're doing in that line. But you'll have to
+sit up now, for this young man's come inter some property, and will
+be sasheying round in 'Frisco afore long with a biled shirt and a
+stovepipe, and be givin' the go-by to Boomville. Well! you young folks
+will excuse me for a while, as I reckon I'll just toddle over and get
+the recorder to put that bill o' sale on record. Nothin' like squaring
+things to onct, Mr. Barker.”
+
+As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink. Carter had not only
+bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his excuse for a
+confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious construction on his
+visit. What could she think of him now? He stood ashamed and embarrassed
+before her.
+
+But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden concern
+regarding the “horrid” untidiness of the room, which made her cheeks
+quite pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and set down in
+exactly the same place several articles, was exceedingly delighted. In
+fact, she did not remember ever having been so pleased before in her
+life! These things were always so unexpected! Just like the weather, for
+instance. It was quite cool last night--and now it was just stifling.
+And so dusty! Had Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch? Or
+perhaps, being a rich man, he--with a dazzling smile--was above walking
+now. It was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.
+
+“I really wanted to tell only--YOU, Miss Carter,” stammered Barker. “You
+see--” he hesitated. But Miss Kitty saw perfectly. He wanted to tell
+HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER! Not that it made the
+slightest difference to her, for her father would have been sure to
+have told her. It was also kind of her father to invite him to luncheon.
+Otherwise she might not have seen him before he left Boomville.
+
+But this was more than Barker could stand. With the same desperate
+directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father, he
+now blurted out his whole heart to her. He told her how he had loved
+her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken together at the
+church picnic. Did she remember it? How he had sat and worshiped her,
+and nothing else, at church! How her voice in the church choir had
+sounded like an angel's; how his poverty and his uncertain future had
+kept him from seeing her often, lest he should be tempted to betray his
+hopeless passion. How as soon as he realized that he had a position,
+that his love for her need not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes,
+he came to tell her ALL. He did not even dare to hope! But she would
+HEAR him at least, would she not?
+
+Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple, outspoken
+declaration. In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at her pink cheeks
+in the glass, and stopped to look out of the window. The room was filled
+with his love--it was encompassing her--and, despite his shy attitude,
+seemed to be almost embracing her. But she managed at last to turn upon
+him a face that was now as white and grave as his own was eager and
+glowing.
+
+“Sit down,” she said gently.
+
+He did so obediently, but wonderingly. She then opened the piano and
+took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose sheets
+of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Thus
+intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and for the first
+time raised her eyes to his.
+
+“Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt! There!--not so near; you
+can hear what I have to say well enough where you are. That will do.”
+
+Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat
+down.
+
+“Now,” said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before
+her, “I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--or at least
+SAY it--but I do. There! But because I do believe you--it seems to me
+all wrong! For the very reasons that you give for not having spoken to
+me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same reasons
+why you should not speak to me now. You see, all this time you have let
+nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me. In everybody's eyes
+YOU and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive,
+college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally
+came here to this hotel as customers. In everybody's eyes I have been
+only the rich hotel-keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon
+you--but nothing more. But at least we were then pretty much alike,
+and as good as each other. And now, as soon as you have become suddenly
+rich, and, of course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to
+acknowledge it by accepting you!”
+
+“You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty,” burst out Barker vehemently,
+but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the young lady's
+fingers on the keys. He sank back in his chair.
+
+“Of course you never MEANT it,” she said with an odd laugh; “but
+everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to everybody
+in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have just made to me.
+Everybody will say I accepted you for your money; everybody will say
+it was a put-up job of my father's. Everybody will say that you threw
+yourself away on me. And I don't know but that they would be right. Sit
+down, please! or I shall play again.
+
+“You see,” she went on, without looking at him, “just now you like to
+remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter girl,
+but if I became your wife it's just what you would like to FORGET. And
+I shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the time when you came
+here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes when you couldn't, just
+to see me; and how we used to make excuses to speak with each other over
+the dishes. You don't know what these things mean to a woman who”--she
+hesitated a moment, and then added abruptly, “but what does that matter?
+You would not care to be reminded of it. So,” she said, rising up with a
+grave smile and grasping her hands tightly behind her, “it's a good deal
+better that you should begin to forget it now. Be a good boy and take my
+advice. Go to San Francisco. You will meet some girl there in a way
+you will not afterward regret. You are young, and your riches, to say
+nothing,” she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat inconsistent
+with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips, “of your kind
+and simple heart, will secure that which the world would call unselfish
+affection from one more equal to you, but would always believe was only
+BOUGHT if it came from me.”
+
+“I suppose you are right,” he said simply.
+
+She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened. He had risen,
+his face white and his gray eyes widely opened. “I suppose you are
+right,” he went on, “because you are saying to me what my partners said
+to me this morning, when I offered to share my wealth with them, God
+knows as honestly as I offered to share my heart with you. I suppose
+that you are both right; that there must be some curse of pride or
+selfishness upon the money that I have got; but I have not felt it yet,
+and the fault does not lie with me.”
+
+She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently toward the
+window. When she turned back again he was gone. The room around her was
+empty; this room, which a moment before had seemed to be pulsating with
+his boyish passion, was now empty, and empty of HIM. She bit her lips,
+rose, and ran eagerly to the window. She saw his straw hat and brown
+curls as he crossed the road. She drew her handkerchief sharply away
+from the withered shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once
+treasured remains in the hearth. Then, possibly because she had it
+ready in her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking
+sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its back,
+and buried her face in her hands.
+
+It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to make
+no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them! So it
+seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal directness.
+It was the possession of this wealth that had in some way hopelessly
+changed his relations with the world. He did not love Kitty any the
+less; he did not even think she had wronged him; they, his partners and
+his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there must be some occult quality
+in this wealth that he would understand when he possessed it, and
+perhaps it might even make him ashamed of his generosity; not in the way
+they had said, but in his tempting them so audaciously to assume a wrong
+position. It behoved him to take possession of it at once, and to take
+also upon himself alone the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities
+it would incur. His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to
+tempt an innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not
+seen in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'
+refusal. He resolved to wait no longer, but sell his dreadful stock at
+once. He walked directly to the bank.
+
+The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known already,
+received him graciously in recognition of his well-known simple honesty,
+and respectfully as a representative of the equally well-known poor but
+“superior” partnership of the Gulch. He listened with marked attention
+to Barker's hesitating but brief story, only remarking at its close:
+
+“You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?”
+
+“No,” said Barker; “I mean the 'First'--and it said First in the
+Boomville paper.”
+
+“Yes, yes!--I saw it--it was a printer's error. The stock of the 'First'
+was called in two years ago. No! You mean the 'Second,' for, of course,
+you've followed the quotations, and are likely to know what stock you're
+holding shares of. When you go back, take a look at them, and you'll see
+I am right.”
+
+“But I brought them with me,” said Barker, with a slight flushing as
+he felt in his pocket, “and I am quite sure they are the 'First'.” He
+brought them out and laid them on the desk before the manager.
+
+The words “First Extension” were plainly visible. The manager glanced
+curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.
+
+“Did anybody put this up on you?” he said sternly. “Did your partners
+send you here with this stuff?”
+
+“No! no!” said Barker eagerly. “No one! It's all MY mistake. I see it
+now. I trusted to the newspaper.”
+
+“And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the quotations, nor
+followed it in any way, since you had it?”
+
+“Never!” said Barker. “Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw the
+newspaper. So it's not worth anything?” And, to the infinite surprise of
+the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish face.
+
+“I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on,” said the
+manager gently.
+
+The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which his
+wondering companion could not help joining. “Thank you,” said Barker
+suddenly, and rushed away.
+
+“He beats everything!” said the manager, gazing after him. “Damned if he
+didn't seem even PLEASED.”
+
+He WAS pleased. The burden of wealth had fallen from his shoulders; the
+dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and parted his friends from
+him was gone! And he had not got rid of it by spending it foolishly. It
+had not ruined anybody yet; it had not altered anybody in HIS eyes.
+It was gone; and he was a free and happy man once more. He would go
+directly back to his partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but
+they could not look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes.
+Perhaps even Kitty--but here a sudden chill struck him. He had forgotten
+the bill of sale! He had forgotten the dreadful promissory note given to
+her father in the rash presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be
+paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money
+when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from
+those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a
+stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but,
+horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now,
+while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering
+upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR--COULD NOT PAY FOR--and in the
+guise of a benefactor he was dishonoring them. Yet it was Carter he
+must meet first; he must confess all to him. He must go back to the
+hotel--that hotel where he had indignantly left her, and tell the father
+he was a fraud. It was terrible to think of; perhaps it was part of that
+money curse that he could not get rid of, and was now realizing; but
+it MUST be done. He was simple, but his very simplicity had that
+unhesitating directness of conclusion which is the main factor of what
+men call “pluck.”
+
+He turned back to the hotel and entered the office. But Mr. Carter had
+not yet returned. What was to be done? He could not wait there; there
+was no time to be lost; there was only one other person who knew his
+expectations, and to whom he could confide his failure--it was Kitty. It
+was to taste the dregs of his humiliation, but it must be done. He ran
+up the staircase and knocked timidly at the sitting-room door. There was
+a momentary pause, and a weak voice said “Come in.” Barker opened the
+door; saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful
+eyes that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful but
+stiffening figure. But he was past all insult now.
+
+“I would not intrude,” he said simply, “but I came only to see your
+father. I have made an awful blunder--more than a blunder, I think--a
+FRAUD. Believing that I was rich, I purchased your father's claim for my
+partners, and gave him my promissory note. I came here to give him back
+his claim--for that note can NEVER be paid! I have just been to the
+bank; I find I have made a stupid mistake in the name of the shares upon
+which I based my belief in my wealth. The ones I own are worthless--am
+as poor as ever--I am even poorer, for I owe your father money I can
+never pay!”
+
+To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her troubled
+eyes which he had never seen before. “This is a feeble trick,” she said
+bitterly; “it is unlike you--it is unworthy of you!”
+
+“Good God! You must believe me. Listen! it was all a mistake--a
+printer's error. I read in the paper that the stock for the First
+Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second. I
+had some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and only
+thought of when I read the announcement in the paper this morning. I
+swear to you--”
+
+But it was unnecessary. There was no doubting the truth of that
+voice--that manner. The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give place
+to a stare, and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue wells of
+laughter. She went to the window and laughed. She sat down to the piano
+and laughed. She caught up the handkerchief, and hiding half her rosy
+face in it, laughed. She finally collapsed into an easy chair, and,
+burying her brown head in its cushions, laughed long and confidentially
+until she brought up suddenly against a sob. And then was still.
+
+Barker was dreadfully alarmed. He had heard of hysterics before. He felt
+he ought to do something. He moved toward her timidly, and gently drew
+away her handkerchief. Alas! the blue wells were running over now.
+He took her cold hands in his; he knelt beside her and passed his arm
+around her waist. He drew her head upon his shoulder. He was not sure
+that any of these things were effective until she suddenly lifted
+her eyes to his with the last ray of mirth in them vanishing in a big
+teardrop, put her arms round his neck, and sobbed:
+
+“Oh, George! You blessed innocent!”
+
+An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.
+
+“But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be
+time; perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's
+claim.”
+
+“Yes, George dear,” said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; “and tell
+them to do so AT ONCE!”
+
+“What?” gasped Barker.
+
+“At once--do you hear?--or it may be too late! Go quick.”
+
+“But your father--Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all yourself,
+and spare me.”
+
+“I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey. Nor shall you! Don't you see
+the note isn't due for a month? Stop! Have you told anybody but Paw and
+me?”
+
+“Only the bank manager.”
+
+She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most
+enchanting of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin. “I'll run over and
+fix him,” she said.
+
+“Fix him?” returned Barker, aghast.
+
+“Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical joke
+on you, and he mustn't give you away. He'll do anything for me.”
+
+“But my partners didn't! On the contrary--”
+
+“Don't tell me, George,” said Miss Kitty severely. “THEY ought never to
+have let you come here with that stuff. But come! You must go at once.
+You must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out everything to him; I know you!
+I'll tell him you could not stay to luncheon. Quick, now; go. What?
+Well--there!”
+
+Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so protracted
+that Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the front landing
+before she could disappear by the back stairs. But once in the street,
+Barker no longer lingered. It was a good three miles back to the Gulch;
+he might still reach it by the time his partners were taking their
+noonday rest, and he resolved that although the messenger had preceded
+him, they would not enter upon the new claim until the afternoon. For
+Barker, in spite of his mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking
+what he couldn't pay for; he would keep the claim intact until something
+could be settled. For the rest, he walked on air! Kitty loved him!
+The accursed wealth no longer stood between them. They were both poor
+now--everything was possible.
+
+The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he
+reached the Gulch. Here a new trepidation seized him. How would his
+partners receive the news of his utter failure? HE was happy, for he had
+gained Kitty through it. But they? For a moment it seemed to him that he
+had purchased his happiness through their loss. He stopped, took off his
+hat, and ran his fingers remorsefully through his damp curls.
+
+Another thing troubled him. He had reached the crest of the Gulch, where
+their old working ground was spread before him like a map. They were not
+there; neither were they lying under the four pines on the ridge where
+they were wont to rest at midday. He turned with some alarm to the new
+claim adjoining theirs, but there was no sign of them there either. A
+sudden fear that they had, after parting from him, given up the claim
+in a fit of disgust and depression, and departed, now overcame him. He
+clapped his hand on his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.
+
+He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of “Who's there?” from
+the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the trail.
+But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he was wearing
+vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of “All right, it's
+only Barker! Hooray!” he ran toward him. In an instant he was joined by
+Stacy from the cabin, and the two men, catching hold of their returning
+partner, waltzed him joyfully and breathlessly into the cabin. But the
+quick-eyed Demorest suddenly let go his hold and stared at Barker's
+face. “Why, Barker, old boy, what's up?”
+
+“Everything's up,” gasped the breathless Barker. “It's all up about
+these stocks. It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of that newspaper.
+I never had the right kind of shares. The ones I have are worthless
+rags”; and the next instant he had blurted out his whole interview with
+the bank manager.
+
+The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's infinite
+perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty
+fell upon them. They laughed, holding on each other's shoulders; they
+laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling figure; they went out and
+laughed with their backs against a tree. They laughed separately and in
+different corners. And then they came up to Barker with tears in their
+eyes, dropped their heads on his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:
+
+“You blessed ass!”
+
+“But,” said Stacy suddenly, “how did you manage to buy the claim?”
+
+“Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys. I've NEVER PAID FOR IT,” groaned
+Barker.
+
+“But Carter sent us the bill of sale,” persisted Demorest, “or we
+shouldn't have taken it.”
+
+“I gave my promissory note at thirty days,” said Barker desperately,
+“and where's the money to come from now? But,” he added wildly, as the
+men glanced at each other--“you said 'taken it.' Good heavens! you don't
+mean to say that I'm TOO late--that you've--you've touched it?”
+
+“I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing,” drawled Demorest.
+
+“It looks uncommonly like it,” drawled Stacy.
+
+Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other. “Shall we pass our
+young friend in to see the show?” said Demorest to Stacy.
+
+“Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,”
+ returned Stacy.
+
+They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the
+corner of the cabin. There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large tin
+prospecting pan, in which the partners also occasionally used to knead
+their bread. A dirty towel covered it. Demorest whisked it dexterously
+aside, and disclosed three large fragments of decomposed gold and
+quartz. Barker started back.
+
+“Heft it!” said Demorest grimly.
+
+Barker could scarcely lift the pan!
+
+“Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!” said Stacy, in short
+staccato sentences. “In a pocket! Brought it out the second stroke of
+the pick! We'd been awfully blue after you left. Awfully blue, too, when
+that bill of sale came, for we thought you'd been wasting your money on
+US. Reckoned we oughtn't to take it, but send it straight back to you.
+Messenger gone! Then Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be
+undone, and we ought to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and
+strike a single stroke for you. And there it is. And there's more on the
+hillside.”
+
+“But it isn't MINE! It isn't YOURS! It's Carter's. I never had the money
+to pay for it--and I haven't got it now.”
+
+“But you gave the note--and it is not due for thirty days.”
+
+A recollection flashed upon Barker. “Yes,” he said with thoughtful
+simplicity, “that's what Kitty said.”
+
+“Oh, Kitty said so,” said both partners, gravely.
+
+“Yes,” stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, “and, as I
+didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting it ready.”
+ He picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as his two partners
+stepped beyond the door.
+
+“Wasn't it exactly like him?” said Demorest.
+
+“Him all over,” said Stacy.
+
+“And his worry over that note?” said Demorest.
+
+“And 'what Kitty said,'” said Stacy.
+
+“Look here! I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said.”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“What luck!”
+
+
+
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+
+I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be
+proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency,
+nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social
+standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we
+accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownership
+was more difficult to settle; and although the dog I have in my mind at
+the present writing attached himself impartially and equally to everyone
+in camp, no one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the
+perpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with
+indecent haste.
+
+“Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks,” or the
+retort, “He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin,” expressed
+the eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any
+responsibility. Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an
+unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest critics
+vied with each other in narrating instances of his sagacity, insight,
+and agility which they themselves had witnessed.
+
+He had been seen crossing the “flume” that spanned Grizzly Canyon at a
+height of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide. He had tumbled
+down the “shoot” to the South Fork, a thousand feet below, and was found
+sitting on the riverbank “without a scratch, 'cept that he was lazily
+givin' himself with his off hind paw.” He had been forgotten in a
+snowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come home in the early spring with
+the conceited complacency of an Alpine traveler and a plumpness alleged
+to have been the result of an exclusive diet of buried mail bags and
+their contents. He was generally believed to read the advance election
+posters, and disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brass
+band--which he hated--came to the Ridge. He was suspected of having
+overlooked Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed to
+the Colonel's adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of betting
+against four kings.
+
+While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported witnesses, it
+was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the responsibility of
+corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and HE was looked upon as a
+consummate liar.
+
+“Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye! Scoot,
+you yaller pizin!” was a common adjuration whenever the unfortunate
+animal intruded upon a card party. “Ef thar was a spark, an ATOM of
+truth in THAT DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I saw him sittin' up and
+trying to magnetize a jay bird off a tree. But wot are ye goin' to do
+with a yaller equivocator like that?”
+
+I have said that he was yellow--or, to use the ordinary expression,
+“yaller.” Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the ignominy
+attached to the epithet lay in this favorite pronunciation. Men who
+habitually spoke of a “YELLOW bird,” a “YELLOW-hammer,” a “YELLOW leaf,”
+ always alluded to him as a “YALLER dog.”
+
+He certainly WAS yellow. After a bath--usually compulsory--he presented
+a decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of his forehead to
+the stump of his tail, fading in his sides and flank to a delicate straw
+color. His breast, legs, and feet--when not reddened by “slumgullion,”
+ in which he was fond of wading--were white. A few attempts at ornamental
+decoration from the India-ink pot of the storekeeper failed, partly
+through the yellow dog's excessive agility, which would never give the
+paint time to dry on him, and partly through his success in transferring
+his markings to the trousers and blankets of the camp.
+
+The size and shape of his tail--which had been cut off before his
+introduction to Rattlers Ridge--were favorite sources of speculation to
+the miners, as determining both his breed and his moral responsibility
+in coming into camp in that defective condition. There was a general
+opinion that he couldn't have looked worse with a tail, and its removal
+was therefore a gratuitous effrontery.
+
+His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown, and
+sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from evolution
+through environment, and their original trustful openness was marred by
+the experience of watching for flying stones, sods, and passing kicks
+from the rear, so that the pupils were continually reverting to the
+outer angle of the eyelid.
+
+Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed question
+of his BREED. His speed and scent pointed to a “hound,” and it is
+related that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of a wildcat with
+such success that he followed it apparently out of the State, returning
+at the end of two weeks footsore, but blandly contented.
+
+Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the same
+belief, “into the brush” to drive off a bear, who was supposed to be
+haunting the campfire. He returned in a few minutes WITH the bear,
+DRIVING IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole party. After
+this the theory of his being a hunting dog was abandoned. Yet it was
+said--on the usual uncorroborated evidence--that he had “put up” a
+quail; and his qualities as a retriever were for a long time accepted,
+until, during a shooting expedition for wild ducks, it was discovered
+that the one he had brought back had never been shot, and the party were
+obliged to compound damages with an adjacent settler.
+
+His fondness for paddling in the ditches and “slumgullion” at one time
+suggested a water spaniel. He could swim, and would occasionally bring
+out of the river sticks and pieces of bark that had been thrown in; but
+as HE always had to be thrown in with them, and was a good-sized dog,
+his aquatic reputation faded also. He remained simply “a yaller dog.”
+ What more could be said? His actual name was “Bones”--given to him, no
+doubt, through the provincial custom of confounding the occupation of
+the individual with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedent
+could be found in some old English family names.
+
+But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particular
+individual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of drunkards.
+Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought him out from
+under a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction. He would accompany
+them through the long straggling street of the settlement, barking his
+delight at every step or misstep of the revelers, and exhibiting none of
+that mistrust of eye which marked his attendance upon the sane and the
+respectable. He accepted even their uncouth play without a snarl or a
+yelp, hypocritically pretending even to like it; and I conscientiously
+believe would have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if the
+hand that tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him
+“lie still” were husky with liquor. He would “see” the party cheerfully
+into a saloon, wait outside the door--his tongue fairly lolling from his
+mouth in enjoyment--until they reappeared, permit them even to tumble
+over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before them, heedless of
+awkwardly projected stones and epithets. He would afterward accompany
+them separately home, or lie with them at crossroads until they were
+assisted to their cabins. Then he would trot rakishly to his own haunt
+by the saloon stove, with the slightly conscious air of having been a
+bad dog, yet of having had a good time.
+
+We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from some
+merely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the physically
+and mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with active
+wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such
+moments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a
+“yaller dog” with all that was disreputable. And this was supported by
+another very singular canine manifestation--the “sincere flattery” of
+simulation or imitation.
+
+“Uncle Billy” Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being
+the camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatest
+solicitude. He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his feet
+or head according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment, but, it was
+noticed, began presently to undergo a singular alteration in his own
+habits and appearance. From being an active, tireless scout and forager,
+a bold and unovertakable marauder, he became lazy and apathetic;
+allowed gophers to burrow under him without endeavoring to undermine the
+settlement in his frantic endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels
+to flash their tails at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual
+caches, and left his favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.
+His eyes grew dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion
+became blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness
+began to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together,
+zigzagging up the hill. Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could be
+predetermined by Bones' appearance at times when his temporary master
+was invisible. “The old man must have an awful jag on today,” was
+casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable
+in the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, but
+when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was
+freely called a “derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite.” Not a few
+advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy
+astray, he at least “slavered him over and coddled him until the old man
+got conceited in his wickedness.” This undoubtedly led to a compulsory
+divorce between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to a
+neighboring town and a doctor.
+
+Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was
+supposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his convalescence,
+and to have been “cut” by Uncle Billy in his reformed character; and
+he returned to his old active life again, and buried his past with his
+forgotten bones. It was said that he was afterward detected in trying
+to lead an intoxicated tramp into camp after the methods employed by
+a blind man's dog, but was discovered in time by the--of
+course--uncorroborated narrator.
+
+I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and picturesque
+sin, but the same veracity which compelled me to transcribe his
+faults and iniquities obliges me to describe his ultimate and somewhat
+monotonous reformation, which came from no fault of his own.
+
+It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent of
+his change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been induced to
+diverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our settlement. Flags
+were flying from the post office and Polka saloon, and Bones was flying
+before the brass band that he detested, when the sweetest girl in the
+county--Pinkey Preston--daughter of the county judge and hopelessly
+beloved by all Rattlers Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had
+glorified by occupying as an invited guest.
+
+“What makes him run away?” she asked quickly, opening her lovely eyes in
+a possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to run away from
+her.
+
+“He don't like the brass band,” we explained eagerly.
+
+“How funny,” murmured the girl; “is it as out of tune as all that?”
+
+This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy
+us--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--but we
+were positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather her dainty
+skirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust toward Bones, who,
+with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had halted in the road,
+and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at the spectacle of the
+descending trombone. We held our breath as she approached him. Would
+Bones evade her as he did us at such moments, or would he save our
+reputation, and consent, for the moment, to accept her as a new kind of
+inebriate? She came nearer; he saw her; he began to slowly quiver with
+excitement--his stump of a tail vibrating with such rapidity that
+the loss of the missing portion was scarcely noticeable. Suddenly she
+stopped before him, took his yellow head between her little hands,
+lifted it, and looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her two
+lovely blue ones. What passed between them in that magnetic glance no
+one ever knew. She returned with him; said to him casually: “We're not
+afraid of brass bands, are we?” to which he apparently acquiesced, at
+least stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which was
+nearly all the time.
+
+During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were always
+near together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public checking of Yuba
+Bill's “waybill” on behalf of the township, with a gold pencil presented
+to her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far from knowing no bounds,
+seemed to know nothing but them, and he witnessed it apparently in the
+air. No one dared to interfere. For the first time a local pride in
+Bones sprang up in our hearts--and we lied to each other in his praises
+openly and shamelessly.
+
+Then the time came for parting. We were standing by the door of the
+coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Bones
+was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the interior, and
+apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the
+corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers.
+Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into
+his brimming eyes, and said, simply, “GOOD dog,” with the gentlest of
+emphasis on the adjective, and popped into the coach.
+
+The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold vehicle
+bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow dog danced
+in and out of it to the very outskirts of the settlement. And then he
+soberly returned.
+
+A day or two later he was missed--but the fact was afterward known that
+he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston lived, and
+he was forgiven. A week afterward he was missed again, but this time for
+a longer period, and then a pathetic letter arrived from Sacramento for
+the storekeeper's wife.
+
+“Would you mind,” wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, “asking some of your boys
+to come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones? I don't mind
+having the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where everyone
+knows me; but here he DOES make one so noticeable, on account of HIS
+COLOR. I've got scarcely a frock that he agrees with. He don't go with
+my pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint he makes three shades lighter.
+You know yellow is SO trying.”
+
+A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a
+deputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl. We
+were all quite indignant with Bones--but, oddly enough, I think it was
+greatly tempered with our new pride in him. While he was with us alone,
+his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent
+phrase “that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers” gave us a
+mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a
+“mascot” in some zoological curiosity.
+
+This was further indicated by a singular occurrence. A new church had
+been built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come from San
+Francisco to preach the opening sermon. After a careful examination of
+the camp's wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of apparel, a few of
+us were deputed to represent “Rattlers” at the Sunday service. In our
+white ducks, straw hats, and flannel blouses, we were sufficiently
+picturesque and distinctive as “honest miners” to be shown off in one of
+the front pews.
+
+Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books--in the
+cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and blown over
+by the spices of our own woods through the open windows, a deep sense
+of the abiding peace of Christian communion settled upon us. At this
+supreme moment someone murmured in an awe-stricken whisper:
+
+“WILL you look at Bones?”
+
+We looked. Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallery
+through a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his mistake,
+was now calmly walking along the gallery rail before the astounded
+worshipers. Reaching the end, he paused for a moment, and carelessly
+looked down. It was about fifteen feet to the floor below--the simplest
+jump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones. Daintily, gingerly,
+lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of manner, as if, humanly
+speaking, he had one leg in his pocket and were doing it on three, he
+cleared the distance, dropping just in front of the chancel, without a
+sound, turned himself around three times, and then lay comfortably down.
+
+Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the eminent
+divine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile. We heard the hurried
+whispers: “Belongs to them.” “Quite a local institution here, you know.”
+ “Don't like to offend sensibilities;” and the minister's prompt “By no
+means,” as he went on with his service.
+
+A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat there
+in slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that any affront
+offered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and followed by our
+instantaneous withdrawal in a body.
+
+All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Bible
+from the communion table and holding it in both hands before him, walked
+toward a reading stand by the altar rails. Bones uttered a distinct
+growl. The minister stopped.
+
+We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole situation. The Bible
+was nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of sod which we
+were in the playful habit of launching at Bones when he lay half-asleep
+in the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade it.
+
+We held our breath. What was to be done? But the opportunity belonged
+to our leader, Jeff Briggs--a confoundedly good-looking fellow, with the
+golden mustache of a northern viking and the curls of an Apollo. Secure
+in his beauty and bland in his self-conceit, he rose from the pew, and
+stepped before the chancel rails.
+
+“I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir,” he said, respectfully, “and
+you will see that he will go out quietly.”
+
+“What is wrong?” whispered the minister in some concern.
+
+“He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without giving
+him a fair show, as we do.”
+
+The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the book in
+his hands. Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and vanished like
+a yellow flash!
+
+With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a week.
+At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge Preston,
+saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their house, and
+begged that the camp, without yielding up their valuable PROPERTY in
+him, would allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an indefinite time;
+that both the judge and his daughter--with whom Bones was already an old
+friend--would be glad if the members of the camp would visit their old
+favorite whenever they desired, to assure themselves that he was well
+cared for.
+
+I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good deal to
+do with our ultimate yielding. However, the reports of those who visited
+Bones were wonderful and marvelous. He was residing there in state,
+lying on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled up under the judicial desk in
+the judge's study, sleeping regularly on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's
+bedroom door, or lazily snapping at flies on the judge's lawn.
+
+“He's as yaller as ever,” said one of our informants, “but it don't
+somehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over in the
+old time, just to see him scoot out of the dust.”
+
+And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs will
+indignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by every faithful
+hound since the days of Ulysses. Bones not only FORGOT, but absolutely
+CUT US! Those who called upon the judge in “store clothes” he would
+perhaps casually notice, but he would sniff at them as if detecting and
+resenting them under their superficial exterior. The rest he simply paid
+no attention to. The more familiar term of “Bonesy”--formerly applied
+to him, as in our rare moments of endearment--produced no response.
+This pained, I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through some
+strange human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.
+Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very moment
+he ignored us. I am afraid that we also took some pains to point
+out that he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his elasticity,
+implying covertly that his choice was a mistake and his life a failure.
+
+A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability, being
+found one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's
+door. When the news was conveyed to us, we asked permission, the camp
+being in a prosperous condition, to erect a stone over his grave. But
+when it came to the inscription we could only think of the two words
+murmured to him by Miss Pinkey, which we always believe effected his
+conversion:
+
+“GOOD Dog!”
+
+
+
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+
+She was a mother--and a rather exemplary one--of five children, although
+her own age was barely nine. Two of these children were twins, and she
+generally alluded to them as “Mr. Amplach's children,” referring to an
+exceedingly respectable gentleman in the next settlement who, I have
+reason to believe, had never set eyes on her or them. The twins were
+quite naturally alike--having been in a previous state of existence two
+ninepins--and were still somewhat vague and inchoate below their low
+shoulders in their long clothes, but were also firm and globular about
+the head, and there were not wanting those who professed to see in this
+an unmistakable resemblance to their reputed father. The other children
+were dolls of different ages, sex, and condition, but the twins may
+be said to have been distinctly her own conception. Yet such was her
+admirable and impartial maternity that she never made any difference
+between them. “The Amplach's children” was a description rather than a
+distinction.
+
+She was herself the motherless child of Robert Foulkes, a hardworking
+but somewhat improvident teamster on the Express Route between Big Bend
+and Reno. His daily avocation, when she was not actually with him in the
+wagon, led to an occasional dispersion of herself and her progeny along
+the road and at wayside stations between those places. But the family
+was generally collected together by rough but kindly hands already
+familiar with the handling of her children. I have a very vivid
+recollection of Jim Carter trampling into a saloon, after a five-mile
+walk through a snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket. “Suthin'
+ought to be done,” he growled, “to make Meary a little more careful o'
+them Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big
+Bend.” “God bless my soul!” said a casual passenger, looking up hastily;
+“I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married.” Jim winked diabolically at us
+over his glass. “No more did I,” he responded gloomily, “but you can't
+tell anything about the ways o' them respectable, psalm-singing jay
+birds.” Having thus disposed of Amplach's character, later on, when
+he was alone with Mary, or “Meary,” as she chose to pronounce it, the
+rascal worked upon her feelings with an account of the infant Amplach's
+sufferings in the snowdrift and its agonized whisperings for “Meary!
+Meary!” until real tears stood in Mary's blue eyes. “Let this be a
+lesson to you,” he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his
+pocket, “for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to bring
+that child to.” Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but for weeks
+afterwards “Julian Amplach”--this unhappy twin--was kept in a somnolent
+attitude in the cart, and was believed to have contracted dissipated
+habits from the effects of his heroic treatment.
+
+Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded her
+first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable expense
+by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh birthday. This,
+by one of those rare inventions known only to a child's vocabulary,
+she at once called “Misery”--probably a combination of “Missy,” as she
+herself was formerly termed by strangers, and “Missouri,” her native
+State. It was an excessively large doll at first--Mr. Dodd wishing to
+get the worth of his money--but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal
+care, remedied the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed
+parts of its limbs very rapidly. It was further reduced in bulk by
+falling under the wagon and having the whole train pass over it,
+but singularly enough its greatest attenuation was in the head and
+shoulders--the complexion peeling off as a solid layer, followed by the
+disappearance of distinct strata of its extraordinary composition. This
+continued until the head and shoulders were much too small for even
+its reduced frame, and all the devices of childish millinery--a shawl
+secured with tacks and well hammered in, and a hat which tilted backward
+and forward and never appeared at the same angle--failed to restore
+symmetry. Until one dreadful morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole
+upper structure disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing
+erect from the spinal column. Even an imaginative child like Mary could
+not accept this sort of thing as a head. Later in the day Jack Roper,
+the blacksmith at the “Crossing,” was concerned at the plaintive
+appearance before his forge of a little girl clad in a bright-blue
+pinafore of the same color as her eyes, carrying her monstrous offspring
+in her arms. Jack recognized her and instantly divined the situation.
+“You haven't,” he suggested kindly, “got another head at home--suthin'
+left over,” Mary shook her head sadly; even her prolific maternity was
+not equal to the creation of children in detail. “Nor anythin' like
+a head?” he persisted sympathetically. Mary's loving eyes filled with
+tears. “No, nuffen!” “You couldn't,” he continued thoughtfully, “use her
+the other side up?--we might get a fine pair o' legs outer them irons,”
+ he added, touching the two prongs with artistic suggestion. “Now look
+here”--he was about to tilt the doll over when a small cry of feminine
+distress and a swift movement of a matronly little arm arrested the
+evident indiscretion. “I see,” he said gravely. “Well, you come here
+tomorrow, and we'll fix up suthin' to work her.” Jack was thoughtful the
+rest of the day, more than usually impatient with certain stubborn mules
+to be shod, and even knocked off work an hour earlier to walk to Big
+Bend and a rival shop. But the next morning when the trustful and
+anxious mother appeared at the forge she uttered a scream of delight.
+Jack had neatly joined a hollow iron globe, taken from the newel post of
+some old iron staircase railing, to the two prongs, and covered it
+with a coat of red fireproof paint. It was true that its complexion was
+rather high, that it was inclined to be top-heavy, and that in the long
+run the other dolls suffered considerably by enforced association with
+this unyielding and implacable head and shoulders, but this did not
+diminish Mary's joy over her restored first-born. Even its utter absence
+of features was no defect in a family where features were as evanescent
+as in hers, and the most ordinary student of evolution could see
+that the “Amplach” ninepins were in legitimate succession to the
+globular-headed “Misery.” For a time I think that Mary even preferred
+her to the others. Howbeit it was a pretty sight to see her on a summer
+afternoon sitting upon a wayside stump, her other children dutifully
+ranged around her, and the hard, unfeeling head of Misery pressed deep
+down into her loving little heart as she swayed from side to side,
+crooning her plaintive lullaby. Small wonder that the bees took up the
+song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head
+the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran
+air--or Heaven knows what--let slip flickering lights and shadows to
+play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down upon it
+with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it smiled.
+
+The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive.
+“Gloriana”--pronounced as two words: “Glory Anna”--being the work of
+her father, who also named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of canvas
+wagon-covering, girt so as to define a neck and waist, with a rudely
+inked face--altogether a weak, pitiable, manlike invention; and “Johnny
+Dear,” alleged to be the representative of John Doremus, a young
+storekeeper who occasionally supplied Mary with gratuitous sweets. Mary
+never admitted this, and as we were all gentlemen along that road,
+we were blind to the suggestion. “Johnny Dear” was originally a small
+plaster phrenological cast of a head and bust, begged from some shop
+window in the county town, with a body clearly constructed by Mary
+herself. It was an ominous fact that it was always dressed as a BOY,
+and was distinctly the most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny. Indeed,
+in spite of the faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth,
+white, hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike. Left sometimes by
+Mary astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to
+dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified smile, and
+it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the Pioneer Coach
+at the request of curious and imploring passengers, and then grimly
+installed “Johnny Dear” beside him on the box seat, publicly delivering
+him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed confusion and the first blush
+we had ever seen on her round, chubby, sunburnt cheeks. It may seem
+strange that with her great popularity and her well-known maternal
+instincts, she had not been kept fully supplied with proper and more
+conventional dolls; but it was soon recognized that she did not care
+for them--left their waxen faces, rolling eyes, and abundant hair in
+ditches, or stripped them to help clothe the more extravagant creatures
+of her fancy. So it came that “Johnny Dear's” strictly classical profile
+looked out from under a girl's fashionable straw sailor hat, to the
+utter obliteration of his prominent intellectual faculties; the Amplach
+twins wore bonnets on their ninepins heads, and even an attempt was
+made to fit a flaxen scalp on the iron-headed Misery. But her dolls were
+always a creation of her own--her affection for them increasing with the
+demand upon her imagination. This may seem somewhat inconsistent
+with her habit of occasionally abandoning them in the woods or in the
+ditches. But she had an unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of
+Nature, and trusted her children to the breast of the Great Mother as
+freely as she did herself in her own motherlessness. And this confidence
+was rarely betrayed. Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear
+never touched her lost waifs. Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach
+twin buried under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared smilingly
+in the spring in all its wooden and painted integrity. We were all
+Pantheists then--and believed this implicitly. It was only when exposed
+to the milder forces of civilization that Mary had anything to fear.
+Yet even then, when Patsy O'Connor's domestic goat had once tried to
+“sample” the lost Misery, he had retreated with the loss of three
+front teeth, and Thompson's mule came out of an encounter with that
+iron-headed prodigy with a sprained hind leg and a cut and swollen
+pastern.
+
+But these were the simple Arcadian days of the road between Big Bend and
+Reno, and progress and prosperity, alas! brought changes in their wake.
+It was already whispered that Mary ought to be going to school, and
+Mr. Amplach--still happily oblivious of the liberties taken with his
+name--as trustee of the public school at Duckville, had intimated that
+Mary's bohemian wanderings were a scandal to the county. She was growing
+up in ignorance, a dreadful ignorance of everything but the chivalry,
+the deep tenderness, the delicacy and unselfishness of the rude men
+around her, and obliviousness of faith in anything but the immeasurable
+bounty of Nature toward her and her children. Of course there was a
+fierce discussion between “the boys” of the road and the few married
+families of the settlement on this point, but, of course, progress and
+“snivelization”--as the boys chose to call it--triumphed. The projection
+of a railroad settled it; Robert Foulkes, promoted to a foremanship of
+a division of the line, was made to understand that his daughter must be
+educated. But the terrible question of Mary's family remained. No school
+would open its doors to that heterogeneous collection, and Mary's little
+heart would have broken over the rude dispersal or heroic burning of her
+children. The ingenuity of Jack Roper suggested a compromise. She
+was allowed to select one to take to school with her; the others were
+ADOPTED by certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit
+them every Saturday afternoon. The selection was a cruel trial, so cruel
+that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn, Misery, we
+would not have interfered for worlds, but in her unexpected choice
+of “Johnny Dear” the most unworldly of us knew that it was the first
+glimmering of feminine tact--her first submission to the world of
+propriety that she was now entering. “Johnny Dear” was undoubtedly the
+most presentable; even more, there was an educational suggestion in its
+prominent, mapped-out phrenological organs. The adopted fathers were
+loyal to their trust. Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept
+the iron-headed Misery on a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk;
+nobody but himself and Mary ever knew the secret, stolen, and thrilling
+interviews that took place during the first days of their separation.
+Certain facts, however, transpired concerning Mary's equal faithfulness
+to another of her children. It is said that one Saturday afternoon, when
+the road manager of the new line was seated in his office at Reno in
+private business discussion with two directors, a gentle tap was heard
+at the door. It was opened to an eager little face, a pair of blue eyes,
+and a blue pinafore. To the astonishment of the directors, a change came
+over the face of the manager. Taking the child gently by the hand, he
+walked to his desk, on which the papers of the new line were
+scattered, and drew open a drawer from which he took a large ninepin
+extraordinarily dressed as a doll. The astonishment of the two gentlemen
+was increased at the following quaint colloquy between the manager and
+the child.
+
+“She's doing remarkably well in spite of the trying weather, but I have
+had to keep her very quiet,” said the manager, regarding the ninepin
+critically.
+
+“Ess,” said Mary quickly, “It's just the same with Johnny Dear; his
+cough is f'ightful at nights. But Misery's all right. I've just been to
+see her.”
+
+“There's a good deal of scarlet fever around,” continued the manager
+with quiet concern, “and we can't be too careful. But I shall take her
+for a little run down the line tomorrow.”
+
+The eyes of Mary sparkled and overflowed like blue water. Then there was
+a kiss, a little laugh, a shy glance at the two curious strangers, the
+blue pinafore fluttered away, and the colloquy ended. She was equally
+attentive in her care of the others, but the rag baby “Gloriana,” who
+had found a home in Jim Carter's cabin at the Ridge, living too far for
+daily visits, was brought down regularly on Saturday afternoon to Mary's
+house by Jim, tucked in asleep in his saddle bags or riding gallantly
+before him on the horn of his saddle. On Sunday there was a dress
+parade of all the dolls, which kept Mary in heart for the next week's
+desolation.
+
+But there came one Saturday and Sunday when Mary did not appear, and it
+was known along the road that she had been called to San Francisco to
+meet an aunt who had just arrived from “the States.” It was a vacant
+Sunday to “the boys,” a very hollow, unsanctified Sunday, somehow,
+without that little figure. But the next, Sunday, and the next, were
+still worse, and then it was known that the dreadful aunt was making
+much of Mary, and was sending her to a grand school--a convent at Santa
+Clara--where it was rumored girls were turned out so accomplished that
+their own parents did not know them. But WE knew that was impossible to
+our Mary; and a letter which came from her at the end of the month, and
+before the convent had closed upon the blue pinafore, satisfied us, and
+was balm to our anxious hearts. It was characteristic of Mary; it was
+addressed to nobody in particular, and would--but for the prudence of
+the aunt--have been entrusted to the post office open and undirected. It
+was a single sheet, handed to us without a word by her father; but as
+we passed it from hand to hand, we understood it as if we had heard our
+lost playfellow's voice.
+
+“Ther's more houses in 'Frisco than you kin shake a stick at and
+wimmens till you kant rest, but mules and jakasses ain't got no sho, nor
+blacksmiffs shops, wich is not to be seen no wear. Rapits and Skwirls
+also bares and panfers is on-noun and unforgotten on account of the
+streets and Sunday skoles. Jim Roper you orter be very good to Mizzery
+on a kount of my not bein' here, and not harten your hart to her bekos
+she is top heavy--which is ontroo and simply an imptient lie--like
+you allus make. I have a kinary bird wot sings deliteful--but isn't a
+yellerhamer sutch as I know, as you'd think. Dear Mister Montgommery,
+don't keep Gulan Amplak to mutch shet up in office drors; it isn't good
+for his lungs and chest. And don't you ink his head--nother! youre as
+bad as the rest. Johnny Dear, you must be very kind to your attopted
+father, and you, Glory Anna, must lov your kind Jimmy Carter verry
+mutch for taking you hossback so offen. I has been buggy ridin' with
+an orficer who has killed injuns real! I am comin' back soon with grate
+affeckshun, so luke out and mind.”
+
+But it was three years before she returned, and this was her last
+and only letter. The “adopted fathers” of her children were faithful,
+however, and when the new line was opened, and it was understood that
+she was to be present with her father at the ceremony, they came, with
+a common understanding, to the station to meet their old playmate. They
+were ranged along the platform--poor Jack Roper a little overweighted
+with a bundle he was carrying on his left arm. And then a young girl
+in the freshness of her teens and the spotless purity of a muslin frock
+that although brief in skirt was perfect in fit, faultlessly booted and
+gloved, tripped from the train, and offered a delicate hand in turn to
+each of her old friends. Nothing could be prettier than the smile on the
+cheeks that were no longer sunburnt; nothing could be clearer than the
+blue eyes lifted frankly to theirs. And yet, as she gracefully turned
+away with her father, the faces of the four adopted parents were found
+to be as red and embarrassed as her own on the day that Yuba Bill drove
+up publicly with “Johnny Dear” on the box seat.
+
+“You weren't such a fool,” said Jack Montgomery to Roper, “as to bring
+Misery here with you?”
+
+“I was,” said Roper with a constrained laugh--“and you?” He had just
+caught sight of the head of a ninepin peeping from the manager's pocket.
+The man laughed, and then the four turned silently away.
+
+“Mary” had indeed come back to them; but not “The Mother of Five!”
+
+
+
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+
+We all remembered very distinctly Bulger's advent in Rattlesnake Camp.
+It was during the rainy season--a season singularly inducive to settled
+reflective impressions as we sat and smoked around the stove in Mosby's
+grocery. Like older and more civilized communities, we had our periodic
+waves of sentiment and opinion, with the exception that they were more
+evanescent with us, and as we had just passed through a fortnight of
+dissipation and extravagance, owing to a visit from some gamblers and
+speculators, we were now undergoing a severe moral revulsion, partly
+induced by reduced finances and partly by the arrival of two families
+with grownup daughters on the hill. It was raining, with occasional warm
+breaths, through the open window, of the southwest trades, redolent of
+the saturated spices of the woods and springing grasses, which perhaps
+were slightly inconsistent with the hot stove around which we had
+congregated. But the stove was only an excuse for our listless,
+gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness went well together, and it was
+currently accepted that we had caught from the particular reptile which
+gave its name to our camp much of its pathetic, lifelong search for
+warmth, and its habit of indolently basking in it.
+
+A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry our
+damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against it; but
+as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive in upon them
+through the open window without moving, and seemed to take infinite
+delight in the amount of steam they generated, even that pretense
+dropped. Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun
+striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm
+stone beside it, could not have typified us better.
+
+Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
+reflective severity:
+
+“Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if
+we're going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at least
+straighten up the camp, and not have it look like a cross between a
+tenement alley and a broken-down circus. I declare, I was just sick
+when these two Baker girls started to make a short cut through the camp.
+Darned if they didn't turn round and take to the woods and the rattlers
+again afore they got halfway. And that benighted idiot, Tom Rollins,
+standin' there in the ditch, spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he
+looked like a spotted tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards
+and forrards and sayin', 'This way, ladies; this way!'”
+
+“I didn't,” returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking up
+from his steaming boots; “I didn't start in night afore last to dance
+'The Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my hair and
+a red blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new potato patch,
+in order that it might 'increase and multiply.' I didn't sing 'Sabbath
+Morning Bells' with an anvil accompaniment until twelve o'clock at
+night over at the Crossing, so that they might dream of their Happy
+Childhood's Home. It seems to me that it wasn't me did it. I might be
+mistaken--it was late--but I have the impression that it wasn't me.”
+
+From the silence that followed, this would seem to have been clearly
+a recent performance of the previous speaker, who, however, responded
+quite cheerfully:
+
+“An evenin' o' simple, childish gaiety don't count. We've got to start
+in again FAIR. What we want here is to clear up and encourage decent
+immigration, and get rid o' gamblers and blatherskites that are makin'
+this yer camp their happy hunting-ground. We don't want any more
+permiskus shootin'. We don't want any more paintin' the town red. We
+don't want any more swaggerin' galoots ridin' up to this grocery and
+emptyin' their six-shooters in the air afore they 'light. We want to put
+a stop to it peacefully and without a row--and we kin. We ain't got no
+bullies of our own to fight back, and they know it, so they know they
+won't get no credit bullyin' us; they'll leave, if we're only firm. It's
+all along of our cussed fool good-nature; they see it amuses us, and
+they'll keep it up as long as the whisky's free. What we want to do is,
+when the next man comes waltzin' along--”
+
+A distant clatter from the rocky hillside here mingled with the puff of
+damp air through the window.
+
+“Looks as ef we might hev a show even now,” said Tom Rollins, removing
+his feet from the stove as we all instinctively faced toward the window.
+
+“I reckon you're in with us in this, Mosby?” said Briggs, turning toward
+the proprietor of the grocery, who had been leaning listlessly against
+the wall behind his bar.
+
+“Arter the man's had a fair show,” said Mosby, cautiously. He deprecated
+the prevailing condition of things, but it was still an open question
+whether the families would prove as valuable customers as his present
+clients. “Everything in moderation, gentlemen.”
+
+The sound of galloping hoofs came nearer, now swishing in the soft mud
+of the highway, until the unseen rider pulled up before the door. There
+was no shouting, however, nor did he announce himself with the usual
+salvo of firearms. But when, after a singularly heavy tread and the
+jingle of spurs on the platform, the door flew open to the newcomer,
+he seemed a realization of our worst expectations. Tall, broad, and
+muscular, he carried in one hand a shotgun, while from his hip dangled
+a heavy navy revolver. His long hair, unkempt but oiled, swept a greasy
+circle around his shoulders; his enormous mustache, dripping with wet,
+completely concealed his mouth. His costume of fringed buckskin was wild
+and outre even for our frontier camp. But what was more confirmative
+of our suspicions was that he was evidently in the habit of making an
+impression, and after a distinct pause at the doorway, with only a side
+glance at us, he strode toward the bar.
+
+“As there don't seem to be no hotel hereabouts, I reckon I kin put up
+my mustang here and have a shakedown somewhere behind that counter,” he
+said. His voice seemed to have added to its natural depth the hoarseness
+of frequent overstraining.
+
+“Ye ain't got no bunk to spare, you boys, hev ye?” asked Mosby,
+evasively, glancing at Percy Briggs without looking at the stranger.
+We all looked at Briggs also; it was HIS affair after all--HE had
+originated this opposition. To our surprise he said nothing.
+
+The stranger leaned heavily on the counter.
+
+“I was speaking to YOU,” he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and slightly
+accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on the bar. “Ye
+don't seem to catch on.”
+
+Mosby smiled feebly, and again cast an imploring glance at Briggs. To
+our greater astonishment, Briggs said, quietly: “Why don't you answer
+the stranger, Mosby?”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Mosby, suavely, to the newcomer, while an angry flush
+crossed his check as he recognized the position in which Briggs had
+placed him. “Of course, you're welcome to what doings I hev here, but I
+reckoned these gentlemen over there,” with a vicious glance at Briggs,
+“might fix ye up suthin' better; they're so pow'ful kind to your sort.”
+
+The stranger threw down a gold piece on the counter and said: “Fork out
+your whisky, then,” waited until his glass was filled, took it in his
+hand, and then, drawing an empty chair to the stove, sat down beside
+Briggs. “Seein' as you're that kind,” he said, placing his heavy hand
+on Briggs's knee, “mebbe ye kin tell me ef thar's a shanty or a cabin at
+Rattlesnake that I kin get for a couple o' weeks. I saw an empty one at
+the head o' the hill. You see, gennelmen,” he added confidentially as
+he swept the drops of whisky from his long mustache with his fingers and
+glanced around our group, “I've got some business over at Bigwood,” our
+nearest town, “but ez a place to stay AT it ain't my style.”
+
+“What's the matter with Bigwood?” said Briggs, abruptly.
+
+“It's too howlin', too festive, too rough; thar's too much yellin'
+and shootin' goin' day and night. Thar's too many card sharps and gay
+gamboliers cavortin' about the town to please me. Too much permiskus
+soakin' at the bar and free jimjams. What I want is a quiet place what
+a man kin give his mind and elbow a rest from betwixt grippin' his
+shootin' irons and crookin' in his whisky. A sort o' slow, quiet, easy
+place LIKE THIS.”
+
+We all stared at him, Percy Briggs as fixedly as any. But there was not
+the slightest trace of irony, sarcasm, or peculiar significance in his
+manner. He went on slowly:
+
+“When I struck this yer camp a minit ago; when I seed that thar ditch
+meanderin' peaceful like through the street, without a hotel or free
+saloon or express office on either side; with the smoke just a curlin'
+over the chimbley of that log shanty, and the bresh just set fire to and
+a smolderin' in that potato patch with a kind o' old-time stingin' in
+your eyes and nose, and a few women's duds just a flutterin' on a line
+by the fence, I says to myself: 'Bulger--this is peace! This is wot
+you're lookin' for, Bulger--this is wot you're wantin'--this is wot
+YOU'LL HEV!'”
+
+“You say you've business over at Bigwood. What business?” said Briggs.
+
+“It's a peculiar business, young fellow,” returned the stranger,
+gravely. “Thar's different men ez has different opinions about it. Some
+allows it's an easy business, some allows it's a rough business; some
+says it's a sad business, others says it's gay and festive. Some wonders
+ez how I've got into it, and others wonder how I'll ever get out of it.
+It's a payin' business--it's a peaceful sort o' business when left to
+itself. It's a peculiar business--a business that sort o' b'longs to
+me, though I ain't got no patent from Washington for it. It's MY OWN
+business.” He paused, rose, and saying, “Let's meander over and take a
+look at that empty cabin, and ef she suits me, why, I'll plank down
+a slug for her on the spot, and move in tomorrow,” walked towards the
+door. “I'll pick up suthin' in the way o' boxes and blankets from the
+grocery,” he added, looking at Mosby, “and ef thar's a corner whar I kin
+stand my gun and a nail to hang up my revolver--why, I'm all thar!”
+
+By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also, and not
+only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty cabin, but
+assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a fortnight's occupancy.
+Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on his return for some
+explanation of this singular change in his attitude toward the stranger.
+He coolly reminded us, however, that while his intention of excluding
+ruffianly adventurers from the camp remained the same, he had no right
+to go back on the stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord
+with our own, and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with
+them, that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a
+mild firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might
+attend his abrupt dismissal. We were all satisfied except Mosby, who had
+not yet recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he was pleased
+to call “craw-fishing.” “Seemed to me his account of his business was
+extraordinary satisfactory! Sorter filled the bill all round--no mistake
+thar,” he suggested, with a malicious irony. “I like a man that's
+outspoken.”
+
+“I understood him very well,” said Briggs, quietly.
+
+“In course you did. Only when you've settled in your MIND whether he
+was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe you'll let ME
+know.”
+
+It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the stranger
+again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to leave matters
+in Briggs's hands. Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into the empty cabin the
+next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes from the grocery, which
+he quickly extemporized into tables and chairs, and the purchase of some
+necessary cooking utensils, soon made himself at home. The rest of the
+camp, now thoroughly aroused, made a point of leaving their work in
+the ditches, whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's
+tenement in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
+tormenting. But they could not find that he was doing anything of a
+suspicious character--except, perhaps, from the fact that it was
+not OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them to
+security. He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking in his
+doorway. On the second day he checked this itinerant curiosity by taking
+the initiative himself, and quietly walking from claim to claim and from
+cabin to cabin with a pacific but by no means a satisfying interest. The
+shadow of his tall figure carrying his inseparable gun, which had not
+yet apparently “stood in the corner,” falling upon an excavated bank
+beside the delving miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could
+not explain; a few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from
+their noontide gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr.
+Bulger was seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before
+a poker party in the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless
+gamblers to weakly recede from “a bluff” and allow his adversary to
+sweep the board. After this it was felt that matters were becoming
+serious. There was no subsequent patrolling of the camp before the
+stranger's cabin. Their curiosity was singularly abated. A general
+feeling of repulsion, kept within bounds partly by the absence of any
+overt act from Bulger, and partly by an inconsistent over-consciousness
+of his shotgun, took its place. But an unexpected occurrence revived it.
+
+One evening, as the usual social circle were drawn around Mosby's stove,
+the lazy silence was broken by the familiar sounds of pistol shots and a
+series of more familiar shrieks and yells from the rocky hill road. The
+circle quickly recognized the voices of their old friends the roisterers
+and gamblers from Sawyer's Dam; they as quickly recognized the returning
+shouts here and there from a few companions who were welcoming them. I
+grieve to say that in spite of their previous attitude of reformation a
+smile of gratified expectancy lit up the faces of the younger members,
+and even the older ones glanced dubiously at Briggs. Mosby made no
+attempt to conceal a sigh of relief as he carefully laid out an extra
+supply of glasses in his bar. Suddenly the oncoming yells ceased, the
+wild gallop of hoofs slackened into a trot, and finally halted, and even
+the responsive shouts of the camp stopped also. We all looked vacantly
+at each other; Mosby leaped over his counter and went to the door;
+Briggs followed with the rest of us. The night was dark, and it was a
+few minutes before we could distinguish a straggling, vague, but silent
+procession moving through the moist, heavy air on the hill. But, to our
+surprise, it was moving away from us--absolutely LEAVING the camp! We
+were still staring in expectancy when out of the darkness slowly emerged
+a figure which we recognized at once as Captain Jim, one of the most
+reckless members of our camp. Pushing us back into the grocery he
+entered without a word, closed the door behind him, and threw himself
+vacantly into a chair. We at once pressed around him. He looked up at us
+dazedly, drew a long breath, and said slowly:
+
+“It's no use, gentlemen! Suthin's GOT to be done with that Bulger; and
+mighty quick.”
+
+“What's the matter?” we asked eagerly.
+
+“Matter!” he repeated, passing his hand across his forehead. “Matter!
+Look yere! Ye all of you heard them boys from Sawyer's Dam coming over
+the hill? Ye heard their music--mebbe ye heard US join in the chorus?
+Well, on they came waltzing down the hill, like old times, and we
+waitin' for 'em. Then, jest as they passed the old cabin, who do you
+think they ran right into--shooting iron, long hair and mustache, and
+all that--standing there plump in the road? why, Bulger!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well!--Whatever it was--don't ask ME--but, dern my skin, ef after a
+word or two from HIM--them boys just stopped yellin', turned round like
+lambs, and rode away, peaceful-like, along with him. We ran after them
+a spell, still yellin', when that thar Bulger faced around, said to us
+that he'd 'come down here for quiet,' and ef he couldn't hev it he'd
+have to leave with those gentlemen WHO WANTED IT too! And I'm gosh
+darned ef those GENTLEMEN--you know 'em all--Patsey Carpenter, Snapshot
+Harry, and the others--ever said a darned word, but kinder nodded 'So
+long' and went away!”
+
+Our astonishment and mystification were complete; and I regret to say,
+the indignation of Captain Jim and Mosby equally so. “If we're going to
+be bossed by the first newcomer,” said the former, gloomily, “I reckon
+we might as well take our chances with the Sawyer's Dam boys, whom we
+know.”
+
+“Ef we are going to hev the legitimate trade of Rattlesnake interfered
+with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired road agent,”
+ said Mosby, “we might as well invite the hull of Joaquin Murietta's
+gang here at once! But I suppose this is part o' Bulger's particular
+'business,'” he added, with a withering glance at Briggs.
+
+“I understand it all,” said Briggs, quietly. “You know I told you
+that bullies couldn't live in the same camp together. That's human
+nature--and that's how plain men like you and me manage to scud along
+without getting plugged. You see, Bulger wasn't going to hev any of his
+own kind jumpin' his claim here. And I reckon he was pow'ful enough to
+back down Sawyer's Dam. Anyhow, the bluff told--and here we are in peace
+and quietness.”
+
+“Until he lets us know what is his little game,” sneered Mosby.
+
+Nevertheless, such is the force of mysterious power that although it was
+exercised against what we firmly believed was the independence of the
+camp, it extorted a certain respect from us. A few thought it was not a
+bad thing to have a professional bully, and even took care to relate the
+discomfiture of the wicked youth of Sawyer's Dam for the benefit of
+a certain adjacent and powerful camp who had looked down upon us.
+He himself, returning the same evening from his self-imposed escort,
+vouchsafed no other reason than the one he had already given.
+Preposterous as it seemed, we were obliged to accept it, and the still
+more preposterous inference that he had sought Rattlesnake Camp solely
+for the purpose of acquiring and securing its peace and quietness.
+Certainly he had no other occupation; the little work he did upon the
+tailings of the abandoned claim which went with his little cabin was
+scarcely a pretense. He rode over on certain days to Bigwood on account
+of his business, but no one had ever seen him there, nor could the
+description of his manner and appearance evoke any information from the
+Bigwoodians. It remained a mystery.
+
+It had also been feared that the advent of Bulger would intensify that
+fear and dislike of riotous Rattlesnake which the two families
+had shown, and which was the origin of Briggs's futile attempt at
+reformation. But it was discovered that since his arrival the young
+girls had shown less timidity in entering the camp, and had even
+exchanged some polite conversation and good-humoured badinage with its
+younger and more impressible members. Perhaps this tended to make these
+youths more observant, for a few days later, when the vexed question
+of Bulger's business was again under discussion, one of them remarked,
+gloomily:
+
+“I reckon there ain't no doubt WHAT he's here for!”
+
+The youthful prophet was instantly sat upon after the fashion of
+all elderly critics since Job's. Nevertheless, after a pause he was
+permitted to explain.
+
+“Only this morning, when Lance Forester and me were chirping with them
+gals out on the hill, who should we see hanging around in the bush but
+that cussed Bulger! We allowed at first that it might be only a new
+style of his interferin', so we took no notice, except to pass a few
+remarks about listeners and that sort o' thing, and perhaps to bedevil
+the girls a little more than we'd hev done if we'd been alone. Well,
+they laughed, and we laughed--and that was the end of it. But this
+afternoon, as Lance and me were meandering down by their cabin, we
+sorter turned into the woods to wait till they'd come out. Then all of
+a suddent Lance stopped as rigid as a pointer that's flushed somethin',
+and says, 'B'gosh!' And thar, under a big redwood, sat that slimy
+hypocrite Bulger, twisting his long mustaches and smiling like clockwork
+alongside o' little Meely Baker--you know her, the pootiest of the
+two sisters--and she smilin' back on him. Think of it! that unknown,
+unwashed, longhaired tramp and bully, who must be forty if a day, and
+that innocent gal of sixteen. It was simply disgustin'!”
+
+I need not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to at
+once improved the occasion. 'What more could be expected? Women,
+the world over, were noted for this sort of thing! This long-haired,
+swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had captivated them, as he
+always had done since the days of Homer. Simple merit, which sat lowly
+in barrooms, and conceived projects for the public good around the
+humble, unostentatious stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon
+learn this bitter lesson. And in this case youth too, perhaps, was
+right in its conjectures, for this WAS, no doubt, the little game of the
+perfidious Bulger. We recalled the fact that his unhallowed appearance
+in camp was almost coincident with the arrival of the two families.
+We glanced at Briggs; to our amazement, for the first time he looked
+seriously concerned. But Mosby in the meantime leaned his elbows lazily
+over the counter and, in a slow voice, added fuel to the flame.
+
+“I wouldn't hev spoken of it before,” he said, with a sidelong glance
+at Briggs, “for it might be all in the line o' Bulger's 'business,'
+but suthin' happened the other night that, for a minit, got me! I was
+passin' the Bakers' shanty, and I heard one of them gals a singing a
+camp-meeting hymn. I don't calkilate to run agin you young fellers in
+any sparkin' or canoodlin' that's goin' on, but her voice sounded so
+pow'ful soothin' and pretty thet I jest stood there and listened. Then
+the old woman--old Mother Baker--SHE joined in, and I listened too. And
+then--dern my skin!--but a man's voice joined in--jest belching outer
+that cabin!--and I sorter lifted myself up and kem away.
+
+“That voice, gentlemen,” said Mosby, lingering artistically as he took
+up a glass and professionally eyed it before wiping it with his towel,
+“that voice, cumf'bly fixed thar in thet cabin among them wimen folks,
+was Bulger's!”
+
+Briggs got up, with his eyes looking the darker for his flushed face.
+“Gentlemen,” he said huskily, “thar's only one thing to be done. A lot
+of us have got to ride over to Sawyer's Dam tomorrow morning and pick up
+as many square men as we can muster; there's a big camp meeting goin'
+on there, and there won't be no difficulty in that. When we've got a big
+enough crowd to show we mean business, we must march back here and ride
+Bulger out of this camp! I don't hanker arter Vigilance Committees, as
+a rule--it's a rough remedy--it's like drinkin' a quart o' whisky agin
+rattlesnake poison but it's got to be done! We don't mind being sold
+ourselves but when it comes to our standin' by and seein' the only
+innocent people in Rattlesnake given away--we kick! Bulger's got to be
+fired outer this camp! And he will be!”
+
+But he was not.
+
+For when, the next morning, a determined and thoughtful procession of
+the best and most characteristic citizens of Rattlesnake Camp filed into
+Sawyer's Dam, they found that their mysterious friends had disappeared,
+although they met with a fraternal but subdued welcome from the general
+camp. But any approach to the subject of their visit, however,
+was received with a chilling dissapproval. Did they not know that
+lawlessness of any kind, even under the rude mantle of frontier justice,
+was to be deprecated and scouted when a “means of salvation, a power of
+regeneration,” such as was now sweeping over Sawyer's Dam, was at hand?
+Could they not induce this man who was to be violently deported to
+accompany them willingly to Sawyer's Dam and subject himself to the
+powerful influence of the “revival” then in full swing?
+
+The Rattlesnake boys laughed bitterly, and described the man of whom
+they talked so lightly; but in vain. “It's no use, gentlemen,” said
+a more worldly bystander, in a lower voice, “the camp meetin's got a
+strong grip here, and betwixt you and me there ain't no wonder. For the
+man that runs it--the big preacher--has got new ways and methods that
+fetches the boys every time. He don't preach no cut-and-dried gospel; he
+don't carry around no slop-shop robes and clap 'em on you whether they
+fit or not; but he samples and measures the camp afore he wades into
+it. He scouts and examines; he ain't no mere Sunday preacher with a
+comfortable house and once-a-week church, but he gives up his days and
+nights to it, and makes his family work with him, and even sends 'em
+forward to explore the field. And he ain't no white-choker shadbelly
+either, but fits himself, like his gospel, to the men he works among. Ye
+ought to hear him afore you go. His tent is just out your way. I'll go
+with you.”
+
+Too dejected to offer any opposition, and perhaps a little curious to
+see this man who had unwittingly frustrated their design of lynching
+Bulger, they halted at the outer fringe of worshipers who packed the
+huge inclosure. They had not time to indulge their cynicisms over this
+swaying mass of emotional, half-thinking, and almost irresponsible
+beings, nor to detect any similarity between THEIR extreme methods and
+the scheme of redemption they themselves were seeking, for in a
+few moments, apparently lifted to his feet on a wave of religious
+exultation, the famous preacher arose. The men of Rattlesnake gasped for
+breath.
+
+It was Bulger!
+
+But Briggs quickly recovered himself. “By what name,” said he, turning
+passionately towards his guide, “does this man--this impostor--call
+himself here?”
+
+“Baker.”
+
+“Baker?” echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.
+
+“Baker?” repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.
+
+“Yes,” returned their guide. “You oughter know it too! For he sent his
+wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample your camp, a
+week ago! Come, now, what are you givin' us?”
+
+
+
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+
+He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one of the
+Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only known the
+“dugout” or canoe as a means of conveyance across the scant streams
+whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long,
+narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as
+a “prairie schooner,” in which he journeyed across the plains to
+California in '53, did not help his conception by that nautical figure.
+And when at last he dropped upon the land of promise through one of the
+Southern mountain passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks
+of a great yellow river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like
+grasses that were unknown to him. The river, broadening as it debouched
+through many channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE
+of his journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
+meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the
+great stream itself, he found the prospect “good” according to his
+lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a
+temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and “settle.”
+
+There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings he had
+passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery
+and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him
+independent of neighbors. He took his first meal in his new solitude
+under a spreading willow, but so near his natural boundary that the
+waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The
+sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the
+stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was
+not even a gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the
+frontiersman in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it
+was his; he was alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with
+less concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation
+than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. When the
+sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and went
+quietly to sleep.
+
+But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
+not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a deep
+throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that seemed even
+to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As it came nearer
+it separated itself into a labored, monotonous panting, continuous, but
+distinct from an equally monotonous but fainter beating of the waters,
+as if the whole track of the river were being coursed and trodden by a
+multitude of swiftly trampling feet. A strange feeling took possession
+of him--half of fear, half of curious expectation. It was coming nearer.
+He rose, leaped hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night
+was dark; at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky
+pierced with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed
+to be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
+constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
+three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him and
+apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he involuntarily
+drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and
+resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by
+enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light
+that he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit
+windows.
+
+Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the
+meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all this was
+nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and
+open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and
+wonderful spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women moved through
+brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one a banquet seemed
+to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants; in another were men
+playing cards around marble-topped tables; in another the light flashed
+back again from the mirrors and glistening glasses and decanters of
+a gorgeous refreshment saloon; in smaller openings there was the shy
+disclosure of dainty white curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate
+apartments.
+
+Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified. It was as if some invisible
+Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world of which he
+had never dreamed. It was THE world--a world of which he knew nothing
+in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western isolation--sweeping by
+him with the rush of an unknown planet. In another moment it was gone; a
+shower of sparks shot up from one of the towers and fell all around him,
+and then vanished, even as he remembered the set piece of “Fourth of
+July” fireworks had vanished in his own rural town when he was a boy.
+The darkness fell with it too. But such was his utter absorption and
+breathless preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself,
+and he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the low
+banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!
+
+He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later from
+the opposite direction on its return trip. He watched it the next night
+and the next. Hereafter he never missed it, coming or going--whatever
+the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and lonely life. He felt he
+could not have slept without seeing it go by. Oddly enough, his interest
+and desire did not go further. Even had he the time and money to spend
+in a passage on the boat, and thus actively realize the great world of
+which he had only these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness
+kept him from it. It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs
+that his ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was
+dimly conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling
+with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien criticism. For
+there was much that he did not understand, and some things that grated
+upon his lonely independence.
+
+One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little
+longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the
+retreating boat. Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain
+irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,
+diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank. Looking
+at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the water like
+a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a black arm in an
+unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It was a struggling man. But it
+was quickly evident that the current was too strong and the turbulence
+of the shallow water too great for his efforts. Without a moment's
+hesitation, clad as he was in only his shirt and trousers, Morse
+strode into the reeds, and the next moment, with a call of warning, was
+swimming toward the now wildly struggling figure. But, from some unknown
+reason, as Morse approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent
+protest and desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's extended arm.
+
+Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man, Morse,
+a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and propelled him at
+arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as much reluctance as
+incapacity, toward the bank. As their feet touched the reeds and slimy
+bottom the man's resistance ceased, and he lapsed quite listlessly in
+Morse's arms. Half lifting, half dragging his burden, he succeeded at
+last in gaining the strip of meadow, and deposited the unconscious man
+beneath the willow tree. Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.
+
+But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up and
+wringing the water from his clothes. He then saw for the first time,
+by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly dressed and
+of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that bright and
+fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in his solitude. He
+eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the whisky. Then he rose
+to his feet, staggered a few steps forward, and glanced curiously around
+him at the still motionless wagon, the few felled trees and evidence of
+“clearing,” and even at the rude cabin of logs and canvas just beginning
+to rise from the ground a few paces distant, and said, impatiently:
+
+“Where the devil am I?”
+
+Morse hesitated. He was unable to name the locality of his
+dwelling-place. He answered briefly:
+
+“On the right bank of the Sacramento.”
+
+The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
+resentment. “Oh!” he said, with ironical gravity, “and I suppose that
+this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River. Thank you!”
+
+Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only settled
+there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.
+
+“What's your nearest town, then?”
+
+“Thar ain't any. Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the
+crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've heard
+on.”
+
+The stranger's look of suspicion passed. “Well,” he said, in an imperative
+fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of habit as the
+occasion, “I want a horse, and mighty quick, too.”
+
+“H'ain't got any.”
+
+“No horse? How did you get to this place?”
+
+Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.
+
+The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said, with
+a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: “Pike--aren't you?”
+
+Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California slang
+for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt, he replied
+simply:
+
+“I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri.”
+
+“Well,” said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, “you must beg
+or steal a horse from your neighbors.”
+
+“Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles.”
+
+“Then send fifteen miles! Stop.” He opened his still clinging shirt
+and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. “There! there's two
+hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a horse. Sabe?”
+
+“Thar ain't anyone to send,” said Morse, quietly.
+
+“Do you mean to say you are all alone here?”
+
+“Yes.
+
+“And you fished me out--all by yourself?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly stretched
+out his hand and grasped his companion's.
+
+“All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over there
+tomorrow.”
+
+“I was goin' on to say,” said Morse, simply, “that if you'll lie by
+tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and fetch
+you back a horse afore noon.”
+
+“That's enough.” He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse. “Did
+you never hear,” he said, with a singular smile, “that it was about the
+meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a drowning man?”
+
+“No,” said Morse, simply. “I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
+DIDN'T.”
+
+“That depends upon the man you save,” said the stranger, with the same
+ambiguous smile, “and whether the SAVING him is only putting things off.
+Look here,” he added, with an abrupt return to his imperative style,
+“can't you give me some dry clothes?”
+
+Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a “hickory shirt,” well worn,
+but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The stranger
+put them on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of
+sticks and dry leaves.
+
+“What's that for?” said the stranger, suddenly.
+
+“A fire to dry your clothes.”
+
+The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.
+
+“Not any fire tonight if I know it,” he said, brusquely. Before Morse
+could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone,
+dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, “Now, tell me
+all about yourself, and what you are doing here.”
+
+Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
+had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a
+“location.” He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom
+and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon
+to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting
+position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean
+his nails in the bright moonlight--an occupation which made the simple
+Morse wander vaguely in his narration.
+
+“And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever till
+you'll shake yourself out of your boots?”
+
+Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.
+
+“And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and
+walk over you and your cabin and your stock?”
+
+“No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back.”
+
+The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.
+
+“If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in. I
+suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?”
+
+Morse pointed to the wagon. “Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you
+kin lie there.” Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence
+and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.
+
+“I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful
+kempany o' nights. I never seed one afore I kem here,” and then, with
+the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further
+preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late
+experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a
+quietly searching eye.
+
+“Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me.
+What else did you see? Anything before that--before you saw me in the
+water?”
+
+“No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all.”
+
+“Ah,” said the stranger. “Well, I'm going to turn in.” He walked to the
+wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it with his
+wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A moment later he
+seemed to be in a profound slumber.
+
+It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy, that
+he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination of this
+man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature independent
+and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question his right or
+to resent his rudeness. He had accepted his guest's careless or
+premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his accident as a
+matter of course, and had never dreamed of questioning him. That it was
+a natural accident of that great world so apart from his own experiences
+he did not doubt, and thought no more about it. The advent of the man
+himself was greater to him than the causes which brought him there. He
+was as yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious
+stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with even the
+slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his hand felt yet
+warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive grasp, as if it
+had been a woman's. There is a simple intuition of friendship in some
+lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly akin to love at first
+sight. Even the audacities and insolence of this stranger affected
+Morse as he might have been touched and captivated by the coquetries
+or imperiousness of some bucolic virgin. And this reserved and shy
+frontiersman found himself that night sleepless, and hovering with an
+abashed timidity and consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his
+guest, as if he had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of
+some slumbering Amaryllis.
+
+He was off by daylight--after having placed a rude breakfast by the side
+of the still sleeping guest--and before midday he had returned with a
+horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the amount he had
+paid for the horse, the man said curtly:
+
+“What's that for?”
+
+“Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse.”
+
+The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing the
+pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the horse.
+
+“So your name's Martin Morse! Well--goodby, Morsey!”
+
+Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. “You didn't tell me
+your name,” he said. “In case--”
+
+“In case I'm WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack.” He smiled,
+and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.
+
+Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and
+living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he
+could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow strip of meadow was
+haunted by him. There was the tree under which he had first placed
+him, and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but
+well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments he had worn and returned
+lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong
+alkali flavor of his own. He was early by the river side, having a vague
+hope, he knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him
+among the passengers. He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint
+light of the rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first
+seen the stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in
+the water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but
+had been dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint
+resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night. But a second
+glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him
+that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far different from his
+former companion. There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an
+enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen.
+An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for
+he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond
+recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened
+and deepened with the far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely
+knowing why, he dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the
+reeds, as if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then,
+to his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat
+and the beat of its paddles were “slowing” as the vague bulk came in
+sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a
+surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through the sedge that half
+submerged him. The flashing of three or four lanterns on deck and the
+motionless line of lights abreast of him dazzled his eyes, but he knew
+that the low fringe of willows hid his house and wagon completely from
+view. A vague murmur of voices from the deck was suddenly overridden by
+a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent
+a pulsation through the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.
+A sense of relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious
+that for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.
+
+When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its
+clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of formality
+and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some law papers from
+their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and electors' notices
+which he had seen in the papers. He then buried the corpse in a shallow
+trench, which he dug by the light of the moon. He had no question of
+responsibility; his pioneer training had not included coroners' inquests
+in its experience; in giving the body a speedy and secure burial
+from predatory animals he did what one frontiersman would do for
+another--what he hoped might be done for him. If his previous
+unaccountable feelings returned occasionally, it was not from that;
+but rather from some uneasiness in regard to his late guest's possible
+feelings, and a regret that he had not been here at the finding of the
+body. That it would in some way have explained his own accident he did
+not doubt.
+
+The boat did not “slow up” the next night, but passed as usual; yet
+three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its coming
+with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity--which was his
+nearest approach to imagination. He was then able to examine it more
+closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he now began to call
+“his friend” in his verbal communings with himself--but whom he did not
+seem destined to again discover; until one day, to his astonishment, a
+couple of fine horses were brought to his clearing by a stock-drover.
+They had been “ordered” to be left there. In vain Morse expostulated and
+questioned.
+
+“Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?” said the drover, with business
+brusqueness; “and I reckon there ain't no other man o' that name around
+here?”
+
+“No,” said Morse.
+
+“Well, then, they're YOURS.”
+
+“But who sent them?” insisted Morse. “What was his name, and where does
+he live?”
+
+“I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o' buyers,”
+ said the drover dryly; “but the horses is 'Morgan,' you can bet your
+life.” He grinned as he rode away.
+
+That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to his
+again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he lived
+in that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals were of great
+service to him in “rounding up” the stock he now easily took in for
+pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having a partner or a hired
+man. The idea that this superior gentleman in fine clothes might ever
+appear to him in the former capacity had even flitted through his brain,
+but he had rejected it with a sigh. But the thought that, with luck and
+industry, he himself might, in course of time, approximate to Captain
+Jack's evident station, DID occur to him, and was an incentive to
+energy. Yet it was quite distinct from the ordinary working man's
+ambition of wealth and state. It was only that it might make him more
+worthy of his friend. The great world was still as it had appeared
+to him in the passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to
+criticize.
+
+For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke with
+listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his daily
+labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and a
+feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river, as if
+his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in its yellow
+stream. But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange dreams assailed
+him of dead bodies arising with swollen and distorted lips to touch his
+own as he strove to drink, or of his mysterious guest battling with him
+in its current, and driving him ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe
+his parched and crackling limbs in its flood, he would be confronted
+with the dazzling lights of the motionless steamboat and the glare of
+stony eyes--until he fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he
+knew not, until one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man
+sitting by his bed and a Negress in the doorway.
+
+“You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'” said the stranger, dropping
+Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes, “but you're
+all right now, and will pull through.”
+
+“Who are you?” stammered Morse feebly.
+
+“Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento.”
+
+“How did you come here?”
+
+“I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
+There she is.” He pointed to the smiling Negress.
+
+“WHO ordered you?”
+
+The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. “One of your friends, of
+course.”
+
+“But what was his name?”
+
+“Really, I don't remember. But don't distress yourself. He has settled
+for everything right royally. You have only to get strong now. My duty
+is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse. Only when you are
+strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back farther from the river.”
+
+And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him through
+the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him nothing more.
+He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for a new and strange
+phase of his simple, childish affection for his benefactor, partly
+superinduced by his illness, was affecting him. He was beginning to
+feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was dimly conscious that his
+mysterious guest was only coldly returning his hospitality and benefits,
+while holding aloof from any association with him--and indicating the
+immeasurable distance that separated their future intercourse. He had
+withheld any kind message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even
+his NAME. The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled
+beneath the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach
+or resentment. He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
+childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
+reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the
+nurse.
+
+He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river, with a
+faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might mysteriously
+be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out his location and
+abandoning it, that he might escape the cold surveillance of his
+heartless friend. All this was undoubtedly childish--but there is an
+irrepressible simplicity of youth in all deep feeling, and the worldly
+inexperience of the frontiersman left him as innocent as a child. In
+this phase of his unrequited affection he even went so far as to seek
+some news of Captain Jack at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish
+quest, even to take the steamboat from thence to Stockton.
+
+What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
+natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained
+for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and--had
+he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary--VULGAR.
+Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and
+action of those who frequented it--and for whom it was built--were of a
+lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, this gave him none of
+his former sense of critical superiority, but only of his own utter and
+complete isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
+deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,
+unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had
+so often done in his dreams.
+
+His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;
+to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did
+not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and
+excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of
+slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in
+his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man
+to man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
+tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
+the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this
+continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of
+passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish
+haste of speed and exertion.
+
+The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
+ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and
+news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the
+reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the staterooms, were all
+dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the perpetual throb of the demon
+of hurry and unrest. And when at last a horrible fascination dragged him
+into the engine room, and he saw the cruel relentless machinery at work,
+he seemed to recognize and understand some intelligent but pitiless
+Moloch, who was dragging this feverish world at its heels.
+
+Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could
+view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs
+unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality.
+He knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the
+fringe of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points
+where a few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage
+beyond them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware
+that two men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat,
+and were standing before him looking upon the bank.
+
+“It was about here, I reckon,” said one, listlessly, as if continuing a
+previous lagging conversation, “that it must have happened. For it was
+after we were making for the bend we've just passed that the deputy,
+goin' to the stateroom below us, found the door locked and the window
+open. But both men--Jack Despard and Seth Hall, the sheriff--weren't
+to be found. Not a trace of 'em. The boat was searched, but all for
+nothing. The idea is that the sheriff, arter getting his prisoner
+comf'ble in the stateroom, took off Jack's handcuffs and locked the
+door; that Jack, who was mighty desp'rate, bolted through the window
+into the river, and the sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him.
+Others allow--for the chairs and things was all tossed about in the
+stateroom--that the two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and
+chucked him out, and then slipped cl'ar into the water himself, for the
+stateroom window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap'n allows
+that no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live. Anyhow, that
+was all they ever knew of it.”
+
+“And there wasn't no trace of them found?” said the second man, after a
+long pause.
+
+“No. Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and slung 'em
+round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of the river bed,
+with all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and they mightn't come up
+for ages; or else the wheels might have waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento
+until there wasn't enough left of 'em to float, and dropped 'em when the
+boat stopped.”
+
+“It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take,” resumed the
+second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.
+
+“Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him sure!
+And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them gamblers, and
+allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or a pistol wasn't to
+be washed out of life by water.”
+
+The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and motionless.
+Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly out of this awful
+revelation--the thought that his friend was still true to him--and that
+his strange absence and mysterious silence were fully accounted for and
+explained. And with it came the more thrilling fancy that this man was
+alive now to HIM alone.
+
+HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the question,
+while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in reference to its effect
+upon the chances of Captain Jack and the power it gave his enemies than
+his own conscience. He would rather that his friend should have proven
+the proscribed outlaw who retained an unselfish interest in him than the
+superior gentleman who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought
+he understood now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying
+moods--even his bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable
+curse entailed upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he
+recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern in
+his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of his
+protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.
+
+There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his farm,
+where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he did so,
+returning on the same boat. He was now fully recovered from his illness,
+and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to put himself in a position
+to help the mysterious fugitive when the time should come. The remote
+farm should always be a haven of refuge for him, and in this hope he
+forbore to take any outside help, remaining solitary and alone, that
+Captain Jack's retreat should be inviolate. And so the long, dry season
+passed, the hay was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the
+first rains, dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river,
+were all that broke his unending solitude. In this enforced attitude of
+waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new idea. He
+was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the exhortations of some
+camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the idea that he might have
+been selected to work out the regeneration of Captain Jack. What might
+not come of this meeting and communing together in this lonely spot?
+That anything was due to the memory of the murdered sheriff, whose bones
+were rotting in the trench that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did
+not occur to him. Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double
+consideration. Friendship and love--and, for the matter of that,
+religion--are eminently one-ideaed.
+
+But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out
+of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring
+to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door
+fell out as from that inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed
+like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over
+his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against
+it, and thence out into what might have been another world! For the
+rain had ceased, and the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable
+expanse of water! It was not an overflow, but the whole rushing river
+magnified and repeated a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for
+breath and clung to the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither.
+But it was bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift
+glance toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping
+torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the wooded
+foothills. It was the great flood of '54. In its awe-inspiring
+completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval Deluge.
+
+As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
+overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at
+last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree. Here he was for
+the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from this height was only
+the more appalling. Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past
+year's industry, had disappeared. He was now conscious for the first
+time of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together
+on a slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the
+flood. The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
+The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the
+burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which
+they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough.
+The habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by
+drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown
+and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling
+of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered
+house. When day broke he was cold and hungry.
+
+Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of
+the waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread
+before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence impressed him. In
+the afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse,
+until the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor. He had but one idea
+now--the coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength
+to swim to it. He did not know until later that it could no longer
+follow the old channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and
+hearing. With his disappointment and exposure that night came a return
+of his old fever. His limbs were alternately racked with pain or
+benumbed and lifeless. He could scarcely retain his position--at times
+he scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
+quick plunge downward. In other moments of lucid misery he was conscious
+of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead face of the
+murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by the flood, staring
+at him from the water; to this was added the hallucination of noises. He
+heard voices, his own name called by a voice he knew--Captain Jack's!
+
+Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and
+plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had
+a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--of the black
+hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--the sensation of
+a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand upon his
+collar, and--unconsciousness!
+
+When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and rowed
+through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was taken in
+through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel and cared
+for. But all his questions yielded only the information that the
+tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public Relief
+Association--had been dispatched for him with special directions, by a
+man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the one who had plunged in
+for him at the last moment. The man had left the boat at Stockton.
+There was nothing more? Yes!--he had left a letter. Morse seized it
+feverishly. It contained only a few lines:
+
+
+We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from drowning, and
+shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.
+
+CAPTAIN JACK.
+
+
+The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but fell
+back, unconscious.
+
+Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as an
+impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to restock
+the farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-packer offered
+him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to the mountains--for
+he knew tracks and passes and could ride. The mountains gave him back
+a little of the vigor he had lost in the river valley, but none of its
+dreams and ambitions. One day, while tracking a lost mule, he stopped
+to slake his thirst in a waterhole--all that the summer had left of a
+lonely mountain torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast
+also, he was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some
+bits of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
+attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with
+him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody
+wondered. To the Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural.
+It was “nigger luck”--the luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the
+inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony of the gods!
+
+But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
+temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed
+to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of
+excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on
+the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had
+already assembled there--a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his
+way through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the
+changed and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of
+a cart, which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around
+his neck, was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end
+of the rope drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the
+doomed man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
+lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an easy
+gesture of farewell.
+
+And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,
+and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized
+another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished
+crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,
+the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse
+staggered forward FREE--with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did
+not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with
+his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.
+
+There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act
+of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled
+aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed
+man himself would have set him free. But they say--and it is credibly
+recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless
+sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a
+curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran
+cold, and then leaped furiously to their cheeks.
+
+“And now,” he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a
+jerk of his head--“Go on, and be damned to you! I'm ready.”
+
+They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
+Despard were buried in the same grave.
+
+
+
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+
+The largest tent of the Tasajara camp meeting was crowded to its utmost
+extent. The excitement of that dense mass was at its highest pitch. The
+Reverend Stephen Masterton, the single erect, passionate figure of that
+confused medley of kneeling worshipers, had reached the culminating
+pitch of his irresistible exhortatory power. Sighs and groans were
+beginning to respond to his appeals, when the reverend brother was seen
+to lurch heavily forward and fall to the ground.
+
+At first the effect was that of a part of his performance; the groans
+redoubled, and twenty or thirty brethren threw themselves prostrate in
+humble imitation of the preacher. But Sister Deborah Stokes, perhaps
+through some special revelation of feminine intuition, grasped the
+fallen man, tore loose his black silk necktie, and dragged him free
+of the struggling, frantic crowd whose paroxysms he had just evoked.
+Howbeit he was pale and unconscious, and unable to continue the service.
+Even the next day, when he had slightly recovered, it was found that any
+attempt to renew his fervid exhortations produced the same disastrous
+result.
+
+A council was hurriedly held by the elders. In spite of the energetic
+protests of Sister Stokes, it was held that the Lord “was wrestlin' with
+his sperrit,” and he was subjected to the same extraordinary treatment
+from the whole congregation that he himself had applied to THEM. Propped
+up pale and trembling in the “Mourners' Bench” by two brethren, he
+was “striven with,” exhorted, prayed over, and admonished, until
+insensibility mercifully succeeded convulsions. Spiritual therapeutics
+having failed, he was turned over to the weak and carnal nursing of
+“womenfolk.” But after a month of incapacity he was obliged to yield to
+“the flesh,” and, in the local dialect, “to use a doctor.”
+
+It so chanced that the medical practitioner of the district was a man
+of large experience, of military training, and plain speech. When,
+therefore, he one day found in his surgery a man of rude Western type,
+strong-limbed and sunburned, but trembling, hesitating and neurotic in
+movement, after listening to his symptoms gravely, he asked, abruptly:
+“And how much are you drinking now?”
+
+“I am a lifelong abstainer,” stammered his patient in quivering
+indignation. But this was followed by another question so frankly
+appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.
+
+“I'm Stephen Masterton--known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
+Northern California district,” he thundered--“and an enemy of the flesh
+in all its forms.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, “but as you are
+suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous system,
+and the depression following prolonged artificial exaltation--it makes
+little difference whether the cause be spiritual, as long as there is a
+certain physical effect upon your BODY--which I believe you have brought
+to me to cure. Now--as to diet? you look all wrong there.
+
+“My food is of the simplest--I have no hankering for fleshpots,”
+ responded the patient.
+
+“I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks SIMPLE?”
+ said the doctor, coolly; “they are COMMON enough, and if you were
+working with your muscles instead of your nerves in that frame of yours
+they might not hurt you; but you are suffering as much from eating more
+than you can digest as the veriest gourmand. You must stop all that. Go
+down to a quiet watering-place for two months.” . . .
+
+“I go to a watering-place?” interrupted Masterton; “to the haunt of the
+idle, the frivolous and wanton--never!”
+
+“Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'” said the doctor,
+with a shrug, “although a little idleness and frivolity with different
+food wouldn't hurt you--but you must go somewhere and change your habits
+and mode of life COMPLETELY. I will find you some sleepy old Spanish
+town in the southern country where you can rest and diet. If this is
+distasteful to you,” he continued, grimly, “you can always call it 'a
+trial.'”
+
+Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he found
+himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved, hilly
+street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the mountain road
+itself. It broadened suddenly into a square or plaza, flanked on each
+side by an irregular row of yellowing adobe houses, with the inevitable
+verandaed tienda in each corner, and the solitary, galleried fonda, with
+a half-Moorish archway leading into an inner patio or courtyard in the
+center.
+
+The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission
+church, a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the two
+belfry towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the ultima
+thule of every traveler. But all that the eye rested on was ruined,
+worn, and crumbling. The adobe houses were cracked by the incessant
+sunshine of the half-year-long summer, or the more intermittent
+earthquake shock; the paved courtyard of the fonda was so uneven and
+sunken in the center that the lumbering wagon and faded diligencia stood
+on an incline, and the mules with difficulty kept their footing while
+being unladen; the whitened plaster had fallen from the feet of the two
+pillars that flanked the Mission doorway, like bandages from a gouty
+limb, leaving the reddish core of adobe visible; there were apparently
+as many broken tiles in the streets and alleys as there were on the
+heavy red roofs that everywhere asserted themselves--and even seemed to
+slide down the crumbling walls to the ground. There were hopeless gaps
+in grille and grating of doorways and windows, where the iron bars had
+dropped helplessly out, or were bent at different angles. The walls of
+the peaceful Mission garden and the warlike presidio were alike lost in
+the escalading vines or leveled by the pushing boughs of gnarled
+pear and olive trees that now surmounted them. The dust lay thick and
+impalpable in hollow and gutter, and rose in little vapory clouds with a
+soft detonation at every stroke of his horse's hoofs. Over all this dust
+and ruin, idleness seemed to reign supreme. From the velvet-jacketed
+figures lounging motionless in the shadows of the open doorways--so
+motionless that only the lazy drift of cigarette smoke betokened their
+breathing--to the reclining peons in the shade of a catalpa, or the
+squatting Indians in the arroyo--all was sloth and dirt.
+
+The Rev. Stephen Masterton felt his throat swell with his old
+exhortative indignation. A gaudy yellow fan waved languidly in front of
+a black rose-crested head at a white-curtained window. He knew he was
+stifling with righteous wrath, and clapped his spurs to his horse.
+
+Nevertheless, in a few days, by the aid of a letter to the innkeeper,
+he was installed in a dilapidated adobe house, not unlike those he had
+seen, but situated in the outskirts and overlooking the garden and part
+of the refectory of the old Mission. It had even a small garden of its
+own--if a strip of hot wall, overburdened with yellow and white roses, a
+dozen straggling callas, a bank of heliotrope, and an almond tree could
+be called a garden. It had an open doorway, but so heavily recessed
+in the thick walls that it preserved seclusion, a sitting-room, and an
+alcoved bedroom with deep embrasured windows that however excluded the
+unwinking sunlight and kept an even monotone of shade.
+
+Strange to say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust,
+absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely
+inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and
+decay--the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with
+a spicelike piquancy, and left no stain.
+
+A wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf,
+ministered to his simple wants. But these wants had also been regulated
+by Dr. Duchesne. He found himself, with some grave doubts of his
+effeminacy, breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate instead of his
+usual bowl of molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a crisp tortilla
+instead of the heavy saleratus bread, greasy flapjack, or the lard-fried
+steak, and, more wonderful still, completing his repast with purple
+grapes from the Mission wall. He could not deny that it was simple--that
+it was even refreshing and consistent with the climate and his
+surroundings. On the other hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest
+peasant--and were not those peons slothful idolaters?
+
+At the end of the week--his correspondence being also restricted by his
+doctor to a few lines to himself regarding his progress--he wrote to
+that adviser:
+
+“The trembling and unquiet has almost ceased; I have less nightly
+turmoil and visions; my carnal appetite seems to be amply mollified and
+soothed by these viands, whatever may be their ultimate effect upon the
+weakness of our common sinful nature. But I should not be truthful to
+you if I did not warn you that I am viewing with the deepest spiritual
+concern a decided tendency toward sloth, and a folding of the hands over
+matters that often, I fear, are spiritual as well as temporal. I would
+ask you to consider, in a spirit of love, if it be not wise to rouse my
+apathetic flesh, so as to strive, even with the feeblest exhortations,
+against this sloth in others--if only to keep one's self from falling
+into the pit of easy indulgence.”
+
+What answer he received is not known, but it is to be presumed that he
+kept loyal faith with his physician, and gave himself up to simple walks
+and rides and occasional meditation. His solitude was not broken in
+upon; curiosity was too active a vice, and induced too much exertion for
+his indolent neighbors, and the Americano's basking seclusion, though
+unlike the habits of his countrymen, did not affect them. The shopkeeper
+and innkeeper saluted him always with a profound courtesy which awakened
+his slight resentment, partly because he was conscious that it was
+grateful to him, and partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in
+them a less satisfied condition.
+
+Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own garden,
+through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-coated shadow
+slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and gentle that he was
+startled at first into an awkward imitation of it himself, and then into
+an angry self-examination. He knew that he loathed that long-skirted,
+womanlike garment, that dangling, ostentatious symbol, that air of
+secrecy and mystery, and he inflated his chest above his loosely tied
+cravat and unbuttoned waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom. But
+he was conscious the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this
+meeting, and in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined
+observance of his doctor's orders. But when he was strong again, and
+fitted for his Master's work, how strenuously he should improve the
+occasion this gave him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her slaves
+and worshipers!
+
+His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book--the
+Bible--were regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or three
+strokes from the cracked bell that hung in the open belfry which reared
+itself beyond the gnarled pear tees. He could not say that it was
+aggressive or persistent, like his own church bells, nor that it
+even expressed to him any religious sentiment. Moreover, it was not a
+“Sabbath” bell, but a DAILY one, and even then seemed to be only a signal
+to ears easily responsive, rather than a stern reminder. And the hour
+was always a singularly witching one.
+
+It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
+yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild oats
+on the hillside were all of the one color of old gold. It was when the
+quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza was blending
+with the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through the clefts of the
+coast range, until a refreshing balm seemed to fall like a benediction
+on all nature. It was when the trade-wind-swept and irritated surfaces
+of the rocky gorge beyond were soothed with clinging vapors; when the
+pines above no longer rocked monotonously, and the great undulating sea
+of the wild-oat plains had gone down and was at rest. It was at this
+hour, one afternoon, that, with the released scents of the garden, there
+came to him a strange and subtle perfume that was new to his senses. He
+laid aside his book, went into the garden, and, half-unconscious of his
+trespass, passed through the Mission orchard and thence into the little
+churchyard beside the church.
+
+Looking at the strange inscriptions in an unfamiliar tongue, he
+was singularly touched with the few cheap memorials lying upon the
+graves--like childish toys--and for the moment overlooked the papistic
+emblems that accompanied them. It struck him vaguely that Death, the
+common leveler, had made even the symbols of a faith eternal inferior to
+those simple records of undying memory and affection, and he was for a
+moment startled into doubt.
+
+He walked to the door of the church; to his surprise it was open.
+Standing upon the threshold, he glanced inside, and stood for a moment
+utterly bewildered. In a man of refined taste and education that bizarre
+and highly colored interior would have only provoked a smile or
+shrug; to Stephen Masterton's highly emotional nature, but artistic
+inexperience, strangely enough it was profoundly impressive. The heavily
+timbered, roughly hewn roof, barred with alternate bands of blue and
+Indian red, the crimson hangings, the gold and black draperies, affected
+this religious backwoodsman exactly as they were designed to affect the
+heathen and acolytes for whose conversion the temple had been reared. He
+could scarcely take his eyes from the tinsel-crowned Mother of Heaven,
+resplendent in white and gold and glittering with jewels; the radiant
+shield before the Host, illuminated by tall spectral candles in the
+mysterious obscurity of the altar, dazzled him like the rayed disk of
+the setting sun.
+
+A gentle murmur, as of the distant sea, came from the altar. In his
+naive bewilderment he had not seen the few kneeling figures in the
+shadow of column and aisle; it was not until a man, whom he recognized
+as a muleteer he had seen that afternoon gambling and drinking in the
+fonda, slipped by him like a shadow and sank upon his knees in the
+center of the aisle that he realized the overpowering truth.
+
+HE, Stephen Masterton, was looking upon some rite of Popish idolatry! He
+was turning quickly away when the keeper of the tienda--a man of sloth
+and sin--gently approached him from the shadow of a column with a mute
+gesture, which he took to be one of invitation. A fierce protest of
+scorn and indignation swelled to his throat, but died upon his lips. Yet
+he had strength enough to erect his gaunt emaciated figure, throwing out
+his long arms and extended palms in the attitude of defiant exorcism,
+and then rush swiftly from the church. As he did so he thought he saw
+a faint smile cross the shopkeeper's face, and a whispered exchange of
+words with a neighboring worshiper of more exalted appearance came to
+his ears. But it was not intelligible to his comprehension.
+
+The next day he wrote to his doctor in that quaint grandiloquence of
+written speech with which the half-educated man balances the slips of
+his colloquial phrasing:
+
+
+Do not let the purgation of my flesh be unduly protracted. What with the
+sloth and idolatries of Baal and Ashteroth, which I see daily around
+me, I feel that without a protest not only the flesh but the spirit is
+mortified. But my bodily strength is mercifully returning, and I found
+myself yesterday able to take a long ride at that hour which they here
+keep sacred for an idolatrous rite, under the beautiful name of “The
+Angelus.” Thus do they bear false witness to Him! Can you tell me the
+meaning of the Spanish words “Don Keyhotter”? I am ignorant of these
+sensuous Southern languages, and am aware that this is not the correct
+spelling, but I have striven to give the phonetic equivalent. It was
+used, I am inclined to think, in reference to MYSELF, by an idolater.
+
+P.S.--You need not trouble yourself. I have just ascertained that
+the words in question were simply the title of an idle novel, and, of
+course, could not possibly refer to ME.
+
+
+Howbeit it was as “Don Quixote”--that is, the common Spaniard's
+conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic and
+madman--that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all unconsciously
+through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-pitying, half-smiling
+glances of the people.
+
+In spite of his meditations, his single volume, and his habit of
+retiring early, he found his evenings were growing lonely and tedious.
+He missed the prayer meeting, and, above all, the hymns. He had a fine
+baritone voice, sympathetic, as may be imagined, but not cultivated. One
+night, in the seclusion of his garden, and secure in his distance from
+other dwellings, he raised his voice in a familiar camp-meeting hymn
+with a strong Covenanter's ring in the chorus. Growing bolder as he went
+on, he at last filled the quiet night with the strenuous sweep of his
+chant. Surprised at his own fervor, he paused for a moment, listening,
+half frightened, half ashamed of his outbreak. But there was only the
+trilling of the night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a
+coyote.
+
+For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
+instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
+contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance. But he was relieved,
+nevertheless. His pent-up emotion had found vent, and without the
+nervous excitement that had followed his old exaltation. That night he
+slept better. He had found the Lord again--with Psalmody!
+
+The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same simplicity,
+but with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations, which his more
+hopeful mood gently rendered. At the conclusion of the first verse
+he was, however, distinctly conscious of being followed by the same
+twanging sound he had heard on the previous night, and which even his
+untutored ear could recognize as an attempt to accompany him. But before
+he had finished the second verse the unknown player, after an ingenious
+but ineffectual essay to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with
+an impatient and almost pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the
+sounding-board of the unseen instrument. Masterton finished it alone.
+
+With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the locality
+of the hidden player. The sound evidently came from the Mission garden;
+but in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate
+his Indian housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was
+uninterrupted by any sound from the former musician. A sense of
+disappointment, he knew not why, came over him. The kindly overture of
+the unseen player had been a relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely
+concluded the hymn when the familiar sound again struck his ears. But
+this time the musician played boldly, confidently, and with a singular
+skill on the instrument.
+
+The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some confusion,
+a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint and fascinating,
+was mischievously uplifted. But alas! even to his ears, ignorant of
+the language, it was very clearly a song of levity and wantonness,
+of freedom and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its
+fascination that he fancied it was reclaimed by the delightful childlike
+and innocent expression of the singer.
+
+Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and, overcome
+by a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the garden and glided
+with an Indian softness of tread toward the voice. The moon shone full
+upon the ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage.
+Half hiding, half mingling with one of them--an indistinct bulk of
+light-colored huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest--hung
+the unknown musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that
+Masterton actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the
+figure without attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the
+crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little
+cry from above. He had barely time to recover his position before the
+singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and fell
+outward. But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed, and threw
+out his long arms. The next moment they were full of soft flounces,
+a struggling figure was against his breast, and a woman's frightened
+little hands around his neck. But he had broken her fall, and almost
+instantly, yet with infinite gentleness, he released her unharmed, with
+hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in an upright position against
+the wall. Even her guitar, still hanging from her shoulder by a yellow
+ribbon, had bounded elastic and resounding against the wall, but lay
+intact at her satin-slippered feet. She caught it up with another quick
+little cry, but this time more of sauciness than fear, and drew her
+little hand across its strings, half defiantly.
+
+“I hope you are not hurt?” said the circuit preacher, gravely.
+
+She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no extravagance
+to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was
+lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like
+a pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin
+that made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other
+color could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old
+wife of the shopkeeper, he felt that, for all her childish voice and
+features, she was a grown woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.
+
+But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before her,
+and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily against the wall
+and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+“It was the fault of you,” she said, in a broken English that seemed as
+much infantine as foreign. “What for you not remain to yourself in your
+own CASA? So it come. You creep so--in the dark--and shake my wall, and
+I fall. And she,” pointing to the guitar, “is a'most broke! And for all
+thees I have only make to you a serenade. Ingrate!”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said Masterton quickly, “but I was curious. I
+thought I might help you, and--”
+
+“Make yourself another cat on the wall, eh? No; one is enough, thank
+you!”
+
+A frown lowered on Masterton's brow. “You don't understand me,” he said,
+bluntly. “I did not know WHO was here.”
+
+“Ah, BUENO! Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see,” she said, tapping her
+bodice with one little finger, “all the same; the niece from Manuel
+Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there. And you?”
+
+“My name is Masterton.”
+
+“How mooch?”
+
+“Masterton,” he repeated.
+
+She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook her
+little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her ear fell
+to the ground. But she did not heed it, nor the fact that Masterton had
+picked it up.
+
+“Ah, I cannot!” she said, poutingly. “It is as deefeecult to make go as
+my guitar with your serenade.”
+
+“Can you not say 'Stephen Masterton'?” he asked, more gently, with a
+returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.
+
+“Es-stefen? Ah, ESTEBAN! Yes; Don Esteban! BUENO! Then, Don Esteban,
+what for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night so fierce? The
+melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce--ah! he is weeked! Ess it
+how the Americano make always his serenade?”
+
+Masterton's brow again darkened. And his hymn of exultation had been
+mistaken by these people--by this--this wanton child!
+
+“It was no serenade,” he replied, curtly; “it was in the praise of the
+Lord!”
+
+“Of how mooch?”
+
+“Of the Lord of Hosts--of the Almighty in Heaven.” He lifted his long
+arms reverently on high.
+
+“Oh!” she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from the
+wall. At a secure distance she stopped. “Then you are a soldier, Don
+Esteban?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will make
+die 'in His army'? Oh, yes; you have said.” She gathered up her guitar
+tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him gravely, and said,
+“You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night,” and began to glide
+away.
+
+“One moment, Miss--Miss Ramirez,” called Masterton. “I--that is you--you
+have--forgotten your rose,” he added, feebly, holding up the flower. She
+halted.
+
+“Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours. I have drop,
+you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours. Good a' night, COMANDANTE Don
+Esteban!”
+
+With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance,
+suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in
+its ruined and helpless structure. Stephen Masterton gazed after her
+stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand. Then he threw it away and
+re-entered his home.
+
+Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently--so
+fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped
+from his mind, and went to bed. He slept well and dreamlessly. The next
+morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed
+to him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it
+did not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.
+
+So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early sunshine,
+even to the wall where she had stood. But he had not taken into account
+the vivifying freshness of the morning, the renewed promise of life and
+resurrection in the pulsing air and potent sunlight, and as he stood
+there he seemed to see the figure of the young girl again leaning
+against the wall in all the charm of her irrepressible and innocent
+youth. More than that, he found the whole scene re-enacting itself
+before him; the nebulous drapery half hidden in the foliage, the cry and
+the fall; the momentary soft contact of the girl's figure against his
+own, the clinging arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her
+flounces--all this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when
+it occurred.
+
+He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow rose
+still lying in the debris where he had thrown it--but still pure, fresh,
+and unfaded. He picked it up again, with a singular fancy that it was
+the girl herself, and carried it into the house.
+
+As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful thought
+occurred to him. Was not the episode of last night a special providence?
+Was not that young girl, wayward and childlike, a mere neophyte in her
+idolatrous religion, as yet unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented
+to him as a brand to be snatched from the burning? Was not this
+the opportunity of conversion he had longed for--this the chance of
+exercising his gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the
+napkin of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?
+His illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this
+contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely ordered
+plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and ordained for
+that service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious
+instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt
+to accompany him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that
+predestined force within her? Was not even that wantonness and
+frivolity contrasted with her childishness--which he had at first
+misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to
+abandon her in that struggle of good and evil?
+
+He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the
+little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a flash of
+resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties
+in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in
+this transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.
+
+She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve
+enabled him to make more freely, with some information--which a later
+talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed
+in detail.
+
+“YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with
+her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first
+communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could
+play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes--of a certainty. She was gay,
+and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for
+any.”
+
+Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed
+it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would
+make her an easier convert.
+
+But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion?
+For the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his
+whole nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and
+exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he
+remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith;
+he must “be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove.” He must work
+upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any
+clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw
+no wrong in a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation.
+Ignorant as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the
+usages of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with
+all the intrigue of a gallant. The perspicacity as well as the intuition
+of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of mere spiritual
+conquest.
+
+Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the
+yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to
+be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez. To his great relief and some
+surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her withered
+hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the epistle and the
+accompanying gratuity. To a man less naively one-ideaed it might
+have awakened some suspicion; but to the more sanguine hopefulness of
+Masterton it only suggested the fancy that Concepcion herself might
+prove to be open to conversion, and that he should in due season attempt
+HER salvation also. But that would be later. For Concepcion was always
+with him and accessible; the girl was not.
+
+The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and
+almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:
+
+“I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself. Will
+you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission tonight at
+early candlelight? It would avert worldly suspicion if you brought also
+your guitar.”
+
+The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with
+great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she had,
+however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait for an
+answer.
+
+In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer
+would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the girl's
+opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given her a
+choice of time.
+
+Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her
+willingness, and doubt the potency of his note. He was accustomed
+to exhort ORALLY--perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of
+SPEAKING to her directly without writing.
+
+When the moon rose he was already in the garden. Lingering at first in
+the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams fell on
+the wall and its crests of foliage. But nothing moved among that ebony
+tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar tinkle of the guitar--all
+was silent. As the moon rose higher he at last boldly walked to the
+wall, and listened for any movement on the other side of it. But nothing
+stirred. She was evidently NOT coming--his note had failed.
+
+He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a
+light laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from
+beneath his own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed
+familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a
+long black mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.
+
+He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She
+looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden
+doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the
+difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim
+perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.
+
+“I was looking for you on the wall,” he stammered.
+
+“MADRE DE DIOS!” she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, “you
+would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when
+you shake the tree? No!”
+
+“You haven't brought your guitar,” he continued, still more awkwardly,
+as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.
+
+“For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where
+go Pepita? She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her
+tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.' And then--it
+ess finish!”
+
+Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something
+in this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency
+of an awkward man he went on.
+
+“But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me.”
+
+“But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you
+had not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon.”
+ She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only
+her mischievous eyes were visible, added: “You had not asked me then to
+come to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference.”
+
+The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame,
+mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but
+above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite
+pleasure--that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:
+
+“No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?”
+
+The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance
+than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly
+caught.
+
+“A treek? A treek?” she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly,
+as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him
+and dropped her fan from her face.
+
+“And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?”
+
+“I wanted to talk with you,” he began, “on far more serious matters.
+I wished to--” but he stopped. He could not address this quaint
+child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured
+or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer
+responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at
+his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.
+
+He flushed--and then burst out bluntly, “I want to talk with you about
+your soul.”
+
+“My what?”
+
+“Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.”
+
+“What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?” Her eyes grew
+rounder, though she faced him boldly.
+
+“I am a Minister of the Gospel,” he said, in hurried entreaty. “You must
+hear me for a moment. I would save your soul.”
+
+“My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission--you moost seek her
+there! My mortal BODY,” she added, with a mischievous smile, “say to
+you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'” She dropped him a little curtsy
+and--ran away.
+
+“One moment, Miss Ramirez,” said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already
+slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly
+beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure,
+and vanish.
+
+In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he
+had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the
+garden. His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that
+his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the
+incorrigibility of his subject.
+
+Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the
+girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have
+borne it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false
+testimony for their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the
+triumph of her conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his
+purpose incompatible with that sisterly affection he had so often
+preached to the women of his flock? He might have taken her hand, and
+called her “Sister Pepita,” even as he had called Deborah “Sister.” He
+recalled the fact that he had for an instant held her struggling in his
+arms: he remembered the thrill that the recollection had caused him,
+and somehow it now sent a burning blush across his face. He hurried back
+into the house.
+
+The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled
+resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl's
+soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him
+an equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and
+work upon his feelings.
+
+Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his
+mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation
+from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation
+presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.
+
+One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's guitar in
+the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran
+into the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he
+unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was
+not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew
+that they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one
+of his own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice
+rose with the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of
+purely oral imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the
+“s,” were Pepita's own:
+
+     Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
+     As ye journey essweetly ssing;
+     Essing your great Redeemer's praise,
+     Glorioos in Hees works and ways.
+
+He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more
+wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular
+hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose
+again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled
+his throat:
+
+     We are traveling home to God,
+     In the way our farzers trod,
+     They are happy now, and we
+     Soon their happiness shall see.
+
+The simple, almost childish words--so childish that they might have been
+the fitting creation of her own childish lips--here died away with a
+sweep and crash of the whole strings. Breathless silence followed, in
+which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his own heart.
+
+“Miss Ramirez,” he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own.
+There was no reply. “Pepita!” he repeated; it was strangely like the
+accent of a lover, but he no longer cared. Still the singer's voice was
+silent.
+
+Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until he
+came to the fissure. It was overgrown with vines and brambles almost
+as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in her delicate
+crape dress, so could he! He brushed roughly through, and found himself
+in a glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the white wall of the
+Mission church.
+
+For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by
+the rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into the
+orchard had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a figure in a
+parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and running from
+the wall, began to course through the trees until it became apparently
+a part of that involved pattern. Nothing daunted, however, Stephen
+Masterton pursued, his speed increased as he recognized the flounces of
+Pepita's barred dress, but the young girl had the advantage of knowing
+the locality, and could evade her pursuer by unsuspected turns and
+doubles.
+
+For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect
+silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering
+shepherd. Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a tiled
+roof that was now visible as projecting over the presidio wall, and
+was evidently her goal of refuge. He redoubled his speed; with skillful
+audacity and sheer strength of his broad shoulders he broke through a
+dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was swiftly skirting, and suddenly
+appeared between her and her house.
+
+With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself in
+the hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her side,
+and caught her panting figure in his arms.
+
+While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should
+do and what he should say to her. To his simple appeal for her
+companionship and willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness, that
+should invite her trustfulness in him; he would confess his wrong and
+ask her forgiveness of his abrupt solicitations; he would propose to
+teach her more hymns, they would practice psalmody together; even this
+priest, the custodian of her soul, could not object to that; but chiefly
+he would thank her: he would tell her how she had pleased him, and this
+would lead to more serious and thoughtful converse. All this was in his
+mind while he ran, was upon his lips as he caught her and for an instant
+she lapsed, exhausted, in his arms. But, alas! even in that moment he
+suddenly drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!
+
+
+The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with the
+dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned to
+Tasajara. He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who, having for
+the twelfth time added to the population of the settlement, was not
+“doing as well” as everybody--except, possibly, Dr. Duchesne--expected.
+After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-burdened, undernourished woman
+as comfortable as he could in her rude, neglected surroundings, to
+change the dreary chronicle of suffering, he turned to the husband,
+and said, “And what has become of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in
+your--vocation?” A long groan came from the deacon.
+
+“Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse,” said the doctor, earnestly. “I
+thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I beg your pardon--I
+mean,” he added, hurriedly, “he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he
+was picking up his strength again and doing well!”
+
+“In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt,” returned the Deacon,
+scornfully, “and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value
+the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost
+to eternal life forever. Not,” he continued in sanctimonious
+vindictiveness, “but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's
+steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song.”
+
+“But what has he done?” persisted Dr. Duchesne.
+
+“Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!”
+
+“Dear me!” said the doctor, “so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?--not
+anybody's wife? Eh?”
+
+“He has entered the Church of Rome,” said the Deacon, indignantly, “he
+has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he
+is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!”
+
+“But are you SURE?” said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than
+before.
+
+“Sure,” returned the Deacon angrily, “didn't Brother Bulkley, on account
+of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make
+a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its
+wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of
+practicing on an organ--he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in
+the tents of the Lord--in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female
+Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a
+Jesuit priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young
+Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown tongues?
+Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch who called him
+'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish? Didn't he find him, who left here
+a man mortified in flesh and spirit and pale with striving with sinners,
+fat and rosy from native wines and fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy
+in colored apparel? And last of all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a
+rumor was spread far and wide that this miserable backslider was to take
+to himself a wife--in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who
+seduced him? What do you call that?”
+
+“It looks a good deal like human nature,” said the doctor, musingly,
+“but I call it a cure!”
+
+
+
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+
+The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half
+hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval
+dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that
+carried him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of
+his own people, and the sympathetic community of New World tastes and
+expressions still filled his mind until he woke up, or rather, as it
+seemed to him, was falling asleep in the past of this Old World town
+which had once held his ancestors. Although a republican, he had liked
+to think of them in quaint distinctive garb, representing state and
+importance--perhaps even aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the
+responsibility of such “bad eminence” rest with them entirely, but a
+habit of conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led
+him also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
+quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in a
+doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of his
+progenitors. For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in Europe, he
+was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that it was,
+perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved than as having
+degenerated. In these ingenuous meditations he had passed the long rows
+of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs and unpatched dilapidations
+were yet far removed from squalor, until he had reached the road
+bordered by poplars, all so unlike his own country's waysides--and knew
+that he had wandered far from his hotel.
+
+He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the way
+he had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or turning that
+would eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet
+extend his experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a
+narrow grass lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as
+public as the highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was
+not a thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had
+something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be
+at least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on
+the exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the
+direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park
+of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban
+space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,
+until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he
+diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,
+whose line he had been following.
+
+As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking
+in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and
+being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was
+singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting
+serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his
+way. The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times
+he could see not only the light through it but even the moving figures
+of the speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At
+last he determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged
+on the other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself
+behind a somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their
+backs toward him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his
+own, and all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
+handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which
+now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in
+uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from
+the others that he was enabled to see the house between her and her
+companions, he was confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond
+braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly
+intruded upon some august ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into
+the hedge, but so silently that his momentary presence was evidently
+undetected. When he regained the park side he glanced back through
+the interstices; there was no movement of the figures nor break in the
+silence to indicate that his intrusion had been observed. With a long
+breath of relief he hurried from the park.
+
+It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little modern
+adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval reflections,
+and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained porter in the
+courtyard was in regard to the park. There was no public park in
+Alstadt! The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof Gardens--the Schloss,
+which was in the direction he indicated. The Schloss was the residency
+of the hereditary Grand Duke. JA WOHL! He was stopping there with
+several Hoheiten. There was naturally a party there--a family reunion.
+But it was a private enclosure. At times, when the Grand Duke was “not in
+residence,” it was open to the public. In point of fact, at such times
+tickets of admission were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige
+each. There was not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and
+dairy--the pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.
+
+But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the modern
+life of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long walk, he
+passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on the landing
+near his room. As he entered his apartment he had a vague impression,
+without exactly knowing why, that the landlord and the military
+stranger had just left it. This feeling was deepened by the evident
+disarrangement of certain articles in his unlocked portmanteau and the
+disorganization of his writing case. A wave of indignation passed over
+him. It was followed by a knock at the door, and the landlord blandly
+appeared with the stranger.
+
+“A thousand pardons,” said the former, smilingly, “but Herr Sanderman,
+the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you. I hope we are
+not intruding?”
+
+“Not NOW,” said the American, dryly.
+
+The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.
+
+“I have to ask only a few formal questions,” said the Ober-Inspector in
+excellent but somewhat precise English, “to supplement the report which,
+as a stranger, you may not know is required by the police from the
+landlord in regard to the names and quality of his guests who are
+foreign to the town. You have a passport?”
+
+“I have,” said the American still more dryly. “But I do not keep it in
+an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case.”
+
+“An admirable precaution,” said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
+“May I see it? Thanks,” he added, glancing over the document which the
+American produced from his pocket. “I see that you are a born American
+citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented
+this little contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman, that your name is
+German?”
+
+“It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two centuries
+ago,” said Hoffman, curtly.
+
+“We are indeed honored by your return to it,” returned Sanderman
+suavely, “but it was the circumstance of your name being a local one,
+and the possibility of your still being a German citizen liable to
+unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble.” His manner was
+clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that all the time his own
+face and features were undergoing a profound scrutiny from the speaker.
+
+“And you are making sure that you will know me again?” said Hoffman,
+with a smile.
+
+“I trust, indeed, both,” returned Sanderman, with a bow, “although
+you will permit me to say that your description here,” pointing to the
+passport, “scarcely does you justice. ACH GOTT! it is the same in all
+countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN.”
+
+Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without
+knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in the
+remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.
+
+The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the door. “I
+hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by doing anything I
+can to render your visit here a pleasant one. Perhaps,” he added, “it is
+not for long.”
+
+But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he imagined
+was a possible sneer.
+
+“I have not yet determined my movements,” he said.
+
+The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
+military salute and departed.
+
+Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile urbanity
+of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the official visit to
+his guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and even introduced him to
+a singularly artistic-looking man of middle age, wearing an order in his
+buttonhole, whom he met casually in the hall.
+
+“Our Court photographer,” explained the landlord with some fervor,
+“at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten and
+Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses.”
+
+“I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would give
+me a visit,” said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman with an
+intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the Police Inspector,
+“and I would be charmed if he would avail himself of my poor skill to
+transmit his picturesque features to my unique collection.”
+
+Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he was
+conscious of being struck with this second examination of his face, and
+the allusion to his personality.
+
+The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air. The Herr
+would still like to see the Schloss? Hoffman, who had quite forgotten
+his adventure in the park, looked vacant. JA WOHL--the Hof authorities
+had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated to the hotel
+proprietor that he might have permission to visit the model farm and
+dairy. As the American still looked indifferent the porter pointed out
+with some importance that it was a Ducal courtesy not to be lightly
+treated; that few, indeed, of the burghers themselves had ever been
+admitted to this eccentric whim of the late Grand Duchess. He would, of
+course, be silent about it; the Court would not like it known that they
+had made an exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would
+enter quickly and boldly alone. There would be a housekeeper or a
+dairymaid to show him over the place.
+
+More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American, was
+inclined to classify as a “free pass” to a somewhat heavy “side show,”
+ he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning after breakfast
+set out to visit the model farm and dairy. Dismissing his driver, as
+he had been instructed, Hoffman entered the gateway with a mingling of
+expectancy and a certain amusement over the “boldness” which the
+porter had suggested should characterize his entrance. Before him was
+a beautifully kept lane bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which
+seemed to sink into the distance. He was instinctively following it when
+he became aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the
+livery of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast
+of him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory
+military salute preserving a ceremonious silence. There was something
+so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful, rural industry
+that by the time they had reached the bottom of the lane the American
+had quite recovered his good humor. But here a new astonishment awaited
+him. Nestling before him in a green amphitheater lay a little wooden
+farm-yard and outbuildings, which irresistibly suggested that it had
+been recently unpacked and set up from a box of Nuremberg toys. The
+symmetrical trees, the galleried houses with preternaturally glazed
+windows, even the spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the
+white-fenced barnyards were all unreal, wooden and toylike.
+
+Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was
+quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,
+he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion. The
+mysterious chasseur had disappeared. But under the arch of an arbor,
+which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass, and pink
+tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.
+
+At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for another.
+For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden china--so
+daintily delicate and unique it was in color and arrangement. It was
+that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten medieval peasant garb
+of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage, lace sleeves, and helmeted
+metallic comb. But, after the Dresden method, the pale yellow of her
+hair was repeated in her bodice, the pink of her cheeks was in the
+roses of her chintz overskirt. The blue of her eyes was the blue of her
+petticoat; the dazzling whiteness of her neck shone again in the
+sleeves and stockings. Nevertheless she was real and human, for the
+pink deepened in her cheeks as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she
+recognized the civility with a grave little curtsy.
+
+“You have come to see the dairy,” she said in quaintly accurate English;
+“I will show you the way.”
+
+“If you please,” said Hoffman, gaily, “but--”
+
+“But what?” she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely astonished
+eyes.
+
+Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
+contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment. Nothing
+daunted, however, he went on:
+
+“Couldn't we shake all that?”
+
+The look of wonder returned. “Shake all that?” she repeated. “I do not
+understand.”
+
+“Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick of
+showing them. I think, too, I've about sized the whole show. Wouldn't
+it be better if we sat down in that arbor--supposing it won't fall
+down--and you told me all about the lot? It would save you a heap of
+trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than trapesing round. Of
+course,” he said, with a quick transition to the gentlest courtesy, “if
+you're conscientious about this thing we'll go on and not spare a cow.
+Consider me in it with you for the whole morning.”
+
+She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming laugh.
+It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a certain barbaric
+trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had not entirely
+overlaid.
+
+“I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,” he
+said to himself as he laughed too.
+
+But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle but
+singular significance she said:
+
+“I think you must see the dairy.”
+
+Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the brown
+curls on his forehead. “By all means,” he said instantly, and began
+walking by her side in modest but easy silence. Now that he thought her
+a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.
+
+Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
+entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:
+
+“But you Americans--in your rich and prosperous country, with your large
+lands and your great harvests--you must know all about farming.”
+
+“Never was in a dairy in my life,” said Hoffman gravely. “I'm from
+the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept in
+cellars.”
+
+Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand. Then she
+apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of mischief in her
+eyes:
+
+“Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the Grand
+Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?”
+
+“No. The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em--standing like wax
+figures--the other side of the park lodge, the other day--and got away
+as soon as I could. I think I prefer the cows.”
+
+Her head was slightly turned away. He had to content himself with
+looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly
+buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside him.
+
+“Of course,” he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, “if it's
+part of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that, too. I dare
+say you could make them interesting.”
+
+“But why,” she said with her head still slightly turned away toward
+a figure--a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time, Hoffman
+perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur had done--“why
+did you come here at all?”
+
+“The first time was a fool accident,” he returned frankly. “I was making
+a short cut through what I thought was a public park. The second time
+was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom I found going
+through my things, but who apologized--as I suppose--by getting me an
+invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I thought it only the
+square thing to both of 'em to accept it. But I'm mighty glad I came;
+I wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand dollars. You see I haven't
+struck anyone I cared to talk to since.” Here he suddenly remarked that
+she hadn't looked at him, and that the delicate whiteness of her neck
+was quite suffused with pink, and stopped instantly. Presently he said
+quite easily:
+
+“Who's the chorus?”
+
+“The lady?”
+
+“Yes. She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know--just
+as if she didn't catch on.”
+
+“She's the head housekeeper of the farm. Perhaps you would prefer to
+have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?”
+
+The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
+petticoats.
+
+“Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on me.
+But here's the dairy. Don't let her come inside among those pans of
+fresh milk with that smile, or there'll be trouble.”
+
+The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and the
+figure passed on as they entered the dairy. It was beautifully clean and
+fresh. With a persistence that he quickly recognized as mischievous and
+ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability accepted with even
+greater gravity and assumption of interest, she showed him all the
+details. From thence they passed to the farmyard, where he hung with
+breathless attention over the names of the cows and made her repeat
+them. Although she was evidently familiar with the subject, he could see
+that her zeal was fitful and impatient.
+
+“Suppose we sit down,” he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic seat
+in the center of the green.
+
+“Sir down?” she repeated wonderingly. “What for?”
+
+“To talk. We'll knock off and call it half a day.”
+
+“But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,” she
+said quickly.
+
+“Am I? I don't think these particulars were in my invitation.”
+
+She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a
+bright eye around the field.
+
+“Come,” he said gently, “there are no other sightseers waiting, and your
+conscience is clear,” and he moved toward the rustic seat.
+
+“Certainly not--there,” she added in a low voice.
+
+They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung the
+miniature stream.
+
+“You are not staying long in Alstadt?” she said.
+
+“No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from.”
+
+They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his trousers,
+but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him fixedly in the eye
+said:
+
+“Ah, you have relations here?”
+
+“Yes, but they are dead two hundred years.”
+
+She laughed again with a slight expression of relief. They had entered
+the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she suddenly stopped and
+sat down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise he found that they were
+quite alone.
+
+“Tell me about these relatives,” she said, slightly drawing aside her
+skirt to make room for him on the seat.
+
+He did not require a second invitation. He not only told her all about
+his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more recent and
+more nearly related to him; about his own life, his vocation--he was a
+clever newspaper correspondent with a roving commission--his ambitions,
+his beliefs and his romance.
+
+“And then, perhaps, of this visit--you will also make 'copy'?”
+
+He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but shook
+his head.
+
+“No,” he said gravely. “No--this is YOU. The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER is big
+pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you from me.”
+
+He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly
+around it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even then--as
+if in forgetfulness or indifference--permitted her hand to rest
+unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to gallantry,
+neither was it a rejection of an unconscious familiarity.
+
+“But you haven't told me about yourself,” he said.
+
+“Oh, I,” she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a laugh
+and a sidelong glance, “of what importance is that to you? It is the
+Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you Americans seek to
+know. I am--what I am--as you see.”
+
+“You bet,” said Hoffman with charming decision.
+
+“I WHAT?”
+
+“You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even know
+your name.”
+
+She laughed again, and after a pause, said: “Elsbeth.”
+
+“But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting, you
+know.”
+
+“Then you Americans are really so very formal--eh?” she said slyly,
+looking at her imprisoned hand.
+
+“Well, yes,” returned Hoffman, disengaging it. “I suppose we are
+respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write to?”
+
+“You are neither to write nor inquire.”
+
+“What?” She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes in
+which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated, but for
+the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented her words with
+a slight pressure.
+
+“You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your landlord:
+'Pack up my luggage. I have finished with this old town and my
+ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see, and I shall
+leave Alstadt tomorrow!'”
+
+“Thank you! I don't catch on.”
+
+“Of what necessity should you? I have said it. That should be enough for
+a chivalrous American like you.” She again significantly looked down at
+her hand.
+
+“If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I can
+say no more,” he said seriously; “but give me some reason for it.”
+
+“Ah so!” she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. “Then I must
+tell you. You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess. Well! THEY
+KNOW YOU. The day before yesterday you were wandering in the park, as
+you admit. You say, also, you got through the hedge and interrupted
+some ceremony. That ceremony was not a Court function, Mr. Hoffman, but
+something equally sacred--the photographing of the Ducal family
+before the Schloss. You say that you instantly withdrew. But after the
+photograph was taken the plate revealed a stranger standing actually
+by the side of the Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the
+Grand Duke himself. That stranger was you!”
+
+“And the picture was spoiled,” said the American, with a quiet laugh.
+
+“I should not say that,” returned the lady, with a demure glance at her
+companion's handsome face, “and I do not believe that the Princess--who
+first saw the photograph--thought so either. But she is very young
+and willful, and has the reputation of being very indiscreet, and
+unfortunately she begged the photographer not to destroy the plate, but
+to give it to her, and to say nothing about it, except that the plate
+was defective, and to take another. Still it would have ended there if
+her curiosity had not led her to confide a description of the stranger
+to the Police Inspector, with the result you know.”
+
+“Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled into a
+family group that was being photographed?”
+
+“Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her curiosity
+about you,” corrected the fair stranger.
+
+“But look here! I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay for the
+plate.”
+
+“Then you do want to see the Princess?” said the young girl smiling;
+“you are like the others.”
+
+“Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don't see how they can
+prevent it if I choose to remain.”
+
+“Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with your
+passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for examination. You
+will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of the town and be ordered
+to leave it. You will be shadowed by the police until you quarrel with
+them--like a free American--and you are conducted to the frontier.
+Perhaps you will strike an officer who has insulted you, and then you
+are finished on the spot.”
+
+The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat over
+his curls.
+
+“Suppose I am content to risk it--having first laid the whole matter and
+its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that he could make it
+hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they happened to 'down me.'
+By Jove! I shouldn't mind being the martyr of an international episode
+if they'd spare me long enough to let me get the first 'copy' over to
+the other side.” His eyes sparkled.
+
+“You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story, and
+you have no evidence. They would demand to know your informant, and I
+should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is already talked about,
+made a subject of scandal. But no matter! It is right that an American's
+independence shall not be interfered with.”
+
+She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and slightly
+turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the handkerchief away, and in
+so doing possessed himself of her other hand.
+
+“Look here, Miss--Miss--Elsbeth. You know I wouldn't give you away,
+whatever happened. But couldn't I get hold of that photographer--I saw
+him, he wanted me to sit to him--and make him tell me?”
+
+“He wanted you to sit to him,” she said hurriedly, “and did you?”
+
+“No,” he replied. “He was a little too fresh and previous, though I
+thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else.”
+
+“Ah!” She said something to herself in German which he did not
+understand, and then added aloud:
+
+“You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you shall
+not sit for him.”
+
+“How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?” He added ruefully,
+“But I'd like to make him give himself away to me somehow.”
+
+“He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go near
+him nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you with his
+instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you must go. I must
+see the Princess.”
+
+“Let me go, too. I will explain it to her,” said Hoffman.
+
+She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her
+hands. “Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see. You are
+curious--you, too; you wish to see this lady who is interested in you. I
+ought to have known it. You are all alike.”
+
+He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as a
+charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry--but retained
+her hands.
+
+“Nonsense,” he said. “I wish to see her that I may have the right to see
+you--that you shall not lose your place here through me; that I may come
+again.”
+
+“You must never come here again.”
+
+“Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you have
+an afternoon off. You shall show me the town--the houses of my
+ancestors--their tombs; possibly--if the Grand Duke rampages--the
+probable site of my own.”
+
+She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
+questioning blue ones. “Do not you Americans know that it is not the
+fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women to walk
+together--unless they are VERLOBT?”
+
+“VER--which?”
+
+“Engaged.” She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
+mischievously.
+
+“So much the better.”
+
+“ACH GOTT!” She made a gesture of hopelessness at his incorrigibility,
+and again attempted to withdraw her hands.
+
+“I must go now.”
+
+“Well then, good-by.”
+
+It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive
+hands. Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and instantly
+released her. She as instantly vanished.
+
+“Elsbeth,” he called quickly. “Elsbeth!”
+
+Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color from
+the dense foliage--quite to his astonishment.
+
+“Hush,” she said, with her finger on her lips. “Are you mad?”
+
+“I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess,” he laughed
+as her head disappeared.
+
+He strolled back toward the gate. Scarcely had he quitted the shrubbery
+before the same chasseur made his appearance with precisely the same
+salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance, accompanied him to the
+gate. At the corner of the street he hailed a droshky and was driven to
+his hotel.
+
+The landlord came up smiling. He trusted that the Herr had greatly
+enjoyed himself at the Schloss. It was a distinguished honor--in fact,
+quite unprecedented. Hoffman, while he determined not to commit himself,
+nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless anxious to learn something
+more of her relations to the Schloss. So pretty, so characteristic, and
+marked a figure must be well known to sightseers. Indeed, once or twice
+the idea had crossed his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left
+him more conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had
+deemed possible. He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown
+by the same attendants.
+
+“ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue when he
+was in residence.”
+
+“And were these attendants in costume?”
+
+“There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants.”
+
+Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet--he knew not
+why. But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it was not
+entrusted to everyday menials--and he briefly described it.
+
+His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious and
+arch intelligence.
+
+“ACH GOTT! yes!” He remembered now (with his finger on his nose) that
+when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were filled with
+shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of the Grand Duke's
+own theatrical company, who assumed the characters with great vivacity.
+Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke had treated the Herr to this
+special courtesy. Yes--there was one pretty, blonde young lady--the
+Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most popular soubrette, who would play it to
+the life! And the description fitted her to a hair! Ah, there was no
+doubt of it; many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.
+
+But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
+corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight. Ah, it would be
+a great joke--quite colossal! if he took a front seat where she could
+see him. And the good man rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation.
+
+Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only equal
+to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true one, and
+that he himself had been ridiculously deceived. The mystery of his fair
+companion's costume, which he had accepted as part of the “show”; the
+inconsistency of her manner and her evident occupation; her undeniable
+wish to terminate the whole episode with that single interview;
+her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic innocence; her perfect
+self-control and experienced acceptance of his gallantry under the
+simulated attitude of simplicity--all now struck him as perfectly
+comprehensible. He recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain
+picturesque realistic details in the dairy--which she had not spared
+him; he recognized it now even in their bowered confidences (how like a
+pretty ballet scene their whole interview on the rustic bench was!),
+and it breathed through their entire conversation--to their theatrical
+parting at the close! And the whole story of the photograph was, no
+doubt, as pure a dramatic invention as the rest! The Princess's romantic
+interest in him--that Princess who had never appeared (why had he not
+detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)--was all a
+part of it. The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by the police
+was a necessary culmination to the little farce. Thank Heaven! he had
+not “risen” at the Princess, even if he had given himself away to the
+clever actress in her own humble role. Then the humor of the whole
+situation predominated and he laughed until the tears came to his eyes,
+and his forgotten ancestors might have turned over in their graves
+without his heeding them. And with this humanizing influence upon him he
+went to the theater.
+
+It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance was a
+special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to himself. He
+tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close to the next box,
+where there was a solitary occupant--an officer--apparently as lonely as
+himself. He had made up his mind that when his fair deceiver appeared
+he would let her see by his significant applause that he recognized her,
+but bore no malice for the trick she had played on him. After all, he
+had kissed her--he had no right to complain. If she should recognize
+him, and this recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and
+their better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant
+artifice. Her vocation was certainly a more independent and original
+one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and inequality he
+cared nothing. He found himself longing for the glance of her calm blue
+eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the seriousness of her sweetly
+restrained lips. There was no doubt that he should know her even as the
+heroine of DER CZAR UND DER ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him. He was
+becoming impatient. And the performance evidently was waiting. A stir
+in the outer gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms
+into the royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
+cause. As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged from
+the background of uniforms and took their places in the front of the
+box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic Princess.
+Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of diamonds that
+startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.
+
+He leaned over to his neighbor. “Who is the young lady in the box?”
+
+“The Princess Alexandrine.”
+
+“I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes.”
+
+“It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the daughter of
+the Grand Duke--there is none other there.”
+
+“Thank you.”
+
+He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage. Then he
+rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box. When he
+reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at the royal
+box. Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a moment motionless
+in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful smile, and she waved her
+fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture of farewell.
+
+The next morning he left Alstadt. There was some little delay at the
+Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk it was
+accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to him by the
+Customhouse Inspector. Hoffman did not open it until he was alone.
+
+
+There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a narrow,
+irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself standing side
+by side with a young German girl, who, in the estimation of his
+compatriots, is by no means stylish and only passably good-looking.
+When he is joked by his friends about the post of honor given to this
+production, and questioned as to the lady, he remains silent. The
+Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt,
+among her other royal qualities, knew whom to trust.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of “Chu Chu,”
+ a Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of
+Enriquez Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was also
+brother to Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had freely given
+both the mustang and my youthful affections. I consider it a proof of
+the superiority of masculine friendship that neither the subsequent
+desertion of the mustang nor that of the young lady ever made the
+slightest difference to Enriquez or me in our exalted amity. To a
+wondering doubt as to what I ever could possibly have seen in his sister
+to admire he joined a tolerant skepticism of the whole sex. This he was
+wont to express in that marvelous combination of Spanish precision and
+California slang for which he was justly famous. “As to thees women and
+their little game,” he would say, “believe me, my friend, your old
+Oncle 'Enry is not in it. No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is
+around. For why? Regard me here! If she is a horse, you shall say, 'She
+will buck-jump,' 'She will ess-shy,' 'She will not arrive,' or 'She will
+arrive too quick.' But if it is thees women, where are you? For when you
+shall say, 'She will ess-shy,' look you, she will walk straight; or
+she will remain tranquil when you think she buck-jump; or else she will
+arrive and, look you, you will not. You shall get left. It is ever so.
+My father and the brother of my father have both make court to my mother
+when she was but a senorita. My father think she have lofe his brother
+more. So he say to her: 'It is enofe; tranquillize yourself. I will go.
+I will efface myself. Adios! Shake hands! Ta-ta! So long! See you
+again in the fall.' And what make my mother? Regard me! She marry my
+father--on the instant! Of thees women, believe me, Pancho, you shall
+know nothing. Not even if they shall make you the son of your father or
+his nephew.”
+
+I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general tendency
+of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little story. It is
+only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so
+cheerfully maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing
+with them. Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race
+he moved with great freedom and popularity. He danced well; when we went
+to fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures
+always procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments,
+I presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings,
+or envy. I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the
+SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the invention
+of the performers, and very little to the imagination of the spectator.
+In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved more or less
+gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled eyes of each other,
+acted as love's signal, and was used to express alternate admiration
+and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear and transport, coyness
+and coquetry, as the dance proceeded. I need not say that Enriquez'
+pantomimic illustration of these emotions was peculiarly extravagant;
+but it was always performed and accepted with a gravity that was an
+essential feature of the dance. At such times sighs would escape him
+which were supposed to portray the incipient stages of passion;
+snorts of jealousy burst from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was
+overtaken by a sort of St. Vitus's dance that expressed his timidity in
+making the first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck
+him with something like a dumb ague; and a single gesture of invitation
+from her produced marked delirium. All this was very like Enriquez; but
+on the particular occasion to which I refer, I think no one was prepared
+to see him begin the figure with the waving of FOUR handkerchiefs! Yet
+this he did, pirouetting, capering, brandishing his silken signals like
+a ballerina's scarf in the languishment or fire of passion, until, in a
+final figure, where the conquered and submitting fair one usually
+sinks into the arms of her partner, need it be said that the ingenious
+Enriquez was found in the center of the floor supporting four of the
+dancers! Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits of
+the crowd or by his evident success with the fair. “Ah, believe me, it
+is nothing,” he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he leaned
+against the doorway. “Possibly, I shall have to offer the chocolate or
+the wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade in the moonlight
+on the veranda. It is ever so. Unless, my friend,” he said, suddenly
+turning toward me in an excess of chivalrous self-abnegation, “unless
+you shall yourself take my place. Behold, I gif them to you! I vamos!
+I vanish! I make track! I skedaddle!” I think he would have carried
+his extravagance to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of
+partners, and committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at
+that moment parted before the remaining dancers, and left one of
+the onlookers, a tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them through
+gold-rimmed eyeglasses in complete critical absorption. I stared in
+amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair stranger Miss
+Urania Mannersley, the Congregational minister's niece!
+
+Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth of
+the Encinal. She was at once the envy and the goad of the daughters of
+those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had settled in the valley.
+She was correct, she was critical, she was faultless and observant. She
+was proper, yet independent; she was highly educated; she was suspected
+of knowing Latin and Greek; she even spelled correctly! She could wither
+the plainest field nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the
+flowers their botanical names. She never said “Ain't you?” but “Aren't
+you?” She looked upon “Did I which?” as an incomplete and imperfect
+form of “What did I do?” She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was
+believed to have read them. She was from Boston. What could she possibly
+be doing at a free-and-easy fandango?
+
+Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there, her
+outward appearance would have attracted attention. Contrasted with
+the gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her
+plain, tightly fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were
+sufficiently notable in themselves, even had they not seemed, like the
+girl herself, a kind of quiet protest to the glaring flounces before
+her. Her small, straight waist and flat back brought into greater relief
+the corsetless, waistless, swaying figures of the Mexican girls, and her
+long, slim, well-booted feet, peeping from the stiff, white edges of her
+short skirt, made their broad, low-quartered slippers, held on by the
+big toe, appear more preposterous than ever. Suddenly she seemed
+to realize that she was standing there alone, but without fear or
+embarrassment. She drew back a little, glancing carelessly behind her
+as if missing some previous companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine.
+She smiled an easy recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested
+more curiously upon Enriquez, who was still by my side. I disengaged
+myself and instantly joined her, particularly as I noticed that a few of
+the other bystanders were beginning to stare at her with little reserve.
+
+“Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?” she said quietly.
+Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my face, she went
+on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:
+
+“I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and was
+going home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I heard
+the music, and dropped in. I don't know what has become of her,” she
+added, glancing round the room again; “she seemed perfectly wild when
+she saw that creature over there bounding about with his handkerchiefs.
+You were speaking to him just now. Do tell me--is he real?”
+
+“I should think there was little doubt of that,” I said with a vague
+laugh.
+
+“You know what I mean,” she said simply. “Is he quite sane? Does he do
+that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?”
+
+This was too much. I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a scion
+of one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance was a
+national gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and a patron,
+and that he was my dearest friend. At the same time I was conscious that
+I wished she hadn't seen his last performance.
+
+“You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?” she said.
+“I don't believe it. It was only like him.” As I hesitated over this
+palpable truth, she went on: “I do wish he'd do it again. Don't you
+think you could make him?”
+
+“Perhaps he might if YOU asked him,” I said a little maliciously.
+
+“Of course I shouldn't do that,” she returned quietly. “All the same, I
+do believe he is really going to do it--or something else. Do look!”
+
+I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by the
+delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested himself of
+his coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied together,
+picturesquely around his waist, preparatory to some new performance. I
+tried furtively to give him a warning look, but in vain.
+
+“Isn't he really too absurd for anything?” said Miss Mannersley, yet
+with a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice. “You know, I never
+saw anything like this before. I wouldn't have believed such a creature
+could have existed.”
+
+Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been of
+any avail. For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he struck a
+few chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center of the floor,
+swaying his body languishingly from side to side in time with the
+music and the pitch of a thin Spanish tenor. It was a gypsy love song.
+Possibly Miss Mannersley's lingual accomplishments did not include a
+knowledge of Castilian, but she could not fail to see that the gestures
+and illustrative pantomime were addressed to her. Passionately assuring
+her that she was the most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes
+were like votive tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of
+being a “brigand” and “assassin” in her attitude toward “his heart,” he
+balanced with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary cloak
+in front of her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on, and with a
+final astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of his guitar, sank
+on one knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her feet.
+
+If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque
+extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's absolute
+unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness. The applause
+of dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and hearty; her only
+contribution to it was a slight parting of her thin red lips in a
+half-incredulous smile. In the silence that followed the applause, as
+Enriquez walked pantingly away, I heard her saying, half to herself,
+“Certainly a most extraordinary creature!” In my indignation I could not
+help turning suddenly upon her and looking straight into her eyes. They
+were brown, with that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of
+nearsighted persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny. She only
+repeated carelessly, “Isn't he?” and added: “Please see if you can find
+Jocasta. I suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he won't be
+doing it again. Ah! there she is. Good gracious, child! what have you
+got there?”
+
+It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly
+holding out toward her mistress.
+
+“Heavens! I don't want it. Keep it yourself.”
+
+I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain glitter in
+the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who were watching
+her curiously. But I think she was as oblivious of this as she was of
+Enriquez' particular attentions. As we reached the street I felt that I
+ought to say something more.
+
+“You know,” I began casually, “that although those poor people meet here
+in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely pastoral
+and a national custom; and these girls are all honest, hardworking peons
+or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old idyllic fashion.”
+
+“Certainly,” said the young girl, half-abstractedly. “Of course it's
+a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those old
+Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago. It's quite Arabic in its
+suggestions. I have got something like it in an old CANCIONERO I picked
+up at a bookstall in Boston. But,” she added, with a gasp of reminiscent
+satisfaction, “that's not like HIM! Oh, no! HE is decidedly original.
+Heavens! yes.”
+
+I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly
+awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala. Yet he
+looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated in what
+I thought was a necessary warning. He, however, quickly precipitated it.
+Glancing after the retreating figures of the two women, he said: “Thees
+mees from Boston is return to her house. You do not accompany her? I
+shall. Behold me--I am there.” But I linked my arm firmly in his. Then
+I pointed out, first, that she was already accompanied by a servant;
+secondly, that if I, who knew her, had hesitated to offer myself as an
+escort, it was hardly proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that
+liberty; that Miss Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which
+he, as a Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.
+
+“But will she not regard lofe--the admiration excessif?” he said,
+twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.
+
+“No; she will not,” I returned sharply; “and you ought to understand
+that she is on a different level from your Manuelas and Carmens.”
+
+“Pardon, my friend,” he said gravely; “thees women are ever the same.
+There is a proverb in my language. Listen: 'Whether the sharp blade of
+the Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it shall find behind it
+ever the same heart to wound.' I am that Toledo blade--possibly it is
+you, my friend. Wherefore, let us together pursue this girl of Boston on
+the instant.”
+
+But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining his
+mercurial impulses for the moment. He halted, and puffed vigorously at
+his cigarette; but the next instant he started forward again. “Let us,
+however, follow with discretion in the rear; we shall pass her house; we
+shall gaze at it; it shall touch her heart.”
+
+Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just
+parted from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of
+attempting it alone, and I thought it better to humor him by consenting
+to walk with him in that direction; but I felt it necessary to say:
+
+“I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your
+performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I were
+you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression.”
+
+“You are saying she ees shock?” said Enriquez, gravely.
+
+I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he saw
+my hesitation. “Then she have jealousy of the senoritas,” he observed,
+with insufferable complacency. “You observe! I have already said. It is
+ever so.”
+
+I could stand it no longer. “Look here, Harry,” I said, “if you must
+know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat--a paid performer.”
+
+“Ah!”--his black eyes sparkled--“the torero, the man who fights the
+bull, he is also an acrobat.”
+
+“Yes; but she thinks you a clown!--a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO--there!”
+
+“Then I have make her laugh?” he said coolly.
+
+I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+“BUENO!” he said cheerfully. “Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make
+feenish with a sigh.”
+
+I turned to look at him in the moonlight. His face presented its
+habitual Spanish gravity--a gravity that was almost ironical. His
+small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity--the
+irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be
+possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of
+Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss
+Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly
+rebounded. As we walked on slowly I continued more persuasively: “Of
+course this is only your nonsense; but don't you see, Miss Mannersley
+thinks it all in earnest and really your nature?” I hesitated, for
+it suddenly struck me that it WAS really his nature. “And--hang it
+all!--you don't want her to believe you a common buffoon., or some
+intoxicated muchacho.”
+
+“Intoxicated?” repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment. “Yes;
+that is the word that shall express itself. My friend, you have made
+a shot in the center--you have ring the bell every time! It is
+intoxication--but not of aguardiente. Look! I have long time an ancestor
+of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young
+girl--a mere peasant girl--pass to the confessional. He look her in
+her eye, he stagger”--here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into the
+road--“he fall!”--he would have suited the action to the word if I had
+not firmly held him up. “They have taken him home, where he have remain
+without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the drunkenness
+of lofe. And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not even
+pretty. The name of my ancestor was--”
+
+“Don Quixote de La Mancha,” I suggested maliciously. “I suspected as
+much. Come along. That will do.”
+
+“My ancestor's name,” continued Enriquez, gravely, “was Antonio
+Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same. Thees Don Quixote of
+whom you speak exist not at all.”
+
+“Never mind. Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house, don't
+make a fool of yourself again.”
+
+It was a wonderful moonlight night. The deep redwood porch of the
+Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak--the largest in
+the Encinal--was diapered in black and silver. As the women stepped
+upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the door. Miss
+Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a last look at the
+beauty of the night as Jocasta entered. Her glance fell upon us as
+we passed. She nodded carelessly and unaffectedly to me, but as she
+recognized Enriquez she looked a little longer at him with her previous
+cold and invincible curiosity. To my horror Enriquez began instantly to
+affect a slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but
+I gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as the
+door closed finally on the young lady.
+
+“You do not comprehend, friend Pancho,” he said gravely, “but those eyes
+in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror. They burn,
+they consume me here like paper. Let us affix to ourselves thees tree.
+She will, without doubt, appear at her window. We shall salute her for
+good night.”
+
+“We will do nothing of the kind,” I said sharply. Finding that I was
+determined, he permitted me to lead him away. I was delighted to
+notice, however, that he had indicated the window which I knew was
+the minister's study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear of the
+house, this later incident was probably not overseen by the young lady
+or the servant. But I did not part from Enriquez until I saw him
+safely back to the sala, where I left him sipping chocolate, his
+arm alternating around the waists of his two previous partners in a
+delightful Arcadian and childlike simplicity, and an apparent utter
+forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.
+
+The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next day,
+being Sunday, I missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout Catholic I
+remembered that he was at mass in the morning, and possibly at the
+bullfight at San Antonio in the afternoon. But I was somewhat surprised
+on the Monday morning following, as I was crossing the plaza, to have
+my arm taken by the Rev. Mr. Mannersley in the nearest approach to
+familiarity that was consistent with the reserve of this eminent divine.
+I looked at him inquiringly. Although scrupulously correct in attire,
+his features always had a singular resemblance to the national
+caricature known as “Uncle Sam,” but with the humorous expression
+left out. Softly stroking his goatee with three fingers, he began
+condescendingly: “You are, I think, more or less familiar with the
+characteristics and customs of the Spanish as exhibited by the settlers
+here.” A thrill of apprehension went through me. Had he heard of
+Enriquez' proceedings? Had Miss Mannersley cruelly betrayed him to her
+uncle? “I have not given that attention myself to their language and
+social peculiarities,” he continued, with a large wave of the hand,
+“being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs and
+superstitions”--it struck me that this was apt to be a common fault of
+people of the Mannersley type--“but I have refrained from a personal
+discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held somewhat broad views
+on the subject of their remarkable missionary work, and have suggested
+a scheme of co-operation with them, quite independent of doctrinal
+teaching, to my brethren of other Protestant Christian sects. These
+views I first incorporated in a sermon last Sunday week, which I am told
+has created considerable attention.” He stopped and coughed slightly. “I
+have not yet heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to believe
+that my remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally.”
+
+I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address me
+on this topic. I had a vague remembrance of having heard that he had
+said something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of his
+flock, but nothing more. He continued: “I have just said that I was
+unacquainted with the characteristics of the Spanish-American race. I
+presume, however, they have the impulsiveness of their Latin origin.
+They gesticulate--eh? They express their gratitude, their joy, their
+affection, their emotions generally, by spasmodic movements? They
+naturally dance--sing--eh?” A horrible suspicion crossed my mind;
+I could only stare helplessly at him. “I see,” he said graciously;
+“perhaps it is a somewhat general question. I will explain myself.
+A rather singular occurrence happened to me the other night. I had
+returned from visiting a parishioner, and was alone in my study
+reviewing my sermon for the next day. It must have been quite late
+before I concluded, for I distinctly remember my niece had returned
+with her servant fully an hour before. Presently I heard the sounds of
+a musical instrument in the road, with the accents of someone singing or
+rehearsing some metrical composition in words that, although couched
+in a language foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me the
+impression of being distinctly adulatory. For some little time, in
+the greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the
+performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle
+curiosity to the window. From thence, standing in my dressing-gown,
+and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the
+roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared
+to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own
+invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and
+in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me.
+Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I
+am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me
+that the various phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation
+were successively portrayed. He placed his hands upon his head,
+his heart, and even clasped them together in this manner.” To my
+consternation the reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most
+extravagant pantomime. “I am willing to confess,” he continued, “that
+I was singularly moved by them, as well as by the highly creditable and
+Christian interest that evidently produced them. At last I opened the
+window. Leaning out, I told him that I regretted that the lateness of
+the hour prevented any further response from me than a grateful though
+hurried acknowledgment of his praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be
+glad to see him for a few moments in the vestry before service the next
+day, or at early candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class. I
+told him that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical
+brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing could
+be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited testimony
+to my motives. He appeared for an instant to be deeply affected, and,
+indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then gracefully retired, with
+some agility and a slight saltatory movement.”
+
+He paused. A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and
+I looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once
+Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished
+by a master hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face
+betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he
+had complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade
+to his niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by
+my companion's next words.
+
+“I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast. She
+had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she agreed with
+me as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition of my liberal
+efforts toward his coreligionists. It was she, in fact, who suggested
+that your knowledge of these people might corroborate my impressions.”
+
+I was dumfounded. Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized
+Enriquez' hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield him?
+But this was so inconsistent with her utter indifference to him, except
+as a grotesque study, that she would have been more likely to tell
+her uncle all about his previous performance. Nor could it be that she
+wished to conceal her visit to the fandango. She was far too independent
+for that, and it was even possible that the reverend gentleman, in his
+desire to know more of Enriquez' compatriots, would not have objected.
+In my confusion I meekly added my conviction to hers, congratulated him
+upon his evident success, and slipped away. But I was burning with
+a desire to see Enriquez and know all. He was imaginative but not
+untruthful. Unfortunately, I learned that he was just then following one
+of his erratic impulses, and had gone to a rodeo at his cousin's, in
+the foothills, where he was alternately exercising his horsemanship in
+catching and breaking wild cattle and delighting his relatives with his
+incomparable grasp of the American language and customs, and of the airs
+of a young man of fashion. Then my thoughts recurred to Miss Mannersley.
+Had she really been oblivious that night to Enriquez' serenade? I
+resolved to find out, if I could, without betraying Enriquez. Indeed, it
+was possible, after all, that it might not have been he.
+
+Chance favored me. The next evening I was at a party where
+Miss Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a
+distinguished--I had almost written a popular--guest. But, as I
+have formerly stated, although the youthful fair of the Encinal were
+flattered by her casual attentions, and secretly admired her superior
+style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy under the
+dominance of her intelligence and education, and were afraid to attempt
+either confidence or familiarity. They were also singularly jealous
+of her, for although the average young man was equally afraid of her
+cleverness and her candor, he was not above paying a tremulous and timid
+court to her for its effect upon her humbler sisters. This evening she
+was surrounded by her usual satellites, including, of course, the local
+notables and special guests of distinction. She had been discussing,
+I think, the existence of glaciers on Mount Shasta with a spectacled
+geologist, and had participated with charming frankness in a
+conversation on anatomy with the local doctor and a learned professor,
+when she was asked to take a seat at the piano. She played with
+remarkable skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and brilliantly.
+As she sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening dress,
+her regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her high
+shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and provocative
+intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions
+if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer
+than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do
+with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don
+Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her
+slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the
+pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was
+slightly thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the
+ceiling in an effort of memory.
+
+“Something of Chopin's,” suggested the geologist, ardently.
+
+“That exquisite sonata!” pleaded the doctor.
+
+“Suthin' of Rubinstein. Heard him once,” said a gentleman of Siskiyou.
+“He just made that pianner get up and howl. Play Rube.”
+
+She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish
+coquetry in her manner. Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the keys
+with a glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords, down went
+the low pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she presently began to
+hum to herself. I started--as well I might--for I recognized one of
+Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar solos. It was audacious;
+it was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar. As I remembered it--as he
+sang it--it recounted the adventures of one Don Francisco, a provincial
+gallant and roisterer of the most objectionable type. It had one hundred
+and four verses, which Enriquez never spared me. I shuddered as in a
+pleasant, quiet voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical
+praise of the PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came
+caressingly from her thin red lips. But the company was far differently
+affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were evidently
+catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody whistled the air from
+a distant corner; even the faces of the geologist and doctor brightened.
+
+“A tarantella, I presume?” blandly suggested the doctor.
+
+Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. “It is a
+Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century,” she said dryly.
+
+“It seemed sorter familiar, too,” hesitated one of the young men,
+timidly, “like as if--don't you know?--you had without knowing it, don't
+you know?”--he blushed slightly--“sorter picked it up somewhere.”
+
+“I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval
+manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it,” returned Miss
+Mannersley coldly as she turned away.
+
+But I was not inclined to let her off so easily. I presently made my way
+to her side. “Your uncle was complimentary enough to consult me as to
+the meaning of the appearance of a certain exuberant Spanish visitor
+at his house the other night.” I looked into her brown eyes, but my
+own slipped off her velvety pupils without retaining anything. Then she
+reinforced her gaze with a pince-nez, and said carelessly:
+
+“Oh, it's you? How are you? Well, could you give him any information?”
+
+“Only generally,” I returned, still looking into her eyes. “These people
+are impulsive. The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and quicksilver.”
+
+She smiled slightly. “That reminds me of your volatile friend. He was
+mercurial enough, certainly. Is he still dancing?”
+
+“And singing sometimes,” I responded pointedly. But she only added
+casually, “A singular creature,” without exhibiting the least
+consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser. I felt that
+Enriquez alone could enlighten me. I must see him.
+
+I did, but not in the way I expected. There was a bullfight at San
+Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance being
+changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the Americans. An
+additional attraction was offered in the shape of a bull-and-bear fight,
+also a concession to American taste, which had voted the bullfight
+“slow,” and had averred that the bull “did not get a fair show.” I am
+glad that I am able to spare the reader the usual realistic horrors, for
+in the Californian performances there was very little of the brutality
+that distinguished this function in the mother country. The horses were
+not miserable, worn-out hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the
+display of horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but
+secured an almost absolute safety to horse and rider. I never saw
+a horse gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in
+wheeling quickly to avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained
+their animals without injury.
+
+The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn
+outskirts of an old Spanish village. It was a rudely built oval
+amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed only
+over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial “notables,” but
+now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives, with a sprinkling of
+American travelers and ranchmen. The impalpable adobe dust of the arena
+was being whirled into the air by the strong onset of the afternoon
+trade winds, which happily, however, helped also to dissipate a reek
+of garlic, and the acrid fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk
+cigarettes. I was leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the
+meager and circuslike procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen,
+when my attention was attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery.
+A lady and gentleman of a quality that was evidently unfamiliar to the
+rest of the audience were picking their way along the rickety benches
+to a front seat. I recognized the geologist with some surprise, and the
+lady he was leading with still greater astonishment. For it was Miss
+Mannersley, in her precise, well-fitting walking-costume--a monotone of
+sober color among the parti-colored audience.
+
+However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was not
+only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I had been
+to Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that her uncle
+might have given her permission to come, as a recognition of the Sunday
+concession of the management, as well as to conciliate his supposed
+Catholic friends. I watched her sitting there until the first bull
+had entered, and, after a rather brief play with the picadors and
+banderilleros, was dispatched. At the moment when the matador approached
+the bull with his lethal weapon I was not sorry for an excuse to glance
+at Miss Mannersley. Her hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent
+forward over her knees. I fancied that she, too, had dropped her
+eyes before the brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a
+drawing-book in her hand and was actually sketching it. I turned my eyes
+in preference to the dying bull.
+
+The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was, however,
+more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers. He accepted
+the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and he declined
+the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors. He bristled with
+banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his haunches backed
+against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the fine dust raised by
+the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing hoof--his one dull, heavy
+protest. A vague uneasiness had infected his adversaries; the picadors
+held aloof, the banderilleros skirmished at a safe distance. The
+audience resented only the indecision of the bull. Galling epithets
+were flung at him, followed by cries of “ESPADA!” and, curving his elbow
+under his short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand,
+advanced and--stopped. The bull remained motionless.
+
+For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down upon
+the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it around the
+tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment seemed to stop the
+performance. I heard an exclamation from the geologist, who had risen to
+his feet. I fancied I heard even a faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but
+the next moment, as the dust was slowly settling, we saw a sheet
+of paper in the air, that had been caught up in this brief cyclone,
+dropping, dipping from side to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly
+descended in the very middle of the arena. It was a leaf from Miss
+Mannersley's sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.
+
+In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at last
+excited the bull's growing but tardy ire. He glanced at it with murky,
+distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet troubled fury. Whether
+he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or
+whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his
+surroundings, I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador,
+taking advantage of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at
+the audience, advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young
+man cleared the barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the
+matador to one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony
+and Miss Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the
+bull, knelt down before him with an exaggerated humility, and held up
+the drawing as if for his inspection. A roar of applause broke from the
+audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the attendants, as the
+goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger. But he sprang to one side
+with great dexterity, made a courteous gesture to the matador as if
+passing the bull over to him, and still holding the paper in his hand,
+re-leaped the barrier, and rejoined the audience in safety. I did not
+wait to see the deadly, dominant thrust with which the matador received
+the charging bull; my eyes were following the figure now bounding up the
+steps to the balcony, where with an exaggerated salutation he laid the
+drawing in Miss Mannersley's lap and vanished. There was no mistaking
+that thin lithe form, the narrow black mustache, and gravely dancing
+eyes. The audacity of conception, the extravagance of execution, the
+quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to no one but Enriquez.
+
+I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of the
+bull away. She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved focus of
+a hundred eager and curious eyes. She smiled slightly as she saw me. “I
+was just telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary creature it was, and
+how you knew him. He must have had great experience to do that sort of
+thing so cleverly and safely. Does he do it often? Of course, not just
+that. But does he pick up cigars and things that I see they throw to the
+matador? Does he belong to the management? Mr. Briggs thinks the whole
+thing was a feint to distract the bull,” she added, with a wicked glance
+at the geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.
+
+“I am afraid,” I said dryly, “that his act was as unpremeditated and
+genuine as it was unusual.”
+
+“Why afraid?”
+
+It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake. What
+right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more genuine
+than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that they were, was
+it fair in me to give my friend away to this heartless coquette?
+“You are not very gallant,” she said, with a slight laugh, as I was
+hesitating, and turned away with her escort before I could frame a
+reply. But at least Enriquez was now accessible, and I should gain some
+information from him. I knew where to find him, unless he were still
+lounging about the building, intent upon more extravagance; but I
+waited until I saw Miss Mannersley and Briggs depart without further
+interruption.
+
+The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the outskirts
+of the village. When I arrived there I found Enriquez' pinto mustang
+steaming in the corral, and although I was momentarily delayed by the
+servants at the gateway, I was surprised to find Enriquez himself lying
+languidly on his back in a hammock in the patio. His arms were hanging
+down listlessly on each side as if in the greatest prostration, yet I
+could not resist the impression that the rascal had only just got into
+the hammock when he heard of my arrival.
+
+“You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time,” he said, in accents of
+exaggerated weakness. “I am absolutely exhaust. I am bursted, caved in,
+kerflummoxed. I have behold you, my friend, at the barrier. I speak not,
+I make no sign at the first, because I was on fire; I speak not at the
+feenish--for I am exhaust.”
+
+“I see; the bull made it lively for you.”
+
+He instantly bounded up in the hammock. “The bull! Caramba! Not a
+thousand bulls! And thees one, look you, was a craven. I snap my fingers
+over his horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose.”
+
+“Well, then--what was it?”
+
+He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.
+Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones to
+the sky. “He asks me--thees friend of my soul, thees brother of my life,
+thees Pancho that I lofe--what it was? He would that I should tell him
+why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand, crack in the voice,
+and am generally wipe out! And yet he, my pardner--thees Francisco--know
+that I have seen the mees from Boston! That I have gaze into the eye,
+touch the hand, and for the instant possess the picture that hand have
+drawn! It was a sublime picture, Pancho,” he said, sitting up again
+suddenly, “and have kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword have
+touch even the bone of hees back and make feenish of him.”
+
+“Look here, Enriquez,” I said bluntly, “have you been serenading that
+girl?”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and said:
+“Ah, yes. What would you? It is of a necessity.”
+
+“Well,” I retorted, “then you ought to know that her uncle took it all to
+himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his religious
+tolerance.”
+
+He did not even smile. “BUENO,” he said gravely. “That make something,
+too. In thees affair it is well to begin with the duenna. He is the
+duenna.”
+
+“And,” I went on relentlessly, “her escort told her just now that your
+exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull, suggested
+by the management.”
+
+“Bah! her escort is a geologian. Naturally, she is to him as a stone.”
+
+I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment with a
+sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock, bidding me wait
+his return from a messenger in the gateway.
+
+Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock that
+Enriquez had quitted. A scrap of paper was lying in its meshes, which
+at first appeared to be of the kind from which Enriquez rolled his
+cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it away, I found it was of
+much firmer and stouter material. Looking at it more closely, I was
+surprised to recognize it as a piece of the tinted drawing-paper torn
+off the “block” that Miss Mannersley had used. It had been deeply
+creased at right angles as if it had been folded; it looked as if it
+might have been the outer half of a sheet used for a note.
+
+It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited my
+curiosity. I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss Mannersley,
+for I had seen it in her hand. Had she given him another? And if so, why
+had it been folded to the destruction of the drawing? Or was it part
+of a note which he had destroyed? In the first impulse of discovery
+I walked quickly with it toward the gateway where Enriquez had
+disappeared, intending to restore it to him. He was just outside talking
+with a young girl. I started, for it was Jocasta--Miss Mannersley's
+maid.
+
+With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and indignation
+with which we illogically are apt to resent the withholding of a
+friend's confidence, even in matters concerning only himself. It was no
+use for me to reason that it was no business of mine, that he was right
+in keeping a secret that concerned another--and a lady; but I was afraid
+I was even more meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my
+theory of his conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him. I
+continued to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried
+good-by, alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but
+without appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to
+my further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,
+threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, “Ah! you
+see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!” and returned
+to Jocasta. But whether this meant that he had received a message from
+Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her maid to carry one,
+was still uncertain. He was capable of either. During the next two
+or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I had resolved to try the
+effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our conversation, I gathered
+little further of their relations, and, to my surprise, after one or two
+characteristic extravagances of allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject,
+too. Only one afternoon, as we were parting, he said carelessly: “My
+friend, you are going to the casa of Mannersley tonight. I too have the
+honor of the invitation. But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you
+will take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,
+desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for I
+have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-in-law,
+who has a quinsy to the death. It is sad.”
+
+This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
+advances. I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.
+
+“Nonsense!” I said bluntly. “Nothing keeps you from going.”
+
+“My friend,” returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment
+that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, “it is everything that
+shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and
+tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the
+geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum that shall be easy.”
+
+He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found
+Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and
+pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me
+might have been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.
+I delivered his excuses as naturally as I could. She stiffened for an
+instant, and seemed an inch higher. “I am so sorry,” she said at last in
+a level voice. “I thought he would have been so amusing. Indeed, I had
+hoped we might try an old Moorish dance together which I have found and
+was practicing.”
+
+“He would have been delighted, I know. It's a great pity he didn't come
+with me,” I said quickly; “but,” I could not help adding, with emphasis
+on her words, “he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you know.”
+
+“I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,”
+ returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, “except that it
+justifies my respect for his character.”
+
+I do not know why I did not relate this to him. Possibly I had given up
+trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have an idea that
+he could take care of himself. But I was somewhat surprised a few days
+later when, after asking me to go with him to a rodeo at his uncle's he
+added composedly, “You will meet Mees Boston.”
+
+I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
+extravagance. For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
+purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,
+and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a property
+stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and strangers,
+particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain access to its
+mysteries and the fiesta that followed.
+
+“But how did she get an invitation?” I asked. “You did not dare to
+ask--” I began.
+
+“My friend,” said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, “the great and
+respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable oncle, and other
+Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the inexpressible honor to
+solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle that she shall come--that she
+shall of her own superior eye behold the barbaric customs of our race.”
+
+His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before him,
+laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face. But the
+actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out
+of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his
+chair. “I shall be there, friend Pancho,” he said, with a preposterous
+gasp. “I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her
+at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred
+spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the
+ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend Pancho. I shall
+be there.”
+
+He was as good as his word. When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle, installed
+Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the long
+valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant Enriquez selected a bull
+from the frightened and galloping herd, and, cleverly isolating him
+from the band, lassoed his hind legs, and threw him exactly before the
+platform where Miss Mannersley was seated. It was Enriquez who caught
+the unbroken mustang, sprang from his own saddle to the bare back of his
+captive, and with the lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches
+at Miss Mannersley's feet. It was Enriquez who, in the sports that
+followed, leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the chicken
+buried to its head in the sand, without wringing its neck, and tossed
+it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore
+the same look of animation that I had seen in her face at our previous
+meeting. Although she did not bring her sketchbook with her, as at the
+bullfight, she did not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which
+took place under her very eyes.
+
+Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to my
+actual knowledge, even exchanged words. And now, although she was the
+guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the field, and
+apart from her. Nor, as far as I could detect, did either apparently
+make any effort to have it otherwise. The peculiar circumstance seemed
+to attract no attention from anyone else. But for what I alone knew--or
+thought I knew--of their actual relations, I should have thought them
+strangers.
+
+But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad patio
+of Don Pedro's casa would bring them together. And later in the evening,
+as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the dancing of the
+Mexican women, whose white-flounced sayas were monotonously rising and
+falling to the strains of two melancholy harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined
+us from the house. She seemed to be utterly absorbed and abstracted in
+the barbaric dances, and scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing
+with her cheek resting on her hand. Suddenly she arose with a little
+cry.
+
+“What is it?” asked two or three.
+
+“Nothing--only I have lost my fan.” She had risen, and was looking
+abstractedly on the floor.
+
+Half a dozen men jumped to their feet. “Let me fetch it,” they said.
+
+“No, thank you. I think I know where it is, and will go for it myself.”
+ She was moving away.
+
+But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity. Such a thing was not to
+be heard of in his casa. If the senorita would not permit HIM--an old
+man--to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her cavalier of the
+day.
+
+But Enriquez was not to be found. I glanced at Miss Mannersley's
+somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it. I thought I
+saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she said, in a lower
+voice, “On the stone seat in the garden.”
+
+I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting. I knew the gardens,
+and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen yards from
+the casa. The moon shone full upon it. There, indeed, lay the little
+gray-feathered fan. But beside it, also, lay the crumpled black
+gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had worn at the rodeo.
+
+I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back. As I passed through
+the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me. The man stared. Did I
+not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two minutes ago?
+
+When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley without
+a word. “BUENO,” said Don Pedro, gravely; “it is as well. There shall be
+no bones broken over the getting of it, for Enriquez, I hear, has had to
+return to the Encinal this very evening.”
+
+Miss Mannersley retired early. I did not inform her of my discovery, nor
+did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret. There was no doubt that
+she and Enriquez had been together, perhaps not for the first time; but
+what was the result of their interview? From the young girl's demeanor
+and Enriquez' hurried departure, I could only fear the worst for him.
+Had he been tempted into some further extravagance and been angrily
+rebuked, or had he avowed a real passion concealed under his exaggerated
+mask and been deliberately rejected? I tossed uneasily half the night,
+following in my dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever
+starting from my sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping
+hoofs.
+
+I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there before
+me, and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly discussing
+something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and consciously as
+I approached. There was an air of indefinite uneasiness everywhere. A
+strange fear came over me with the chill of the early morning air. Had
+anything happened to Enriquez? I had always looked upon his extravagance
+as part of his playful humor. Could it be possible that under the sting
+of rejection he had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement
+real? Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were
+the case.
+
+I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had
+risen. The woman started, and looked covertly round before she replied.
+Did not Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid had not slept
+in their beds that night, but had gone, none knew where?
+
+For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility in
+this suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the retreating
+family group. But as I entered the corridor a vaquero touched me on the
+shoulder. He had evidently just dismounted, and was covered with the
+dust of the road. He handed me a note written in pencil on a leaf
+from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook. It was in Enriquez' hand, and his
+signature was followed by his most extravagant rubric.
+
+
+Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility think
+I am no more. That is where you shall slip up, my little brother! I am
+much more--I am two times as much, for I have marry Miss Boston. At the
+Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp! No cards shall be left! I
+kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-law. You shall say to him that
+we fly to the South wilderness as the combined evangelical missionary to
+the heathen! Miss Boston herself say this. Ta-ta! How are you now?
+
+Your own Enriquez.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1312-0.txt or 1312-0.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/1/1312/
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
+Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
+of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/1312-0.zip b/old/1312-0.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dcd78e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312-0.zip
diff --git a/old/1312-h.zip b/old/1312-h.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1341440
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312-h.zip
diff --git a/old/1312-h/1312-h.htm b/old/1312-h/1312-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff3c411
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312-h/1312-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,14427 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
+
+<!DOCTYPE html
+   PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      Selected Stories of Bret Harte
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Selected Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1312]
+Last Updated: March 5, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_INTR"> INTRODUCTION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> MIGGLES </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> TENNESSEE'S PARTNER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE IDYL OF RED GULCH </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> BROWN OF CALAVERAS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> HIGH-WATER MARK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> A LONELY RIDE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> MLISS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_NOTE"> NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0020"> AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0021"> BARKER'S LUCK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0022"> A YELLOW DOG </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0023"> A MOTHER OF FIVE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0024"> BULGER'S REPUTATION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0025"> IN THE TULES </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0026"> A CONVERT OF THE MISSION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0027"> THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0028"> THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_INTR" id="link2H_INTR">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a> <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      INTRODUCTION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing, into
+      four quite distinct parts. First, we have the precocious boyhood, with its
+      eager response to the intellectual stimulation of cultured parents; young
+      Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility; devoured voraciously
+      the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving, Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding;
+      and, with creditable success, attempted various forms of composition.
+      Then, compelled by economic necessity, he left school at thirteen, and for
+      three years worked first in a lawyer's office, and then in a merchant's
+      counting house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second period, that of his migration to California, includes all that
+      is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving in California
+      in 1854, he was, successively, a school-teacher, drug-store clerk, express
+      messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. He worked for a while on
+      the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he was dismissed for objecting
+      editorially to the contemporary California sport of murdering Indians),
+      then on the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved his first moderate
+      acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswold of New York. In 1864
+      he was given the secretaryship of the California mint, a virtual sinecure,
+      and he was enabled do a great deal of writing. The first volume of his
+      poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES, CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated
+      parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS were published in 1867. One year later,
+      THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which had aspirations of becoming &ldquo;the ATLANTIC
+      MONTHLY of the West,&rdquo; was established, and Harte was appointed its first
+      editor. For it, he wrote most of what still remains valid as literature&mdash;THE
+      LUCK OF ROARING CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM
+      TRUTHFUL JAMES, among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic
+      glamor and Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel
+      material, with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular.
+      Editors began to clamor for his stories; the University of California
+      appointed him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY
+      offered him the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive
+      rights to one year's literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the
+      ascendant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
+      policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed, were the
+      cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the OVERLAND MONTHLY.
+      Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the East, he left California
+      (permanently, as it proved). The East, however, was financially
+      unappreciative. Harte wrote an unsuccessful novel and collaborated with
+      Mark Twain on an unremunerative play. His attempts to increase his income
+      by lecturing were even less rewarding. From his departure from California
+      in 1872 to his death thirty years later, Harte's struggles to regain
+      financial stability were unremitting: and to these efforts is due the
+      relinquishment of his early ideal of &ldquo;a peculiarly characteristic Western
+      American literature.&rdquo; Henceforth Harte accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks,
+      &ldquo;the role of entertainer, and as an entertainer he survived for thirty
+      years his death as an artist.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
+      appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a throat
+      cancer. He left for Crefeld without his wife or son&mdash;perhaps
+      intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him when circumstances
+      allowed; but save for a few years prior to his death, the separation, for
+      whatever complex of reasons, remained permanent. Harte, however, continued
+      to provide for them as liberally as he was able. In Crefeld Harte wrote A
+      LEGEND OF SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION, and UNSER KARL. In 1880
+      he transferred to the more lucrative consulship of Glasgow, and ROBIN
+      GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of his stay there. In 1885
+      he was dismissed from his consulship, probably for political reasons,
+      though neglect of duty was charged against him. He removed to London where
+      he remained, for most part, until his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp. His mining
+      experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his portraits of mining
+      life are wholly impressionistic. &ldquo;No one,&rdquo; Mark Twain wrote, &ldquo;can talk the
+      quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and shovel and
+      drill and fuse.&rdquo; Yet, Twain added elsewhere, &ldquo;Bret Harte got his
+      California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of
+      them into his tales alive.&rdquo; That is, perhaps, the final comment. Much
+      could be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over the
+      life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings are
+      obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
+      Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that &ldquo;There
+      are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons which we
+      could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte.&rdquo; The figure is perhaps
+      exaggerated, but there are many reasons for admiration. First, Harte
+      originated a new and incalculably influential type of story: the
+      romantically picturesque &ldquo;human-interest&rdquo; story. &ldquo;He created the local
+      color story,&rdquo; Prof. Blankenship remarks, &ldquo;or at least popularized it, and
+      he gave new form and intent to the short story.&rdquo; Character motivating
+      action is central to this type of story, rather than mood dominating
+      incident. Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful one,
+      admirably suited to his subjects. He can manage the humorous or the
+      pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more remarkable than
+      his excesses. His sentences have both force and flow; his backgrounds are
+      crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures have their
+      own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of the theatric
+      finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings down his curtain
+      dramatically and effectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A. <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight, for
+      in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire
+      settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but &ldquo;Tuttle's
+      grocery&rdquo; had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered, calmly
+      continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each
+      other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp was
+      collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.
+      Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was
+      frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the camp,&mdash;&ldquo;Cherokee
+      Sal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to be
+      feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman in
+      Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she most
+      needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and
+      irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear even
+      when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness.
+      The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation which must
+      have made the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful. It was,
+      perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when she most
+      lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met only the
+      half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the
+      spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought
+      it was &ldquo;rough on Sal,&rdquo; and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a
+      moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in his
+      sleeve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no means
+      uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had been
+      dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of
+      return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced AB
+      INITIO. Hence the excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in there, Stumpy,&rdquo; said a prominent citizen known as &ldquo;Kentuck,&rdquo;
+       addressing one of the loungers. &ldquo;Go in there, and see what you kin do.
+      You've had experience in them things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes, had
+      been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to some
+      legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp&mdash;a city of
+      refuge&mdash;was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice,
+      and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the
+      extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked
+      its pipe, and awaited the issue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were
+      actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless.
+      Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives and character.
+      The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blonde hair;
+      Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction
+      of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five
+      feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The
+      term &ldquo;roughs&rdquo; applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition.
+      Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may
+      have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their
+      aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right
+      hand; the best shot had but one eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around the
+      cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a river.
+      The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that faced the
+      cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman might have
+      seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,&mdash;seen it winding like a
+      silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By
+      degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely
+      offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that &ldquo;Sal would get
+      through with it;&rdquo; even that the child would survive; side bets as to the
+      sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an excited
+      discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and the camp
+      stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift
+      rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous
+      cry,&mdash;a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines
+      stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It
+      seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel
+      of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the mother, better
+      counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for whether
+      owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, Cherokee Sal
+      was sinking fast. Within an hour she had climbed, as it were, that rugged
+      road that led to the stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and
+      shame, forever. I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much,
+      except in speculation as to the fate of the child. &ldquo;Can he live now?&rdquo; was
+      asked of Stumpy. The answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee
+      Sal's sex and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was
+      some conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less
+      problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and
+      apparently as successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the door
+      was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed
+      themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or
+      shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below the
+      blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed, and within
+      it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at Roaring Camp.
+      Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was soon indicated.
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of authority and EX
+      OFFICIO complacency,&mdash;&ldquo;gentlemen will please pass in at the front
+      door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as wishes to
+      contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy.&rdquo; The first
+      man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about
+      him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In such communities
+      good and bad actions are catching. As the procession filed in comments
+      were audible,&mdash;criticisms addressed perhaps rather to Stumpy in the
+      character of showman; &ldquo;Is that him?&rdquo; &ldquo;Mighty small specimen;&rdquo; &ldquo;Has n't
+      more 'n got the color;&rdquo; &ldquo;Ain't bigger nor a derringer.&rdquo; The contributions
+      were as characteristic: A silver tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver,
+      silver mounted; a gold specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady's
+      handkerchief (from Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond
+      ring (suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he &ldquo;saw
+      that pin and went two diamonds better&rdquo;); a slung-shot; a Bible
+      (contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the
+      initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of surgeon's
+      shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for 5 pounds; and about $200 in
+      loose gold and silver coin. During these proceedings Stumpy maintained a
+      silence as impassive as the dead on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as
+      that of the newly born on his right. Only one incident occurred to break
+      the monotony of the curious procession. As Kentuck bent over the
+      candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain,
+      caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck
+      looked foolish and embarrassed. Something like a blush tried to assert
+      itself in his weather-beaten cheek. &ldquo;The damned little cuss!&rdquo; he said, as
+      he extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and care than he
+      might have been deemed capable of showing. He held that finger a little
+      apart from its fellows as he went out, and examined it curiously. The
+      examination provoked the same original remark in regard to the child. In
+      fact, he seemed to enjoy repeating it. &ldquo;He rastled with my finger,&rdquo; he
+      remarked to Tipton, holding up the member, &ldquo;the damned little cuss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the
+      cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night. Nor
+      did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his
+      experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of the
+      newcomer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of sentiment,
+      and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When everybody else had
+      gone to bed, he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly. Then
+      he walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling with demonstrative
+      unconcern. At a large redwood-tree he paused and retraced his steps, and
+      again passed the cabin. Halfway down to the river's bank he again paused,
+      and then returned and knocked at the door. It was opened by Stumpy. &ldquo;How
+      goes it?&rdquo; said Kentuck, looking past Stumpy toward the candle-box. &ldquo;All
+      serene!&rdquo; replied Stumpy. &ldquo;Anything up?&rdquo; &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo; There was a pause&mdash;an
+      embarrassing one&mdash;Stumpy still holding the door. Then Kentuck had
+      recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy. &ldquo;Rastled with it,&mdash;the
+      damned little cuss,&rdquo; he said, and retired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp
+      afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was a
+      formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her infant.
+      A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an animated
+      discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing for its
+      wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument partook of
+      none of those fierce personalities with which discussions were usually
+      conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should send the child
+      to Red Dog,&mdash;a distance of forty miles,&mdash;where female attention
+      could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and
+      unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed parting
+      from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained. &ldquo;Besides,&rdquo;
+       said Tom Ryder, &ldquo;them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and ring in
+      somebody else on us.&rdquo; A disbelief in the honesty of other camps prevailed
+      at Roaring Camp, as in other places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection. It
+      was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring Camp
+      as her home, and the speaker urged that &ldquo;they didn't want any more of the
+      other kind.&rdquo; This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may
+      seem, was the first spasm of propriety,&mdash;the first symptom of the
+      camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain
+      delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in
+      office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and &ldquo;Jinny&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      mammal before alluded to&mdash;could manage to rear the child. There was
+      something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased
+      the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to
+      Sacramento. &ldquo;Mind,&rdquo; said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust
+      into the expressman's hand, &ldquo;the best that can be got,&mdash;lace, you
+      know, and filigree-work and frills,&mdash;damn the cost!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of the
+      mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature took the
+      foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra
+      foothills,&mdash;that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal
+      cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,&mdash;he may have found food and
+      nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and
+      phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good
+      nursing. &ldquo;Me and that ass,&rdquo; he would say, &ldquo;has been father and mother to
+      him! Don't you,&rdquo; he would add, apostrophizing the helpless bundle before
+      him, &ldquo;never go back on us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became
+      apparent. He had generally been known as &ldquo;The Kid,&rdquo; &ldquo;Stumpy's Boy,&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+      Coyote&rdquo; (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's endearing
+      diminutive of &ldquo;The damned little cuss.&rdquo; But these were felt to be vague
+      and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another influence.
+      Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day
+      declared that the baby had brought &ldquo;the luck&rdquo; to Roaring Camp. It was
+      certain that of late they had been successful. &ldquo;Luck&rdquo; was the name agreed
+      upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience. No allusion was
+      made to the mother, and the father was unknown. &ldquo;It's better,&rdquo; said the
+      philosophical Oakhurst, &ldquo;to take a fresh deal all round. Call him Luck,
+      and start him fair.&rdquo; A day was accordingly set apart for the christening.
+      What was meant by this ceremony the reader may imagine who has already
+      gathered some idea of the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master
+      of ceremonies was one &ldquo;Boston,&rdquo; a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to
+      promise the greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two
+      days in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
+      allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand
+      godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music
+      and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar, Stumpy
+      stepped before the expectant crowd. &ldquo;It ain't my style to spoil fun,
+      boys,&rdquo; said the little man, stoutly eyeing the faces around him, &ldquo;but it
+      strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's playing it
+      pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't goin'
+      to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any godfathers round, I'd like
+      to see who's got any better rights than me.&rdquo; A silence followed Stumpy's
+      speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that the first man to
+      acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped of his fun. &ldquo;But,&rdquo;
+       said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage, &ldquo;we're here for a
+      christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas Luck, according to
+      the laws of the United States and the State of California, so help me
+      God.&rdquo; It was the first time that the name of the Deity had been otherwise
+      uttered than profanely in the camp. The form of christening was perhaps
+      even more ludicrous than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough,
+      nobody saw it and nobody laughed. &ldquo;Tommy&rdquo; was christened as seriously as
+      he would have been under a Christian roof and cried and was comforted in
+      as orthodox fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost
+      imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to
+      &ldquo;Tommy Luck&rdquo;&mdash;or &ldquo;The Luck,&rdquo; as he was more frequently called&mdash;first
+      showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and
+      whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered. The rose wood
+      cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy's way of putting it,
+      &ldquo;sorter killed the rest of the furniture.&rdquo; So the rehabilitation of the
+      cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging in at
+      Stumpy's to see &ldquo;how 'The Luck' got on&rdquo; seemed to appreciate the change,
+      and in self-defense the rival establishment of &ldquo;Tuttle's grocery&rdquo;
+       bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The reflections of the
+      latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to produce stricter habits
+      of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon
+      those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding The Luck. It was a
+      cruel mortification to Kentuck&mdash;who, in the carelessness of a large
+      nature and the habits of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments
+      as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through
+      decay&mdash;to be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons.
+      Yet such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
+      appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still shining
+      from his ablutions. Nor were moral and social sanitary laws neglected.
+      &ldquo;Tommy,&rdquo; who was supposed to spend his whole existence in a persistent
+      attempt to repose, must not be disturbed by noise. The shouting and
+      yelling, which had gained the camp its infelicitous title, were not
+      permitted within hearing distance of Stumpy's. The men conversed in
+      whispers or smoked with Indian gravity. Profanity was tacitly given up in
+      these sacred precincts, and throughout the camp a popular form of
+      expletive, known as &ldquo;D&mdash;n the luck!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Curse the luck!&rdquo; was
+      abandoned, as having a new personal bearing. Vocal music was not
+      interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and
+      one song, sung by &ldquo;Man-o'-War Jack,&rdquo; an English sailor from her Majesty's
+      Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious
+      recital of the exploits of &ldquo;the Arethusa, Seventy-four,&rdquo; in a muffled
+      minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, &ldquo;On
+      b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa.&rdquo; It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The
+      Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and
+      crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of
+      Jack or the length of his song,&mdash;it contained ninety stanzas, and was
+      continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,&mdash;the
+      lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie
+      at full length under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their
+      pipes and drinking in the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that
+      this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp. &ldquo;This 'ere kind o' think,&rdquo;
+       said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, &ldquo;is
+      'evingly.&rdquo; It reminded him of Greenwich.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from
+      whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket
+      spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the
+      ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower
+      with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would bring
+      him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted blossoms of
+      Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were
+      beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden
+      carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering mica, a fragment of
+      variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the creek, became
+      beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and were invariably pat
+      aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many treasures the woods and
+      hillsides yielded that &ldquo;would do for Tommy.&rdquo; Surrounded by playthings such
+      as never child out of fairyland had before, it is to be hoped that Tommy
+      was content. He appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an
+      infantine gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes,
+      that sometimes worried Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it
+      is recorded that once, having crept beyond his &ldquo;corral,&rdquo;&mdash;a hedge of
+      tessellated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed,&mdash;he dropped over
+      the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs
+      in the air in that position for at least five minutes with unflinching
+      gravity. He was extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many
+      other instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the
+      statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge of
+      superstition. &ldquo;I crep' up the bank just now,&rdquo; said Kentuck one day, in a
+      breathless state of excitement &ldquo;and dern my skin if he was a-talking to a
+      jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was, just as free and
+      sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each other just like two
+      cherrybums.&rdquo; Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine boughs or lying
+      lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to him the birds
+      sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed. Nature was his
+      nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between the leaves golden
+      shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send
+      wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous gum; to
+      him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the bumblebees
+      buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were &ldquo;flush times,&rdquo; and
+      the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp was
+      jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No
+      encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion more
+      perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the
+      camp they duly preempted. This, and a reputation for singular proficiency
+      with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate. The
+      expressman&mdash;their only connecting link with the surrounding world&mdash;sometimes
+      told wonderful stories of the camp. He would say, &ldquo;They've a street up
+      there in 'Roaring' that would lay over any street in Red Dog. They've got
+      vines and flowers round their houses, and they wash themselves twice a
+      day. But they're mighty rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin
+      baby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement. It
+      was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one
+      or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might
+      perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this concession
+      to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its
+      general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their
+      affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be
+      carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly yielded in
+      the hope that something might turn up to prevent it. And it did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow lay
+      deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river, and every
+      river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a tumultuous
+      watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant trees and
+      scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had been twice
+      under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. &ldquo;Water put the gold
+      into them gulches,&rdquo; said Stumpy. &ldquo;It been here once and will be here
+      again!&rdquo; And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and
+      swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber,
+      and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair
+      valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the
+      morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone.
+      Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but the
+      pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared. They
+      were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they said, a
+      man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did anybody
+      know them, and did they belong here?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed
+      and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As
+      they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was
+      cold and pulseless. &ldquo;He is dead,&rdquo; said one. Kentuck opened his eyes.
+      &ldquo;Dead?&rdquo; he repeated feebly. &ldquo;Yes, my man, and you are dying too.&rdquo; A smile
+      lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. &ldquo;Dying!&rdquo; he repeated; &ldquo;he's a-taking
+      me with him. Tell the boys I've got The Luck with me now;&rdquo; and the strong
+      man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a
+      straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the
+      unknown sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat
+      on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of
+      a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three
+      men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged
+      significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a
+      settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
+      indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was
+      another question. &ldquo;I reckon they're after somebody,&rdquo; he reflected; &ldquo;likely
+      it's me.&rdquo; He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had
+      been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and
+      quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In point of fact, Poker Flat was &ldquo;after somebody.&rdquo; It had lately suffered
+      the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent
+      citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as
+      lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret
+      committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was
+      done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the
+      boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of
+      certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these
+      were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
+      impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established
+      standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category.
+      A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a
+      sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had
+      won from them. &ldquo;It's agin justice,&rdquo; said Jim Wheeler, &ldquo;to let this yer
+      young man from Roaring Camp&mdash;an entire stranger&mdash;carry away our
+      money.&rdquo; But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those
+      who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this
+      narrower local prejudice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the
+      less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too
+      much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an
+      uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the
+      dealer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to
+      the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be
+      a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was
+      intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly
+      known as the &ldquo;Duchess&rdquo;; another, who had won the title of &ldquo;Mother
+      Shipton&rdquo;; and &ldquo;Uncle Billy,&rdquo; a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed
+      drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was
+      any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked the
+      uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to
+      the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their
+      lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few
+      hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton,
+      and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic
+      Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's
+      desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the
+      Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that
+      seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy
+      good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his
+      own riding horse, &ldquo;Five Spot,&rdquo; for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode.
+      But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The
+      young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded
+      coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of &ldquo;Five Spot&rdquo; with
+      malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping
+      anathema.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The road to Sandy Bar&mdash;a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
+      regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some
+      invitation to the emigrants&mdash;lay over a steep mountain range. It was
+      distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon
+      passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into the dry,
+      cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At
+      noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her
+      intention of going no farther, and the party halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater,
+      surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped
+      gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley.
+      It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been
+      advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy
+      Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for
+      delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a
+      philosophic commentary on the folly of &ldquo;throwing up their hand before the
+      game was played out.&rdquo; But they were furnished with liquor, which in this
+      emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In
+      spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less
+      under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state
+      into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton snored.
+      Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly
+      surveying them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required
+      coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language,
+      he &ldquo;couldn't afford it.&rdquo; As he gazed at his recumbent fellow exiles, the
+      loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life, his very
+      vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in
+      dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts
+      characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his
+      annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable
+      companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling
+      the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive
+      to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the
+      gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines
+      around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already
+      deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own name
+      called.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the
+      newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the
+      &ldquo;Innocent&rdquo; of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a &ldquo;little
+      game,&rdquo; and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune&mdash;amounting
+      to some forty dollars&mdash;of that guileless youth. After the game was
+      finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and
+      thus addressed him: &ldquo;Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble
+      worth a cent. Don't try it over again.&rdquo; He then handed him his money back,
+      pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom
+      Simson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting of
+      Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his
+      fortune. &ldquo;Alone?&rdquo; No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had run
+      away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that used
+      to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged a long
+      time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were
+      going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired
+      out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All
+      this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout, comely damsel
+      of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she had been blushing
+      unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with
+      propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.
+      He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle
+      Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to
+      recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not bear
+      trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further,
+      but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor
+      means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by
+      assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with
+      provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log house near the
+      trail. &ldquo;Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,&rdquo; said the Innocent, pointing to
+      the Duchess, &ldquo;and I can shift for myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
+      bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire
+      up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the
+      joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of
+      his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he
+      found them seated by a fire&mdash;for the air had grown strangely chill
+      and the sky overcast&mdash;in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was
+      actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was
+      listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days.
+      The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr.
+      Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability.
+      &ldquo;Is this yer a damned picnic?&rdquo; said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he
+      surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered
+      animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic
+      fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for
+      he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the
+      tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
+      The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for
+      the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so
+      honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines.
+      The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too
+      stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned
+      without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down
+      before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and
+      cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
+      strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it&mdash;snow!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for
+      there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been
+      lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to
+      his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were
+      no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his
+      usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
+      peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin
+      Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by
+      celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his
+      shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly
+      in a whirling mist of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What
+      could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over
+      the valley, and summed up the present and future in two words&mdash;&ldquo;snowed
+      in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,
+      had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious fingers of
+      Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might
+      last ten days longer. &ldquo;That is,&rdquo; said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the
+      Innocent, &ldquo;if you're willing to board us. If you ain't&mdash;and perhaps
+      you'd better not&mdash;you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with
+      provisions.&rdquo; For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself
+      to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he
+      had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He
+      dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew
+      the facts of their associate's defection. &ldquo;They'll find out the truth
+      about us all when they find out anything,&rdquo; he added, significantly, &ldquo;and
+      there's no good frightening them now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.
+      Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.
+      &ldquo;We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll
+      all go back together.&rdquo; The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and Mr.
+      Oakhurst's calm, infected the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine
+      boughs extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess
+      directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact
+      that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest
+      extent. &ldquo;I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat,&rdquo; said
+      Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened
+      her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested
+      Piney not to &ldquo;chatter.&rdquo; But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search
+      for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks.
+      He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the
+      whisky, which he had prudently cached. &ldquo;And yet it don't somehow sound
+      like whisky,&rdquo; said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the
+      blazing fire through the still-blinding storm and the group around it that
+      he settled to the conviction that it was &ldquo;square fun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as something
+      debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain
+      that, in Mother Shipton's words, he &ldquo;didn't say cards once&rdquo; during that
+      evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat
+      ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some
+      difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods
+      managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an
+      accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the
+      crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn,
+      which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and
+      vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to
+      its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to
+      infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I'm bound to die in His army.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable group,
+      and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of the vow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the stars
+      glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional
+      habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount of sleep,
+      in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed to take upon himself
+      the greater part of that duty. He excused himself to the Innocent by
+      saying that he had &ldquo;often been a week without sleep.&rdquo; &ldquo;Doing what?&rdquo; asked
+      Tom. &ldquo;Poker!&rdquo; replied Oakhurst, sententiously; &ldquo;when a man gets a streak
+      of luck,&mdash;nigger luck&mdash;he don't get tired. The luck gives in
+      first. Luck,&rdquo; continued the gambler, reflectively, &ldquo;is a mighty queer
+      thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And
+      it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a
+      streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat&mdash;you come along, and slap
+      you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all
+      right. For,&rdquo; added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I'm bound to die in His army.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
+      valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
+      provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that
+      mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry
+      landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
+      drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut&mdash;a hopeless,
+      uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which
+      the castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of
+      the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it,
+      and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that direction
+      a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for
+      that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her
+      good, she privately informed the Duchess. &ldquo;Just you go out there and cuss,
+      and see.&rdquo; She then set herself to the task of amusing &ldquo;the child,&rdquo; as she
+      and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it
+      was a soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the
+      fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
+      accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
+      flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void
+      left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney&mdash;storytelling.
+      Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their
+      personal experiences, this plan would have failed too but for the
+      Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr.
+      Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed to narrate the
+      principal incidents of that poem&mdash;having thoroughly mastered the
+      argument and fairly forgotten the words&mdash;in the current vernacular of
+      Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again
+      walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and
+      the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of
+      Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was
+      he interested in the fate of &ldquo;Ash-heels,&rdquo; as the Innocent persisted in
+      denominating the &ldquo;swift-footed Achilles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed over
+      the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from
+      leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer
+      around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their
+      prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty feet above
+      their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires,
+      even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And
+      yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and
+      looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled
+      himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful
+      than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton&mdash;once
+      the strongest of the party&mdash;seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on
+      the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; she said, in a
+      voice of querulous weakness, &ldquo;but don't say anything about it. Don't waken
+      the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it.&rdquo; Mr. Oakhurst
+      did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week,
+      untouched. &ldquo;Give 'em to the child,&rdquo; she said, pointing to the sleeping
+      Piney. &ldquo;You've starved yourself,&rdquo; said the gambler. &ldquo;That's what they call
+      it,&rdquo; said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again and, turning her
+      face to the wall, passed quietly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
+      forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the snow,
+      Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snowshoes,
+      which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. &ldquo;There's one chance in a
+      hundred to save her yet,&rdquo; he said, pointing to Piney; &ldquo;but it's there,&rdquo; he
+      added, pointing toward Poker Flat. &ldquo;If you can reach there in two days
+      she's safe.&rdquo; &ldquo;And you?&rdquo; asked Tom Simson. &ldquo;I'll stay here,&rdquo; was the curt
+      reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lovers parted with a long embrace. &ldquo;You are not going, too?&rdquo; said the
+      Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him. &ldquo;As
+      far as the canyon,&rdquo; he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the
+      Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid with
+      amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
+      whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone had
+      quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The
+      tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
+      faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
+      position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
+      Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
+      night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
+      protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
+      gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
+      closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: &ldquo;Piney, can you
+      pray?&rdquo; &ldquo;No, dear,&rdquo; said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
+      exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
+      spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head
+      of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
+      shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and
+      settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
+      looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of
+      earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung
+      from above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and
+      footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed
+      the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal
+      peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even the law of
+      Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in
+      each other's arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found
+      the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore the
+      following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+              BENEATH THIS TREE
+               LIES THE BODY
+                     OF
+               JOHN OAKHURST,
+         WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
+          ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
+                    AND
+             HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
+          ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his
+      heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
+      once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MIGGLES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the passage
+      of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle over the
+      roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last poetical quotation. The tall
+      man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed through the swaying strap
+      and his head resting upon it&mdash;altogether a limp, helpless-looking
+      object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut down too late. The French
+      lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet in a half-conscious propriety
+      of attitude, shown even in the disposition of the handkerchief which she
+      held to her forehead and which partially veiled her face. The lady from
+      Virginia City, traveling with her husband, had long since lost all
+      individuality in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls.
+      There was no sound but the rattling of wheels and the dash of rain upon
+      the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped and we became dimly aware of voices.
+      The driver was evidently in the midst of an exciting colloquy with someone
+      in the road&mdash;a colloquy of which such fragments as &ldquo;bridge gone,&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;twenty feet of water,&rdquo; &ldquo;can't pass,&rdquo; were occasionally distinguishable
+      above the storm. Then came a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road
+      shouted the parting adjuration:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try Miggles's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of a
+      horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our way to
+      Miggles's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our authority, did not remember the
+      name, and he knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe traveler thought
+      Miggles must keep a hotel. We only knew that we were stopped by high water
+      in front and rear, and that Miggles was our rock of refuge. A ten minutes
+      splashing through a tangled by-road, scarcely wide enough for the stage,
+      and we drew up before a barred and boarded gate in a wide stone wall or
+      fence about eight feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and evidently Miggles
+      did not keep a hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely locked. &ldquo;Miggles!
+      O Miggles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      No answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Migg-ells! You Miggles!&rdquo; continued the driver, with rising wrath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Migglesy!&rdquo; joined the expressman, persuasively. &ldquo;O Miggy! Mig!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles. The Judge, who
+      had finally got the window down, put his head out and propounded a series
+      of questions, which if answered categorically would have undoubtedly
+      elucidated the whole mystery, but which the driver evaded by replying that
+      &ldquo;if we didn't want to sit in the coach all night, we had better rise up
+      and sing out for Miggles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately. And when
+      we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called for
+      &ldquo;Maygells!&rdquo; whereat we all laughed. While we were laughing, the driver
+      cried &ldquo;Shoo!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of &ldquo;Miggles&rdquo; was
+      repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and
+      supplemental &ldquo;Maygells.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extraordinary echo,&rdquo; said the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Extraordinary damned skunk!&rdquo; roared the driver, contemptuously. &ldquo;Come out
+      of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don't hide in the
+      dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,&rdquo; continued Yuba Bill, now dancing
+      about in an excess of fury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miggles!&rdquo; continued the voice. &ldquo;O Miggles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My good man! Mr. Myghail!&rdquo; said the Judge, softening the asperities of
+      the name as much as possible. &ldquo;Consider the inhospitality of refusing
+      shelter from the inclemency of the weather to helpless females. Really, my
+      dear sir&mdash;&rdquo; But a succession of &ldquo;Miggles,&rdquo; ending in a burst of
+      laughter, drowned his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he
+      battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure. We
+      followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that we
+      could distinguish was that we were in a garden&mdash;from the rosebushes
+      that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves&mdash;and
+      before a long, rambling wooden building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know this Miggles?&rdquo; asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nor, don't want to,&rdquo; said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage
+      Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear sir,&rdquo; expostulated the Judge as he thought of the barred
+      gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lookee here,&rdquo; said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, &ldquo;hadn't you better go back
+      and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in,&rdquo; and he pushed
+      open the door of the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the
+      large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and
+      the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; somebody
+      sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we
+      crowded together into the room, after the driver and expressman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, be you Miggles?&rdquo; said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward
+      it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face. It was a man's
+      face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which there
+      was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had
+      sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face to
+      the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous object, without
+      further recognition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bill restrained himself with an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miggles! Be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know&rdquo;; and Yuba Bill
+      shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable stranger
+      apparently collapsed&mdash;sinking into half his size and an
+      undistinguishable heap of clothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, dern my skin,&rdquo; said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and hopelessly
+      retiring from the contest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious invertebrate
+      back into his original position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to
+      reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that from the helplessness of this
+      solitary man there must be attendants near at hand, and we all drew around
+      the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, and had never lost
+      his conversational amiability&mdash;standing before us with his back to
+      the hearth&mdash;charged us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has reached that
+      condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,' or has
+      suffered some premature abatement of his mental and physical faculties.
+      Whether he is really the Miggles&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here he was interrupted by &ldquo;Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!&rdquo; and, in
+      fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key as it had once
+      before been delivered unto us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm. The Judge, in
+      particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to come
+      directly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon discovered in a
+      large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and who
+      immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence which contrasted singularly
+      with his previous volubility. It was, undoubtedly, his voice which we had
+      heard in the road, and our friend in the chair was not responsible for the
+      discourtesy. Yuba Bill, who re-entered the room after an unsuccessful
+      search, was loath to accept the explanation, and still eyed the helpless
+      sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in which he had put up his
+      horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical. &ldquo;Thar ain't nobody but
+      him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar damned old skeesicks knows
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based. Bill had
+      scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the porch, the
+      trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and with flash of white
+      teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony or
+      diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned
+      back against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman, whose
+      wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of the feminine
+      curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of whose head, topped by
+      a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little feet and ankles, hidden
+      somewhere in the recesses of her boy's brogans, all was grace&mdash;this
+      was Miggles, laughing at us, too, in the most airy, frank, offhand manner
+      imaginable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, boys,&rdquo; said she, quite out of breath, and holding one little
+      hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of our
+      party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose features had
+      relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile cheerfulness&mdash;&ldquo;you
+      see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed down the road. I
+      thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody
+      was home but Jim,&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;I'm out of breath&mdash;and&mdash;that
+      lets me out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with a
+      mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us; attempted
+      to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt; laughed and sat
+      down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll trouble you for that thar harpin,&rdquo; said Miggles, gravely. Half a
+      dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing hairpin was
+      restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the room, looked keenly
+      in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes looked back at hers with an
+      expression we had never seen before. Life and intelligence seemed to
+      struggle back into the rugged face. Miggles laughed again&mdash;it was a
+      singularly eloquent laugh&mdash;and turned her black eyes and white teeth
+      once more toward us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This afflicted person is&mdash;&rdquo; hesitated the Judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim,&rdquo; said Miggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brother?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady passengers who
+      I had noticed did not participate in the general masculine admiration of
+      Miggles, and said gravely, &ldquo;No; it's Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers moved closer to each
+      other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and the tall
+      man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at this emergency.
+      But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious, broke the silence. &ldquo;Come,&rdquo;
+       she said briskly, &ldquo;you must be hungry. Who'll bear a hand to help me get
+      tea?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba Bill was engaged like
+      Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the expressman was grinding
+      coffee on the veranda; to myself the arduous duty of slicing bacon was
+      assigned; and the Judge lent each man his good-humored and voluble
+      counsel. And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and our Hibernian &ldquo;deck
+      passenger,&rdquo; set the table with all the available crockery, we had become
+      quite joyous, in spite of the rain that beat against windows, the wind
+      that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered together in
+      the corner, or the magpie who uttered a satirical and croaking commentary
+      on their conversation from his perch above. In the now bright, blazing
+      fire we could see that the walls were papered with illustrated journals,
+      arranged with feminine taste and discrimination. The furniture was
+      extemporized, and adapted from candle boxes and packing-cases, and covered
+      with gay calico, or the skin of some animal. The armchair of the helpless
+      Jim was an ingenious variation of a flour barrel. There was neatness, and
+      even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the
+      long low room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a social triumph&mdash;chiefly,
+      I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in guiding the conversation,
+      asking all the questions herself, yet bearing throughout a frankness that
+      rejected the idea of any concealment on her own part, so that we talked of
+      ourselves, of our prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of each other&mdash;of
+      everything but our host and hostess. It must be confessed that Miggles's
+      conversation was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she
+      employed expletives the use of which had generally been yielded to our
+      sex. But they were delivered with such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes,
+      and were usually followed by a laugh&mdash;a laugh peculiar to Miggles&mdash;so
+      frank and honest that it seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy body
+      against the outer walls of the house. This was shortly followed by a
+      scratching and sniffling at the door. &ldquo;That's Joaquin,&rdquo; said Miggles, in
+      reply to our questioning glances; &ldquo;would you like to see him?&rdquo; Before we
+      could answer she had opened the door, and disclosed a half-grown grizzly,
+      who instantly raised himself on his haunches, with his forepaws hanging
+      down in the popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at
+      Miggles, with a very singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba Bill.
+      &ldquo;That's my watch dog,&rdquo; said Miggles, in explanation. &ldquo;Oh, he don't bite,&rdquo;
+       she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into a corner. &ldquo;Does he,
+      old Toppy?&rdquo; (the latter remark being addressed directly to the sagacious
+      Joaquin). &ldquo;I tell you what, boys,&rdquo; continued Miggles after she had fed and
+      closed the door on URSA MINOR, &ldquo;you were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't
+      hanging round when you dropped in tonight.&rdquo; &ldquo;Where was he?&rdquo; asked the
+      Judge. &ldquo;With me,&rdquo; said Miggles. &ldquo;Lord love you; he trots round with me
+      nights like as if he was a man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind. Perhaps we all
+      had the same picture before us&mdash;of Miggles walking through the rainy
+      woods, with her savage guardian at her side. The Judge, I remember, said
+      something about Una and her lion; but Miggles received it as she did other
+      compliments, with quiet gravity. Whether she was altogether unconscious of
+      the admiration she excited&mdash;she could hardly have been oblivious of
+      Yuba Bill's adoration&mdash;I know not; but her very frankness suggested a
+      perfect sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the younger
+      members of our party.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to the
+      opinions of those of her own sex who were present. In fact, the repast
+      over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers that no pine
+      boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth
+      could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and, suddenly declaring that it
+      was time to &ldquo;turn in,&rdquo; offered to show the ladies to their bed in an
+      adjoining room. &ldquo;You boys will have to camp out here by the fire as well
+      as you can,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;for thar ain't but the one room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our sex&mdash;by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger
+      portion of humanity&mdash;has been generally relieved from the imputation
+      of curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say that
+      hardly had the door closed on Miggles than we crowded together,
+      whispering, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises, and
+      a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her singular
+      companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat
+      like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference
+      of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels. In the midst
+      of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and Miggles re-entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had flashed
+      upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment on the
+      threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left behind her
+      the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a moment before. Coming into
+      the room, she drew a low stool beside the paralytic's chair, sat down,
+      drew the blanket over her shoulders, and saying, &ldquo;If it's all the same to
+      you, boys, as we're rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight,&rdquo; took the
+      invalid's withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon the dying
+      fire. An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory to more
+      confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous curiosity,
+      kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the roof, wandering gusts of wind
+      stirred the embers into momentary brightness, until, in a lull of the
+      elements, Miggles suddenly lifted up her head, and, throwing her hair over
+      her shoulder, turned her face upon the group and asked:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there any of you that knows me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53. Everybody knew me there, and
+      everybody had the right to know me. I kept the Polka saloon until I came
+      to live with Jim. That's six years ago. Perhaps I've changed some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned her head
+      to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she again spoke, and
+      then more rapidly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's no great
+      harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim here&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      took his hand in both of hers as she spoke&mdash;&ldquo;used to know me, if you
+      didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he spent all he had.
+      And one day&mdash;it's six years ago this winter&mdash;Jim came into my
+      back room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and
+      never moved again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and never
+      seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said as how it was
+      caused all along of his way of life&mdash;for Jim was mighty free and
+      wild-like&mdash;and that he would never get better, and couldn't last long
+      anyway. They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he was
+      no good to anyone and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was
+      something in Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I said
+      'No.' I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody&mdash;gentlemen
+      like yourself, sir, came to see me&mdash;and I sold out my business and
+      bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel,
+      you see, and I brought my baby here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke, slowly
+      shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the ruined man
+      between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if she
+      offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and expressionless,
+      it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten with the Divine
+      thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm around her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about yer, for I
+      was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any woman to help me,
+      and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the Indians hereabout, who'd do
+      odd jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North Fork, Jim and I
+      managed to worry through. The Doctor would run up from Sacramento once in
+      a while. He'd ask to see 'Miggles's baby,' as he called Jim, and when he'd
+      go away, he'd say, 'Miggles; you're a trump&mdash;God bless you'; and it
+      didn't seem so lonely after that. But the last time he was here he said,
+      as he opened the door to go, 'Do you know, Miggles, your baby will grow up
+      to be a man yet and an honor to his mother; but not here, Miggles, not
+      here!' And I thought he went away sad&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;&rdquo; and here
+      Miggles's voice and head were somehow both lost completely in the shadow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The folks about here are very kind,&rdquo; said Miggles, after a pause, coming
+      a little into the light again. &ldquo;The men from the fork used to hang around
+      here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the women are kind&mdash;and
+      don't call. I was pretty lonely until I picked up Joaquin in the woods
+      yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and taught him to beg for his
+      dinner; and then thar's Polly&mdash;that's the magpie&mdash;she knows no
+      end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of evenings with her talk, and
+      so I don't feel like as I was the only living being about the ranch. And
+      Jim here,&rdquo; said Miggles, with her old laugh again, and coming out quite
+      into the firelight, &ldquo;Jim&mdash;why, boys, you would admire to see how much
+      he knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he looks
+      at 'em just as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're sitting
+      alone, I read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord!&rdquo; said Miggles, with
+      her frank laugh, &ldquo;I've read him that whole side of the house this winter.
+      There never was such a man for reading as Jim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why,&rdquo; asked the Judge, &ldquo;do you not marry this man to whom you have
+      devoted your youthful life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see,&rdquo; said Miggles, &ldquo;it would be playing it rather low down on
+      Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then, too, if we were
+      man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound to do what I do now of
+      my own accord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are young yet and attractive&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's getting late,&rdquo; said Miggles, gravely, &ldquo;and you'd better all turn in.
+      Good night, boys&rdquo;; and, throwing the blanket over her head, Miggles laid
+      herself down beside Jim's chair, her head pillowed on the low stool that
+      held his feet, and spoke no more. The fire slowly faded from the hearth;
+      we each sought our blankets in silence; and presently there was no sound
+      in the long room but the pattering of the rain upon the roof and the heavy
+      breathing of the sleepers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream. The storm had
+      passed, the stars were shining, and through the shutterless window the
+      full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines without, looked into the
+      room. It touched the lonely figure in the chair with an infinite
+      compassion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood the lowly head of
+      the woman whose hair, as in the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him
+      she loved. It even lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba
+      Bill, half-reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
+      savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then I fell asleep and
+      only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me, and &ldquo;All aboard&rdquo;
+       ringing in my ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone. We wandered
+      about the house and lingered long after the horses were harnessed, but she
+      did not return. It was evident that she wished to avoid a formal
+      leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we had come. After we had
+      helped the ladies into the coach, we returned to the house and solemnly
+      shook hands with the paralytic Jim, as solemnly settling him back into
+      position after each handshake. Then we looked for the last time around the
+      long low room, at the stool where Miggles had sat, and slowly took our
+      seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked, and we were off!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six horses
+      back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk. For there, on a
+      little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her hair flying, her eyes
+      sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and her white teeth flashing a
+      last &ldquo;good-by.&rdquo; We waved our hats in return. And then Yuba Bill, as if
+      fearful of further fascination, madly lashed his horses forward, and we
+      sank back in our seats. We exchanged not a word until we reached the North
+      Fork, and the stage drew up at the Independence House. Then, the Judge
+      leading, we walked into the barroom and took our places gravely at the
+      bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?&rdquo; said the Judge, solemnly taking off
+      his white hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, here's to MIGGLES. GOD BLESS HER!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps He had. Who knows?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
+      certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in 1854
+      most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were derived
+      from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of &ldquo;Dungaree Jack&rdquo;; or
+      from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in &ldquo;Saleratus Bill,&rdquo; so called
+      from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread; or for some
+      unlucky slip, as exhibited in &ldquo;The Iron Pirate,&rdquo; a mild, inoffensive man,
+      who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the
+      term &ldquo;iron pyrites.&rdquo; Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude
+      heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's real
+      name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported statement. &ldquo;Call
+      yourself Clifford, do you?&rdquo; said Boston, addressing a timid newcomer with
+      infinite scorn; &ldquo;hell is full of such Cliffords!&rdquo; He then introduced the
+      unfortunate man, whose name happened to be really Clifford, as &ldquo;Jay-bird
+      Charley&rdquo;&mdash;an unhallowed inspiration of the moment that clung to him
+      ever after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other than
+      this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and distinct
+      individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he left Poker
+      Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He never got
+      any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by a young
+      person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals. One
+      morning he said something to her which caused her to smile not unkindly,
+      to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his upturned,
+      serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He followed her, and
+      emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast and victory. That day
+      week they were married by a justice of the peace, and returned to Poker
+      Flat. I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I
+      prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar&mdash;in the gulches and
+      barrooms&mdash;where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of
+      humor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason that
+      Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took occasion to say
+      something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said, she
+      smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated&mdash;this time as far as
+      Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to
+      housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's
+      Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his
+      fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned from
+      Marysville, without his Partner's wife&mdash;she having smiled and
+      retreated with somebody else&mdash;Tennessee's Partner was the first man
+      to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered
+      in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their
+      indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in
+      Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation.
+      In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical detail
+      which was unpleasant in a difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar. He
+      was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these
+      suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued
+      intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be
+      accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last
+      Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his
+      way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled the
+      time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically concluded
+      the interview in the following words: &ldquo;And now, young man, I'll trouble
+      you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see your weppings
+      might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation to
+      the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was San Francisco. I
+      shall endeavor to call.&rdquo; It may be stated here that Tennessee had a fine
+      flow of humor, which no business preoccupation could wholly subdue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause against
+      the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same fashion as his
+      prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him, he made a
+      desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the crowd before
+      the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon; but at its farther
+      extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The men looked at
+      each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed
+      and independent; and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth
+      century would have been called heroic, but, in the nineteenth, simply
+      &ldquo;reckless.&rdquo; &ldquo;What have you got there?&mdash;I call,&rdquo; said Tennessee,
+      quietly. &ldquo;Two bowers and an ace,&rdquo; said the stranger, as quietly, showing
+      two revolvers and a bowie knife. &ldquo;That takes me,&rdquo; returned Tennessee; and
+      with this gamblers' epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode
+      back with his captor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
+      going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
+      evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with
+      heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth
+      faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce
+      passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank of
+      the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.
+      Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the
+      express office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless
+      panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
+      deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark
+      firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter
+      passionless stars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a
+      judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
+      their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The
+      law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and
+      personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their
+      hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they were
+      already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their own
+      minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that
+      might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged, on
+      general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than
+      his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more
+      anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took a
+      grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. &ldquo;I don't take any hand
+      in this yer game,&rdquo; had been his invariable but good-humored reply to all
+      questions. The Judge&mdash;who was also his captor&mdash;for a moment
+      vaguely regretted that he had not shot him &ldquo;on sight&rdquo; that morning, but
+      presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind.
+      Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that
+      Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted
+      at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to whom
+      the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him as a
+      relief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a
+      square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
+      &ldquo;jumper&rdquo; and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect
+      under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even
+      ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he was
+      carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and
+      inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched
+      had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he
+      advanced with great gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each
+      person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious,
+      perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
+      complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and
+      thus addressed the Judge:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was passin' by,&rdquo; he began, by way of apology, &ldquo;and I thought I'd just
+      step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar&mdash;my
+      pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the
+      Bar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological
+      recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket handkerchief, and for
+      some moments mopped his face diligently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?&rdquo; said the Judge,
+      finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thet's it,&rdquo; said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. &ldquo;I come yar as
+      Tennessee's pardner&mdash;knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet
+      and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but thar
+      ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness as he's been
+      up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez you&mdash;confidential-like,
+      and between man and man&mdash;sez you, 'Do you know anything in his
+      behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I&mdash;confidential-like, as between man
+      and man&mdash;'What should a man know of his pardner?'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this all you have to say?&rdquo; asked the Judge impatiently, feeling,
+      perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize the
+      Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thet's so,&rdquo; continued Tennessee's Partner. &ldquo;It ain't for me to say
+      anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants
+      money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner. Well,
+      what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches that
+      stranger. And you lays for HIM, and you fetches HIM; and the honors is
+      easy. And I put it to you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you, gentlemen,
+      all, as far-minded men, ef this isn't so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Prisoner,&rdquo; said the Judge, interrupting, &ldquo;have you any questions to ask
+      this man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&rdquo; continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. &ldquo;I play this yer hand
+      alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has
+      played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer
+      camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more; some would say
+      less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a watch&mdash;it's
+      about all my pile&mdash;and call it square!&rdquo; And before a hand could be
+      raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon
+      the table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their
+      feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to &ldquo;throw
+      him from the window&rdquo; was only overridden by a gesture from the Judge.
+      Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's
+      Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with his
+      handkerchief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use of
+      forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be
+      condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue, and
+      those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled
+      slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the
+      gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated
+      sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the
+      belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and
+      saying, &ldquo;This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,&rdquo;
+       he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him
+      back. &ldquo;If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it
+      now.&rdquo; For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
+      strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and,
+      saying, &ldquo;Euchred, old man!&rdquo; held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took it
+      in his own, and saying, &ldquo;I just dropped in as I was passin' to see how
+      things was gettin' on,&rdquo; let the hand passively fall, and adding that it
+      was a warm night, again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and without
+      another word withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled insult
+      of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch&mdash;who, whether bigoted, weak, or
+      narrow, was at least incorruptible&mdash;firmly fixed in the mind of that
+      mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and at
+      the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the top of
+      Marley's Hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
+      perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,
+      with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future evildoers,
+      in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was present, and to whose
+      vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty of that
+      midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky, the
+      awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and promise
+      of Nature, and above all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled through
+      each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social lesson. And yet,
+      when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its
+      possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing
+      that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed,
+      the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the RED DOG CLARION was
+      right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous tree.
+      But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular
+      appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road. As
+      they approached, they at once recognized the venerable &ldquo;Jenny&rdquo; and the
+      two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner&mdash;used by him
+      in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner of the
+      equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the perspiration
+      from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for
+      the body of the &ldquo;diseased,&rdquo; &ldquo;if it was all the same to the committee.&rdquo; He
+      didn't wish to &ldquo;hurry anything&rdquo;; he could &ldquo;wait.&rdquo; He was not working that
+      day; and when the gentlemen were done with the &ldquo;diseased,&rdquo; he would take
+      him. &ldquo;Ef thar is any present,&rdquo; he added, in his simple, serious way, &ldquo;as
+      would care to jine in the fun'l, they kin come.&rdquo; Perhaps it was from a
+      sense of humor, which I have already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar&mdash;perhaps
+      it was from something even better than that; but two-thirds of the
+      loungers accepted the invitation at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of his
+      Partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that it
+      contained a rough, oblong box&mdash;apparently made from a section of
+      sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was
+      further decorated with slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye
+      blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew
+      over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in
+      front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward. The
+      equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was habitual with
+      &ldquo;Jenny&rdquo; even under less solemn circumstances. The men&mdash;half
+      curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly&mdash;strolled along
+      beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the homely
+      catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the road or some present
+      sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to the rear in
+      couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external show of a
+      formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a funeral
+      march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from a lack of
+      sympathy and appreciation&mdash;not having, perhaps, your true humorist's
+      capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The way led through Grizzly Canyon&mdash;by this time clothed in funereal
+      drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in the
+      red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth
+      benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,
+      surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the ferns
+      by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain a
+      secure outlook from higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their
+      wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy
+      Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
+      cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
+      the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the
+      California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay superadded.
+      A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure, which in the brief
+      days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity had been used as a
+      garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we approached it we were
+      surprised to find that what we had taken for a recent attempt at
+      cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of
+      assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed
+      throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back and
+      deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down the
+      board which served as a lid; and mounting the little mound of earth beside
+      it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his handkerchief.
+      This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech; and they disposed
+      themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When a man,&rdquo; began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, &ldquo;has been running free
+      all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And if
+      he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do? Why,
+      bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we brings
+      him home from his wandering.&rdquo; He paused, and picked up a fragment of
+      quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: &ldquo;It ain't the
+      first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now. It ain't
+      the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help
+      himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have waited for him on
+      yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he couldn't
+      speak, and didn't know me. And now that it's the last time, why&rdquo;&mdash;he
+      paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve&mdash;&ldquo;you see it's sort
+      of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen,&rdquo; he added, abruptly, picking
+      up his long-handled shovel, &ldquo;the fun'l's over; and my thanks, and
+      Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave,
+      turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments' hesitation
+      gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy Bar
+      from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's Partner,
+      his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his knees, and
+      his face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief. But it was argued by
+      others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that
+      distance; and this point remained undecided.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
+      Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had cleared
+      him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a suspicion of
+      his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on him, and
+      proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses. But from that day
+      his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline; and when the
+      rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were beginning to
+      peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed. One
+      night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in the storm, and
+      trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the
+      swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from
+      the pillow, saying, &ldquo;It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put 'Jinny' in
+      the cart&rdquo;; and would have risen from his bed but for the restraint of his
+      attendant. Struggling, he still pursued his singular fancy: &ldquo;There, now,
+      steady, 'Jinny'&mdash;steady, old girl. How dark it is! Look out for the
+      ruts&mdash;and look out for him, too, old gal. Sometimes, you know, when
+      he's blind-drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight up to
+      the pine on the top of the hill. Thar&mdash;I told you so!&mdash;thar he
+      is&mdash;coming this way, too&mdash;all by himself, sober, and his face
+      a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they met.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much
+      the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long he
+      had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long he
+      should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered. A
+      tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and
+      saturated his moral being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular, was
+      not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to attract
+      attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a temporary
+      tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, &ldquo;Effects of McCorkle's
+      whisky&mdash;kills at forty rods,&rdquo; with a hand pointing to McCorkle's
+      saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire, personal; and
+      was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process rather than a
+      commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this facetious
+      exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule, released from his
+      pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curiously at
+      the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy which the
+      species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty boots, and curled
+      himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in the sunlight,
+      with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious and doglike in its
+      implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until they
+      crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with gigantic
+      parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted by the
+      plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon the
+      recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not.
+      And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other
+      philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Mary,&rdquo; as she was known to the little flock that she had just
+      dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
+      afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
+      azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it&mdash;picking her
+      way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of
+      disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon
+      Sandy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she had
+      paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and halted
+      for a moment&mdash;at least six feet from this prostrate monster&mdash;with
+      her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither sound
+      nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then overturned
+      the satirical headboard, and muttered &ldquo;Beasts!&rdquo;&mdash;an epithet which
+      probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the entire
+      male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain
+      rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the
+      demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly
+      celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps
+      fairly earned the reputation of being &ldquo;stuck-up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were heating
+      Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature, and that
+      his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to place it
+      over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly as his eyes
+      were open. Yet she did it, and made good her retreat. But she was somewhat
+      concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was removed, and that
+      Sandy was sitting up and saying something.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied
+      that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from
+      childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but
+      condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right to
+      dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the statement
+      of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward expression was
+      vague, being limited to a repetition of the following formula&mdash;&ldquo;Su'shine
+      all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of distance,
+      asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wass up? Wasser maar?&rdquo; continued Sandy, in a very high key.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up, you horrid man!&rdquo; said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; &ldquo;get
+      up, and go home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary trembled.
+      He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wass I go home for?&rdquo; he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go and take a bath,&rdquo; replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with great
+      disfavor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest, threw
+      them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly forward,
+      darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodness heavens!&mdash;the man will be drowned!&rdquo; said Miss Mary; and
+      then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and
+      locked herself in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's
+      wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got
+      drunk. &ldquo;Abner,&rdquo; responded Mrs. Stidger, reflectively, &ldquo;let's see: Abner
+      hasn't been tight since last 'lection.&rdquo; Miss Mary would have liked to ask
+      if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath
+      would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation, which
+      she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with opening her
+      gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger&mdash;a fine specimen of
+      Southwestern efflorescence&mdash;and then dismissed the subject
+      altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston: &ldquo;I
+      think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least
+      objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
+      anything that could make the women tolerable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that her
+      afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another direction.
+      She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of azalea
+      blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not strange, as
+      her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and invariably
+      kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines; but, on
+      questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the azaleas. A
+      few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the
+      window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous laughter
+      that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss Mary could get
+      from him was, that someone had been &ldquo;looking in the winder.&rdquo; Irate and
+      indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle with the intruder. As
+      she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came plump upon the quondam
+      drunkard&mdash;now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly sheepish and
+      guilty-looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in her
+      present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also, that the
+      beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was amiable-looking&mdash;in
+      fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored, silken beard apparently
+      had never yet known the touch of barber's razor or Delilah's shears. So
+      that the cutting speech which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her
+      lips, and she contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with
+      supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she
+      re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense
+      of revelation. And then she laughed, and the little people all laughed,
+      and they were all unconsciously very happy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on a hot day&mdash;and not long after this&mdash;that two
+      short-legged boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail
+      of water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that
+      Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring
+      herself. At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a
+      blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss
+      Mary was both embarrassed and angry. &ldquo;If you carried more of that for
+      yourself,&rdquo; she said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to
+      raise her lashes to its owner, &ldquo;you'd do better.&rdquo; In the submissive
+      silence that followed she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly
+      at the door that he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again&mdash;a
+      laugh in which Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her
+      pale cheek. The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door,
+      and as mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
+      &ldquo;Profane Bill,&rdquo; driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
+      newspapers for his &ldquo;gallantry&rdquo; in invariably offering the box seat to the
+      fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground that
+      he had a habit of &ldquo;cussin' on upgrades,&rdquo; and gave her half the coach to
+      herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden with her in
+      the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a confederate
+      for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother of a pupil
+      whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's
+      temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship
+      the priestess from afar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,
+      glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red
+      Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.
+      Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of the
+      firs &ldquo;did her chest good,&rdquo; for certainly her slight cough was less
+      frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending
+      lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or
+      listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and
+      took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling
+      shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap
+      finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass, and
+      the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such localities&mdash;what
+      infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged rock and clay passed,
+      the last unsightly chasm crossed&mdash;how the waiting woods opened their
+      long files to receive them! How the children&mdash;perhaps because they
+      had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother&mdash;threw
+      themselves face downward on her brown bosom with uncouth caresses, filling
+      the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary herself&mdash;felinely
+      fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity of spotless skirts,
+      collar, and cuffs&mdash;forgot all, and ran like a crested quail at the
+      head of her brood until, romping, laughing, and panting, with a loosened
+      braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat,
+      she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the forest, upon&mdash;the
+      luckless Sandy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensued
+      need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had
+      already established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough that
+      he was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with that
+      quick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized a
+      friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and took
+      other liberties&mdash;as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had built
+      a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of woodcraft,
+      their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such foolish, idle,
+      happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the schoolmistress,
+      gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the sloping hillside weaving
+      wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same attitude as he had
+      lain when first they met. Nor was the similitude greatly forced. The
+      weakness of an easy, sensuous nature that had found a dreamy exaltation in
+      liquor, it is to be feared was now finding an equal intoxication in love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he
+      longed to be doing something&mdash;slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage,
+      or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,
+      gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in a heroic
+      attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being only
+      withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction that it
+      does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my fairest reader,
+      who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some uninteresting
+      stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues, will
+      forgive the omission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they sat there, undisturbed&mdash;the woodpeckers chattering overhead
+      and the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.
+      What they said matters little. What they thought&mdash;which might have
+      been interesting&mdash;did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how
+      Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house, to come to
+      California, for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an
+      orphan, too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived a
+      wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which, from
+      a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and a waste
+      of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when the
+      children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which the
+      schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the
+      outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her weary
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of Red
+      Gulch&mdash;to use a local euphuism&mdash;&ldquo;dried up&rdquo; also. In another day
+      Miss Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know
+      her no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on
+      her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss
+      Mary&mdash;I fear to the danger of school discipline&mdash;was lately in
+      the habit of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other
+      woodland memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts
+      that a gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself
+      into the remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted
+      itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the
+      door. On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of
+      whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
+      pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious; but
+      as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled her
+      white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts. It was,
+      perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a moment's
+      hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the dust beside
+      the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long bench. Her voice
+      was husky as she began:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I couldn't
+      let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my Tommy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
+      attention she could give him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, miss; thank ye!&rdquo; cried the stranger, brightening even through
+      the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her &ldquo;war paint,&rdquo; and
+      striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
+      schoolmistress. &ldquo;I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,
+      there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't
+      much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives than
+      he's got.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her shoulder,
+      opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,&rdquo; she went
+      on, hurriedly. &ldquo;It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to do it,
+      either; but I come to ask a favor&mdash;not for me, miss&mdash;not for me,
+      but for the darling boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her
+      lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees, she
+      went on, in a low voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I
+      ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of
+      sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing a
+      schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
+      right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And O, miss, he loves you
+      so much; and if you could hear him talk about you, in his pretty way, and
+      if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is natural,&rdquo; she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled strangely
+      between pride and humility&mdash;&ldquo;it's natural that he should take to you,
+      miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a gentleman&mdash;and the
+      boy must forget me, sooner or later&mdash;and so I ain't goin' to cry
+      about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy&mdash;God bless him for
+      the bestest, sweetest boy that lives&mdash;to&mdash;to&mdash;take him with
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had fallen
+      on her knees beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some good
+      school, where you can go and see him, and help him to&mdash;to&mdash;to
+      forget his mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be
+      kindness to what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this wicked
+      life, this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will; I know
+      you will&mdash;won't you? You will&mdash;you must not, you cannot say no!
+      You will make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown
+      up, you will tell him his father's name&mdash;the name that hasn't passed
+      my lips for years&mdash;the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here
+      Sandy! Miss Mary!&mdash;do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to
+      me! You will take my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought
+      not to look on such as me. Miss Mary!&mdash;my God, be merciful!&mdash;she
+      is leaving me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her way to
+      the open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, her eyes
+      fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky. There
+      was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on her white
+      collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly away. The
+      suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but I
+      cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!&mdash;I see it in
+      your sweet face&mdash;such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in
+      your eyes, Miss Mary!&mdash;you will take my boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with something
+      of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Red
+      Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take the boy. Send him to me tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. She
+      would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not. She
+      rose to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does&mdash;this man&mdash;know of your intention?&rdquo; asked Miss Mary,
+      suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to him at once&mdash;tonight&mdash;now! Tell him what you have done.
+      Tell him I have taken his child, and tell him&mdash;he must never see&mdash;see&mdash;the
+      child again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it,
+      he must not follow! There, go now, please&mdash;I'm weary, and&mdash;have
+      much yet to do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the
+      young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure
+      breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill took
+      the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for the
+      schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, in
+      obedience to a pleasant voice from the &ldquo;inside,&rdquo; he suddenly reined up his
+      horses and respectfully waited as Tommy hopped out at the command of Miss
+      Mary. &ldquo;Not that bush, Tommy&mdash;the next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a tall
+      azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and boot
+      heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evident that one
+      of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the part of
+      loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and some concern
+      in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further indicated
+      that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the box seat, noted
+      with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that he depreciated the sex, but
+      that he recognized therein a deceitful element, the pursuit of which
+      sometimes drew mankind away from the equally uncertain blandishments of
+      poker&mdash;of which it may be remarked that Mr. Hamlin was a professional
+      exponent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down, he
+      did not even glance at the window from which a green veil was fluttering,
+      but lounged up and down with that listless and grave indifference of his
+      class, which was, perhaps, the next thing to good breeding. With his
+      closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he was a marked contrast to
+      the other passengers, with their feverish restlessness and boisterous
+      emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly
+      dress, his overflowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness
+      and barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese, I fear cut
+      but an unromantic figure beside this lonely calculator of chances, with
+      his pale Greek face and Homeric gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The driver called &ldquo;All aboard!&rdquo; and Mr. Hamlin returned to the coach. His
+      foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the level of the open
+      window, when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to be the finest
+      eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped down again,
+      addressed a few words to one of the inside passengers, effected an
+      exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin never
+      allowed his philosophy to interfere with decisive and prompt action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the other
+      passengers&mdash;particularly those who were making themselves most
+      agreeable to the lady. One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed
+      to her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's profession in a single epithet.
+      Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he recognized in the informant a
+      distinguished jurist from whom, but a few evenings before, he had won
+      several thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed no
+      sign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the
+      legal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of his
+      neighbor. An Indian stoicism&mdash;said to be an inheritance from his
+      maternal ancestor&mdash;stood him in good service, until the rolling
+      wheels rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the stage drew
+      up at the International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentleman and a member
+      of Congress leaped out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess,
+      while Colonel Starbottle, of Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and
+      shawl. In this multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion
+      and delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach, took
+      the lady's hand&mdash;with that decision and positiveness which a
+      hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire&mdash;and in an instant
+      had dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again lifted
+      her to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from that
+      other cynic, &ldquo;Yuba Bill,&rdquo; the driver. &ldquo;Look keerfully arter that baggage,
+      Kernel,&rdquo; said the expressman, with affected concern, as he looked after
+      Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the triumphant
+      procession to the waiting-room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled, and
+      awaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and out into
+      the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one leaving pleasant fancy
+      behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by the roadside shaded their eyes
+      with their hands and looked after him, recognizing the man by his horse,
+      and speculating what &ldquo;was up with Comanche Jack.&rdquo; Yet much of this
+      interest centered in the horse, in a community where the time made by
+      &ldquo;French Pete's&rdquo; mare in his run from the Sheriff of Calaveras eclipsed all
+      concern in the ultimate fate of that worthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself. He
+      checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used as a
+      cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly from his
+      fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape changed and became
+      more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosed some rude
+      attempts at cultivation&mdash;a flowering vine trailed over the porch of
+      one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled babe under the roses of another.
+      A little farther on Mr. Hamlin came upon some barelegged children wading
+      in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage peculiar to
+      himself that they were emboldened to climb up his horse's legs and over
+      his saddle, until he was fain to develop an exaggerated ferocity of
+      demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some kisses and coin. And then,
+      advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of habitation failed, he
+      began to sing&mdash;uplifting a tenor so singularly sweet, and shaded by a
+      pathos so subduing and tender, that I wot the robins and linnets stopped
+      to listen. Mr. Hamlin's voice was not cultivated; the subject of his song
+      was some sentimental lunacy borrowed from the Negro minstrels; but there
+      thrilled through all some occult quality of tone and expression that was
+      unspeakably touching. Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to see this
+      sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at
+      his back, sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a plaint
+      about his &ldquo;Nelly's grave&rdquo; in a way that overflowed the eyes of the
+      listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly
+      recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and
+      was fain to confess the superiority of man. With a superior predatory
+      capacity, HE couldn't sing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and at his
+      former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps, and
+      decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and
+      indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in
+      sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was
+      clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic
+      ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and
+      dismounted before the gilded windows of the &ldquo;Magnolia&rdquo; saloon. Passing
+      through the long barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a
+      dark passage, opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in a
+      dimly lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the
+      locality, showed signs of abuse. The inlaid center table was overlaid with
+      stained disks that were not contemplated in the original design. The
+      embroidered armchairs were discolored, and the green velvet lounge, on
+      which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was soiled at the foot with the red soil
+      of Wingdam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, looking at a highly
+      colored painting above him representing a young creature of opulent
+      charms. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that he had never
+      seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he should, he would not,
+      probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he was thinking of another style
+      of beauty. But just then someone knocked at the door. Without rising, he
+      pulled a cord that apparently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open,
+      and a man entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust&mdash;a vigor not borne out
+      in the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and disfigured
+      by dissipation. He appeared to be also under the influence of liquor, for
+      he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, &ldquo;I thought Kate was here,&rdquo;
+       stammered, and seemed confused and embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam coach,
+      and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You didn't come up on the stage,&rdquo; continued the newcomer, &ldquo;did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Hamlin; &ldquo;I left it at Scott's Ferry. It isn't due for half
+      an hour yet. But how's luck, Brown?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn bad,&rdquo; said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of weak
+      despair; &ldquo;I'm cleaned out again, Jack,&rdquo; he continued, in a whining tone
+      that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure, &ldquo;can't you help me
+      with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup? You see I've got to send money
+      home to the old woman, and&mdash;you've won twenty times that amount from
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack overlooked it,
+      and handed the sum to his visitor. &ldquo;The old-woman business is about played
+      out, Brown,&rdquo; he added, by way of commentary; &ldquo;why don't you say you want
+      to buck agin' faro? You know you ain't married!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fact, sir,&rdquo; said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere contact of
+      the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some dignity to his frame.
+      &ldquo;I've got a wife&mdash;a damned good one, too, if I do say it&mdash;in the
+      States. It's three year since I've seen her, and a year since I've writ to
+      her. When things is about straight, and we get down to the lead, I'm going
+      to send for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Kate?&rdquo; queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
+      confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but poorly
+      carried out, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know. But come, what
+      do you say to a little game? Give us a show to double this hundred.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. Perhaps he knew that
+      the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred that it should
+      flow back into his own coffers rather than any other. He nodded his head,
+      and drew his chair toward the table. At the same moment there came a rap
+      upon the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Kate,&rdquo; said Mr. Brown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened. But, for the first
+      time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved and abashed,
+      and for the first time in his life the hot blood crimsoned his colorless
+      cheeks to his forehead. For before him stood the lady he had lifted from
+      the Wingdam coach, whom Brown&mdash;dropping his cards with a hysterical
+      laugh&mdash;greeted as:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My old woman, by thunder!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her husband.
+      I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the story. And the
+      WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head of &ldquo;Touching Reunion,&rdquo;
+       said: &ldquo;One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar to
+      California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of
+      Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the effete civilization of the East
+      and its inhospitable climate, resolved to join her noble husband upon
+      these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention, she undertook
+      the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the husband may be
+      easier imagined than described. The meeting is said to have been
+      indescribably affecting. We trust her example may be followed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful
+      speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily
+      improved. He bought out his partners in the &ldquo;Nip and Tuck&rdquo; lead, with
+      money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two after his
+      wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's theory that Brown
+      had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have been furnished by Mr. Jack
+      Hamlin. He built and furnished the &ldquo;Wingdam House,&rdquo; which pretty Mrs.
+      Brown's great popularity kept overflowing with guests. He was elected to
+      the Assembly, and gave largess to churches. A street in Wingdam was named
+      in his honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate, he
+      grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased, he
+      became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he was
+      absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social liberty,
+      it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and only
+      attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into
+      silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex whom
+      she had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like
+      most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power, whether of
+      masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered, too, in her
+      extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the unconscious priestess
+      of a mythological worship, perhaps not more ennobling to her womanhood
+      than that which distinguished an older Greek democracy. I think that Brown
+      was dimly conscious of this. But his only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose
+      INFELIX reputation naturally precluded any open intimacy with the family,
+      and whose visits were infrequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,
+      large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense of
+      the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense which was
+      not so fresh, nor quite as innocent. Beside her sat Colonel Starbottle and
+      Judge Boompointer, and a later addition to her court in the shape of a
+      foreign tourist. She was in good spirits.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you see down the road?&rdquo; inquired the gallant Colonel, who had
+      been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's attention was
+      diverted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dust,&rdquo; said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. &ldquo;Only Sister Anne's 'flock of
+      sheep.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther back than
+      last week's paper, took a more practical view. &ldquo;It ain't sheep,&rdquo; he
+      continued; &ldquo;it's a horseman. Judge, ain't that Jack Hamlin's gray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was growing
+      too cold for further investigations, they retired to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after dinner.
+      Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's companions; perhaps,
+      like other weak natures, he found pleasure in the exercise of absolute
+      power over inferior animals. He had a certain gratification in the
+      training of a chestnut mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased him,
+      which he couldn't do with Mrs. Brown. It was here that he recognized a
+      certain gray horse which had just come in, and, looking a little farther
+      on, found his rider. Brown's greeting was cordial and hearty, Mr. Hamlin's
+      somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request, he followed him up the
+      back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small room looking out
+      upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished with a bed, a table, a few
+      chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This yer's my home, Jack,&rdquo; said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw himself
+      upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair. &ldquo;Her room's t'other
+      end of the hall. It's more'n six months since we've lived together, or
+      met, except at meals. It's mighty rough papers on the head of the house,
+      ain't it?&rdquo; he said, with a forced laugh. &ldquo;But I'm glad to see you, Jack,
+      damn glad,&rdquo; and he reached from the bed, and again shook the unresponsive
+      hand of Jack Hamlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable; though,
+      for the matter of that, it's all round town. Don't strike a light. We can
+      talk here in the moonshine. Put up your feet on that winder, and sit here
+      beside me. Thar's whisky in that jug.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. Brown of Calaveras
+      turned his face to the wall and continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind. But it's loving her,
+      and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate, and no one to put
+      down the brake; that's what gits me! But I'm glad to see ye, Jack, damn
+      glad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his
+      companion's hand again. He would have detained it, but Jack slipped it
+      into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked, listlessly, &ldquo;How long has
+      this been going on?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
+      Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't know how
+      much I loved her till then. And she hasn't been the same woman since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about, and
+      I'm glad you've come. It ain't that she doesn't love me any more; it ain't
+      that she fools with every chap that comes along, for, perhaps, I staked
+      her love and lost it, as I did everything else at the Magnolia; and,
+      perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some women, and thar ain't no great harm
+      done, 'cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think&mdash;I think she loves
+      somebody else. Don't move, Jack; don't move; if your pistol hurts ye, take
+      it off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and lonesome,
+      and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I've ketched her lookin'
+      at me sort of timid and pitying. And she writes to somebody. And for the
+      last week she's been gathering her own things&mdash;trinkets, and
+      furbelows, and jew'lry&mdash;and, Jack, I think she's goin' off. I could
+      stand all but that. To have her steal away like a thief&mdash;&rdquo; He put his
+      face downward to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound but
+      the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and moved to
+      the open window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and the bed and
+      its occupant were in shadow. &ldquo;What shall I do, Jack?&rdquo; said the voice from
+      the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: &ldquo;Spot the man,
+      and kill him on sight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Jack?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's took the risk!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But will that bring HER back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table. It's a
+      comfort to see ye, if nothin' else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack hesitated, and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from his pocket
+      and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown's face was turned to the
+      wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he cut them, and dealt one
+      card on the opposite side of the table and toward the bed, and another on
+      his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce, his own card, a
+      king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time &ldquo;dummy&rdquo; had a queen, and
+      himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third deal. It brought his
+      adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. &ldquo;Two out of three,&rdquo; said
+      Jack, audibly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that, Jack?&rdquo; said Brown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and his
+      imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes confusing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the
+      anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept.
+      Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on the town of
+      Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully&mdash;its harsh outlines softened and
+      subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that
+      flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the
+      ditches, and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked up
+      at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling field.
+      Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to Mr.
+      Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star should
+      fall&mdash;He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the
+      phenomenon was not repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached the
+      table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the flickering
+      candlelight. It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in a
+      woman's hand:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke. &ldquo;Are you there Jack?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack&mdash;dreamed of old times. I
+      thought that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack,
+      was&mdash;who do you think?&mdash;you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed&mdash;the paper still
+      in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good sign, ain't it?&rdquo; queried Brown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon. Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The &ldquo;old man,&rdquo; thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the assistance
+      of Hamlin's outstretched hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smoke?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Light?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his
+      companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped the
+      fragment&mdash;a fiery star&mdash;from the open window. He watched it as
+      it fell, and then returned to his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old man,&rdquo; he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, &ldquo;in ten
+      minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We won't see each
+      other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice: sell out all you've
+      got, take your wife with you, and quit the country. It ain't no place for
+      you, nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go, if she won't. Don't whine
+      because you can't be a saint, and she ain't an angel. Be a man&mdash;and
+      treat her like a woman. Don't be a damn fool. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like a
+      deer. At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler and backed
+      him against the wall. &ldquo;Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I'll&mdash;&rdquo; The
+      ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The missis said you was to have the buggy,&rdquo; stammered the man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Damn the buggy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded
+      hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?&rdquo; said the man, who, like all his class,
+      admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his
+      welfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand aside!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the
+      road. In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes, he was but a
+      moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a star just loosed from
+      its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles away,
+      heard a voice, pure as a skylark's, singing afield. They who were asleep
+      turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and love and olden
+      days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased
+      their labors and leaned upon their picks, to listen to a romantic vagabond
+      ambling away against the rosy sunrise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HIGH-WATER MARK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness was
+      patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and tortuous
+      sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open bay, were all
+      hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their scant blades, their
+      amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if you choose to indulge
+      your fancy&mdash;although the flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not
+      inspiring&mdash;the wavy line of scattered drift gave an unpleasant
+      consciousness of the spent waters, and made the dead certainty of the
+      returning tide a gloomy reflection which no present sunshine could
+      dissipate. The greener meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and
+      made no positive attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation
+      should be complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
+      might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and soured
+      by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
+      depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the curlew,
+      the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome teal, the sharp,
+      querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled complaint of the
+      &ldquo;killdeer&rdquo; plover, were beyond the power of written expression. Nor was
+      the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful and inspiring.
+      Certainly not the blue heron standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously
+      catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor
+      the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who
+      saw fit to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive
+      kingfisher&mdash;an ornithological Marius&mdash;reviewing the desolate
+      expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of the
+      marsh continually, but evidently couldn't make up his mind whether the
+      waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the reflection that, after
+      all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to give a definite answer. On the
+      contrary, it was evident at a glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow
+      Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and that the season of migration was
+      looked forward to with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the
+      full-grown, and of extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood. But if
+      Dedlow Marsh was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have
+      seen it when the tide was strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly
+      over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those who
+      looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low
+      hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted
+      trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went forth on their dreary,
+      purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and thither, but getting no
+      farther toward any goal at the falling tide or the day's decline than the
+      cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the glossy ducks swung silently, making
+      neither ripple nor furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in
+      with the tide and shut out the blue above, even as the green below had
+      been obliterated; when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a
+      hopeless way, started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on
+      the boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like
+      the floating hair of a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were lost
+      upon Dedlow Marsh and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that&mdash;then
+      you might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never failed
+      to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.
+      Although the event was briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the
+      story, in all its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor. I
+      cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar coloring of
+      feminine delineation, for my narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give at
+      least its substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-sized
+      river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed by the
+      Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which constituted the
+      southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was a
+      small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout piles, and was
+      three miles distant from the settlements upon the river. Her husband was a
+      logger&mdash;a profitable business in a county where the principal
+      occupation was the manufacture of lumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb of a
+      high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower
+      end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the
+      voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and she
+      remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that they must
+      endeavor to complete their voyage before the coming of the southwesterly
+      gale which he saw brewing. And that night it began to storm and blow
+      harder than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees fell in
+      the forest by the river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew that one
+      she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand, and that had
+      he feared for her he would not have left her. This, and her domestic
+      duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep her mind
+      from dwelling on the weather, except, of course, to hope that he was
+      safely harbored with the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance. But she
+      noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and look after
+      the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their garden-patch,
+      and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could
+      hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would like to have
+      someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had not
+      been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she would have
+      taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her nearest neighbor. But
+      then, you see, he might have returned in the storm, all wet, with no one
+      to see to him; and it was a long exposure for baby, who was croupy and
+      ailing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like sleeping or
+      even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but she still &ldquo;sat and
+      sat,&rdquo; and even tried to read. I don't know whether it was a Bible or some
+      profane magazine that this poor woman read, but most probably the latter,
+      for the words all ran together and made such sad nonsense that she was
+      forced at last to put the book down and turn to that dearer volume which
+      lay before her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled,
+      and try to look forward to its mysterious future. And, rocking the cradle,
+      she thought of everything and everybody, but still was wide-awake as ever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her clothes. How
+      long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke with a dreadful
+      choking in her throat, and found herself standing, trembling all over, in
+      the middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast, and she was
+      &ldquo;saying something.&rdquo; The baby cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down
+      trying to hush it when she heard a scratching at the door. She opened it
+      fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who
+      crawled, dripping with water, into the room. She would like to have looked
+      out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to see how things
+      looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she could hardly hold
+      it. Then she sat down a little while, and then walked up and down a little
+      while, and then she lay down again a little while. Lying close by the wall
+      of the little cabin, she thought she heard once or twice something scrape
+      slowly against the clapboards, like the scraping of branches. Then there
+      was a little gurgling sound, &ldquo;like the baby made when it was swallowing&rdquo;;
+      then something went &ldquo;click-click&rdquo; and &ldquo;cluck-cluck,&rdquo; so that she sat up in
+      bed. When she did so she was attracted by something else that seemed
+      creeping from the back door toward the center of the room. It wasn't much
+      wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her
+      hand, and began spreading all over the floor. It was water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing but
+      water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw nothing but
+      water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that open, she saw nothing
+      but water. Then she remembered hearing her husband once say that there was
+      no danger in the tide, for that fell regularly, and people could calculate
+      on it, and that he would rather live near the bay than the river, whose
+      banks might overflow at any time. But was it the tide? So she ran again to
+      the back door, and threw out a stick of wood. It drifted away toward the
+      bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her lips. It
+      was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not the tide!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then&mdash;O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither faint
+      nor fall; it was then&mdash;blessed be the Saviour, for it was his
+      merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful moment&mdash;that
+      fear dropped from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased. It was
+      then and thereafter that she never lost her self-command, through all the
+      trials of that gloomy night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a table
+      upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the floor was already
+      over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so perceptibly, and
+      seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew open. Then she
+      heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall, and, looking out,
+      saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near the road at the upper
+      end of the pasture, had floated down to the house. Luckily its long roots
+      dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for
+      had it struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and
+      bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock. The hound had
+      leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots shivering and
+      whining. A ray of hope flashed across her mind. She drew a heavy blanket
+      from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe, waded in the deepening
+      waters to the door. As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the
+      little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy
+      she succeeded in obtaining a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining
+      an arm about its roots, she held in the other her moaning child. Then
+      something cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house
+      she had just quitted fell forward&mdash;just as cattle fall on their knees
+      before they lie down&mdash;and at the same moment the great redwood tree
+      swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her crying
+      babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of her
+      situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water-swept cabin.
+      She remembered even then, and she wonders how foolish she was to think of
+      it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress and the
+      baby's best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would be spared
+      so that he, when he returned, would have something to come to, and it
+      wouldn't be quite so desolate, and&mdash;how could he ever know what had
+      become of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint. But
+      she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the long roots
+      of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half a revolution, and
+      twice dipped her in the black water. The hound, who kept distracting her
+      by running up and down the tree and howling, at last fell off at one of
+      these collisions. He swam for some time beside her, and she tried to get
+      the poor beast up on the tree, but he &ldquo;acted silly&rdquo; and wild, and at last
+      she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her baby were left alone. The
+      light which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was
+      quenched suddenly. She could not then tell whither she was drifting. The
+      outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she
+      judged the tree was moving in a line with the river. It must be about
+      slack water, and she had probably reached the eddy formed by the
+      confluence of the tide and the overflowing waters of the river. Unless the
+      tide fell soon, there was present danger of her drifting to its channel,
+      and being carried out to sea or crushed in the floating drift. That peril
+      averted, if she were carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope
+      to strike one of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till
+      daylight. Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from the
+      river, and the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again it
+      was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her heart. She found at
+      about this time that she was so chilled and stiffened in her cramped
+      position that she could scarcely move, and the baby cried so when she put
+      it to her breast that she noticed the milk refused to flow; and she was so
+      frightened at that, that she put her head under her shawl, and for the
+      first time cried bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind her, and
+      she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped up the water to
+      cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt as her tears. There
+      was a relief, though, for by this sign she knew that she was drifting with
+      the tide. It was then the wind went down, and the great and awful silence
+      oppressed her. There was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of
+      the great trunk on which she rested, and around her all was black gloom
+      and quiet. She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know
+      that she had not lost her voice. She thought then&mdash;it was queer, but
+      she could not help thinking it&mdash;how awful must have been the night
+      when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
+      creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of mariners
+      clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to rafts, and beaten
+      to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank God that she was thus
+      spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby, who had fallen into a fretful
+      sleep. Suddenly, away to the southward, a great light lifted itself out of
+      the gloom, and flashed and flickered, and flickered and flashed again. Her
+      heart fluttered quickly against the baby's cold cheek. It was the
+      lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet wondering, the tree
+      suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then seemed to lie quiet
+      and still. She put out her hand and the current gurgled against it. The
+      tree was aground, and, by the position of the light and the noise of the
+      surf, aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not been
+      for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would have felt
+      safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to make all her
+      impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock
+      of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the plover
+      flew up and piped mournfully as they wheeled around the trunk, and at last
+      fearlessly lit upon it like a gray cloud. Then the heron flew over and
+      around her, shrieking and protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs
+      only a few yards from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird,
+      larger than a dove&mdash;like a pelican, but not a pelican&mdash;circled
+      around and around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite
+      over her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
+      neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that she
+      thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to attract her
+      attention. But when she did so, the child was so chilled and cold, and had
+      such a blue look under the little lashes which it didn't raise at all,
+      that she screamed aloud, and the bird flew away, and she fainted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much, after all,
+      to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses it was bright
+      sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused noise of guttural
+      voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an Indian &ldquo;hushaby,&rdquo; and
+      rocking herself from side to side before a fire built on the marsh, before
+      which she, the recovered wife and mother, lay weak and weary. Her first
+      thought was for her baby, and she was about to speak, when a young squaw,
+      who must have been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought her
+      the &ldquo;mowitch,&rdquo; pale but living, in such a queer little willow cradle all
+      bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed and cried
+      together, and the young squaw and the old squaw showed their big white
+      teeth and glinted their black eyes and said, &ldquo;Plenty get well, skeena
+      mowitch,&rdquo; &ldquo;wagee man come plenty soon,&rdquo; and she could have kissed their
+      brown faces in her joy. And then she found that they had been gathering
+      berries on the marsh in their queer, comical baskets, and saw the skirt of
+      her gown fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw couldn't
+      resist the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came down and
+      discovered the &ldquo;wagee&rdquo; woman and child. And of course she gave the garment
+      to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and when HE came at last and rushed
+      up to her, looking about ten years older in his anxiety, she felt so faint
+      again that they had to carry her to the canoe. For, you see, he knew
+      nothing about the flood until he met the Indians at Utopia, and knew by
+      the signs that the poor woman was his wife. And at the next high tide he
+      towed the tree away back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and
+      built another house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and
+      called it after her, &ldquo;Mary's Ark!&rdquo; But you may guess the next house was
+      built above high-water mark. And that's all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the Dedlow
+      Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at high
+      tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog, as I have, to
+      understand properly Mary's adventure, or to appreciate duly the blessings
+      of living beyond High-Water Mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A LONELY RIDE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night, a
+      lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the reader
+      that I have no ulterior design in making this assertion. A long course of
+      light reading has forewarned me what every experienced intelligence must
+      confidently look for from such a statement. The storyteller who willfully
+      tempts Fate by such obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in
+      danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped
+      lunatic, or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be
+      detected. I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred to me.
+      The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti than the
+      regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had not yet reached such depth
+      of imbecility as to ride of their own free will in California stages; and
+      my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as she always is, could not, I fear,
+      have borne up against these depressing circumstances long enough to have
+      made the slightest impression on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on the
+      vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible on its
+      roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion clung tenaciously to its
+      wheels. I opened the door; the stage creaked easily, and in the gloomy
+      abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly hands, to come in now
+      and have my sufferings out at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which struck
+      me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel, who I
+      had reason to suppose was not in any way connected with the stage company,
+      gravely descended, and walking toward the conveyance, tried the handle of
+      the door, opened it, expectorated in the carriage, and returned to the
+      hotel with a serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed his position when
+      another individual, equally disinterested, impassively walked down the
+      steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated
+      carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel. A
+      third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns
+      of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and
+      expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his column.
+      There was something so weird in this baptism that I grew quite nervous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal annoyances,
+      winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk at the stage office
+      to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had not predisposed me to
+      cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka House, from a social viewpoint,
+      were not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion&mdash;so common to
+      many honest people&mdash;that a serious style of deportment and conduct
+      toward a stranger indicates high gentility and elevated station. Obeying
+      this principle, all hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general
+      remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of several bad
+      cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left the
+      dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on
+      mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A piano,
+      harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to a diffident
+      and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an old and sharp
+      profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy curls. &ldquo;I sez to
+      Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the face is open disgrace.'&rdquo; I heard no
+      more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere expression on the subject of
+      female loveliness, I walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
+      might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought shame and sorrow to
+      the household.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me that I
+      stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about to mount, was
+      for a moment illuminated by the open door of the hotel. He had the wearied
+      look which was the distinguishing expression of Wingdam. Satisfied that I
+      was properly waybilled and receipted for, he took no further notice of me.
+      I looked longingly at the box seat, but he did not respond to the appeal.
+      I flung my carpetbag into the chasm, dived recklessly after it, and&mdash;before
+      I was fairly seated&mdash;with a great sigh, a creaking of unwilling
+      springs, complaining bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we moved away.
+      Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the piano sank to rest,
+      and the night and its shadows moved solemnly upon us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that
+      encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely distinguishable
+      as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the peculiar sodden odor
+      that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the open window as we
+      rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that, leaning from the
+      carriage, I more than once detected the fragrant sigh of some astonished
+      cow, whose ruminating repose upon the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed.
+      But in the darkness our progress, more the guidance of some mysterious
+      instinct than any apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm
+      of security to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the
+      part of the driver would have destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that rest
+      so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion. When
+      I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary
+      conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were
+      distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms on
+      the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently
+      composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs of
+      the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which
+      began to absorb my attention painfully. Slowly this thumping merged into a
+      senseless echo of the mysterious female of the hotel parlor, and shaped
+      itself into this awful and benumbing axiom&mdash;&ldquo;Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.
+      Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.&rdquo; Inequalities of the road only
+      quickened its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no use to
+      except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the many instances
+      where praise to the face had redounded to the everlasting honor of praiser
+      and bepraised; of no use to dwell sentimentally on modest genius and
+      courage lifted up and strengthened by open commendation; of no use to
+      except to the mysterious female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
+      generation on selfish and mechanically repeated axioms&mdash;all this
+      failed to counteract the monotonous repetition of this sentence. There was
+      nothing to do but to give in&mdash;and I was about to accept it weakly, as
+      we too often treat other illusions of darkness and necessity, for the time
+      being, when I became aware of some other annoyance that had been forcing
+      itself upon me for the last few moments. How quiet the driver was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not lying
+      gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with blackened face
+      who did the thing so quietly driving me&mdash;whither? The thing is
+      perfectly feasible. And what is this fancy now being jolted out of me? A
+      story? It's of no use to keep it back&mdash;particularly in this abysmal
+      vehicle, and here it comes: I am a Marquis&mdash;a French Marquis; French,
+      because the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better
+      adapted to romantic incident&mdash;a Marquis, because the democratic
+      reader delights in the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming
+      from Paris to my country seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I
+      fall asleep and tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and
+      dream of an angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so
+      dark that when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who
+      holds the carriage door. But what of that?&mdash;PESTE! I am heavy with
+      sleep. The same obscurity also hides the old familiar indecencies of the
+      statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and it opens and shuts behind
+      me smartly. Then I find myself in a trap, in the presence of the brigand
+      who has quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither.
+      There is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say,
+      &ldquo;PARBLEU!&rdquo; draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two
+      after outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my
+      ruffled linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I am
+      rescued&mdash;rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
+      assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an intimate
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing the
+      driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. I could
+      see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky woods, relieving a lighter
+      sky. A few stars widely spaced in this picture glimmered sadly. I noticed
+      again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I
+      hope that the vandal who first applied the flippant &ldquo;twinkle&rdquo; to them may
+      not be driven melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes. I noticed again
+      the mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude to
+      each integer of the densest constellation, involving the smallest star
+      with immeasurable loneliness. Something of this calm and solitude crept
+      over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern. When I awoke the full moon was
+      rising. Seen from my window, it had an indescribably unreal and theatrical
+      effect. It was the full moon of NORMA&mdash;that remarkable celestial
+      phenomenon which rises so palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime
+      andante chorus, until the CASTA DIVA is sung&mdash;the &ldquo;inconstant moon&rdquo;
+       that then and thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a
+      part of the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed
+      Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut from that
+      impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back with the first
+      strain of the recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat time, and
+      the private-box-like obscurity of the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to
+      the view. But it was a vast improvement upon my past experience, and I
+      hugged the fond delusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A familiar
+      sound had assured me of his presence in the full possession of at least
+      one of his most important functions. Frequent and full expectoration
+      convinced me that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of
+      highwaymen, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted from my
+      mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana, who left, as when she
+      visited Endymion, much of her splendor outside my cavern&mdash;I looked
+      around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I
+      picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated. There was no
+      scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No bend or
+      twist in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character. I
+      tried to think that it might have been &ldquo;Mariar's.&rdquo; I tried to imagine
+      that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might have heard
+      the soft compliments whispered in her ears which provoked the wrath of the
+      aged female. But in vain. It was reticent and unswerving in its upright
+      fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through my fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had dozed repeatedly&mdash;waked on the threshold of oblivion by contact
+      with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I was unconsciously
+      assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my childish recollection,
+      that spherical shape which could best resist those impressions, when I
+      perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens, had begun to separate
+      the formless masses of the shadowy landscape. Trees isolated, in clumps
+      and assemblages, changed places before my window. The sharp outlines of
+      the distant hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the
+      dry, cold, dewless air of a California summer night. I was wondering how
+      late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night traveled as
+      slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing
+      prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession
+      of whip-snappings, like a pack of Chinese crackers, broke from the box
+      before me. The stage leaped forward, and when I could pick myself from
+      under the seat, a long white building had in some mysterious way rolled
+      before my window. It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I
+      addressed the driver:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought you changed horses on the road?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So we did. Two hours ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's odd. I didn't notice it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully place for
+      a nice quiet snooze&mdash;empty stage, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      His name was Fagg&mdash;David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us,
+      in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous way. He
+      probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows
+      would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and how sorry
+      our friends were to have us leave, and show daguerreotypes and locks of
+      hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the man of no account used to sit by and
+      listen with a pained, mortified expression on his plain face, and say
+      nothing. I think he had nothing to say. He had no associates except when
+      we patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal of sport to
+      us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind. He never got
+      his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how we all laughed when
+      Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string, and&mdash;But you know
+      that time-honored joke. And then we had such a splendid lark with him.
+      Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the sight of him, and we used to make
+      Fagg think that she had taken a fancy to him, and send him little
+      delicacies and books from the cabin. You ought to have witnessed the rich
+      scene that took place when he came up, stammering and very sick, to thank
+      her! Didn't she flash up grandly and beautifully and scornfully? So like
+      &ldquo;Medora,&rdquo; Rattler said&mdash;Rattler knew Byron by heart&mdash;and wasn't
+      old Fagg awfully cut up? But he got over it, and when Rattler fell sick at
+      Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him. You see he was a good sort of
+      fellow, but he lacked manliness and spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly by,
+      mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring apostrophe
+      of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite seriously, if he
+      thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember Rattler's reply, but I
+      know we all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was something good
+      for Rattler was smart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand &ldquo;feed.&rdquo; We
+      agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course we didn't
+      invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary, you see,
+      now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old Fagg, as we
+      called him&mdash;he was only about twenty-five years old, by the way&mdash;was
+      the source of immense amusement to us that day. It appeared that he had
+      conceived the idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and actually started
+      off afoot. We had a good time, and shook hands with one another all
+      around, and so parted. Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet some of those
+      hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each other, or have
+      dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know that we didn't dine
+      together the next year, because young Barker swore he wouldn't put his
+      feet under the same mahogany with such a very contemptible scoundrel as
+      that Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money at Valparaiso of young Stubbs,
+      who was then a waiter in a restaurant, didn't like to meet such people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at Mugginsville, in
+      '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it. I stopped at the Empire
+      Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and rode round the town and out to
+      the claim. One of those individuals whom newspaper correspondents call
+      &ldquo;our intelligent informant,&rdquo; and to whom in all small communities the
+      right of answering questions is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed out
+      to me. Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he
+      never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and added:
+      &ldquo;You see, stranger,&rdquo; (he addressed the bank before him) &ldquo;gold is sure to
+      come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his pick) but the
+      old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his pick)
+      warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period). He was
+      green, and let the boys about here jump him&rdquo;&mdash;and the rest of his
+      sentence was confided to his hat, which he had removed to wipe his manly
+      brow with his red bandanna.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked him who was the original proprietor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name war Fagg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer. He had worked
+      hard, he said, and was getting on &ldquo;so-so.&rdquo; I took quite a liking to him
+      and patronized him to some extent. Whether I did so because I was
+      beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as Rattler and Mixer is not
+      necessary for me to state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
+      shareholders were done! Well, the next thing I heard was that Rattler, who
+      was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at Mugginsville keeping bar
+      for the proprietor of the Mugginsville Hotel, and that old Fagg had struck
+      it rich, and didn't know what to do with his money. All this was told me
+      by Mixer, who had been there, settling up matters, and likewise that Fagg
+      was sweet upon the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid hotel. And
+      so by hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old Robins, the hotel
+      man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie Robins and Fagg. Nellie
+      was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing, and would do just as her
+      father wished. I thought it would be a good thing for Fagg if he should
+      marry and settle down; that as a married man he might be of some account.
+      So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to look after things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for me&mdash;Rattler!
+      the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had tried to snub me
+      two years ago. I talked to him about old Fagg and Nellie, particularly as
+      I thought the subject was distasteful. He never liked Fagg, and he was
+      sure, he said, that Nellie didn't. Did Nellie like anybody else? He turned
+      around to the mirror behind the bar and brushed up his hair! I understood
+      the conceited wretch. I thought I'd put Fagg on his guard and get him to
+      hurry up matters. I had a long talk with him. You could see by the way the
+      poor fellow acted that he was badly stuck. He sighed, and promised to
+      pluck up courage to hurry matters to a crisis. Nellie was a good girl, and
+      I think had a sort of quiet respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But
+      her fancy was already taken captive by Rattler's superficial qualities,
+      which were obvious and pleasing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than
+      you or I. We are more apt to take acquaintances at their apparent value
+      than their intrinsic worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to
+      trust them, quite as convenient. The difficulty with women is that their
+      feelings are apt to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you know,
+      reasoning is out of the question. This is what old Fagg would have known
+      had he been of any account. But he wasn't. So much the worse for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when in
+      walked old Fagg. I was surprised to see him down, but we talked over the
+      current topics in that mechanical manner of people who know that they have
+      something else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that formal way.
+      After an interval Fagg in his natural manner said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes&mdash;that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States. I
+      came to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I have
+      executed a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs. I have some
+      papers I'd like to leave with you. Will you take charge of them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;But what of Nellie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in one of
+      the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld. At length he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall not marry Nellie&mdash;that is&rdquo;&mdash;he seemed to apologize
+      internally for the positive form of expression&mdash;&ldquo;I think that I had
+      better not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;David Fagg,&rdquo; I said with sudden severity, &ldquo;you're of no account!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To my astonishment his face brightened. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that's it!&mdash;I'm
+      of no account! But I always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved that
+      girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than she did me,
+      and would be happier I dare say with him. But then I knew that old Robins
+      would have preferred me to him, as I was better off&mdash;and the girl
+      would do as he said&mdash;and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the way&mdash;and
+      so I left. But,&rdquo; he continued, as I was about to interrupt him, &ldquo;for fear
+      the old man might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough to set him up in
+      business for himself in Dogtown. A pushing, active, brilliant fellow, you
+      know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be in his old position
+      again&mdash;and you needn't be hard on him, you know, if he doesn't.
+      Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be at all
+      amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to attend to it,
+      and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer arrived, and a
+      terrible incident occupied the papers for days afterward. People in all
+      parts of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful shipwreck, and
+      those who had friends aboard went away by themselves, and read the long
+      list of the lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant,
+      the noble, and loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was
+      the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the &ldquo;man of no account&rdquo; had
+      &ldquo;gone home!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      MLISS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations, and
+      the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
+      mountain, stands &ldquo;Smith's Pocket.&rdquo; Seen from the red road at sunset, in
+      the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the
+      outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside. The red stage topped with
+      red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the tortuous
+      descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing
+      altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably owing to
+      this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's
+      Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance. Dismounting from
+      the vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident traveler is apt to walk
+      straight out of town under the impression that it lies in quite another
+      direction. It is related that one of the tunnel men, two miles from town,
+      met one of these self-reliant passengers with a carpetbag, umbrella,
+      Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of &ldquo;Civilization and Refinement,&rdquo;
+       plodding along over the road he had just ridden, vainly endeavoring to
+      find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
+      disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
+      fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling
+      more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of man;
+      while halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and
+      disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some
+      forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road,
+      hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a
+      clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and here and there
+      were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the
+      hearthstone open to the skies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a
+      &ldquo;pocket&rdquo; on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were
+      taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were
+      expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling. And
+      then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject like other
+      pockets to depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of the great red
+      mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last return of his
+      labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume
+      steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune. Then Smith went into
+      quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into hydraulics and
+      ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloonkeeping. Presently it was
+      whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it was known that
+      Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then people began to think, as they are
+      apt to, that he had never been anything else. But the settlement of
+      Smith's Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily not dependent
+      on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and
+      found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with its two fancy
+      stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two first
+      families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was overawed by the
+      assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions, imported per express,
+      exclusively to the first families; making outraged Nature, in the ragged
+      outline of her furrowed surface, look still more homely, and putting
+      personal insult on that greater portion of the population to whom the
+      Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely the necessity of
+      cleanliness without the luxury of adornment. Then there was a Methodist
+      Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the
+      mountainside, a graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Master,&rdquo; as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night in
+      the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully making
+      those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the extremes
+      of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as &ldquo;Riches are
+      deceitful,&rdquo; and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity of flourish
+      that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping.
+      The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise
+      did not disturb his work. But the opening of the door, and the tapping
+      continuing from the inside, caused him to look up. He was slightly
+      startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad. Still,
+      her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black hair falling
+      over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet streaked with the red soil,
+      were all familiar to him. It was Melissa Smith&mdash;Smith's motherless
+      child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can she want here?&rdquo; thought the master. Everybody knew &ldquo;Mliss,&rdquo; as
+      she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
+      Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable
+      disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way as
+      proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as philosophically
+      accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought the schoolboys
+      with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She followed the trails
+      with a woodman's craft, and the master had met her before, miles away,
+      shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road. The miners'
+      camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these
+      voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms. Not but that a larger
+      protection had been previously extended to Mliss. The Rev. Joshua
+      McSnagley, &ldquo;stated&rdquo; preacher, had placed her in the hotel as servant, by
+      way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her to his scholars at
+      Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally at the landlord, and
+      quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the guests, and created in the
+      Sabbath school a sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness
+      and placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the
+      starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-faced
+      children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had her
+      ignominiously expelled. Such were the antecedents, and such the character
+      of Mliss as she stood before the master. It was shown in the ragged dress,
+      the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from
+      her black, fearless eyes, and commanded his respect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I come here tonight,&rdquo; she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard
+      glance on his, &ldquo;because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when
+      them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. You keep
+      school, don't you? I want to be teached!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled hair
+      and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master would have
+      extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But with the
+      natural, though illogical, instincts of his species, her boldness awakened
+      in him something of that respect which all original natures pay
+      unconsciously to one another in any grade. And he gazed at her the more
+      fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on that door latch and her
+      eyes on his:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Mliss&mdash;Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
+      father's Old Smith&mdash;Old Bummer Smith&mdash;that's what's the matter
+      with him. Mliss Smith&mdash;and I'm coming to school!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for no
+      other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the
+      master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped; she began to
+      twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line of upper
+      lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly.
+      Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush struggled up to her
+      cheek and tried to assert itself through the splashes of redder soil, and
+      the sunburn of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God
+      to strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her face on the
+      master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass. When,
+      with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs the MEA CULPA
+      of childish penitence&mdash;that &ldquo;she'd be good, she didn't mean to,&rdquo;
+       etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left Sabbath school.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why had she left the Sabbath school?&mdash;why? Oh, yes. What did he
+      (McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell her that
+      God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to go to Sabbath
+      school for? SHE didn't want to be &ldquo;beholden&rdquo; to anybody who hated her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had she told McSnagley this?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, she had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in the
+      little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the
+      sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected himself with a
+      sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a
+      moment of serious silence he asked about her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for her? Why
+      did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks say, &ldquo;Old Bummer
+      Smith's Mliss!&rdquo; when she passed? Yes; oh yes. She wished he was dead&mdash;she
+      was dead&mdash;everybody was dead; and her sobs broke forth anew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could what you
+      or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories from childish
+      lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I the unnatural
+      facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow
+      of her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his shawl
+      around her, and, bidding her come early in the morning, he walked with her
+      down the road. There he bade her &ldquo;good night.&rdquo; The moon shone brightly on
+      the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the bent little figure
+      as it staggered down the road, and waited until it had passed the little
+      graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and stood for
+      a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against the far-off patient
+      stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines of the copybook
+      thereafter faded into long parallels of never-ending road, over which
+      childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and crying into the night. Then,
+      the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and
+      went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed, and her
+      coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb, in
+      which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone occasionally
+      in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued. Then began a
+      series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in which master and pupil
+      bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence and sympathy
+      between them. Although obedient under the master's eye, at times during
+      recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in
+      ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding himself
+      matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the master with torn
+      jacket and scratched face and complaints of the dreadful Mliss. There was
+      a serious division among the townspeople on the subject, some threatening
+      to withdraw their children from such evil companionship, and others as
+      warmly upholding the course of the master in his work of reclamation.
+      Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him
+      on looking back afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out of the
+      shadow of her past life, as though it were but her natural progress down
+      the narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their
+      first meeting. Remembering the experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he
+      carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had
+      shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the course of her reading, she
+      chanced to stumble upon those few words which have lifted such as she
+      above the level of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent&mdash;if she
+      learned something of a faith that is symbolized by suffering, and the old
+      light softened in her eyes, it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few
+      of the plainer people had made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss
+      was enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization; and often
+      a rough shake of the hand, and words of homely commendation from a
+      red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the young
+      master, and set him to thinking if it was altogether deserved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and the
+      master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious copies,
+      when there came a tap at the door and again Mliss stood before him. She
+      was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps but the
+      long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his former
+      apparition. &ldquo;Are you busy?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;Can you come with me?&rdquo;&mdash;and
+      on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she said, &ldquo;Come,
+      then, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they
+      entered the town the master asked her whither she was going. She replied,
+      &ldquo;To see my father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or
+      indeed anything more than &ldquo;Old Smith&rdquo; or the &ldquo;Old Man.&rdquo; It was the first
+      time in three months that she had spoken of him at all, and the master
+      knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him since her great change.
+      Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose,
+      he passively followed. In out-of-the-way places, low groggeries,
+      restaurants, and saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses, the master,
+      preceded by Mliss, came and went. In the reeking smoke and blasphemous
+      outcries of low dens, the child, holding the master's hand, stood and
+      anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature
+      of her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to the
+      child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor upon her
+      but for the interference of the master. Others, recognizing him mutely,
+      made way for them to pass. So an hour slipped by. Then the child whispered
+      in his ear that there was a cabin on the other side of the creek crossed
+      by the long flume, where she thought he still might be. Thither they
+      crossed&mdash;a toilsome half-hour's walk&mdash;but in vain. They were
+      returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights
+      of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report
+      rang out on the clear night air. The echoes caught it, and carried it
+      round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all along the
+      streams. Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the outskirts of the
+      town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite audibly beside them, a
+      few stones loosened themselves from the hillside and splashed into the
+      stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge the branches of the funereal pines,
+      and then the silence seemed to fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The
+      master turned toward Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but
+      the child had gone. Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the
+      trail to the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached
+      the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village. Midway of the
+      crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe. For high above him on
+      the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure of his late companion
+      crossing swiftly in the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central
+      point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of
+      awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the child appeared,
+      and, taking the master's hand, led him silently before what seemed a
+      ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited
+      manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected event had
+      at last happened&mdash;an expression that to the master in his
+      bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were
+      partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared to
+      be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant. The
+      master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them. It was
+      Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet in his heart,
+      lying beside his empty pocket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a &ldquo;change of heart&rdquo;
+       supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described in the
+      gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had &ldquo;struck a good
+      lead.&rdquo; So when there was a new grave added to the little enclosure, and at
+      the expense of the master a little board and inscription put above it, the
+      RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to
+      the memory of one of &ldquo;our oldest Pioneers,&rdquo; alluding gracefully to that
+      &ldquo;bane of noble intellects,&rdquo; and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear
+      brother with the past. &ldquo;He leaves an only child to mourn his loss,&rdquo; says
+      the BANNER, &ldquo;who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the
+      Rev. Mr. McSnagley.&rdquo; The Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of
+      Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child
+      the suicide of her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to
+      the beneficial effects of the &ldquo;silent tomb,&rdquo; and in this cheerful
+      contemplation drove most of the children into speechless horror, and
+      caused the pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally
+      and refuse to be comforted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
+      whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
+      breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
+      in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and hard.
+      In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of a Sabbath
+      afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers plucked from
+      the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon
+      the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were formed of a
+      sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in their desks,
+      intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood
+      anemone, and here and there the master noticed the dark-blue cowl of the
+      monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something in the odd association
+      of this noxious plant with these memorials which occasioned a painful
+      sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic sense. One day, during a
+      long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of
+      the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on a fantastic throne formed by
+      the hanging plumes of lifeless branches, her lap full of grasses and pine
+      burrs, and crooning to herself one of the Negro melodies of her younger
+      life. Recognizing him at a distance, she made room for him on her elevated
+      throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality and patronage that
+      would have been ridiculous had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed
+      him with pine nuts and crab apples. The master took that opportunity to
+      point out to her the noxious and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose
+      dark blossoms he saw in her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to
+      meddle with it as long as she remained his pupil. This done&mdash;as the
+      master had tested her integrity before&mdash;he rested satisfied, and the
+      strange feeling which had overcome him on seeing them died away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known, the
+      master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted specimen
+      of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the &ldquo;Per-rairie
+      Rose.&rdquo; Being one of those who contend resolutely against their own
+      natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and struggles,
+      had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of
+      &ldquo;order,&rdquo; which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as &ldquo;Heaven's first
+      law.&rdquo; But she could not entirely govern the orbits of her satellites,
+      however regular her own movements, and even her own &ldquo;Jeemes&rdquo; sometimes
+      collided with her. Again her old nature asserted itself in her children.
+      Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard &ldquo;between meals,&rdquo; and Aristides came home
+      from school without shoes, leaving those important articles on the
+      threshold, for the delight of a barefooted walk down the ditches. Octavia
+      and Cassandra were &ldquo;keerless&rdquo; of their clothes. So with but one exception,
+      however much the &ldquo;Prairie Rose&rdquo; might have trimmed and pruned and trained
+      her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly wild and
+      straggling. That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She
+      was the realization of her mother's immaculate conception&mdash;neat,
+      orderly, and dull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that &ldquo;Clytie&rdquo; was a
+      consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher
+      threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was &ldquo;bad,&rdquo; and set her up
+      before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,
+      therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to
+      school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss and
+      others. For &ldquo;Clytie&rdquo; was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's
+      physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
+      Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket, to
+      whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and languished
+      in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal.
+      A few were jealous of the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes to
+      another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that in
+      school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were
+      uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the request
+      with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat disproportionate
+      to the quality of service she verbally required; that she sometimes
+      allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was
+      writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls
+      when she did so. I don't remember whether I have stated that the master
+      was a young man&mdash;it's of little consequence, however; he had been
+      severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her first
+      lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and factitious
+      glance like the fine young Spartan that he was. Perhaps an insufficient
+      quality of food may have tended to this asceticism. He generally avoided
+      Clytie; but one evening, when she returned to the schoolhouse after
+      something she had forgotten, and did not find it until the master walked
+      home with her, I hear that he endeavored to make himself particularly
+      agreeable&mdash;partly from the fact, I imagine, that his conduct was
+      adding gall and bitterness to the already overcharged hearts of
+      Clytemnestra's admirers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to school.
+      Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared
+      that they had left the school together, but the willful Mliss had taken
+      another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he called on
+      Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had
+      spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace that might
+      lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice,
+      but that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with his
+      innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the child
+      would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was almost as terrible,
+      muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at heart,
+      the master returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and seated
+      himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him addressed to
+      himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be written on a leaf torn
+      from some old memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had
+      been sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost tenderly, the master
+      read as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      RESPECTED SIR&mdash;When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.
+      NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my
+      Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco-box] to Sally
+      Flanders. But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don't you dare
+      to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she is perfekly
+      disgustin. That is all and no more at present from
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yours respectfully,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MELISSA SMITH.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon lifted its
+      bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the trail that led to
+      the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the coming and going of little
+      feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he tore the missive into fragments and
+      scattered them along the road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike
+      fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its
+      form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who
+      had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge
+      where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and
+      tasseled branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what
+      might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling
+      limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered
+      itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat, found
+      the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he met the
+      black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other without speaking.
+      She was first to break the silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo; she asked curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master had decided on a course of action. &ldquo;I want some crab apples,&rdquo;
+       he said humbly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?&rdquo; (It
+      seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional
+      syllables to that classical young woman's already long-drawn title.) &ldquo;O
+      you wicked thing!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I am
+      famished!&rdquo; and the young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned
+      against the tree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life she had
+      known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his heartbroken
+      tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind you
+      don't tell,&rdquo; for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and squirrels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of hunger
+      probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she peered at
+      him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master promised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hope you'll die if you do!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid down the
+      tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the munching of the pine
+      nuts. &ldquo;Do you feel better?&rdquo; she asked, with some solicitude. The master
+      confessed to a recuperated feeling, and then, gravely thanking her,
+      proceeded to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone far before
+      she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white, with tears
+      in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right moment had come.
+      Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking in her tearful eyes,
+      said, gravely, &ldquo;Lissy, do you remember the first evening you came to see
+      me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Lissy remembered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
+      something and be better, and I said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; responded the child, promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was
+      lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and
+      teach him to be better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited
+      patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
+      raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them. A
+      squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and there
+      stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are waiting, Lissy,&rdquo; said the master, in a whisper, and the child
+      smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long
+      pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the doubting
+      face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the master's hand in
+      her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but the master, putting
+      the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her; and so, hand in hand,
+      they passed out of the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit
+      road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss still
+      retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps the
+      jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little breast.
+      Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline offered more
+      extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions were under the
+      master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible
+      form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
+      conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many
+      other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a
+      priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's
+      doll&mdash;a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a
+      secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time
+      companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering. Its
+      original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and anointed
+      by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in days past.
+      Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers had been. Mliss
+      had never been known to apply to it any childish term of endearment. She
+      never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It was put severely
+      to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise
+      during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she would
+      to herself, it knew no luxuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll and
+      gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The master
+      on looking at it one day fancied he saw a slight resemblance in its round
+      red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident before
+      long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance. Accordingly she
+      hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes
+      dragged it with a string round its neck to and from school. At other
+      times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and
+      inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge of what she considered
+      a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or whether
+      she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites of certain other heathens,
+      and, indulging in that &ldquo;fetish&rdquo; ceremony, imagined that the original of
+      her wax model would pine away and finally die, is a metaphysical question
+      I shall not now consider.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing in
+      her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous
+      perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.
+      Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of course
+      she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing beyond her
+      own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around her, in their
+      minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are not better than
+      grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand
+      flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master
+      was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained his
+      fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see that
+      Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but one
+      better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition&mdash;the
+      faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though not
+      always an attribute of the noble savage&mdash;Truth. Mliss was both
+      fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
+      synonymous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had
+      arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that
+      he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined to
+      call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
+      humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he
+      thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with
+      a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that had guided her
+      willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent
+      consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his
+      dislike and went to McSnagley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed that the
+      master was looking &ldquo;peartish,&rdquo; and hoped he had got over the &ldquo;neuralgy&rdquo;
+       and &ldquo;rheumatiz.&rdquo; He himself had been troubled with a dumb &ldquo;ager&rdquo; since
+      last conference. But he had learned to &ldquo;rastle and pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method of
+      curing the dumb &ldquo;ager&rdquo; upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr.
+      McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. &ldquo;She is an adornment
+      to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young family,&rdquo; added Mr.
+      McSnagley; &ldquo;and there's that mannerly young gal&mdash;so well behaved&mdash;Miss
+      Clytie.&rdquo; In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect him to such an
+      extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The master was doubly
+      embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor
+      Mliss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was something
+      unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's
+      earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say
+      something natural, found it convenient to recall another engagement, and
+      left without asking the information required, but in his after reflections
+      somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the full benefit of having
+      refused it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close
+      communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in the master's
+      manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long
+      postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked full
+      in his face with big, searching eyes. &ldquo;You ain't mad?&rdquo; said she, with an
+      interrogative shake of the black braids. &ldquo;No.&rdquo; &ldquo;Nor bothered?&rdquo; &ldquo;No.&rdquo; &ldquo;Nor
+      hungry?&rdquo; (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that might attack a person at any
+      moment.) &ldquo;No.&rdquo; &ldquo;Nor thinking of her?&rdquo; &ldquo;Of whom, Lissy?&rdquo; &ldquo;That white girl.&rdquo;
+       (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who was a very dark
+      brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) &ldquo;No.&rdquo; &ldquo;Upon your word?&rdquo; (A substitute
+      for &ldquo;Hope you'll die!&rdquo; proposed by the master.) &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; &ldquo;And sacred honor?&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; Then Mliss gave him a fierce little kiss, and, hopping down,
+      fluttered off. For two or three days after that she condescended to appear
+      more like other children, and be, as she expressed it, &ldquo;good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket, and as
+      his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually
+      becoming the capital of the State not entirely definite, he contemplated a
+      change. He had informed the school trustees privately of his intentions,
+      but educated young men of unblemished moral character being scarce at that
+      time, he consented to continue his school term through the winter to early
+      spring. None else knew of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
+      Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people of Wingdam as
+      &ldquo;Duchesny.&rdquo; He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or any of his
+      scholars. His reticence was partly the result of a constitutional
+      indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared the questions and
+      surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never really believed he
+      was going to do anything before it was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,
+      which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,
+      romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do
+      better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was
+      nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would be
+      a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed letters to
+      Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister of Melissa's
+      mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of leaving the
+      Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few months. This was
+      a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for
+      Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving, sympathetic
+      woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide her wayward nature.
+      Yet, when the master had read the letter, Mliss listened to it carelessly,
+      received it submissively, and afterward cut figures out of it with her
+      scissors, supposed to represent Clytemnestra, labeled &ldquo;the white girl,&rdquo; to
+      prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the
+      schoolhouse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered in
+      the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few ripened shoots
+      of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or Examination. So the
+      savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were gathered to witness that
+      time-honored custom of placing timid children in a constrained positions
+      and bullying them as in a witness box. As usual in such cases, the most
+      audacious and self-possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors. The
+      reader will imagine that in the present instance Mliss and Clytie were
+      preeminent, and divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness of
+      material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem
+      and saintlike correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid
+      and blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated
+      the greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's
+      antecedents had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class
+      whose athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome
+      bearded faces looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was
+      overthrown by an unexpected circumstance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing
+      entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most
+      ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and Mliss
+      had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our spotted ball
+      through space, and keeping time with the music of the spheres, and
+      defining the tethered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley impressively
+      arose. &ldquo;Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
+      and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it had been a doing of
+      it since the creashun, eh?&rdquo; Mliss nodded a scornful affirmative. &ldquo;Well,
+      war that the truth?&rdquo; said McSnagley, folding his arms. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mliss,
+      shutting up her little red lips tightly. The handsome outlines at the
+      windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a saintly Raphael face, with
+      blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the
+      diggings, turned toward the child and whispered, &ldquo;Stick to it, Mliss!&rdquo; The
+      reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at
+      the master, then at the children, and then rested his look on Clytie. That
+      young woman softly elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves
+      were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one
+      of her humblest worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a
+      momentary silence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's
+      big eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin
+      rested softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
+      master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!&rdquo; There was a
+      low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on
+      McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and a comical look of
+      disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over her
+      astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst from
+      McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from
+      the windows, as Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk, with the
+      emphatic declaration:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were visible
+      in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests exhaled the
+      fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, the ceanothus getting
+      ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland which climbed Red
+      Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up
+      from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells.
+      Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just
+      tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups. The little graveyard had
+      gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the mounds were placed
+      two by two by the little paling until they reached Smith's grave, and
+      there there was but one. General superstition had shunned it, and the plot
+      beside Smith was vacant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that, at
+      a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for a few
+      days, a series of &ldquo;side-splitting&rdquo; and &ldquo;screaming farces&rdquo;; that,
+      alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a
+      grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These
+      announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk, and
+      were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the master's
+      scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was
+      sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the
+      master and Mliss &ldquo;assisted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the melodrama
+      was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite. But the master,
+      turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt something like
+      self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her excitable nature.
+      The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of her panting little
+      heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted to give vent to her
+      hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and arched her black
+      eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man,
+      for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate
+      extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-hearted
+      &ldquo;Clytie,&rdquo; who was talking with her &ldquo;feller&rdquo; and ogling the master at the
+      same moment. But when the performance was over, and the green curtain fell
+      on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep breath, and turned to the
+      master's grave face with a half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then
+      she said, &ldquo;Now take me home!&rdquo; and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as
+      if to dwell once more in fancy on the mimic stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to ridicule the
+      whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss thought that the young
+      lady who acted so beautifully was really in earnest, and in love with the
+      gentleman who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love with him
+      it was a very unfortunate thing! &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said Mliss, with an upward sweep
+      of the drooping lid. &ldquo;Oh! well, he couldn't support his wife at his
+      present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine clothes, and then they
+      wouldn't receive as much wages if they were married as if they were merely
+      lovers&mdash;that is,&rdquo; added the master, &ldquo;if they are not already married
+      to somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty young countess
+      takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the
+      candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As to the young
+      man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and must cost at least
+      two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of that mantle of red
+      drugget which I happen to know the price of, for I bought some of it for
+      my room once&mdash;as to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty good
+      fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think people ought to
+      take advantage of it and give him black eyes and throw him in the mud. Do
+      you? I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a long time, before
+      I would throw it up in his face, as the fellow did the other night at
+      Wingdam.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his
+      eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint
+      idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic humor,
+      which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But the young man
+      continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had
+      deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving the invitation of Mrs.
+      Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to
+      keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself,
+      and went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company, Mliss was
+      late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was for
+      once omitted, owing to the absence of his trustworthy guide. As he was
+      putting away his books and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a small
+      voice piped at his side, &ldquo;Please, sir?&rdquo; The master turned and there stood
+      Aristides Morpher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my little man,&rdquo; said the master, impatiently, &ldquo;what is it? quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away agin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that, sir?&rdquo; said the master, with that unjust testiness with which
+      we always receive disagreeable news.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her talking
+      with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now; and please, sir,
+      yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a speech as well as Miss
+      Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted right off by heart,&rdquo; and the
+      little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What actor?&rdquo; asked the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold chain,&rdquo; said
+      the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke out his breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness in
+      his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along
+      by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the master's
+      strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against
+      him. &ldquo;Where were they talking?&rdquo; asked the master, as if continuing the
+      conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the Arcade,&rdquo; said Aristides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they reached the main street the master paused. &ldquo;Run down home,&rdquo; said
+      he to the boy. &ldquo;If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me. If she
+      isn't there, stay home; run!&rdquo; And off trotted the short-legged Aristides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Arcade was just across the way&mdash;a long, rambling building
+      containing a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young man
+      crossed the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by turned
+      and looked after him. He looked at his clothes, took out his handkerchief,
+      and wiped his face before he entered the barroom. It contained the usual
+      number of loungers, who stared at him as he entered. One of them looked at
+      him so fixedly and with such a strange expression that the master stopped
+      and looked again, and then saw it was only his own reflection in a large
+      mirror. This made the master think that perhaps he was a little excited,
+      and so he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of the
+      tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
+      advertisements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and into the
+      billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter apartment a person
+      was standing by one of the tables with a broad-brimmed glazed hat on his
+      head. The master recognized him as the agent of the dramatic company; he
+      had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, from the peculiar
+      fashion of wearing his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his
+      search was not there, he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had
+      noticed the master, but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in
+      which vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand, he
+      pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The master stood
+      opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their glances met, the
+      master walked up to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to speak,
+      something kept rising in his throat and retarded his utterance, and his
+      own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and resonant. &ldquo;I
+      understand,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;that Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my
+      scholars, has talked with you about adopting your profession. Is that so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an imaginary
+      shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions. Then, walking round
+      the table, he recovered the ball and placed it upon the spot. This duty
+      discharged, getting ready for another shot, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;S'pose she has?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table in his
+      gloved hand, he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her guardian,
+      and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do the kind of life
+      you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I have already brought her
+      out of an existence worse than death&mdash;out of the streets and the
+      contamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like men.
+      She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking to
+      give her an equivalent for these?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then looked
+      around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that she is a strange, willful girl,&rdquo; continued the master, &ldquo;but
+      she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over her
+      still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further steps in
+      this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I am willing&mdash;&rdquo;
+       But here something rose again in the master's throat, and the sentence
+      remained unfinished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his
+      head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance than
+      tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The best
+      appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master felt
+      this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in the one
+      act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow sent the
+      glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove and skin from
+      the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up the corners of the
+      fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for some time
+      to come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many
+      feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
+      followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about his
+      opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking bits of
+      burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone was
+      holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding from
+      the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a glittering
+      knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master to
+      the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well as he
+      could with his parched throat about &ldquo;Mliss.&rdquo; &ldquo;It's all right, my boy,&rdquo;
+       said Mr. Morpher. &ldquo;She's home!&rdquo; And they passed out into the street
+      together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had come
+      running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him out,
+      saying that somebody was trying to kill the master at the Arcade. Wishing
+      to be alone, the master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the
+      agent again that night, and parted from him, taking the road toward the
+      schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door open&mdash;still
+      more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most sensitive
+      organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
+      adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he thought, that
+      such a construction might be put upon his affection for the child, which
+      at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily
+      abnegated his authority and affection? And what had everybody else said
+      about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last
+      obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had
+      been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked
+      his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the
+      people say? What would his friends say? What would McSnagley say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to meet was
+      Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk, told the child, in a
+      few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to be alone. As she rose he
+      took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, buried his head in his hands.
+      When he looked up again she was still standing there. She was looking at
+      his face with an anxious expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you kill him?&rdquo; she asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said the master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I gave you the knife for!&rdquo; said the child, quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gave me the knife?&rdquo; repeated the master, in bewilderment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit him. Saw
+      you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why didn't you
+      stick him?&rdquo; said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle of the black
+      eyes and a gesture of the little red hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master could only look his astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mliss. &ldquo;If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with the
+      play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you wouldn't tell
+      me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doctor so. I wasn't
+      a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers. I'd rather die first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her character,
+      she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding them out at
+      arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and in the queer pronunciation
+      of her old life, which she fell into when unduly excited:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the
+      play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I won't
+      stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you let me, if
+      you didn't hate and despise me too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over the
+      edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the corner of her
+      apron as if they had been wasps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you lock me up in jail,&rdquo; said Mliss, fiercely, &ldquo;to keep me from the
+      play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself&mdash;why shouldn't
+      I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always carry it
+      here,&rdquo; and she struck her breast with her clenched fist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of the
+      passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his and looking
+      full into her truthful eyes, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lissy, will you go with ME?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now&mdash;tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And, hand in hand, they passed into the road&mdash;the narrow road that
+      had once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it seemed
+      she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered brightly above them.
+      For good or ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them the school of
+      Red Mountain closed upon them forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
+      southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by the
+      headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam clung
+      quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air was filled
+      with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante, Hermenegildo
+      Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the Presidio
+      guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a color into
+      his smoke-dried cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window of the
+      guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the year now about to
+      pass away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there was little to
+      review; the year, like its predecessors, had been uneventful&mdash;the
+      days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by
+      incident or interruption. The regularly recurring feasts and saints' days,
+      the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport ship and rarer
+      foreign vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal life. If there
+      was no achievement, there was certainly no failure. Abundant harvests and
+      patient industry amply supplied the wants of Presidio and Mission.
+      Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook the world
+      concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that
+      emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of the continent to
+      them had no suggestiveness. In short, it was that glorious Indian summer
+      of California history around which so much poetical haze still lingers&mdash;that
+      bland, indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
+      wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of American
+      conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire that
+      burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the work
+      of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the leaves
+      with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture text&mdash;the
+      first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos&mdash;an audible
+      commentary fell from his lips: &ldquo;'Abimelech took her from Abraham'&mdash;ah,
+      little one, excellent!&mdash;'Jacob sent to see his brother'&mdash;body of
+      Christ! that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall
+      see it!&rdquo; A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye&mdash;the
+      right, alas! twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He
+      rubbed it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued:
+      &ldquo;'The Ishmaelites having arrived&mdash;'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
+      threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,
+      the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned quickly toward the
+      wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But it
+      was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen that
+      weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant
+      son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented himself
+      with frowning upon the intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful. He was
+      unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of a
+      mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there was little about him
+      that was peculiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent
+      than elegant or precise&mdash;his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of
+      the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on a
+      trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather into
+      the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale under the
+      headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he did not need,
+      having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict surveillance of the
+      Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign vessels, and would do
+      nothing against the severe discipline and good order of the settlement.
+      There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he glanced toward the
+      desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the open unguarded gate. The
+      fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had discreetly retired to shelter
+      at the beginning of the storm, and was then sound asleep in the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he was
+      accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order
+      issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there was
+      no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
+      humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to the
+      Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh
+      with his decision. He would have denied with equal disregard of
+      consequences that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded so
+      gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only that there
+      should be no communication between the ship and shore. &ldquo;For yourself,
+      Senor Captain,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;accept my hospitality. The fort is yours as
+      long as you shall grace it with your distinguished presence&rdquo;; and with
+      old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of withdrawing from the
+      guardroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort, the
+      two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the
+      shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer
+      literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let slip an
+      offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely reflection of
+      the commercial unimportance of the transaction checked him. He only took a
+      capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely drew a settle before
+      the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief
+      that bound his grizzled brows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me
+      not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate. I
+      have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under the
+      influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became still
+      more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years' budget of gossip!
+      The Commander learned, for the first time, how Great Britain lost her
+      colonies; of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon, whose
+      achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the Commander's
+      superiors would have liked. And when Peleg turned questioner, the
+      Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself master of the gossip
+      of the Mission and Presidio, the &ldquo;small-beer&rdquo; chronicles of that pastoral
+      age, the conversion of the heathen, the Presidio schools, and even asked
+      the Commander how he had lost his eye! It is said that at this point of
+      the conversation Master Peleg produced from about his person divers small
+      trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled trifles, and even forced some of them
+      upon his host. It is further alleged that under the malign influence of
+      Peleg and several glasses of aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of
+      his decorum, and behaved in a manner unseemly for one in his position,
+      reciting high-flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice
+      divers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly
+      in regard to a &ldquo;little one&rdquo; who was his, the Commander's, &ldquo;soul&rdquo;! These
+      allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should
+      be received with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay.
+      That the Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his
+      guest the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous
+      manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of
+      this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
+      protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated,
+      took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT. When
+      the day broke the ship was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that the holy
+      fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the plaza, as
+      of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for many days
+      after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen
+      hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were found in the
+      possession of the wife of the baker, and that several bushels of shoe
+      pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but were quite inadequate
+      to the purposes of provender, were discovered in the stable of the
+      blacksmith. But when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee
+      trader's word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations,
+      and the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon the
+      confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject this part of the
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander. The sun
+      was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in bed, and
+      through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of the
+      previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran to the
+      window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden thought seemed to strike
+      him, and he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with this, he consulted
+      the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There was no mistake;
+      the Commander had a visible second eye&mdash;a right one&mdash;as good,
+      save for the purposes of vision, as the left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but one
+      opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles
+      vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen,
+      through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their
+      beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the
+      recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly. The
+      Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood&mdash;he
+      dared not tell the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos
+      believed that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it
+      wise and discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in his
+      life the Commander thought of policy&mdash;for the first time he quoted
+      that text which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy
+      Christians, of being &ldquo;all things to all men.&rdquo; Infeliz Hermenegildo
+      Salvatierra!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement. The
+      Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise a
+      baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could look at it without winking.
+      It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that, it seemed
+      to be endowed with a dreadful prescience&mdash;a faculty of seeing through
+      and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The soldiers
+      of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their commander,
+      and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning. The servants
+      could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that seemed to pursue
+      them. The children of the Presidio school smirched their copybooks under
+      the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly
+      in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood beside her. Gradually
+      distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity took the place of
+      trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos. Whenever the Right
+      Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
+      miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only saw
+      in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg had
+      hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most trusty retainers
+      stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations, confessions
+      of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses and apologies
+      met his mildest inquiries. The very children that he loved&mdash;his pet
+      pupil, Paquita&mdash;seemed to be conscious of some hidden sin. The result
+      of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly. For the first
+      half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at variance. He was still
+      kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however, his voice took
+      upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical, impassive
+      quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain that the
+      Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the Commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
+      solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the
+      right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of the
+      blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency of
+      Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo
+      Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local
+      authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power
+      over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual advice failed
+      signally. He retired baffled and confused from his first interview with
+      the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful
+      power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted himself, exposed the
+      fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed
+      himself to several undoubted heresies. When the Commander stood up at
+      mass, if the officiating priest caught that skeptical and searching eye,
+      the service was inevitably ruined. Even the power of the Holy Church
+      seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the affections of the people and
+      the good order of the settlement departed from San Carlos.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white
+      walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern
+      jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his
+      dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight
+      had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed and
+      ardently prayed for, came not. The sky was as tearless as the right eye of
+      the Commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among
+      the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more firmly,
+      tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and looked up his
+      Toledo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the hour of
+      evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer attended the
+      services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such times to some solitary
+      spot, where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The firelight
+      played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed figure of
+      Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm,
+      and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at
+      his knee. &ldquo;Ah, littlest of all,&rdquo; said the Commander, with something of his
+      old tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his native
+      speech&mdash;&ldquo;sweet one, what doest thou here? Art thou not afraid of him
+      whom everyone shuns and fears?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the little Indian, readily, &ldquo;not in the dark. I hear your voice&mdash;the
+      old voice; I feel your touch&mdash;the old touch; but I see not your eye,
+      Senor Commandante. That only I fear&mdash;and that, O senor, O my father,&rdquo;
+       said the child, lifting her little arms towards his&mdash;&ldquo;that I know is
+      not thine own!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself, he
+      kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A few hours
+      later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own couch
+      and slept peacefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the
+      low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting
+      through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he not
+      slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and
+      listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in
+      the firelight as the savage lifted his arm; another moment and the sore
+      perplexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when
+      suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The
+      Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and
+      unaltered, glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the
+      earth in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast upon
+      the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of a moment.
+      Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily
+      driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a blow
+      upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ, it was
+      gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or bliss, did it
+      adorn the right orbit of the Commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The rain
+      returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored between
+      priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over the sere
+      hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their martial
+      preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral content
+      once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos. And far southward
+      crept the GENERAL COURT with its master, Peleg Scudder, trafficking in
+      beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering glass eyes, wooden legs,
+      and other Boston notions to the chiefs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_NOTE" id="link2H_NOTE">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART I&mdash;IN THE FIELD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably
+      conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and
+      my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape
+      affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
+      performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena&mdash;a California
+      sky. The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping
+      fissures in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and
+      the herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering
+      stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have
+      removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since
+      given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under
+      that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were
+      prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry
+      atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic which
+      overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical for such
+      thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator,
+      with the old diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted features.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any but
+      a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the
+      setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was
+      consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,
+      with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the plain.
+      The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I urged my
+      horse forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought me to a corral, and a
+      little beyond a house, so low and broad it seemed at first sight to be
+      half-buried in the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like some
+      monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the
+      vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for
+      vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
+      projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle,
+      or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin
+      basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the sinking
+      sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded existence.
+      The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed against the
+      rattling wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the rear
+      of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a slight
+      platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and met my
+      salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led the way to
+      the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were reclining by the
+      fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that
+      betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound started from a dark
+      corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into
+      obscurity, and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I instantly received
+      the impression that for a long time the group by the fire had not uttered
+      a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated my business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo
+      Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so as
+      to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been some
+      intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted adjacent&mdash;&ldquo;settled
+      land warrants,&rdquo; interrupted the old man. &ldquo;Ah, yes! Land warrants&mdash;and
+      then this was Mr. Tryan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other
+      public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face. It was
+      certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of that
+      mining operation known as &ldquo;ground sluicing&rdquo;; the harder lines of
+      underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and
+      soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere of
+      the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement of the contest, with
+      a fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent and unrestrained
+      expression. He told me&mdash;what I had already learned&mdash;that the
+      boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the loose
+      phraseology of the DESENO as beginning in the VALDA or skirt of the hill,
+      its precise location long the subject of litigation. I listened and
+      answered with little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the
+      wind which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd face, which
+      was again reflected in the resemblance that the silent group by the fire
+      bore toward him. He was still talking, and the wind was yet blowing, when
+      my confused attention was aroused by a remark addressed to the recumbent
+      figures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar's,
+      tomorrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kin you go, Kerg?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
+      hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was
+      lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to pack her
+      and the baby agin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for the
+      filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the
+      finest things I had ever seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wise?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched
+      boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down the
+      river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum teeth to
+      get the money from you even then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's parsimony, and
+      Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in
+      honorable retirement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with wimmin and
+      children, p'r'aps you'll go,&rdquo; said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,
+      intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got no saddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wot's gone of your saddle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kerg, there&rdquo;&mdash;indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might
+      have worn at the sacrifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You lie!&rdquo; returned Kerg, cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his
+      head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met his
+      own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side, and a
+      look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take the
+      chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance that
+      I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and introduce you
+      to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic
+      allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a
+      light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger
+      present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again, and
+      then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly
+      together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made
+      upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he
+      cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the
+      prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame, listening to
+      the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair which
+      had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered a crazy
+      table in one corner, with an ink bottle and pen; the latter in that greasy
+      state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and farmhouses. A
+      goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a
+      dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the horse about
+      them. Some deer and bear skins completed the inventory. As I sat there,
+      with the silent group around me, the shadowy gloom within and the dominant
+      wind without, I found it difficult to believe I had ever known a different
+      existence. My profession had often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely
+      among those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness made me
+      feel so lonely and uncomfortable I shrank closer to myself, not without
+      grave doubts&mdash;which I think occur naturally to people in like
+      situations&mdash;that this was the general rule of humanity and I was a
+      solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It was a relief when a laconic
+      announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement in
+      the family. We walked across the dark platform, which led to another
+      low-ceiled room. Its entire length was occupied by a table, at the farther
+      end of which a weak-eyed woman was already taking her repast as she at the
+      same time gave nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of
+      introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no notice of me, I
+      was enabled to slip into a seat without discomposing or interrupting her.
+      Tryan extemporized a grace, and the attention of the family became
+      absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the table
+      often betrayed the presence of the &ldquo;wellspring of pleasure.&rdquo; The
+      conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing
+      notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a
+      vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that when a chance
+      allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder Tryan,
+      the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed bitterly against
+      the system of ranch-holding by the &ldquo;greasers,&rdquo; as he was pleased to term
+      the native Californians. As the same ideas have been sometimes advanced
+      under more pretentious circumstances they may be worthy of record.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer doors.
+      Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants&mdash;most of
+      'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More fools the 'Merrikans
+      for lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan and blood money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot for?
+      Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not so
+      sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home and
+      smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and
+      crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wurent
+      allowed in Mizzoori.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and met
+      the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act did not escape
+      detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the rest of
+      the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was agin Nater, and agin God,&rdquo; added Tryan. &ldquo;God never intended gold
+      in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens. That's
+      why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate for lazy
+      lopers. She never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and smoked away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How long he continued and with what further illustration I could not say,
+      for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I was soon
+      followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a smaller
+      room, and pointed to a bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'd better sleep there tonight,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you'll be more comfortable,
+      and I'll call you early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were then
+      troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The &ldquo;boys&rdquo; returned,
+      one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was thrown on
+      the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it did not seem
+      to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it lit. In half an
+      hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by day undertook the
+      nightly office of mattresses, and each received its owner's full-length
+      figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed George. I sat there
+      until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the
+      wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of
+      the sleepers. At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my hat
+      and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind, whose
+      violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces of
+      the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran not knowing
+      whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house was lost in
+      the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast
+      sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I noticed a slight
+      elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded by the
+      ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as resembling an island
+      in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of the expanding plain. But
+      even here I found no rest. The ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given
+      the climate was somehow sung in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse
+      as, guided by the star, I sought the house again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The
+      door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside
+      the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as
+      though he were hunting up prophecies against the &ldquo;Greaser.&rdquo; I turned to
+      enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying beside
+      the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy slumber,
+      and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had given up
+      his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake him, but he
+      lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I went to bed with
+      a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure soothing me
+      to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and grateful
+      silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed,
+      ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the day to
+      my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been magically
+      laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash of cold water,
+      with an extra chill on from the tin basin, helped to brighten me. It was
+      still early, but the family had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a
+      wagon winding far in the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had
+      already &ldquo;packed&rdquo; his relatives away. I felt more cheerful&mdash;there are
+      few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of a good night's rest.
+      After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we
+      were mounted and dashing down the plain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked
+      with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its
+      banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride, the
+      far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the crisp
+      dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by the
+      well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and
+      picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed,
+      untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were
+      concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels
+      all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit that
+      can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we again
+      bear down into sunlit space. Can this be &ldquo;Chu Chu,&rdquo; staid and respectable
+      filly of American pedigree&mdash;Chu Chu, forgetful of plank roads and
+      cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white feet beneath
+      me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust. &ldquo;Give her her head; don't you
+      see she likes it?&rdquo; and Chu Chu seems to like it, and whether bitten by
+      native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of the roan, &ldquo;blood&rdquo;
+       asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude of years is beaten
+      out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek widens to a deep
+      gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving
+      cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are scattered over the plain,
+      grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds. George makes a
+      wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include them all in his
+      vaquero's loop, and says, &ldquo;Ours!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About how many, George?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head,&rdquo; says George, reflecting. &ldquo;We don't
+      know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are they worth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About thirty dollars a head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing
+      George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan
+      household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says,
+      apologetically:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says it
+      ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact, he
+      built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through, and
+      we'd have to get up and move stakes further down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
+      passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center of the
+      mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and in a few
+      moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
+      &ldquo;TORO!&rdquo; shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a way
+      for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their spume
+      is cast on Chu Chu's quivering flank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might have
+      chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of Devon,
+      but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to meet the
+      exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle
+      with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's not our brand,&rdquo; says George; &ldquo;they're strange stock,&rdquo; and he
+      points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of
+      Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But the
+      herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again
+      recourse to the authoritative &ldquo;TORO,&rdquo; and with swinging riata divides the
+      &ldquo;bossy bucklers&rdquo; on either side. When we are free, and breathing somewhat
+      more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack anyone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never horsemen&mdash;sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but
+      curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a chap
+      afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the pursuit of
+      knowledge. But,&rdquo; adds George, &ldquo;here's the lower bench of the foothills,
+      and here's Altascar's corral, and that White building you see yonder is
+      the casa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe building,
+      baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the
+      charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the
+      sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable
+      coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water,
+      from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the center of a
+      low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied
+      about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving
+      his gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added to
+      the cathedral gloom of the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
+      advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness
+      and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much
+      devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the
+      effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white teeth
+      and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we entered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which would
+      deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had just ridden
+      over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened calmly&mdash;not
+      a muscle of his dark face stirring&mdash;and the smoke curling placidly
+      from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had finished, he
+      offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation. George had
+      meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and
+      English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity. When he returned again, a
+      little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most
+      self-possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk cap beneath that
+      stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect. A serape
+      thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting. Horses are always
+      ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour from the time of our
+      arrival we were again &ldquo;loping&rdquo; in the staring sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by
+      restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by
+      way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further
+      intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned with
+      a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious &ldquo;QUE BUENO?&mdash;Your
+      courts are always just.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing monument
+      of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find the old
+      man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview the old
+      Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I was
+      anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as
+      clearly as my recollection served.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this initial
+      point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried grass
+      in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose from his
+      stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph Tryan,
+      said, in a voice broken with passion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land in
+      the fashion of my country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take the
+      LLANO!&mdash;and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till
+      their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it be
+      the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it of
+      mine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the
+      passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill
+      concealing his triumph, interrupted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than the
+      cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side of
+      the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet sufficiently
+      to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his native
+      invective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!&mdash;open not, I say, your lying,
+      Judas lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!&mdash;car-r-r-ramba!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant thunder,
+      he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had been the gray
+      locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle and galloped away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George turned to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you go back with us tonight?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and the
+      roaring wind, and hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, goodby.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Goodby, George.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far when I
+      turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was
+      already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it, and
+      a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last
+      indistinct impression of George Tryan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_PART" id="link2H_PART_">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      PART II&mdash;IN THE FLOOD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was again in
+      the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation had
+      erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had
+      obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of
+      1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning, I took
+      my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the GOLDEN
+      CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the pattering
+      rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks, and did not
+      disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they silently sat around
+      the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to friends and relatives wore
+      anxious faces, and conversed soberly on the one absorbing topic. Others,
+      like myself, attracted by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details. But
+      with that human disposition to seize upon any circumstance that might give
+      chance event the exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half-conscious
+      of something more than curiosity as an impelling motive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted us
+      the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacramento.
+      Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an
+      appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased
+      mariner called &ldquo;Joe,&rdquo; and, wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like
+      material, about as suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been,
+      took my seat in the stern sheets of his boat. It was no slight inward
+      struggle to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the
+      only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable earth,
+      but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a rapid current as we
+      shot the levee.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We glided up the long level of K Street&mdash;once a cheerful, busy
+      thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water
+      which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles in
+      sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on the
+      local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses on
+      street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or by
+      capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and
+      out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the fences
+      surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and private
+      dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as roughly boarded
+      floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the visible desolation was in
+      the voiceless streets that no longer echoed to carriage wheel or footfall.
+      The low ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry
+      of boatmen were the few signs of life and habitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie
+      lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to the
+      music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of the Lido
+      might improvise, but my Yankee &ldquo;Giuseppe&rdquo; has the advantage of earnestness
+      and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors of the past
+      week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally
+      pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca or Laura had been
+      snatched, half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and
+      refuses the proffered fare, for&mdash;am I not a citizen of San Francisco,
+      which was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not
+      he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but
+      cannot take my money. Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard
+      Society, and the women and children without food and clothes at the
+      Agricultural Hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall&mdash;a dismal,
+      bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,
+      and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here
+      Giuseppe tells me of the &ldquo;Relief Boat&rdquo; which leaves for the flooded
+      district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has taught
+      me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of others, and
+      am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the afflicted.
+      Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from me until I
+      stand on the slippery deck of &ldquo;Relief Boat No. 3.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was once the
+      channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by tossing
+      tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a vast inland
+      sea. Stretches of &ldquo;tule&rdquo; land fertilized by its once regular channel and
+      dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The cultivated
+      profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical
+      perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood.
+      The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke
+      curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an undaunted life
+      within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting the fate of
+      their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or swing in eddies with the
+      wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are stranded everywhere where the
+      tide could carry them. As I wipe the moistened glass, I see nothing but
+      water, pattering on the deck from the lowering clouds, dashing against the
+      window, dripping from the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere
+      washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into
+      deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive quiet and concealment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
+      oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the few
+      half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I
+      forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery. Later
+      we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number of our passengers.
+      From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report to have struck the
+      well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar. There
+      is a voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the use
+      of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty &ldquo;Godspeed&rdquo; on either
+      side. But our signal lights are not far distant before a familiar sound
+      comes back to us&mdash;an indomitable Yankee cheer&mdash;which scatters
+      the gloom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks far
+      in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us&mdash;the
+      wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward the
+      north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we penetrate
+      into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our party into
+      smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I borrow a peacoat
+      of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted
+      to pass into one of the boats. We give way northerly. It is quite dark
+      yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars in
+      an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer is a
+      solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken by the
+      &ldquo;bow oar&rdquo;:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Light ahead.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling light
+      appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the shifting
+      position of some black object apparently drifting close upon us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stern, all; a steamer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!&rdquo; is the reply of the coxswain. &ldquo;It's
+      a house, and a big one too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the
+      darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a
+      window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back to
+      me with it as I listen with beating heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys&mdash;lay her
+      alongside. Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no!
+      here's another!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor to
+      the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end of
+      which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in one
+      hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I
+      spring toward him with an exclamation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joseph Tryan!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on his
+      shoulder, and say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The
+      boys&mdash;George! Are they here? are they safe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
+      involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance, free
+      from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling through
+      our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no further notice
+      of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their peace. I make
+      one more effort:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your ranch&mdash;the
+      Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he
+      repeated to himself &ldquo;The surveyor who surveyed your ranch&mdash;Espiritu
+      Santo&rdquo; over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to
+      fix in his memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully by
+      the hand and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We were silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, &ldquo;I'm a
+      MOVING OFF!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moving off?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you hear?&mdash;there!
+      listen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's them wot he sent!&mdash;Old Altascar sent. They've been here all
+      night. I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man
+      to move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the
+      door, and I saw their eyes on the step&mdash;their cruel, hard eyes. Ah,
+      why don't they quit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further
+      traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so much
+      like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious
+      feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them
+      briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock&mdash;all gone&mdash;gone,
+      gone for the hides and hoofs,&rdquo; and he groans bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and
+      perhaps the family are safe by this time,&rdquo; says the coxswain, hopefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to the
+      boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its
+      strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the stern
+      as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky shows the
+      coming day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had
+      seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket near
+      the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of the old
+      man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about George made a
+      strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened at about eight
+      o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one of the old man's
+      sons had been picked up and was now on board.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it George Tryan?&rdquo; I ask quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is,&rdquo; adds the engineer, with
+      a smile at some luscious remembrance. &ldquo;You'll find him for'ard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
+      irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and rather
+      more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes that
+      have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that
+      circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me at
+      my ease by at once addressing me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's become
+      o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
+      admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at
+      last pulled on his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must have
+      been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old woman.
+      Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was evidently
+      divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the contending
+      emotions to ask about George.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about the
+      prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved suthin. He
+      lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you,&rdquo; to a passing
+      boatman, &ldquo;when are you goin' to give us some grub? I'm hungry 'nough to
+      skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn butcher when things is dried up, and
+      save hides, horns, and taller.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
+      climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?&rdquo; I ask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't much to do now,&rdquo; says the practical young man. &ldquo;I'll have to
+      lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain't
+      worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the ole
+      man'll drive stakes next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I meant as to your father and George, Wise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the old
+      woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween this and
+      Altascar's ef he ain't thar now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if George
+      helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built too high. Oh,
+      thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah,&rdquo; says Wise, with reflective
+      admiration, &ldquo;those greasers ain't the darned fools people thinks 'em. I'll
+      bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy.&rdquo; But the appearance
+      of &ldquo;grub&rdquo; cut this rhapsody short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall keep on a little farther,&rdquo; I say, &ldquo;and try to find George.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage&mdash;workin' on
+      shares, eh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me,
+      and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might
+      warrant, I walked away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of George's
+      self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he had helped and
+      rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen him, and
+      soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the foothills,
+      and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to
+      Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace
+      fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head swung round, pulled
+      by sturdy and willing hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay
+      nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the
+      creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns were
+      seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming
+      implements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the &ldquo;LLANO DE ESPIRITU
+      SANTO.&rdquo; As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water into
+      mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October over that
+      boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant hills, which
+      are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing silently, and I
+      find my mind, released from its tension, growing benumbed and depressed as
+      then. The water, too, is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the
+      creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect the
+      tops of chimisal, which shows the tide to have somewhat fallen. There is a
+      black mound, bearing to the north of the line of alder, making an adverse
+      current, which, as we sweep to the right to avoid, I recognize. We pull
+      close alongside and I call to the men to stop.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, &ldquo;L. E. S. I.&rdquo;
+       Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was George's. It had
+      been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of the
+      mound was deeply dented with horses' hoofs. The stake was covered with
+      horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
+      resting and rowing by turns, and oftener &ldquo;poling&rdquo; the shallower surface,
+      but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My recollection of the old
+      survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings of the
+      creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to determine the
+      distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability. Night overtakes us
+      in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more dangerous than it really
+      is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this mode of
+      navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of perfect safety and speedy
+      relief ahead. We go on in this way until about eight o'clock, and ground
+      by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few hundred yards before we
+      strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white walls of Altascar's
+      appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving in the courtyard; but
+      otherwise the old tomblike repose characterizes the building.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar met me
+      on the corridor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had
+      dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously
+      held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him about George and my
+      fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely laid
+      his hand on my shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;POCO A POCO, senor&mdash;not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you
+      have cold. Necessary it is you should have peace.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he
+      gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves
+      before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was
+      intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the
+      corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity was
+      deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as the
+      whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn
+      inheritor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two smoking
+      dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my men ate
+      ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept down
+      the instincts of hunger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have eat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said, &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; to please him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;BUENO, eat when you can&mdash;food and appetite are not always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his
+      countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than a
+      legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was made by me, senor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;If I could find him&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here! and&rdquo;&mdash;but I could not say &ldquo;well!&rdquo; I understood the gravity of
+      the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the
+      building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the
+      broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor
+      to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before
+      the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and
+      sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the
+      humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their
+      household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him
+      once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that he had
+      known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was honest and brave,&rdquo; said the old man, and turned away. There was
+      another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful outline,
+      and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her downcast face. I
+      did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently, left the loving and
+      loved together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows of
+      the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the horse
+      of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he found
+      him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his person;
+      that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and that he
+      had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that help he had
+      so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse.
+      These incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great
+      chamber that evening&mdash;women and children&mdash;most of them succored
+      through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was buried in the Indian mound&mdash;the single spot of strange
+      perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty
+      plain. A little slab of sandstone with the initials &ldquo;G. T.&rdquo; is his
+      monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey
+      of the &ldquo;Espiritu Santo Rancho.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0020" id="link2H_4_0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a quantity
+      of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion, and a
+      certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness. She
+      always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the latest
+      fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when
+      examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar
+      left by a single drop of vitriol&mdash;happily the only drop of an entire
+      phial&mdash;thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached
+      the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied
+      the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally
+      incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by
+      some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of THE FIDDLETOWN
+      AVALANCHE had said privately that it was &ldquo;an exaggerated dimple.&rdquo; Colonel
+      Starbottle was instantly &ldquo;reminded of the beautifying patches of the days
+      of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women
+      that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank eyes upon&mdash;a Creole
+      woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a scar&mdash;a line
+      extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And this woman, sir,
+      thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to
+      perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I said to her, 'Celeste,
+      how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank you?' And she said
+      to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man that I'd confide in but you;
+      but I made that scar myself, purposely, I did, blank me.' These were her
+      very words, sir, and perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I'll put
+      up any blank sum you can name and prove it, blank me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in love
+      with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love was
+      returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone had
+      been known to express skepticism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was
+      Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this
+      Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted
+      that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made it
+      perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have it
+      inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its
+      highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion
+      of her second divorce), &ldquo;The cold world does not understand Clara yet&rdquo;;
+      and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of a
+      single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the whole
+      caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read those lines entitled
+      &ldquo;Infelissimus,&rdquo; commencing &ldquo;Why waves no cypress o'er this brow?&rdquo;
+       originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the signature of &ldquo;The Lady
+      Clare,&rdquo; without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or
+      the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality
+      and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next
+      week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire
+      absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical
+      manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the
+      newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several
+      poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a
+      too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which an
+      enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the
+      poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule
+      freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown
+      poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden
+      sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some reflections on
+      the vanity of his pursuit&mdash;he supplied several mining camps with
+      whisky and tobacco&mdash;in conjunction with the dreariness of the dusty
+      plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in
+      sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship&mdash;as
+      brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities&mdash;they
+      were married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown,
+      or &ldquo;Fideletown,&rdquo; as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr. Tretherick
+      discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while freighting between
+      Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that which his wife had
+      evolved from the contemplation of California scenery and her own soul.
+      Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to beat her; and she,
+      being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of
+      unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink,
+      and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the
+      AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a
+      similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed
+      it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism, signed
+      &ldquo;A. S.,&rdquo; also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by extensive
+      quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of Greek type, the
+      editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian numbers in the ordinary
+      Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel Starbottle, and the vast
+      delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept the text as an excellent
+      imitation of Choctaw&mdash;a language with which the colonel, as a whilom
+      resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed,
+      the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be
+      an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a
+      Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed &ldquo;A. S. S.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the
+      AVALANCHE. &ldquo;An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last, between
+      the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the well-known
+      Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots
+      were fired by the parties without injury to either, although it is said
+      that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his
+      legs from the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended
+      for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's firearms
+      hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known, although it is hinted
+      that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that points to a well-known
+      and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have often graced our columns
+      seems to gain credence from those that are posted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying
+      circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. &ldquo;The old man's head is
+      level,&rdquo; said one long-booted philosopher. &ldquo;Ef the colonel kills Flash,
+      Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel, Tretherick is all
+      right. Either way, he's got a sure thing.&rdquo; During this delicate condition
+      of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her husband's home and took
+      refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back.
+      Here she staid for several weeks, during which period it is only justice
+      to say that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended,
+      left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of
+      dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few
+      loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the
+      Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick
+      reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation.
+      Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the
+      main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland. It
+      was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The
+      dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she
+      was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port which
+      usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and his
+      boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm, swung
+      jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,
+      vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes; and
+      the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his place
+      at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The coast is clear,&rdquo; said the colonel, &ldquo;and Tretherick is over at Dutch
+      Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you need
+      fear no trouble from him. I,&rdquo; he continued, with a slight inflation of the
+      chest that imperiled the security of his button, &ldquo;I will see that you are
+      protected in the removal of your property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!&rdquo; simpered the lady
+      as they walked along. &ldquo;It's so pleasant to meet someone who has soul&mdash;someone
+      to sympathize with in a community so hardened and heartless as this.&rdquo; And
+      Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not until they wrought their
+      perfect and accepted work upon her companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, certainly, of course,&rdquo; said the colonel, glancing nervously up and
+      down the street&mdash;&ldquo;yes, certainly.&rdquo; Perceiving, however, that there
+      was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.
+      Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the
+      possession of too much soul. That many women&mdash;as a gentleman she
+      would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names&mdash;but many
+      beautiful women had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam,
+      absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when
+      two natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of
+      a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a
+      hypocritical society&mdash;when two souls in perfect accord met and
+      mingled in poetical union, then&mdash;but here the colonel's speech, which
+      had been remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky,
+      almost inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may
+      have heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
+      Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite
+      virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very
+      pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost
+      files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in which
+      it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,
+      uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At
+      the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was
+      no other sign of occupancy. &ldquo;The coast,&rdquo; as the colonel had said, was
+      indeed &ldquo;clear.&rdquo; Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel would have
+      entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. &ldquo;Come for me in a couple
+      of hours, and I shall have everything packed,&rdquo; she said, as she smiled,
+      and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it with great
+      fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the gallant
+      colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as smartly as his
+      stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had gone, Mrs.
+      Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and
+      then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
+      dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it when
+      she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she had
+      forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were
+      half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay her
+      shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her I know
+      not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened with a
+      beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to the mirror,
+      and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of
+      her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly,
+      half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down to
+      get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety eyes
+      became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned away with a light,
+      reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung her precious
+      dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing suddenly a favorite
+      black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment, thought she should have
+      fainted. But discovering it the next instant lying upon a trunk where she
+      had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects
+      the friendless for the first time sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she
+      was hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a certain
+      lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing, before the
+      mirror. And then suddenly she became aware of a child's voice close beside
+      her, and she stopped. And then the child's voice repeated, &ldquo;Is it Mamma?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a little
+      girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was torn and
+      dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled
+      seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque
+      little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain
+      self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much to
+      themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her
+      own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself&mdash;a doll with a
+      cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long
+      shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders
+      and swept the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had
+      but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in
+      the doorway, again asked, &ldquo;Is it Mamma?&rdquo; she answered sharply, &ldquo;No, it
+      isn't,&rdquo; and turned a severe look upon the intruder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,
+      said in deliciously imperfect speech:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the
+      child's shoulders, and said angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How dared you take my things, you bad child?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!&rdquo; she
+      continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had
+      dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was
+      dancing up and down before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your name, child?&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the small
+      and not very white hands from her garments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tarry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tarry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caroline?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whose child ARE you?&rdquo; demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to keep
+      down a rising fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yours,&rdquo; said the little creature with a laugh. &ldquo;I'm your little
+      durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn
+      away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I
+      live wid you and Papa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long have you been here?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I fink it's free days,&rdquo; said Carry reflectively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You think! Don't you know?&rdquo; sneered Mrs. Tretherick. &ldquo;Then, where did you
+      come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a great
+      effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, Papa fetched me&mdash;from Miss Simmons&mdash;from Sacramento, last
+      week.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Last week! You said three days just now,&rdquo; returned Mrs. Tretherick with
+      severe deliberation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean a monf,&rdquo; said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness and
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know what you are talking about?&rdquo; demanded Mrs. Tretherick
+      shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her and
+      precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs.
+      Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There now&mdash;stop that sniffling,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
+      her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly
+      uncomfortable. &ldquo;Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother. Stop,&rdquo;
+       she continued, as Carry moved away. &ldquo;Where's your papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn&rdquo;&mdash;she hesitated&mdash;&ldquo;two,
+      free, days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who takes care of you, child?&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her curiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,&rdquo;
+       said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. &ldquo;Stop&mdash;where
+      are you going?&rdquo; she added as the child began to ascend the stairs,
+      dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't your mamma,&rdquo; shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
+      re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to work
+      with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her best
+      dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched her soft
+      hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an indignant
+      commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to herself she
+      saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first wife&mdash;this
+      child of whose existence he had never seemed to care&mdash;just to insult
+      her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would follow
+      soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn, but RED&mdash;of
+      course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if so, she
+      was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been prepared: this
+      red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been kept at a convenient
+      distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when needed. She remembered
+      his occasional visits there on&mdash;business, as he said. Perhaps the
+      mother already was there; but no, she had gone East. Nevertheless, Mrs.
+      Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact
+      that she might be there. She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain
+      satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely no woman had ever been
+      so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself sitting
+      alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of a ruined
+      temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her husband drove
+      rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his
+      side. Sitting upon the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a
+      lugubrious poem describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly
+      clad, she came upon her husband and &ldquo;another&rdquo; flaunting in silks and
+      diamonds. She pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow&mdash;a
+      beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor
+      of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle
+      all this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He&mdash;she
+      laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her
+      face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so
+      quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied that she
+      heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings and warpings of
+      the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor above. This, as she
+      remembered, was only an open attic that had been used as a storeroom. With
+      a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the
+      door partly open, looked within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small
+      window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the
+      barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's
+      glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor
+      with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking to
+      it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was
+      rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the doll
+      severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay there,
+      and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs. Tretherick's
+      manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation almost a literal
+      reproduction, with a single exception. After she had informed the doll
+      that she was not her mother, at the close of the interview she added
+      pathetically, &ldquo;that if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma,
+      and love her very much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of
+      humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected her
+      most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her
+      cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.
+      The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose
+      very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,
+      the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure&mdash;all these
+      touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.
+      She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and
+      thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the
+      room were a little darker, the child lonelier&mdash;say, sitting beside a
+      dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she
+      suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of
+      the colonel's cane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the hall.
+      Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated
+      statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. &ldquo;Don't
+      tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!&rdquo;
+       she almost screamed. &ldquo;And think,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;of the heartlessness of the
+      wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a blank shame!&rdquo; stammered the colonel, without the least idea of
+      what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to comprehend
+      a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of her character, I
+      fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He stammered, expanded
+      his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but all unintelligently. Mrs.
+      Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a sickening doubt of the existence
+      of natures in perfect affinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's of no use,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer to
+      some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from the
+      fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. &ldquo;It's of no use: my mind
+      is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I shall
+      stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I will
+      put him face to face with his infamy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
+      convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded by
+      the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in his own
+      house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle to the
+      perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental nature.
+      But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing above
+      them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's her,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions, in
+      either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection and
+      jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. &ldquo;Ah! pretty little
+      girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find yourself
+      pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?&rdquo; The colonel's impulse also was
+      to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this
+      action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven. Carry, however,
+      took no immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the
+      chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding
+      herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown. Nevertheless, the
+      colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into an attitude of respectful
+      admiration, he pointed out a marvelous resemblance to the &ldquo;Madonna and
+      Child.&rdquo; Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but did not dislodge Carry as before.
+      There was an awkward pause for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick,
+      motioning significantly to the child, said in a whisper: &ldquo;Go now. Don't
+      come here again, but meet me tonight at the hotel.&rdquo; She extended her hand:
+      the colonel bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a
+      prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls just
+      visible in the folds of her dress&mdash;&ldquo;do you think you will be 'dood'
+      if I let you stay in here and sit with me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And let me tall you Mamma?&rdquo; queried Carry, looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And let you call me Mamma!&rdquo; assented Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeth,&rdquo; said Carry promptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught sight of
+      the trunk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?&rdquo; she said with a quick nervous look,
+      and a clutch at the woman's dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only playing your dowin' away,&rdquo; suggested Carry with a laugh. &ldquo;Let me
+      play too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and presently
+      reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely proceeded to
+      pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A
+      question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from the
+      child; and before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in
+      possession of all her earlier history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick
+      had been obliged to take Carry upon her lap, pending the most confidential
+      disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had
+      apparently ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures; and when lost
+      in thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded, and ran her
+      fingers through the scarlet curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't hold me right, Mamma,&rdquo; said Carry at last, after one or two
+      uneasy shiftings of position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should I hold you?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
+      half-embarrassed laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dis way,&rdquo; said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm around Mrs.
+      Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom&mdash;&ldquo;dis way&mdash;dere.&rdquo;
+       After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small animal, she
+      closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in that
+      artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in the
+      touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her. She
+      began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old horror
+      that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled days of
+      sickness and distrust&mdash;days of an overshadowing fear&mdash;days of
+      preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented,
+      with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have been&mdash;she
+      dared not say HAD been&mdash;and wondered. It was six years ago; if it had
+      lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were folded
+      loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their
+      clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-sob,
+      half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the sleeping child
+      down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if she would hide it
+      in the grave dug there years before. And the gust that shook her passed,
+      and then, ah me! the rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily in her
+      sleep. But the woman soothed her again&mdash;it was SO easy to do it now&mdash;and
+      they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might have seemed
+      incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining sunbeams, and
+      the general air of desertion and abandonment, yet a desertion that had in
+      it nothing of age, decay, or despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in vain.
+      And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks, he found
+      the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes and sunbeams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr.
+      Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much
+      diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER openly
+      alluded to the &ldquo;forcible abduction&rdquo; of the child with the same freedom,
+      and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized
+      the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few
+      of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very
+      strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the INTELLIGENCER. The
+      majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had shaken
+      the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was enough for them to
+      know. They mourned the loss of the fair abductor more than her offense.
+      They promptly rejected Tretherick as an injured husband and disconsolate
+      father, and even went so far as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity
+      of his grief. They reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle,
+      overbearing that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in
+      barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed favorable to
+      the display of sentiment. &ldquo;She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel,&rdquo; said
+      one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great
+      readiness of illustration; &ldquo;and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away
+      someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU,
+      Kernel, diet she should jist shake you&mdash;is what gits me. And they do
+      say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them
+      corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in
+      and out o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?&rdquo; It was another generous and
+      tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine on the
+      colonel's wounds. &ldquo;The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick prevailed on
+      ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the stage offis,
+      and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and offered you two
+      short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud employ you agin&mdash;and
+      now you say it ain't so? Well, I'll tell the boys it ain't so, and I'm
+      glad I met you, for stories DO get round.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
+      Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight, stated
+      that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further deposed that,
+      obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach, and secured a
+      passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was true that Ah Fe's
+      testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted it. Even those who
+      were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the
+      truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern. But it would
+      appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious chronicle,
+      that herein they were mistaken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that Ah
+      Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing Chinamen.
+      They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped with long poles and
+      baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation at once
+      ensued between Ah Fe and his brother Mongolians&mdash;a conversation
+      characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity which
+      was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not
+      understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr.
+      Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing,
+      regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply kicked them
+      out of his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the
+      group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of yellow rice
+      paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a small parcel put
+      into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim solitude of his
+      kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed, ironed, and
+      folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials &ldquo;C. T.&rdquo; Ah Fe tucked it
+      away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the
+      sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. &ldquo;Me no likee Fiddletown.
+      Me belly sick. Me go now.&rdquo; Mr. Tretherick violently suggested a profane
+      locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
+      Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
+      interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a
+      letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. &ldquo;If you bring me an answer, I'll
+      double that&mdash;sabe, John?&rdquo; Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally
+      accidental, with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and
+      another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the
+      AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance on
+      his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after
+      trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into
+      accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother
+      Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony of
+      Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side
+      of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
+      clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his
+      letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry of one
+      Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly affecting.
+      Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the levity induced
+      by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details of this breach of
+      trust, would find ample retributive justice in the difficulties that
+      subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of
+      the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose
+      moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking. At
+      Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger&mdash;purely an act of
+      Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known hands
+      from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being
+      something or other, and discharged with a severe reprimand&mdash;possibly
+      for not being it, and so delaying the course of justice. At San Francisco
+      he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by carefully
+      avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at last reached, in
+      comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where his abuse was confined to
+      the police and limited by the strong arm of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and on
+      the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy Fook's
+      several clients.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill of
+      California Street&mdash;one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the
+      summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy. There was
+      no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or without,
+      only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over everything. There was a
+      fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets: there was a dreary vacant quiet
+      in the gray houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission
+      Ridge was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver. As he
+      put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his defective
+      intelligence and heathen experience, this &ldquo;God's own climate,&rdquo; as was
+      called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it
+      is possible that Ah Fe illogically confounded this season with his old
+      persecutors, the schoolchildren, who, being released from studious
+      confinement, at this hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened
+      on, and turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the little strip
+      of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and above
+      this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat. Ah Fe rang the bell. A
+      servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as
+      if he were some necessary domestic animal. Ah Fe silently mounted the
+      stairs, and entering the open door of the front chamber, put down the
+      basket and stood passively on the threshold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with a
+      child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe instantly
+      recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his immobile face changed,
+      nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly. She evidently
+      did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes. But the child,
+      curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in Fiddletown.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The child
+      clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said shortly: &ldquo;Me
+      John&mdash;Ah Fe&mdash;allee same. Me know you. How do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at Ah Fe.
+      Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Carry's
+      perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows.
+      With a recollection of past pain, and an obscure suspicion of impending
+      danger, she asked him when he had left Fiddletown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San Flisco.
+      Likee washee. Likee Tally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to consider how
+      much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his curt directness and
+      sincerity. But she said, &ldquo;Don't tell anybody you have seen me,&rdquo; and took
+      out her pocketbook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe, without
+      examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily furnished. Ah Fe,
+      without removing his eyes from blank vacancy, saw that both Mrs.
+      Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet it is my duty to state that
+      Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly and firmly over the half-dollar which
+      Mrs. Tretherick extended to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of extraordinary
+      contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from apparently no
+      particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon the basket with the
+      remark:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One piecee washman flagittee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his efforts were
+      rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right ear, a many-folded
+      piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this carefully, he at last disclosed two
+      twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money. Me
+      fetchee money to you. All lightee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John,&rdquo; said Mrs. Tretherick
+      earnestly. &ldquo;There must be some mistake. It belongs to some other person.
+      Take it back, John.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's extended hand,
+      and began hastily to gather up his basket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He say, 'God
+      damn thief!&mdash;catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.' Me no takee
+      back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me fetchee money you.
+      Me no takee back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she MIGHT have
+      left the money in the manner he had said. In any event, she had no right
+      to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by refusing it. So she said:
+      &ldquo;Very well, John, I will keep it. But you must come again and see me&mdash;&rdquo;
+       here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated with a new and sudden revelation of the
+      fact that any man could wish to see any other than herself&mdash;&ldquo;and, and&mdash;Carry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic laugh
+      without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he shut the door
+      carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower hall he, however,
+      found an unexpected difficulty in opening the front door, and, after
+      fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment, looked around for some help or
+      instruction. But the Irish handmaid who had let him in was contemptuously
+      oblivious of his needs, and did not appear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall simply
+      record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a scarf, evidently
+      the property of the servant before alluded to, was lying. As Ah Fe tried
+      the lock with one hand, the other rested lightly on the table. Suddenly,
+      and apparently of its own volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward
+      Ah Fe's hand; from Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly,
+      and with an insinuating, snakelike motion; and then disappeared somewhere
+      in the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying the least interest or
+      concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated his experiments upon the
+      lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red damask, moved by apparently the
+      same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself under Ah Fe's fingers, and
+      sinuously disappeared by the same hidden channel. What further mystery
+      might have followed, I cannot say; for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the
+      secret of the lock, and was enabled to open the door coincident with the
+      sound of footsteps upon the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his
+      movements, but patiently shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully
+      behind him again, and stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that
+      now shrouded earth and sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's figure
+      until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present loneliness, she
+      felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may have ascribed to the
+      higher emotions and the consciousness of a good deed that certain
+      expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of the bosom, that was really due
+      to the hidden presence of the scarf and tablecloth under his blouse. For
+      Mrs. Tretherick was still poetically sensitive. As the gray fog deepened
+      into night, she drew Carry closer toward her, and, above the prattle of
+      the child, pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic recollection at
+      once bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah Fe linked her again
+      with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary interval between, she
+      was now wandering&mdash;a journey so piteous, willful, thorny, and useless
+      that it was no wonder that at last Carry stopped suddenly in the midst of
+      her voluble confidences to throw her small arms around the woman's neck,
+      and bid her not to cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever dedicated to
+      an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs.
+      Tretherick's own theory of this interval and episode, with its feeble
+      palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak
+      apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard. Her
+      slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she found that
+      the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest emotions of
+      the human heart, and compelling the editorial breast to the noblest
+      commendation in the editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray
+      the expenses of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage, but failed
+      signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was different from that
+      which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was certain that her
+      charming presence, so effective at short range, was not sufficiently
+      pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough in the greenroom,
+      but awakened no abiding affection among the audience. In this strait, it
+      occurred to her that she had a voice&mdash;a contralto of no very great
+      compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally
+      obtained position in a church choir. She held it for three months, greatly
+      to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much to the satisfaction of
+      the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward her during the singing of
+      the last hymn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that slanted
+      through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall very tenderly on
+      her beautiful head with its stacked masses of deerskin-colored hair, on
+      the low black arches of her brows, and to deepen the pretty fringes that
+      shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet. Very pleasant it was to watch the opening
+      and shutting of that small straight mouth, with its quick revelation of
+      little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin
+      cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of
+      admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your eye
+      like a racer under the spur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano&mdash;a
+      little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment
+      of her sex&mdash;that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful; that
+      her conceit was unbearable; that, if she considered the rest of the choir
+      as slaves, she (the soprano) would like to know it; that her conduct on
+      Easter Sunday with the basso had attracted the attention of the whole
+      congregation; and that she herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up
+      during the service; that her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her
+      singing in the choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she had
+      waived this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick
+      had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who
+      sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to me
+      behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a note at
+      the end of a line in order that her voice might linger longer with the
+      congregation&mdash;an act that could be attributed only to a defective
+      moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular dry goods clerk on
+      weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently behind his eyebrows on the
+      Sabbath)&mdash;that as a man, sir, he would put up with it no longer. The
+      basso alone&mdash;a short German with a heavy voice, for which he seemed
+      reluctantly responsible, and rather grieved at its possession&mdash;stood
+      up for Mrs. Tretherick, and averred that they were jealous of her because
+      she was &ldquo;bretty.&rdquo; The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel,
+      wherein Mrs. Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement
+      and epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to be
+      supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act was marked
+      intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the usual soprano
+      solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with triumph, but on reaching her
+      room frantically told Carry that they were beggars henceforward; that she&mdash;her
+      mother&mdash;had just taken the very bread out of her darling's mouth, and
+      ended by bursting into a flood of penitent tears. They did not come so
+      quickly as in her old poetical days; but when they came they stung deeply.
+      She was roused by a formal visit from a vestryman&mdash;one of the music
+      committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new neck
+      ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She staid there two hours&mdash;a
+      fact that might have occasioned some remark but that the vestryman was
+      married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When Mrs. Tretherick
+      returned to her room, she sang to herself in the glass and scolded Carry&mdash;but
+      she retained her place in the choir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies received a
+      powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's wife. That lady
+      called upon several of the church members and on Dr. Cope's family. The
+      result was that, at a later meeting of the music committee, Mrs.
+      Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to the size of the building and
+      she was invited to resign. She did so. She had been out of a situation for
+      two months, and her scant means were almost exhausted, when Ah Fe's
+      unexpected treasure was tossed into her lap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
+      shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
+      Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had slipped away
+      unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in her hand
+      roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her back to an active realization of
+      the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was wont to scan the advertisements in
+      the faint hope of finding some avenue of employment&mdash;she knew not
+      what&mdash;open to her needs; and Carry had noted this habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights, and
+      opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following paragraph in
+      the telegraphic column:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIDDLETOWN, 7th.&mdash;Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this
+      place, died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was addicted to
+      intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another page of the
+      paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in a book. Mrs.
+      Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was
+      unusually silent and cold. When Carry was undressed and in bed, Mrs.
+      Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, taking
+      Carry's flaming head between her hands, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Carry, after a moment's thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give you nice
+      clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. &ldquo;Should YOU, Mamma?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. &ldquo;Go to sleep,&rdquo;
+       she said sharply, and turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around her,
+      and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was
+      broken up by sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ky, Mamma,&rdquo; whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of their
+      recent conversation. &ldquo;Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new papa, if he
+      loved you very much&mdash;very, very much!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
+      married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently elected
+      to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils of the State. As
+      I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by the
+      correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture to quote some of his
+      graceful periods. &ldquo;The relentless shafts of the sly god have been lately
+      busy among our gallant Solons. We quote 'one more unfortunate.' The latest
+      victim is the Hon. C. Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair enchantress in the
+      case is a beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a
+      fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of San
+      Francisco, where she commanded a high salary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact
+      with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press. &ldquo;The new
+      Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately advented in the legislature
+      with a little bill to change the name of Tretherick to Starbottle. They
+      call it a marriage certificate down there. Mr. Tretherick has been dead
+      just one month; but we presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of
+      ghosts.&rdquo; It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's
+      victory was by no means an easy one. To a natural degree of coyness on the
+      part of the lady was added the impediment of a rival&mdash;a prosperous
+      undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick
+      at the theater and church, his professional habits debarring him from
+      ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any other than the most formal
+      public contact with the sex. As this gentleman had made a snug fortune
+      during the felicitous prevalence of a severe epidemic, the colonel
+      regarded him as a dangerous rival. Fortunately, however, the undertaker
+      was called in professionally to lay out a brother senator, who had
+      unhappily fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor; and either
+      deterred by physical consideration from rivalry, or wisely concluding that
+      the colonel was professionally valuable, he withdrew from the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward incident.
+      During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the charge of Colonel
+      Starbottle's sister. On their return to the city, immediately on reaching
+      their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle announced her intention of at once
+      proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's to bring the child home. Colonel
+      Starbottle, who had been exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness
+      which he had endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally
+      buttoned his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking unsteadily
+      once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife with his most
+      imposing manner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have deferred,&rdquo; said the colonel with an exaggeration of port that
+      increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of speech&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      have deferr&mdash;I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash my duty ter
+      dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal happ'ness, to bligh
+      bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by unpleasht revelashun. Musht be
+      done&mdash;by God, m'm, musht do it now. The chile is gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone!&rdquo; echoed Mrs. Starbottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
+      drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment nearly
+      sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll splain all in a minit,&rdquo; he said with a deprecating wave of the hand.
+      &ldquo;Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly event wish
+      preshipitate our happ'ness&mdash;the myster'us prov'nice wish releash you&mdash;releash
+      chile! hunerstan?&mdash;releash chile. The mom't Tretherick die&mdash;all
+      claim you have in chile through him&mdash;die too. Thash law. Who's chile
+      b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead. Chile can't b'long dead man. Damn
+      nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh your chile? no! whose chile then? Chile
+      b'long to 'ts mother. Unnerstan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a very
+      low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm lawyer,
+      leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as leshlator, and
+      'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother at any coss&mdash;any
+      coss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is she?&rdquo; repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed on the
+      colonel's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by fav'rin
+      gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly
+      collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to beam
+      with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her
+      as she sat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
+      Conshider m'or's feelings&mdash;conshider MY feelin's.&rdquo; The colonel
+      paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently in his
+      breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles, on
+      the woman before him. &ldquo;Why should dark shed-der cass bligh on two sholes
+      with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good chile, but summonelse chile!
+      Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht, you
+      all's have me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. &ldquo;YOU!&rdquo; she cried, bringing out a
+      chest note that made the chandeliers ring&mdash;&ldquo;You that I married to
+      give my darling food and clothes&mdash;YOU! a dog that I whistled to my
+      side to keep the men off me&mdash;YOU!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had
+      been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom, and then
+      suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a burning fire over
+      her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and mouth, a
+      squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening of the head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. &ldquo;Hear me! If you
+      ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child. If you ever
+      expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back. For
+      where she goes, I go; you hear me! Where she has gone, look for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her
+      arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary
+      bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door. Colonel
+      Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry
+      woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold and
+      rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful
+      attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time
+      profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last
+      he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the narcotic
+      quantity of his potations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables
+      and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course of
+      this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her
+      mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she
+      saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard once
+      more a childish voice asking, &ldquo;Is it Mamma?&rdquo; But the epithet now stung her
+      to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with
+      a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced that, in turning
+      over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper with a broken sandal
+      string. She uttered a great cry here&mdash;the first she had uttered&mdash;and
+      caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again and again, and
+      rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her sex. And then she
+      took it to the window, the better to see it through her now streaming
+      eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing that she could not
+      stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish lips. And then she
+      suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede before her, the
+      floor to sink beneath her feet; and staggering to the bed, she fell prone
+      upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed to her breast. Her face
+      was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and there was a spot upon her
+      lip, another on her handkerchief, and still another on the white
+      counterpane of the bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white
+      curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the roofs,
+      soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-wrapping all things in an
+      uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very quiet&mdash;for
+      all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the other side of the
+      bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary couch, snored
+      peacefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the State
+      of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any other time, the
+      bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm that had
+      whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole, played
+      around this soft Italian Capital, whirled in and out of the great staring
+      wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the cold
+      green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff, dark
+      figures in its streets. From the level of the street, the four principal
+      churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires
+      were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near the railroad station,
+      the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous locomotive was
+      further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal row of front steps, like
+      a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a few more houses to be hitched on
+      to proceed to a pleasanter location. But the pride of Genoa&mdash;the
+      great Crammer Institute for Young Ladies&mdash;stretched its bare brick
+      length and reared its cupola plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above
+      the principal avenue. There was no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the
+      fact that it was a public institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a
+      pretty face at its window, were clearly visible all over the township.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express brought but
+      few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger alighted,
+      and was driven away in the solitary waiting sleigh toward the Genoa Hotel.
+      And then the train sped away again, with that passionless indifference to
+      human sympathies or curiosity peculiar to express trains; the one baggage
+      truck was wheeled into the station again; the station door was locked; and
+      the stationmaster went home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness of
+      three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
+      surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and confectionery
+      saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the admirable
+      regulations of the Institute failed to entirely develop the physical and
+      moral natures of its pupils. They conformed to the excellent dietary rules
+      in public, and in private drew upon the luxurious rations of their village
+      caterer. They attended church with exemplary formality, and flirted
+      informally during service with the village beaux. They received the best
+      and most judicious instruction during school hours, and devoured the
+      trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was an aggregation of
+      quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young creatures that
+      reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even Mistress Phillips, to
+      whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant spirits and
+      youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of &ldquo;them young
+      things&rdquo; did her good, and had even been known to shield them by shameless
+      equivocation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll be
+      missed,&rdquo; said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with an aquiline nose,
+      and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader, as she rose from her seat.
+      &ldquo;Have you got the books, Addy?&rdquo; Addy displayed three dissipated-looking
+      novels under her waterproof. &ldquo;And the provisions, Carry?&rdquo; Carry showed a
+      suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack. &ldquo;All right, then. Come,
+      girls, trudge&mdash;Charge it,&rdquo; she added, nodding to her host as they
+      passed toward the door. &ldquo;I'll pay you when my quarter's allowance comes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Kate,&rdquo; interposed Carry, producing her purse, &ldquo;let me pay; it's my
+      turn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, &ldquo;even if you do have
+      rich relatives, and regular remittances from California. Never! Come,
+      girls, forward, march!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their feet.
+      Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. &ldquo;Sakes alive, galls! ye mussn't go
+      out in sich weather. Better let me send word to the Institoot, and make ye
+      up a nice bed tonight in my parlor.&rdquo; But the last sentence was lost in a
+      chorus of half-suppressed shrieks as the girls, hand in hand, ran down the
+      steps into the storm, and were at once whirled away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast. It was
+      quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow. For some
+      distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience kept them
+      bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut from the highroad
+      across an open field, their strength gave out, the laugh grew less
+      frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's brown eyes. When they
+      reached the road again, they were utterly exhausted. &ldquo;Let us go back,&rdquo;
+       said Carry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd never get across that field again,&rdquo; said Addy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's stop at the first house, then,&rdquo; said Carry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first house,&rdquo; said Addy, peering through the gathering darkness, &ldquo;is
+      Squire Robinson's.&rdquo; She darted a mischievous glance at Carry that, even in
+      her discomfort and fear, brought the quick blood to her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; said Kate with gloomy irony, &ldquo;certainly; stop at the squire's
+      by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home after by your dear
+      friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from Mrs. Robinson, and hopes that
+      the young ladies may be excused this time. No!&rdquo; continued Kate with sudden
+      energy. &ldquo;That may suit YOU; but I'm going back as I came&mdash;by the
+      window, or not at all&rdquo; Then she pounced suddenly, like a hawk, on Carry,
+      who was betraying a tendency to sit down on a snowbank and whimper, and
+      shook her briskly. &ldquo;You'll be going to sleep next. Stay, hold your
+      tongues, all of you&mdash;what's that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the
+      darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. &ldquo;Hold down your heads,
+      girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost.&rdquo; But it was not, for a
+      voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked if
+      its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him, they
+      saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin
+      cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same material,
+      disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen dark eyes. &ldquo;It's a
+      son of old Santa Claus!&rdquo; whispered Addy. The girls tittered audibly as
+      they tumbled into the sleigh; they had regained their former spirits.
+      &ldquo;Where shall I take you?&rdquo; said the stranger quietly. There was a hurried
+      whispering; and then Kate said boldly, &ldquo;To the Institute.&rdquo; They drove
+      silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed up before
+      them. The stranger reined up suddenly. &ldquo;You know the way better than I,&rdquo;
+       he said. &ldquo;Where do you go in?&rdquo; &ldquo;Through the back window,&rdquo; said Kate with
+      sudden and appalling frankness. &ldquo;I see!&rdquo; responded their strange driver
+      quietly and, alighting quickly, removed the bells from the horses. &ldquo;We can
+      drive as near as you please now,&rdquo; he added by way of explanation. &ldquo;He
+      certainly is a son of Santa Claus,&rdquo; whispered Addy. &ldquo;Hadn't we better ask
+      after his father?&rdquo; &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; said Kate decidedly. &ldquo;He is an angel, I dare
+      say.&rdquo; She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was, however,
+      perfectly understood by her feminine auditors, &ldquo;We are looking like three
+      frights.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from a
+      dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There was
+      still some light from the reflected snow; and as he handed his fair
+      companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense
+      though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window,
+      and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and somewhat
+      discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window. &ldquo;Thank you
+      and good night!&rdquo; whispered three voices. A single figure still lingered.
+      The stranger leaned over the window sill. &ldquo;Will you permit me to light my
+      cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck a match outside.&rdquo; By
+      the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very charmingly framed in
+      by the window. The match burnt slowly out in his fingers. Kate smiled
+      mischievously. The astute young woman had detected the pitiable
+      subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the head of her class, and had
+      doting parents paid three years' tuition?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
+      eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat was
+      nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart, affected
+      to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of Carry, her
+      neighbor. &ldquo;HE has come,&rdquo; she gasped in a thrilling whisper. &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; asked
+      Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when Kate was in
+      earnest. &ldquo;Who?&mdash;Why, the man who rescued us last night! I saw him
+      drive to the door this moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in a moment&mdash;there!&rdquo;
+       she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically across
+      her forehead with a tragic air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can he want?&rdquo; asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. &ldquo;I don't
+      know,&rdquo; said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. &ldquo;Possibly to
+      put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and
+      warn her against us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,&rdquo; rejoined Addy
+      thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was his art, you poor creature!&rdquo; returned Kate scornfully. &ldquo;You can
+      never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful. Besides, it's
+      just my fate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Kate,&rdquo; began Carry, in serious concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush! Miss Walker is saying something,&rdquo; said Kate, laughing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The young ladies will please give attention,&rdquo; said a slow, perfunctory
+      voice. &ldquo;Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various letters
+      and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the somewhat
+      severe apartment known publicly as the &ldquo;reception parlor&rdquo; and privately to
+      the pupils as &ldquo;purgatory.&rdquo; His keen eyes had taken in the various rigid
+      details, from the flat steam &ldquo;radiator,&rdquo; like an enormous japanned soda
+      cracker, that heated one end of the room to the monumental bust of Dr.
+      Crammer that hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's Prayer,
+      executed by a former writing master in such gratuitous variety of elegant
+      calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious value of the
+      composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute, which nobody ever
+      recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher; from two illuminated
+      texts of Scripture in an English letter, so gratuitously and hideously
+      remote as to chill all human interest, to a large photograph of the senior
+      class, in which the prettiest girls were Ethiopian in complexion, and sat,
+      apparently, on each other's heads and shoulders. His fingers had turned
+      listlessly the leaves of school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer,
+      the POEMS of Henry Kirke White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF
+      CELEBRATED WOMEN. His fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had gone
+      over the partings and greetings that must have taken place here, and
+      wondered why the apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of
+      humanity; indeed, I am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his
+      visit when the door opened, and Carry Tretherick stood before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier even than
+      it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of some
+      disappointment, without knowing exactly why. Her abundant waving hair was
+      of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a peculiar flowerlike delicacy,
+      her brown eyes of the color of seaweed in deep water. It certainly was not
+      her beauty that disappointed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her
+      part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men
+      whom the sex would vaguely generalize as &ldquo;nice,&rdquo; that is to say, correct
+      in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and feature.
+      Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he was totally
+      unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes
+      of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was not
+      entirely prepossessed in his favor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can hardly hope,&rdquo; he began pleasantly, &ldquo;that you remember me. It is
+      eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl. I am afraid I cannot
+      even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that might exist between a
+      child of six and a young man of twenty-one. I don't think I was fond of
+      children. But I knew your mother very well. I was editor of the AVALANCHE
+      in Fiddletown when she took you to San Francisco.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know,&rdquo; interposed Carry
+      hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Prince looked at her curiously. &ldquo;I mean your stepmother,&rdquo; he said
+      gravely. &ldquo;I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its distinction
+      that began to interest coldly Prince after his first astonishment was
+      past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I come from your stepmother now,&rdquo; he went on with a slight laugh, &ldquo;I
+      must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point. After your
+      father's death, your mother&mdash;I mean your stepmother&mdash;recognized
+      the fact that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick, was legally and
+      morally your guardian and, although much against her inclination and
+      affections, placed you again in her charge.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and sent me
+      home,&rdquo; said Carry with great directness, and the faintest toss of her
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically, that
+      Carry began to like him. With no other notice of the interruption he went
+      on, &ldquo;After your stepmother had performed this act of simple justice, she
+      entered into an agreement with your mother to defray the expenses of your
+      education until your eighteenth year, when you were to elect and choose
+      which of the two should thereafter be your guardian, and with whom you
+      would make your home. This agreement, I think, you are already aware of,
+      and, I believe, knew at the time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was a mere child then,&rdquo; said Carry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said Mr. Prince, with the same smile. &ldquo;Still the conditions,
+      I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your mother; and the only
+      time they are likely to give you the least uneasiness will be when you
+      come to make up your mind in the choice of your guardian. That will be on
+      your eighteenth birthday&mdash;the twentieth, I think, of the present
+      month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carry was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if it be
+      already made. I only came to inform you that your stepmother, Mrs.
+      Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will pass a few days at the
+      hotel. If it is your wish to see her before you make up your mind, she
+      will be glad to meet you. She does not, however, wish to do anything to
+      influence your judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does Mother know she is coming?&rdquo; said Carry hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know,&rdquo; said Prince gravely. &ldquo;I only know that if you conclude to
+      see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's permission. Mrs.
+      Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the agreement, made ten years
+      ago. But her health is very poor; and the change and country quiet of a
+      few days may benefit her.&rdquo; Mr. Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon the
+      young girl, and almost held his breath until she spoke again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mother's coming up today or tomorrow,&rdquo; she said, looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Colonel Starbottle here too?&rdquo; asked Carry, after a pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Colonel Starbottle is dead. Your stepmother is again a widow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dead!&rdquo; repeated Carry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Mr. Prince. &ldquo;Your stepmother has been singularly
+      unfortunate in surviving her affections.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so. Mr. Prince smiled
+      reassuringly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently Carry began to whimper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a
+      singular dropping of the corners of his mustache&mdash;&ldquo;I am afraid you
+      are taking this too deeply. It will be some days before you are called
+      upon to make a decision. Let us talk of something else. I hope you caught
+      no cold last evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carry's face shone out again in dimples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must have thought us so queer! It was too bad to give you so much
+      trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;None whatever, I assure you. My sense of propriety,&rdquo; he added demurely,
+      &ldquo;which might have been outraged had I been called upon to help three young
+      ladies out of a schoolroom window at night, was deeply gratified at being
+      able to assist them in again.&rdquo; The doorbell rang loudly, and Mr. Prince
+      rose. &ldquo;Take your own time, and think well before you make your decision.&rdquo;
+       But Carry's ear and attention were given to the sound of voices in the
+      hall. At the same moment, the door was thrown open, and a servant
+      announced, &ldquo;Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant protest at
+      stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the outskirts of the
+      town, and drove toward his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive of a
+      dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small economic
+      farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious taste, had, I
+      fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind. He would have even
+      avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the door; but that
+      functionary waylaid him on the steps. &ldquo;There's a lady in the sittin'-room,
+      waitin' for ye.&rdquo; Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and entered the room as Mrs.
+      Starbottle flew toward him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had changed sadly in the last ten years. Her figure was wasted to half
+      its size. The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders were broken or
+      inverted. The once full, rounded arm was shrunken in its sleeve; and the
+      golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists almost slipped from her hands
+      as her long, scant fingers closed convulsively around Jack's. Her
+      cheekbones were painted that afternoon with the hectic of fever: somewhere
+      in the hollows of those cheeks were buried the dimples of long ago, but
+      their graves were forgotten. Her lustrous eyes were still beautiful,
+      though the orbits were deeper than before. Her mouth was still sweet,
+      although the lips parted more easily over the little teeth, even in
+      breathing, and showed more of them than she was wont to do before. The
+      glory of her blond hair was still left: it was finer, more silken and
+      ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to cover the hollows of the
+      blue-veined temples.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Clara!&rdquo; said Jack reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, forgive me, Jack!&rdquo; she said, falling into a chair, but still clinging
+      to his hand&mdash;&ldquo;forgive me, dear; but I could not wait longer. I should
+      have died, Jack&mdash;died before another night. Bear with me a little
+      longer (it will not be long), but let me stay. I may not see her, I know;
+      I shall not speak to her: but it's so sweet to feel that I am at last near
+      her, that I breathe the same air with my darling. I am better already,
+      Jack, I am indeed. And you have seen her today? How did she look? What did
+      she say? Tell me all, everything, Jack. Was she beautiful? They say she
+      is. Has she grown? Would you have known her again? Will she come, Jack?
+      Perhaps she has been here already; perhaps&rdquo;&mdash;she had risen with
+      tremulous excitement, and was glancing at the door&mdash;&ldquo;perhaps she is
+      here now. Why don't you speak, Jack? Tell me all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an infinite
+      tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed them capable of.
+      &ldquo;Clara,&rdquo; he said gently and cheerily, &ldquo;try and compose yourself. You are
+      trembling now with the fatigue and excitement of your journey. I have seen
+      Carry; she is well and beautiful. Let that suffice you now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often done
+      before. Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, &ldquo;Did Carry ever
+      write to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twice, thanking me for some presents. They were only schoolgirl letters,&rdquo;
+       she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
+      sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes and
+      jewels, of your&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; interrupted the woman quickly: &ldquo;no! How could she? I have no
+      enemy cruel enough to tell her that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if she&mdash;or if Mrs. Tretherick&mdash;had heard of it? If Carry
+      thought you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might
+      influence her decision. Young girls are fond of the position that wealth
+      can give. She may have rich friends, maybe a lover.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she said eagerly,
+      grasping Jack's hand, &ldquo;when you found me sick and helpless at Sacramento,
+      when you&mdash;God bless you for it, Jack!&mdash;offered to help me to the
+      East, you said you knew of something, you had some plan, that would make
+      me and Carry independent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Jack hastily; &ldquo;but I want you to get strong and well first.
+      And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit to the school.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the interview
+      already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion that shames my
+      own account of that proceeding. Without suppressing a single fact, without
+      omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to throw a poetic veil over that
+      prosaic episode, to invest the heroine with a romantic roseate atmosphere,
+      which, though not perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear, exhibited
+      that genius which ten years ago had made the columns of THE FIDDLETOWN
+      AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not until he saw the
+      heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of his eager listener,
+      that he felt a pang of self-reproach. &ldquo;God help her and forgive me!&rdquo; he
+      muttered between his clinched teeth; &ldquo;but how can I tell her ALL now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her pillow, she
+      tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment sleeping peacefully
+      in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it was a rare comfort to this
+      yearning, foolish woman to know that she was so near. But at this moment
+      Carry was sitting on the edge of her bed, half-undressed, pouting her
+      pretty lips and twisting her long, leonine locks between her fingers as
+      Miss Kate Van Corlear&mdash;dramatically wrapped in a long white
+      counterpane, her black eyes sparkling, and her thoroughbred nose thrown
+      high in air&mdash;stood over her like a wrathful and indignant ghost; for
+      Carry had that evening imparted her woes and her history to Miss Kate, and
+      that young lady had &ldquo;proved herself no friend&rdquo; by falling into a state of
+      fiery indignation over Carry's &ldquo;ingratitude,&rdquo; and openly and shamelessly
+      espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle. &ldquo;Why, if the half you tell me is
+      true, your mother and those Robinsons are making of you not only a little
+      coward, but a little snob, miss. Respectability, forsooth! Look you, my
+      family are centuries before the Trethericks; but if my family had ever
+      treated me in this way, and then asked me to turn my back on my best
+      friend, I'd whistle them down the wind;&rdquo; and here Kate snapped her
+      fingers, bent her black brows, and glared around the room as if in search
+      of a recreant Van Corlear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
+      Prince,&rdquo; said Carry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way into the
+      virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as she afterward
+      expressed it, instantly &ldquo;went for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one
+      shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like a
+      vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely exaggerated
+      classic stride. &ldquo;And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a
+      gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know that among a thousand
+      such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers as
+      Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent,
+      individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray to
+      Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and
+      grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you such
+      a friend as Kate Van Corlear.&rdquo; Yet, after an imposing dramatic exit, she
+      reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed Carry between
+      the brows, and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince. He was convinced in his mind
+      that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness from Mrs.
+      Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal degree of
+      apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to
+      divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that
+      Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to
+      admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring
+      clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind&mdash;to put off
+      day by day from contemplation&mdash;kept asserting itself directly to his
+      inner consciousness. He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his
+      management. He recalled every incident of his interview with Carry, and
+      half-believed that its failure was due to himself. Yet Mrs. Starbottle was
+      very patient and confident; her very confidence shook his faith in his own
+      judgment. When her strength was equal to the exertion, she was propped up
+      in her chair by the window, where she could see the school and the
+      entrance to the hotel. In the intervals she would elaborate pleasant plans
+      for the future, and would sketch a country home. She had taken a strange
+      fancy, as it seemed to Prince, to the present location; but it was notable
+      that the future, always thus outlined, was one of quiet and repose. She
+      believed she would get well soon; in fact, she thought she was now much
+      better than she had been, but it might be long before she should be quite
+      strong again. She would whisper on in this way until Jack would dash madly
+      down into the barroom, order liquors that he did not drink, light cigars
+      that he did not smoke, talk with men that he did not listen to, and behave
+      generally as our stronger sex is apt to do in periods of delicate trials
+      and perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind. With the
+      night fell a few wandering flakes of snow. She was still content and
+      hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to the fire, she
+      explained to him how that, as the school term was drawing near its close,
+      Carry was probably kept closely at her lessons during the day, and could
+      only leave the school at night. So she sat up the greater part of the
+      evening, and combed her silken hair, and as far as her strength would
+      allow, made an undress toilet to receive her guest. &ldquo;We must not frighten
+      the child, Jack,&rdquo; she said apologetically, and with something of her old
+      coquetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received a
+      message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to see him
+      for a moment downstairs. As Jack entered the grim, dimly lighted parlor,
+      he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the fire. He was about to
+      withdraw again when a voice that he remembered very pleasantly said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's all right! I'm the doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and black,
+      audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't ask any questions. I'm the doctor, and there's my prescription,&rdquo;
+       and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing Carry in the corner&mdash;&ldquo;to
+      be taken at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady,&rdquo; replied Kate saucily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then how did you get away?&rdquo; asked Prince gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;BY THE WINDOW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he returned
+      to the parlor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; demanded Kate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She will stay&mdash;YOU will, I hope, also&mdash;tonight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth, and as
+      I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through the
+      window again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a low
+      stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet. Her head was in her stepmother's lap, and
+      she had sobbed herself to sleep. Mrs. Starbottle put her finger to her
+      lip. &ldquo;I told you she would come. God bless you, Jack! and good night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,
+      principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently respectable,
+      called upon Mr. Prince. There was a stormy meeting, ending in a demand for
+      Carry. &ldquo;We certainly cannot admit of this interference,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+      Tretherick, a fashionably dressed, indistinctive-looking woman. &ldquo;It is
+      several days before the expiration of our agreement; and we do not feel,
+      under the circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs. Starbottle from its
+      conditions.&rdquo; &ldquo;Until the expiration of the school term, we must consider
+      Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its rules and discipline,&rdquo;
+       imposed Dr. Crammer. &ldquo;The whole proceeding is calculated to injure the
+      prospects, and compromise the position, of Miss Tretherick in society,&rdquo;
+       suggested Mr. Robinson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle, her
+      absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the pardonable and
+      natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance that they were
+      willing to abide by her decision. And then, with a rising color in his
+      cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a singular calmness in his speech,
+      he added:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One word more. It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance which
+      would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr. Tretherick, in
+      fully resisting your demands. A few months after Mr. Tretherick's death,
+      through the agency of a Chinaman in his employment, it was discovered that
+      he had made a will, which was subsequently found among his papers. The
+      insignificant value of his bequest&mdash;mostly land, then quite valueless&mdash;prevented
+      his executors from carrying out his wishes, or from even proving the will,
+      or making it otherwise publicly known, until within the last two or three
+      years, when the property had enormously increased in value. The provisions
+      of that bequest are simple, but unmistakable. The property is divided
+      between Carry and her stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs.
+      Starbottle shall become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and
+      in all details stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the value of this bequest?&rdquo; asked Mr. Robinson. &ldquo;I cannot tell
+      exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say,&rdquo; returned Prince.
+      &ldquo;Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of Miss Tretherick I must say
+      that her conduct is as judicious as it is honorable to her,&rdquo; responded Mr.
+      Robinson. &ldquo;I shall not presume to question the wishes, or throw any
+      obstacles in the way of carrying out the intentions, of my dead husband,&rdquo;
+       added Mrs. Tretherick; and the interview was closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised Jack's hand
+      to her feverish lips. &ldquo;It cannot add to MY happiness now, Jack; but tell
+      me, why did you keep it from her?&rdquo; Jack smiled, but did not reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were concluded, and
+      Carry was restored to her stepmother. At Mrs. Starbottle's request, a
+      small house in the outskirts of the town was procured; and thither they
+      removed to wait the spring, and Mrs. Starbottle's convalescence. Both came
+      tardily that year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet she was happy and patient. She was fond of watching the budding of the
+      trees beyond her window&mdash;a novel sight to her Californian experience&mdash;and
+      of asking Carry their names and seasons. Even at this time she projected
+      for that summer, which seemed to her so mysteriously withheld, long walks
+      with Carry through the leafy woods, whose gray, misty ranks she could see
+      along the hilltop. She even thought she could write poetry about them, and
+      recalled the fact as evidence of her gaining strength; and there is, I
+      believe, still treasured by one of the members of this little household a
+      little carol so joyous, so simple, and so innocent that it might have been
+      an echo of the robin that called to her from the window, as perhaps it
+      was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so tender, so
+      mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and alive with the
+      fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and bounteously overflowing with
+      an awakening and joyous resurrection not taught by man or limited by
+      creed, that they thought it fit to bring her out and lay her in that
+      glorious sunshine that sprinkled like the droppings of a bridal torch the
+      happy lintels and doors. And there she lay beatified and calm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.
+      Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head. Presently
+      she called Jack to her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was that,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;who just came in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Van Corlear,&rdquo; said Jack, answering the look in her great hollow
+      eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack,&rdquo; she said, after a moment's silence, &ldquo;sit by me a moment; dear
+      Jack: I've something I must say. If I ever seemed hard, or cold, or
+      coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved you, Jack, too
+      well to mar your future by linking it with my own. I always loved you,
+      dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of you. That is gone now. But I
+      had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish woman's dream&mdash;that you might
+      find what I lacked in HER,&rdquo; and she glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl
+      at her side; &ldquo;that you might love her as you have loved me. But even that
+      is not to be, Jack, is it?&rdquo; and she glanced wistfully in his face. Jack
+      pressed her hand, but did not speak. After a few moments' silence, she
+      again said: &ldquo;Perhaps you are right in your choice. She is a goodhearted
+      girl, Jack&mdash;but a little bold.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her struggling
+      spirit, she spoke no more. When they came to her a moment later, a tiny
+      bird that had lit upon her breast flew away; and the hand that they lifted
+      from Carry's head fell lifeless at her side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BARKER'S LUCK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      A bird twittered! The morning sun shining through the open window was
+      apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had only caused
+      the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his blankets. Barker's eyes
+      opened instantly upon the light and the bird on the window ledge. Like all
+      healthy young animals he would have tried to sleep again, but with his
+      momentary consciousness came the recollection that it was his turn to cook
+      the breakfast that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of his bunk to
+      the floor. Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and stepped
+      outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by the
+      Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold water
+      that stood by the door. Then he began to clothe himself, partly in the
+      cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse between the putting on of
+      his trousers and coat which he employed in bringing in wood. Raking
+      together the few embers on the adobe hearth, not without a prudent regard
+      to the rattlesnake which had once been detected in haunting the warm
+      ashes, he began to prepare breakfast. By this time the other sleepers, his
+      partners Stacy and Demorest, young men of about his own age, were awake,
+      alert, and lazily critical of his progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for breakfast,&rdquo; said
+      Stacy, with a yawn; &ldquo;and you needn't serve with red wine. I'm not feeling
+      very peckish this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish
+      mackerel for ME,&rdquo; said Demorest gravely. &ldquo;The fact is, that last bottle of
+      Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no direct
+      reply. Presently, looking up from the fire, he said, &ldquo;There's no more
+      saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit is extra heavy. I told
+      you we had none when you went to the grocery yesterday.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with,&rdquo; said Stacy, who was
+      also treasurer. &ldquo;Put these two negatives together and you make the
+      affirmative&mdash;saleratus. Mix freely and bake in a hot oven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down to
+      what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the mountain air
+      and the regretful fastidiousness born of the recollection of better
+      things. Jerked beef, frizzled with salt pork in a frying-pan, boiled
+      potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed the repast. The biscuits, however,
+      proving remarkably heavy after the first mouthful, were used as missiles,
+      thrown through the open door at an empty bottle which had previously
+      served as a mark for revolver practice, and a few moments later pipes were
+      lit to counteract the effects of the meal and take the taste out of their
+      mouths. Suddenly they heard the sound of horses' hoofs, saw the quick
+      passage of a rider in the open space before the cabin, and felt the smart
+      impact upon the table of some small object thrown by him. It was the
+      regular morning delivery of the county newspaper!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's getting to be a mighty sure shot,&rdquo; said Demorest approvingly,
+      looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper, rolled into
+      a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began to straighten it
+      out. This was no easy matter, as the sheet had evidently been rolled while
+      yet damp from the press; but Demorest eventually opened it and ensconced
+      himself behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nary news?&rdquo; asked Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. There never is any,&rdquo; said Demorest scornfully. &ldquo;We ought to stop the
+      paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean the paper man ought to. WE don't pay him,&rdquo; said Barker gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's the same thing, smarty. No news, no pay. Hallo!&rdquo; he
+      continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper. Then, after the fashion
+      of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the interesting item to
+      himself. When he had finished he brought his fist and the paper, together,
+      violently down upon the table. &ldquo;Now look at this! Talk of luck, will you?
+      Just think of it. Here are WE&mdash;hard-working men with lots of sabe,
+      too&mdash;grubbin' away on this hillside like niggers, glad to get enough
+      at the end of the day to pay for our soggy biscuits and horse-bean coffee,
+      and just look what falls into the lap of some lazy sneakin' greenhorn who
+      never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are WE, with no foolishness,
+      no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do credit to twice that amount
+      of luck&mdash;and seem born to it, too&mdash;and we're set aside for some
+      long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to sit down on his
+      office stool and hold on to a bit of paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up now?&rdquo; asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of
+      familiarity with his partner's extravagance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; said Demorest, reading. &ldquo;Another unprecedented rise has taken
+      place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension Mine' since the
+      sinking of the new shaft. It was quoted yesterday at ten thousand dollars
+      a foot. When it is remembered that scarcely two years ago the original
+      shares, issued at fifty dollars per share, had dropped to only fifty cents
+      a share, it will be seen that those who were able to hold on have got a
+      good thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What mine did you say?&rdquo; asked Barker, looking up meditatively from the
+      dishes he was already washing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Yellow Hammer First Extension,&rdquo; returned Demorest shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them still,&rdquo; said
+      Barker musingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Demorest promptly; &ldquo;the paper speaks of it here. 'We
+      understand,'&rdquo; he continued, reading aloud, &ldquo;'that our eminent fellow
+      citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as &ldquo;Get Left Barker&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;Chucklehead,&rdquo; is one of these fortunate individuals.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, &ldquo;it can't say
+      that. How could it know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: &ldquo;You didn't hear all.
+      Listen! 'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his apparently
+      useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for corn plasters, at
+      a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may laugh, boys,&rdquo; said Barker, with simple seriousness; &ldquo;but I really
+      believe I have got 'em yet. Just wait. I'll see!&rdquo; He rose and began to
+      drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk. &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; he continued,
+      &ldquo;they were given to me by an old chap in return&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward blew
+      up,&rdquo; returned Demorest briefly. &ldquo;We know it all! His hair was white, and
+      his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares in yours, saying, and
+      you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young man&mdash;and'&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For lending him two thousand dollars, then,&rdquo; continued Barker with a
+      simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out the valise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!&rdquo; repeated Stacy. &ldquo;When did YOU have two thousand
+      dollars?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I first left Sacramento&mdash;three years ago,&rdquo; said Barker,
+      unstrapping the valise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long did you have it?&rdquo; said Demorest incredulously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At least two days, I think,&rdquo; returned Barker quietly. &ldquo;Then I met that
+      man. He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those shares. He died
+      afterward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he did,&rdquo; said Demorest severely. &ldquo;They always do. Nothing kills
+      a man more quickly than an action of that kind.&rdquo; Nevertheless the two
+      partners regarded Barker rummaging among some loose clothes and papers
+      with a kind of paternal toleration. &ldquo;If you can't find them, bring out
+      your government bonds,&rdquo; suggested Stacy. But the next moment, flushed and
+      triumphant, Barker rose from his knees, and came toward them carrying some
+      papers in his hands. Demorest seized them from him, opened them, spread
+      them on the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures, and transfers,
+      glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked wildly at Stacy
+      and then at Barker, and gasped:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the living hookey! it is SO!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!&rdquo; echoed Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty shares,&rdquo; continued Demorest breathlessly, &ldquo;at ten thousand dollars
+      a share&mdash;even if it's only a foot&mdash;is two hundred thousand
+      dollars! Jerusalem!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me, fair sir,&rdquo; said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, &ldquo;hast still left in
+      yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links of fine gold?
+      Peradventure a pearl or two may have been overlooked!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;that's all,&rdquo; returned Barker simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hear him! Rothschild says 'that's all.' Prince Esterhazy says he
+      hasn't another red cent&mdash;only two hundred thousand dollars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What ought I to do, boys?&rdquo; asked Barker, timidly glancing from one to the
+      other. Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for many a year
+      afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish joy and affection at
+      that supreme moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do?&rdquo; said Demorest promptly. &ldquo;Stand on your head and yell! No! stop! Come
+      here!&rdquo; He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand, and ran out into the
+      open air. Here they danced violently with clasped hands around a small
+      buckeye, in perfect silence, and then returned to the cabin, grave but
+      perspiring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; said Barker, wiping his forehead, &ldquo;we'll just get some money
+      on these certificates and buy up that next claim which belongs to old
+      Carter&mdash;where you know we thought we saw the indication.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll do nothing of the kind,&rdquo; said Demorest decidedly. &ldquo;WE ain't in it.
+      That money is yours, old chap&mdash;every cent of it&mdash;property
+      acquired before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is to be
+      damned before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this Godforsaken hole.
+      No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we're partners,&rdquo; gasped Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not in THIS! The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir&mdash;though it
+      ill becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with Dives&mdash;is
+      perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass of Malvoisie, at
+      some restaurant in Sacramento&mdash;when you've got things fixed, in honor
+      of your return to affluence. But more would ill become us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what are YOU going to do?&rdquo; said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
+      half-frightened smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have not yet looked through our luggage,&rdquo; said Demorest with
+      invincible gravity, &ldquo;and there's a secret recess&mdash;a double FOND&mdash;to
+      my portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been disturbed
+      since I left my ancestral home in Faginia. There may be a few First
+      Debentures of Erie or what not still there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the other
+      day, but belike they are but poker chips,&rdquo; said Stacy thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An uneasy feeling crept over Barker. The color which had left his fresh
+      cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away. Yet he had seen
+      nothing in his companions' eyes but affection&mdash;with even a certain
+      kind of tender commiseration that deepened his uneasiness. &ldquo;I suppose,&rdquo; he
+      said desperately, after a pause, &ldquo;I ought to go over to Boomville and make
+      some inquiries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the bank, old chap; at the bank!&rdquo; said Demorest emphatically. &ldquo;Take my
+      advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE. Don't breathe a word of your luck to
+      anybody. And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to sell just now; you
+      don't know how high that stock's going to jump yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thought,&rdquo; stammered Barker, &ldquo;that you boys might like to go over with
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're only two
+      to work today,&rdquo; said Demorest, with a slight increase of color and the
+      faintest tremor in his voice. &ldquo;And it won't do, old chap, for us to be
+      seen bumming round with you on the heels of your good fortune. For
+      everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later everybody'll know you WERE
+      rich even when you first came to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Barker indignantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gospel, my boy!&rdquo; said Demorest shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The frozen truth, old man!&rdquo; said Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the door. Here
+      he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to communicate itself
+      to his partners. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then Demorest
+      suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a grip that was half a caress,
+      and walked him rapidly to the door. &ldquo;And now don't stand foolin' with us,
+      Barker boy; but just trot off like a little man, and get your grip on that
+      fortune; and when you've got your hooks in it hang on like grim death.
+      You'll&rdquo;&mdash;he hesitated for an instant only, possibly to find the laugh
+      that should have accompanied his speech&mdash;&ldquo;you're sure to find US here
+      when you get back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his hat on
+      his head and walked quickly away. The two partners stood watching him in
+      silence until his figure was lost in the underbrush. Then they spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Like him&mdash;wasn't it?&rdquo; said Demorest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just him all over,&rdquo; said Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and never even
+      bothering his dear old head about it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten hillside
+      with us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again. That's
+      Barker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear old man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good old chap!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him? He's
+      just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,&rdquo;
+       said Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,&rdquo;
+       said Demorest almost fiercely. &ldquo;There will be knaves and fools enough who
+      will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart without
+      that. No! Let him do as he likes with it&mdash;but let him be himself. I'd
+      rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the money&mdash;his
+      old self and empty-handed&mdash;than try to change the stuff God put into
+      him and make him more like others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that
+      Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: &ldquo;Well! we shall miss him on the
+      hillside&mdash;won't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched
+      off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the
+      leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in
+      the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: &ldquo;Come, let's
+      get to work!&rdquo; and strode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
+      manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost sight
+      of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were less
+      complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the eyes of
+      his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of his good
+      fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with him? Why had
+      they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him had closed? Why
+      had they declined to go with him? Why had this money&mdash;of which he had
+      thought so little, and for which he had cared so little&mdash;changed them
+      toward him? It had not changed HIM&mdash;HE was the same! He remembered
+      how they had often talked and laughed over a prospective &ldquo;strike&rdquo; in
+      mining and speculated what THEY would do together with the money! And now
+      that &ldquo;luck&rdquo; had occurred to one of them, individually, the effect was only
+      to alienate them! He could not make it out. He was hurt, wounded&mdash;yet
+      oddly enough he was conscious now of a certain power within him to hurt
+      and wound in retribution. He was rich: he would let them see HE could do
+      without them. He was quite free now to think only of himself and Kitty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity
+      and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his FIRST
+      thought at the moment he grasped the fact of his wealth was of a young
+      lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at Boomville,
+      who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted. That a pretty
+      girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that he was now a
+      rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners, whom he would still
+      have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his half-hurt, half-vengeful
+      state, that they had often joked him about Kitty, and perhaps further
+      confidence with them was debarred. And it was only due to his dignity that
+      he should now see Kitty at once.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the
+      economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the
+      hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the other
+      half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat. For Kitty
+      was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met with in
+      Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original refinement
+      of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast a doubt on
+      the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of the other,
+      yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained that she was
+      slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her stumpy,
+      commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the dining-room
+      of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The three partners,
+      by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and refined manners, had
+      been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some occult reason&mdash;the
+      more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious or logical presumption to
+      the world generally&mdash;Barker was particularly favored.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose
+      before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not
+      better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance
+      on them to buy a new necktie or a &ldquo;boiled shirt&rdquo; in which to present
+      himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his word
+      to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present, he
+      abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected
+      confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions of
+      secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that breach of
+      faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The
+      dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of breakfast and
+      before the flow of the preparation for the midday meal. He could not have
+      his interview with Kitty in that dreary waste of reversed chairs and bare
+      trestlelike tables, and she was possibly engaged in her household duties.
+      But Miss Kitty had already seen him cross the road, and had lounged into
+      the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of casually examining it.
+      At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in the sweetest and
+      freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered. Then, partly with
+      the desperation of a timid man, and partly through the working of a
+      half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with a simple inquiry for
+      her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled slightly, and preceded
+      him with great formality to the office. Opening the door, without raising
+      her lashes to either her father or the visitor, she said, with a
+      mischievous accenting of the professional manner, &ldquo;Mr. Barker to see you
+      on business,&rdquo; and tripped sweetly away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this slight incident precipitated the crisis. For Barker instantly
+      made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for his partners of
+      this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to confide to him the
+      details of his good fortune, and as a proof of his sincerity and his
+      ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly. Carter was a shrewd business
+      man, and the well-known simplicity of Barker was a proof of his
+      truthfulness, to say nothing of the shares that were shown to him. His
+      selling price for his claim had been two hundred dollars, but here was a
+      rich customer who, from a mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt
+      willing to pay more. He hesitated with a bland but superior smile. &ldquo;Ah,
+      that was my price at my last offer, Mr. Barker,&rdquo; he said suavely; &ldquo;but,
+      you see, things are going up since then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity. Barker,
+      thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened at his own
+      presumption&mdash;not for the amount of the money involved, but from the
+      possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly&mdash;quickly took
+      advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE. &ldquo;No matter, then,&rdquo; he said hurriedly;
+      &ldquo;perhaps I had better consult my partners first; in fact,&rdquo; he added, with
+      a gratuitous truthfulness all his own, &ldquo;I hardly know whether they will
+      take it of me, so I think I'll wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do! He recovered himself with
+      an insinuating smile. &ldquo;You pulled me up too short, Mr. Barker; I'm a
+      business man, but hang it all! what's that among friends? If you reckoned
+      I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred&mdash;why, I'm there! Say no more about it&mdash;the
+      claim's yours. I'll make you out a bill of sale at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; hesitated Barker, &ldquo;you see I haven't got the money yet, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Money!&rdquo; echoed Carter bluntly, &ldquo;what's that among friends? Gimme your
+      note at thirty days&mdash;that's good enough for ME. An' we'll settle the
+      whole thing now&mdash;nothing like finishing a job while you're about it.&rdquo;
+       And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor could protest, he had
+      filled up a promissory note for Barker's signature and himself signed a
+      bill of sale for the property. &ldquo;And I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like to
+      take your partners by surprise about this little gift of yours,&rdquo; he added
+      smilingly. &ldquo;Well, my messenger is starting for the Gulch in five minutes;
+      he's going by your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o' sale, as a
+      kind o' settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything, see! There's
+      nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things. And don't you
+      hurry 'bout them either! You see, you sorter owe us a friendly call&mdash;havin'
+      always dropped inter the hotel only as a customer&mdash;so ye'll stop here
+      over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old woman is busy, why Kitty will try
+      to make the time pass till then by playin' for you on her new pianner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and opportunity,
+      Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as mechanically
+      addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to Demorest, which Carter gave
+      to the messenger. Then he followed his host across the hall to the
+      apartment known as &ldquo;Miss Kitty's parlor.&rdquo; He had often heard of it as a
+      sanctum impervious to the ordinary guest. Whatever functions the young
+      girl assumed at the hotel and among her father's boarders, it was vaguely
+      understood that she dropped them on crossing that sacred threshold, and
+      became &ldquo;MISS Carter.&rdquo; The county judge had been entertained there, and the
+      wife of the bank manager. Barker's admission there was consequently an
+      unprecedented honor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in
+      various charming little ways of the young girl's presence. There was the
+      cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the backs of mules
+      from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon head of Minerva done by
+      the fair occupant at the age of twelve; there was a profile of herself
+      done by a traveling artist; there were pretty little china ornaments and
+      many flowers, notably a faded but still scented woodland shrub which
+      Barker had presented to her two weeks ago, and over which Miss Kitty had
+      discreetly thrown her white handkerchief as he entered. A wave of hope
+      passed over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr. Carter's
+      roughly playful voice introduced him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch, Kitty. You
+      kin let him see what you're doing in that line. But you'll have to sit up
+      now, for this young man's come inter some property, and will be sasheying
+      round in 'Frisco afore long with a biled shirt and a stovepipe, and be
+      givin' the go-by to Boomville. Well! you young folks will excuse me for a
+      while, as I reckon I'll just toddle over and get the recorder to put that
+      bill o' sale on record. Nothin' like squaring things to onct, Mr. Barker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink. Carter had not only
+      bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his excuse for a
+      confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious construction on his
+      visit. What could she think of him now? He stood ashamed and embarrassed
+      before her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden concern
+      regarding the &ldquo;horrid&rdquo; untidiness of the room, which made her cheeks quite
+      pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and set down in exactly the
+      same place several articles, was exceedingly delighted. In fact, she did
+      not remember ever having been so pleased before in her life! These things
+      were always so unexpected! Just like the weather, for instance. It was
+      quite cool last night&mdash;and now it was just stifling. And so dusty!
+      Had Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch? Or perhaps, being a
+      rich man, he&mdash;with a dazzling smile&mdash;was above walking now. It
+      was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really wanted to tell only&mdash;YOU, Miss Carter,&rdquo; stammered Barker.
+      &ldquo;You see&mdash;&rdquo; he hesitated. But Miss Kitty saw perfectly. He wanted to
+      tell HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER! Not that it made the
+      slightest difference to her, for her father would have been sure to have
+      told her. It was also kind of her father to invite him to luncheon.
+      Otherwise she might not have seen him before he left Boomville.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this was more than Barker could stand. With the same desperate
+      directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father, he now
+      blurted out his whole heart to her. He told her how he had loved her
+      hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken together at the church
+      picnic. Did she remember it? How he had sat and worshiped her, and nothing
+      else, at church! How her voice in the church choir had sounded like an
+      angel's; how his poverty and his uncertain future had kept him from seeing
+      her often, lest he should be tempted to betray his hopeless passion. How
+      as soon as he realized that he had a position, that his love for her need
+      not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes, he came to tell her ALL. He
+      did not even dare to hope! But she would HEAR him at least, would she not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple, outspoken
+      declaration. In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at her pink cheeks in
+      the glass, and stopped to look out of the window. The room was filled with
+      his love&mdash;it was encompassing her&mdash;and, despite his shy
+      attitude, seemed to be almost embracing her. But she managed at last to
+      turn upon him a face that was now as white and grave as his own was eager
+      and glowing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down,&rdquo; she said gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did so obediently, but wonderingly. She then opened the piano and took
+      a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose sheets of music
+      in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Thus intrenched,
+      she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and for the first time raised her
+      eyes to his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now listen to me&mdash;be good and don't interrupt! There!&mdash;not so
+      near; you can hear what I have to say well enough where you are. That will
+      do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before
+      her, &ldquo;I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to&mdash;or at
+      least SAY it&mdash;but I do. There! But because I do believe you&mdash;it
+      seems to me all wrong! For the very reasons that you give for not having
+      spoken to me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same
+      reasons why you should not speak to me now. You see, all this time you
+      have let nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me. In everybody's
+      eyes YOU and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive,
+      college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally
+      came here to this hotel as customers. In everybody's eyes I have been only
+      the rich hotel-keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon you&mdash;but
+      nothing more. But at least we were then pretty much alike, and as good as
+      each other. And now, as soon as you have become suddenly rich, and, of
+      course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to acknowledge it by
+      accepting you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty,&rdquo; burst out Barker vehemently,
+      but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the young lady's
+      fingers on the keys. He sank back in his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you never MEANT it,&rdquo; she said with an odd laugh; &ldquo;but everybody
+      will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to everybody in
+      Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have just made to me.
+      Everybody will say I accepted you for your money; everybody will say it
+      was a put-up job of my father's. Everybody will say that you threw
+      yourself away on me. And I don't know but that they would be right. Sit
+      down, please! or I shall play again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You see,&rdquo; she went on, without looking at him, &ldquo;just now you like to
+      remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter girl, but
+      if I became your wife it's just what you would like to FORGET. And I
+      shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the time when you came
+      here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes when you couldn't, just
+      to see me; and how we used to make excuses to speak with each other over
+      the dishes. You don't know what these things mean to a woman who&rdquo;&mdash;she
+      hesitated a moment, and then added abruptly, &ldquo;but what does that matter?
+      You would not care to be reminded of it. So,&rdquo; she said, rising up with a
+      grave smile and grasping her hands tightly behind her, &ldquo;it's a good deal
+      better that you should begin to forget it now. Be a good boy and take my
+      advice. Go to San Francisco. You will meet some girl there in a way you
+      will not afterward regret. You are young, and your riches, to say
+      nothing,&rdquo; she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat inconsistent
+      with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips, &ldquo;of your kind and
+      simple heart, will secure that which the world would call unselfish
+      affection from one more equal to you, but would always believe was only
+      BOUGHT if it came from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you are right,&rdquo; he said simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened. He had risen,
+      his face white and his gray eyes widely opened. &ldquo;I suppose you are right,&rdquo;
+       he went on, &ldquo;because you are saying to me what my partners said to me this
+      morning, when I offered to share my wealth with them, God knows as
+      honestly as I offered to share my heart with you. I suppose that you are
+      both right; that there must be some curse of pride or selfishness upon the
+      money that I have got; but I have not felt it yet, and the fault does not
+      lie with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently toward the
+      window. When she turned back again he was gone. The room around her was
+      empty; this room, which a moment before had seemed to be pulsating with
+      his boyish passion, was now empty, and empty of HIM. She bit her lips,
+      rose, and ran eagerly to the window. She saw his straw hat and brown curls
+      as he crossed the road. She drew her handkerchief sharply away from the
+      withered shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once treasured
+      remains in the hearth. Then, possibly because she had it ready in her
+      hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking sideways upon
+      the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its back, and buried her
+      face in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to make no
+      allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them! So it seemed to
+      Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal directness. It was the
+      possession of this wealth that had in some way hopelessly changed his
+      relations with the world. He did not love Kitty any the less; he did not
+      even think she had wronged him; they, his partners and his sweetheart,
+      were cleverer than he; there must be some occult quality in this wealth
+      that he would understand when he possessed it, and perhaps it might even
+      make him ashamed of his generosity; not in the way they had said, but in
+      his tempting them so audaciously to assume a wrong position. It behoved
+      him to take possession of it at once, and to take also upon himself alone
+      the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities it would incur. His cheeks
+      flushed again as he thought he had tried to tempt an innocent girl with
+      it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not seen in Kitty's eyes the
+      tenderness that had softened his partners' refusal. He resolved to wait no
+      longer, but sell his dreadful stock at once. He walked directly to the
+      bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known already,
+      received him graciously in recognition of his well-known simple honesty,
+      and respectfully as a representative of the equally well-known poor but
+      &ldquo;superior&rdquo; partnership of the Gulch. He listened with marked attention to
+      Barker's hesitating but brief story, only remarking at its close:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Barker; &ldquo;I mean the 'First'&mdash;and it said First in the
+      Boomville paper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes!&mdash;I saw it&mdash;it was a printer's error. The stock of the
+      'First' was called in two years ago. No! You mean the 'Second,' for, of
+      course, you've followed the quotations, and are likely to know what stock
+      you're holding shares of. When you go back, take a look at them, and
+      you'll see I am right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I brought them with me,&rdquo; said Barker, with a slight flushing as he
+      felt in his pocket, &ldquo;and I am quite sure they are the 'First'.&rdquo; He brought
+      them out and laid them on the desk before the manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The words &ldquo;First Extension&rdquo; were plainly visible. The manager glanced
+      curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did anybody put this up on you?&rdquo; he said sternly. &ldquo;Did your partners send
+      you here with this stuff?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no!&rdquo; said Barker eagerly. &ldquo;No one! It's all MY mistake. I see it now.
+      I trusted to the newspaper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the quotations, nor
+      followed it in any way, since you had it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said Barker. &ldquo;Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw the
+      newspaper. So it's not worth anything?&rdquo; And, to the infinite surprise of
+      the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on,&rdquo; said the manager
+      gently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which his
+      wondering companion could not help joining. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Barker
+      suddenly, and rushed away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He beats everything!&rdquo; said the manager, gazing after him. &ldquo;Damned if he
+      didn't seem even PLEASED.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He WAS pleased. The burden of wealth had fallen from his shoulders; the
+      dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and parted his friends from him
+      was gone! And he had not got rid of it by spending it foolishly. It had
+      not ruined anybody yet; it had not altered anybody in HIS eyes. It was
+      gone; and he was a free and happy man once more. He would go directly back
+      to his partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but they could not
+      look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes. Perhaps even Kitty&mdash;but
+      here a sudden chill struck him. He had forgotten the bill of sale! He had
+      forgotten the dreadful promissory note given to her father in the rash
+      presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be paid? And more than that,
+      it had been given in a fraud. He had no money when he gave it, and no
+      prospect of any but what he was to get from those worthless shares. Would
+      anybody believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his
+      partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already
+      implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now, while he was standing there
+      hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new claim he had NOT
+      PAID FOR&mdash;COULD NOT PAY FOR&mdash;and in the guise of a benefactor he
+      was dishonoring them. Yet it was Carter he must meet first; he must
+      confess all to him. He must go back to the hotel&mdash;that hotel where he
+      had indignantly left her, and tell the father he was a fraud. It was
+      terrible to think of; perhaps it was part of that money curse that he
+      could not get rid of, and was now realizing; but it MUST be done. He was
+      simple, but his very simplicity had that unhesitating directness of
+      conclusion which is the main factor of what men call &ldquo;pluck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He turned back to the hotel and entered the office. But Mr. Carter had not
+      yet returned. What was to be done? He could not wait there; there was no
+      time to be lost; there was only one other person who knew his
+      expectations, and to whom he could confide his failure&mdash;it was Kitty.
+      It was to taste the dregs of his humiliation, but it must be done. He ran
+      up the staircase and knocked timidly at the sitting-room door. There was a
+      momentary pause, and a weak voice said &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo; Barker opened the door;
+      saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful eyes
+      that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful but stiffening
+      figure. But he was past all insult now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would not intrude,&rdquo; he said simply, &ldquo;but I came only to see your
+      father. I have made an awful blunder&mdash;more than a blunder, I think&mdash;a
+      FRAUD. Believing that I was rich, I purchased your father's claim for my
+      partners, and gave him my promissory note. I came here to give him back
+      his claim&mdash;for that note can NEVER be paid! I have just been to the
+      bank; I find I have made a stupid mistake in the name of the shares upon
+      which I based my belief in my wealth. The ones I own are worthless&mdash;am
+      as poor as ever&mdash;I am even poorer, for I owe your father money I can
+      never pay!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her troubled
+      eyes which he had never seen before. &ldquo;This is a feeble trick,&rdquo; she said
+      bitterly; &ldquo;it is unlike you&mdash;it is unworthy of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good God! You must believe me. Listen! it was all a mistake&mdash;a
+      printer's error. I read in the paper that the stock for the First
+      Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second. I had
+      some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and only thought
+      of when I read the announcement in the paper this morning. I swear to you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was unnecessary. There was no doubting the truth of that voice&mdash;that
+      manner. The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give place to a stare,
+      and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue wells of laughter. She went
+      to the window and laughed. She sat down to the piano and laughed. She
+      caught up the handkerchief, and hiding half her rosy face in it, laughed.
+      She finally collapsed into an easy chair, and, burying her brown head in
+      its cushions, laughed long and confidentially until she brought up
+      suddenly against a sob. And then was still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker was dreadfully alarmed. He had heard of hysterics before. He felt
+      he ought to do something. He moved toward her timidly, and gently drew
+      away her handkerchief. Alas! the blue wells were running over now. He took
+      her cold hands in his; he knelt beside her and passed his arm around her
+      waist. He drew her head upon his shoulder. He was not sure that any of
+      these things were effective until she suddenly lifted her eyes to his with
+      the last ray of mirth in them vanishing in a big teardrop, put her arms
+      round his neck, and sobbed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, George! You blessed innocent!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be time;
+      perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's claim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, George dear,&rdquo; said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; &ldquo;and tell
+      them to do so AT ONCE!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; gasped Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At once&mdash;do you hear?&mdash;or it may be too late! Go quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But your father&mdash;Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all yourself,
+      and spare me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey. Nor shall you! Don't you see the
+      note isn't due for a month? Stop! Have you told anybody but Paw and me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only the bank manager.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most enchanting
+      of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin. &ldquo;I'll run over and fix him,&rdquo; she
+      said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fix him?&rdquo; returned Barker, aghast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical joke on
+      you, and he mustn't give you away. He'll do anything for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my partners didn't! On the contrary&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't tell me, George,&rdquo; said Miss Kitty severely. &ldquo;THEY ought never to
+      have let you come here with that stuff. But come! You must go at once. You
+      must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out everything to him; I know you! I'll
+      tell him you could not stay to luncheon. Quick, now; go. What? Well&mdash;there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so protracted that
+      Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the front landing before she
+      could disappear by the back stairs. But once in the street, Barker no
+      longer lingered. It was a good three miles back to the Gulch; he might
+      still reach it by the time his partners were taking their noonday rest,
+      and he resolved that although the messenger had preceded him, they would
+      not enter upon the new claim until the afternoon. For Barker, in spite of
+      his mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking what he couldn't pay for;
+      he would keep the claim intact until something could be settled. For the
+      rest, he walked on air! Kitty loved him! The accursed wealth no longer
+      stood between them. They were both poor now&mdash;everything was possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he
+      reached the Gulch. Here a new trepidation seized him. How would his
+      partners receive the news of his utter failure? HE was happy, for he had
+      gained Kitty through it. But they? For a moment it seemed to him that he
+      had purchased his happiness through their loss. He stopped, took off his
+      hat, and ran his fingers remorsefully through his damp curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another thing troubled him. He had reached the crest of the Gulch, where
+      their old working ground was spread before him like a map. They were not
+      there; neither were they lying under the four pines on the ridge where
+      they were wont to rest at midday. He turned with some alarm to the new
+      claim adjoining theirs, but there was no sign of them there either. A
+      sudden fear that they had, after parting from him, given up the claim in a
+      fit of disgust and depression, and departed, now overcame him. He clapped
+      his hand on his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of &ldquo;Who's there?&rdquo; from
+      the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the trail. But the
+      singular look of sternness and impatience which he was wearing vanished as
+      he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of &ldquo;All right, it's only Barker!
+      Hooray!&rdquo; he ran toward him. In an instant he was joined by Stacy from the
+      cabin, and the two men, catching hold of their returning partner, waltzed
+      him joyfully and breathlessly into the cabin. But the quick-eyed Demorest
+      suddenly let go his hold and stared at Barker's face. &ldquo;Why, Barker, old
+      boy, what's up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Everything's up,&rdquo; gasped the breathless Barker. &ldquo;It's all up about these
+      stocks. It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of that newspaper. I never
+      had the right kind of shares. The ones I have are worthless rags&rdquo;; and the
+      next instant he had blurted out his whole interview with the bank manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's infinite
+      perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty
+      fell upon them. They laughed, holding on each other's shoulders; they
+      laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling figure; they went out and laughed
+      with their backs against a tree. They laughed separately and in different
+      corners. And then they came up to Barker with tears in their eyes, dropped
+      their heads on his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You blessed ass!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Stacy suddenly, &ldquo;how did you manage to buy the claim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys. I've NEVER PAID FOR IT,&rdquo; groaned
+      Barker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But Carter sent us the bill of sale,&rdquo; persisted Demorest, &ldquo;or we
+      shouldn't have taken it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I gave my promissory note at thirty days,&rdquo; said Barker desperately, &ldquo;and
+      where's the money to come from now? But,&rdquo; he added wildly, as the men
+      glanced at each other&mdash;&ldquo;you said 'taken it.' Good heavens! you don't
+      mean to say that I'm TOO late&mdash;that you've&mdash;you've touched it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing,&rdquo; drawled Demorest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks uncommonly like it,&rdquo; drawled Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other. &ldquo;Shall we pass our young
+      friend in to see the show?&rdquo; said Demorest to Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,&rdquo;
+       returned Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the corner of
+      the cabin. There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large tin prospecting
+      pan, in which the partners also occasionally used to knead their bread. A
+      dirty towel covered it. Demorest whisked it dexterously aside, and
+      disclosed three large fragments of decomposed gold and quartz. Barker
+      started back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heft it!&rdquo; said Demorest grimly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Barker could scarcely lift the pan!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!&rdquo; said Stacy, in short staccato
+      sentences. &ldquo;In a pocket! Brought it out the second stroke of the pick!
+      We'd been awfully blue after you left. Awfully blue, too, when that bill
+      of sale came, for we thought you'd been wasting your money on US. Reckoned
+      we oughtn't to take it, but send it straight back to you. Messenger gone!
+      Then Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be undone, and we ought
+      to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and strike a single stroke for
+      you. And there it is. And there's more on the hillside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it isn't MINE! It isn't YOURS! It's Carter's. I never had the money
+      to pay for it&mdash;and I haven't got it now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you gave the note&mdash;and it is not due for thirty days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A recollection flashed upon Barker. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said with thoughtful
+      simplicity, &ldquo;that's what Kitty said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Kitty said so,&rdquo; said both partners, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, &ldquo;and, as I
+      didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting it ready.&rdquo; He
+      picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as his two partners
+      stepped beyond the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wasn't it exactly like him?&rdquo; said Demorest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him all over,&rdquo; said Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And his worry over that note?&rdquo; said Demorest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And 'what Kitty said,'&rdquo; said Stacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here! I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What luck!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0022" id="link2H_4_0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A YELLOW DOG
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be
+      proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency,
+      nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social standing
+      of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we accepted it
+      at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownership was more
+      difficult to settle; and although the dog I have in my mind at the present
+      writing attached himself impartially and equally to everyone in camp, no
+      one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the perpetration of
+      any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with indecent haste.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks,&rdquo; or the
+      retort, &ldquo;He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin,&rdquo; expressed the
+      eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any
+      responsibility. Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an
+      unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest critics vied
+      with each other in narrating instances of his sagacity, insight, and
+      agility which they themselves had witnessed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been seen crossing the &ldquo;flume&rdquo; that spanned Grizzly Canyon at a
+      height of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide. He had tumbled
+      down the &ldquo;shoot&rdquo; to the South Fork, a thousand feet below, and was found
+      sitting on the riverbank &ldquo;without a scratch, 'cept that he was lazily
+      givin' himself with his off hind paw.&rdquo; He had been forgotten in a
+      snowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come home in the early spring with
+      the conceited complacency of an Alpine traveler and a plumpness alleged to
+      have been the result of an exclusive diet of buried mail bags and their
+      contents. He was generally believed to read the advance election posters,
+      and disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brass band&mdash;which
+      he hated&mdash;came to the Ridge. He was suspected of having overlooked
+      Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed to the Colonel's
+      adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of betting against four
+      kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported witnesses, it
+      was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the responsibility of
+      corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and HE was looked upon as a
+      consummate liar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye! Scoot,
+      you yaller pizin!&rdquo; was a common adjuration whenever the unfortunate animal
+      intruded upon a card party. &ldquo;Ef thar was a spark, an ATOM of truth in THAT
+      DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I saw him sittin' up and trying to
+      magnetize a jay bird off a tree. But wot are ye goin' to do with a yaller
+      equivocator like that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have said that he was yellow&mdash;or, to use the ordinary expression,
+      &ldquo;yaller.&rdquo; Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the ignominy
+      attached to the epithet lay in this favorite pronunciation. Men who
+      habitually spoke of a &ldquo;YELLOW bird,&rdquo; a &ldquo;YELLOW-hammer,&rdquo; a &ldquo;YELLOW leaf,&rdquo;
+       always alluded to him as a &ldquo;YALLER dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He certainly WAS yellow. After a bath&mdash;usually compulsory&mdash;he
+      presented a decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of his
+      forehead to the stump of his tail, fading in his sides and flank to a
+      delicate straw color. His breast, legs, and feet&mdash;when not reddened
+      by &ldquo;slumgullion,&rdquo; in which he was fond of wading&mdash;were white. A few
+      attempts at ornamental decoration from the India-ink pot of the
+      storekeeper failed, partly through the yellow dog's excessive agility,
+      which would never give the paint time to dry on him, and partly through
+      his success in transferring his markings to the trousers and blankets of
+      the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The size and shape of his tail&mdash;which had been cut off before his
+      introduction to Rattlers Ridge&mdash;were favorite sources of speculation
+      to the miners, as determining both his breed and his moral responsibility
+      in coming into camp in that defective condition. There was a general
+      opinion that he couldn't have looked worse with a tail, and its removal
+      was therefore a gratuitous effrontery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown, and
+      sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from evolution
+      through environment, and their original trustful openness was marred by
+      the experience of watching for flying stones, sods, and passing kicks from
+      the rear, so that the pupils were continually reverting to the outer angle
+      of the eyelid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed question of
+      his BREED. His speed and scent pointed to a &ldquo;hound,&rdquo; and it is related
+      that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of a wildcat with such
+      success that he followed it apparently out of the State, returning at the
+      end of two weeks footsore, but blandly contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the same
+      belief, &ldquo;into the brush&rdquo; to drive off a bear, who was supposed to be
+      haunting the campfire. He returned in a few minutes WITH the bear, DRIVING
+      IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole party. After this the
+      theory of his being a hunting dog was abandoned. Yet it was said&mdash;on
+      the usual uncorroborated evidence&mdash;that he had &ldquo;put up&rdquo; a quail; and
+      his qualities as a retriever were for a long time accepted, until, during
+      a shooting expedition for wild ducks, it was discovered that the one he
+      had brought back had never been shot, and the party were obliged to
+      compound damages with an adjacent settler.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His fondness for paddling in the ditches and &ldquo;slumgullion&rdquo; at one time
+      suggested a water spaniel. He could swim, and would occasionally bring out
+      of the river sticks and pieces of bark that had been thrown in; but as HE
+      always had to be thrown in with them, and was a good-sized dog, his
+      aquatic reputation faded also. He remained simply &ldquo;a yaller dog.&rdquo; What
+      more could be said? His actual name was &ldquo;Bones&rdquo;&mdash;given to him, no
+      doubt, through the provincial custom of confounding the occupation of the
+      individual with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedent could
+      be found in some old English family names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particular
+      individual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of drunkards.
+      Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought him out from under
+      a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction. He would accompany them
+      through the long straggling street of the settlement, barking his delight
+      at every step or misstep of the revelers, and exhibiting none of that
+      mistrust of eye which marked his attendance upon the sane and the
+      respectable. He accepted even their uncouth play without a snarl or a
+      yelp, hypocritically pretending even to like it; and I conscientiously
+      believe would have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if the
+      hand that tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him &ldquo;lie
+      still&rdquo; were husky with liquor. He would &ldquo;see&rdquo; the party cheerfully into a
+      saloon, wait outside the door&mdash;his tongue fairly lolling from his
+      mouth in enjoyment&mdash;until they reappeared, permit them even to tumble
+      over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before them, heedless of
+      awkwardly projected stones and epithets. He would afterward accompany them
+      separately home, or lie with them at crossroads until they were assisted
+      to their cabins. Then he would trot rakishly to his own haunt by the
+      saloon stove, with the slightly conscious air of having been a bad dog,
+      yet of having had a good time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from some
+      merely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the physically and
+      mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with active wickedness, or
+      from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such moments. But the
+      general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a &ldquo;yaller dog&rdquo; with
+      all that was disreputable. And this was supported by another very singular
+      canine manifestation&mdash;the &ldquo;sincere flattery&rdquo; of simulation or
+      imitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Billy&rdquo; Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being the
+      camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatest solicitude.
+      He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his feet or head
+      according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment, but, it was noticed,
+      began presently to undergo a singular alteration in his own habits and
+      appearance. From being an active, tireless scout and forager, a bold and
+      unovertakable marauder, he became lazy and apathetic; allowed gophers to
+      burrow under him without endeavoring to undermine the settlement in his
+      frantic endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels to flash their
+      tails at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual caches, and left his
+      favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun. His eyes grew dull, his
+      coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion became blear-eyed and
+      ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness began to deviate, and
+      it was not unusual to meet the pair together, zigzagging up the hill.
+      Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could be predetermined by Bones'
+      appearance at times when his temporary master was invisible. &ldquo;The old man
+      must have an awful jag on today,&rdquo; was casually remarked when an extra
+      fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones. At first it
+      was believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved
+      this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a &ldquo;derned time-servin',
+      yaller hypocrite.&rdquo; Not a few advanced the opinion that if Bones did not
+      actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least &ldquo;slavered him over and
+      coddled him until the old man got conceited in his wickedness.&rdquo; This
+      undoubtedly led to a compulsory divorce between them, and Uncle Billy was
+      happily dispatched to a neighboring town and a doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was supposed
+      to have visited him, to have been shocked at his convalescence, and to
+      have been &ldquo;cut&rdquo; by Uncle Billy in his reformed character; and he returned
+      to his old active life again, and buried his past with his forgotten
+      bones. It was said that he was afterward detected in trying to lead an
+      intoxicated tramp into camp after the methods employed by a blind man's
+      dog, but was discovered in time by the&mdash;of course&mdash;uncorroborated
+      narrator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and picturesque sin,
+      but the same veracity which compelled me to transcribe his faults and
+      iniquities obliges me to describe his ultimate and somewhat monotonous
+      reformation, which came from no fault of his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent of his
+      change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been induced to diverge
+      from the highroad and stop regularly at our settlement. Flags were flying
+      from the post office and Polka saloon, and Bones was flying before the
+      brass band that he detested, when the sweetest girl in the county&mdash;Pinkey
+      Preston&mdash;daughter of the county judge and hopelessly beloved by all
+      Rattlers Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had glorified by
+      occupying as an invited guest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What makes him run away?&rdquo; she asked quickly, opening her lovely eyes in a
+      possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to run away from
+      her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't like the brass band,&rdquo; we explained eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How funny,&rdquo; murmured the girl; &ldquo;is it as out of tune as all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy us&mdash;we
+      did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day&mdash;but we were
+      positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather her dainty skirts
+      in one hand and trip off through the red dust toward Bones, who, with his
+      eyes over his yellow shoulder, had halted in the road, and half-turned in
+      mingled disgust and rage at the spectacle of the descending trombone. We
+      held our breath as she approached him. Would Bones evade her as he did us
+      at such moments, or would he save our reputation, and consent, for the
+      moment, to accept her as a new kind of inebriate? She came nearer; he saw
+      her; he began to slowly quiver with excitement&mdash;his stump of a tail
+      vibrating with such rapidity that the loss of the missing portion was
+      scarcely noticeable. Suddenly she stopped before him, took his yellow head
+      between her little hands, lifted it, and looked down in his handsome brown
+      eyes with her two lovely blue ones. What passed between them in that
+      magnetic glance no one ever knew. She returned with him; said to him
+      casually: &ldquo;We're not afraid of brass bands, are we?&rdquo; to which he
+      apparently acquiesced, at least stifling his disgust of them while he was
+      near her&mdash;which was nearly all the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were always
+      near together, and at the crowning ceremony&mdash;her public checking of
+      Yuba Bill's &ldquo;waybill&rdquo; on behalf of the township, with a gold pencil
+      presented to her by the Stage Company&mdash;Bones' joy, far from knowing
+      no bounds, seemed to know nothing but them, and he witnessed it apparently
+      in the air. No one dared to interfere. For the first time a local pride in
+      Bones sprang up in our hearts&mdash;and we lied to each other in his
+      praises openly and shamelessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the time came for parting. We were standing by the door of the coach,
+      hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Bones was waiting
+      by her side, confidently looking into the interior, and apparently
+      selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the corner, when
+      Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers. Then, taking his
+      head between her two hands, she again looked into his brimming eyes, and
+      said, simply, &ldquo;GOOD dog,&rdquo; with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective,
+      and popped into the coach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold vehicle
+      bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow dog danced in
+      and out of it to the very outskirts of the settlement. And then he soberly
+      returned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A day or two later he was missed&mdash;but the fact was afterward known
+      that he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston lived,
+      and he was forgiven. A week afterward he was missed again, but this time
+      for a longer period, and then a pathetic letter arrived from Sacramento
+      for the storekeeper's wife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you mind,&rdquo; wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, &ldquo;asking some of your boys to
+      come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones? I don't mind having the
+      dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where everyone knows me; but
+      here he DOES make one so noticeable, on account of HIS COLOR. I've got
+      scarcely a frock that he agrees with. He don't go with my pink muslin, and
+      that lovely buff tint he makes three shades lighter. You know yellow is SO
+      trying.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a deputation
+      sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl. We were all quite
+      indignant with Bones&mdash;but, oddly enough, I think it was greatly
+      tempered with our new pride in him. While he was with us alone, his
+      peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent phrase
+      &ldquo;that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers&rdquo; gave us a mysterious
+      importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a &ldquo;mascot&rdquo; in some
+      zoological curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was further indicated by a singular occurrence. A new church had been
+      built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come from San Francisco
+      to preach the opening sermon. After a careful examination of the camp's
+      wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of apparel, a few of us were
+      deputed to represent &ldquo;Rattlers&rdquo; at the Sunday service. In our white ducks,
+      straw hats, and flannel blouses, we were sufficiently picturesque and
+      distinctive as &ldquo;honest miners&rdquo; to be shown off in one of the front pews.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books&mdash;in
+      the cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and blown over
+      by the spices of our own woods through the open windows, a deep sense of
+      the abiding peace of Christian communion settled upon us. At this supreme
+      moment someone murmured in an awe-stricken whisper:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WILL you look at Bones?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We looked. Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallery through
+      a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his mistake, was now
+      calmly walking along the gallery rail before the astounded worshipers.
+      Reaching the end, he paused for a moment, and carelessly looked down. It
+      was about fifteen feet to the floor below&mdash;the simplest jump in the
+      world for the mountain-bred Bones. Daintily, gingerly, lazily, and yet
+      with a conceited airiness of manner, as if, humanly speaking, he had one
+      leg in his pocket and were doing it on three, he cleared the distance,
+      dropping just in front of the chancel, without a sound, turned himself
+      around three times, and then lay comfortably down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the eminent
+      divine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile. We heard the hurried
+      whispers: &ldquo;Belongs to them.&rdquo; &ldquo;Quite a local institution here, you know.&rdquo;
+       &ldquo;Don't like to offend sensibilities;&rdquo; and the minister's prompt &ldquo;By no
+      means,&rdquo; as he went on with his service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat there in
+      slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that any affront
+      offered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and followed by our
+      instantaneous withdrawal in a body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Bible from
+      the communion table and holding it in both hands before him, walked toward
+      a reading stand by the altar rails. Bones uttered a distinct growl. The
+      minister stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole situation. The Bible
+      was nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of sod which we
+      were in the playful habit of launching at Bones when he lay half-asleep in
+      the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We held our breath. What was to be done? But the opportunity belonged to
+      our leader, Jeff Briggs&mdash;a confoundedly good-looking fellow, with the
+      golden mustache of a northern viking and the curls of an Apollo. Secure in
+      his beauty and bland in his self-conceit, he rose from the pew, and
+      stepped before the chancel rails.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir,&rdquo; he said, respectfully, &ldquo;and
+      you will see that he will go out quietly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is wrong?&rdquo; whispered the minister in some concern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without giving
+      him a fair show, as we do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the book in
+      his hands. Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and vanished like a
+      yellow flash!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a week.
+      At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge Preston,
+      saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their house, and begged
+      that the camp, without yielding up their valuable PROPERTY in him, would
+      allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an indefinite time; that both the
+      judge and his daughter&mdash;with whom Bones was already an old friend&mdash;would
+      be glad if the members of the camp would visit their old favorite whenever
+      they desired, to assure themselves that he was well cared for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good deal to
+      do with our ultimate yielding. However, the reports of those who visited
+      Bones were wonderful and marvelous. He was residing there in state, lying
+      on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled up under the judicial desk in the
+      judge's study, sleeping regularly on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's bedroom
+      door, or lazily snapping at flies on the judge's lawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's as yaller as ever,&rdquo; said one of our informants, &ldquo;but it don't
+      somehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over in the
+      old time, just to see him scoot out of the dust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs will
+      indignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by every faithful
+      hound since the days of Ulysses. Bones not only FORGOT, but absolutely CUT
+      US! Those who called upon the judge in &ldquo;store clothes&rdquo; he would perhaps
+      casually notice, but he would sniff at them as if detecting and resenting
+      them under their superficial exterior. The rest he simply paid no
+      attention to. The more familiar term of &ldquo;Bonesy&rdquo;&mdash;formerly applied to
+      him, as in our rare moments of endearment&mdash;produced no response. This
+      pained, I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through some
+      strange human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.
+      Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very moment
+      he ignored us. I am afraid that we also took some pains to point out that
+      he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his elasticity, implying
+      covertly that his choice was a mistake and his life a failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability, being
+      found one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's
+      door. When the news was conveyed to us, we asked permission, the camp
+      being in a prosperous condition, to erect a stone over his grave. But when
+      it came to the inscription we could only think of the two words murmured
+      to him by Miss Pinkey, which we always believe effected his conversion:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;GOOD Dog!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0023" id="link2H_4_0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A MOTHER OF FIVE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      She was a mother&mdash;and a rather exemplary one&mdash;of five children,
+      although her own age was barely nine. Two of these children were twins,
+      and she generally alluded to them as &ldquo;Mr. Amplach's children,&rdquo; referring
+      to an exceedingly respectable gentleman in the next settlement who, I have
+      reason to believe, had never set eyes on her or them. The twins were quite
+      naturally alike&mdash;having been in a previous state of existence two
+      ninepins&mdash;and were still somewhat vague and inchoate below their low
+      shoulders in their long clothes, but were also firm and globular about the
+      head, and there were not wanting those who professed to see in this an
+      unmistakable resemblance to their reputed father. The other children were
+      dolls of different ages, sex, and condition, but the twins may be said to
+      have been distinctly her own conception. Yet such was her admirable and
+      impartial maternity that she never made any difference between them. &ldquo;The
+      Amplach's children&rdquo; was a description rather than a distinction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was herself the motherless child of Robert Foulkes, a hardworking but
+      somewhat improvident teamster on the Express Route between Big Bend and
+      Reno. His daily avocation, when she was not actually with him in the
+      wagon, led to an occasional dispersion of herself and her progeny along
+      the road and at wayside stations between those places. But the family was
+      generally collected together by rough but kindly hands already familiar
+      with the handling of her children. I have a very vivid recollection of Jim
+      Carter trampling into a saloon, after a five-mile walk through a
+      snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket. &ldquo;Suthin' ought to be done,&rdquo;
+       he growled, &ldquo;to make Meary a little more careful o' them Amplach children;
+      I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big Bend.&rdquo; &ldquo;God bless my
+      soul!&rdquo; said a casual passenger, looking up hastily; &ldquo;I didn't know Mr.
+      Amplach was married.&rdquo; Jim winked diabolically at us over his glass. &ldquo;No
+      more did I,&rdquo; he responded gloomily, &ldquo;but you can't tell anything about the
+      ways o' them respectable, psalm-singing jay birds.&rdquo; Having thus disposed
+      of Amplach's character, later on, when he was alone with Mary, or &ldquo;Meary,&rdquo;
+       as she chose to pronounce it, the rascal worked upon her feelings with an
+      account of the infant Amplach's sufferings in the snowdrift and its
+      agonized whisperings for &ldquo;Meary! Meary!&rdquo; until real tears stood in Mary's
+      blue eyes. &ldquo;Let this be a lesson to you,&rdquo; he concluded, drawing the
+      ninepin dexterously from his pocket, &ldquo;for it took nigh a quart of the best
+      forty-rod whisky to bring that child to.&rdquo; Not only did Mary firmly believe
+      him, but for weeks afterwards &ldquo;Julian Amplach&rdquo;&mdash;this unhappy twin&mdash;was
+      kept in a somnolent attitude in the cart, and was believed to have
+      contracted dissipated habits from the effects of his heroic treatment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded her
+      first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable expense by
+      a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh birthday. This, by one
+      of those rare inventions known only to a child's vocabulary, she at once
+      called &ldquo;Misery&rdquo;&mdash;probably a combination of &ldquo;Missy,&rdquo; as she herself
+      was formerly termed by strangers, and &ldquo;Missouri,&rdquo; her native State. It was
+      an excessively large doll at first&mdash;Mr. Dodd wishing to get the worth
+      of his money&mdash;but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal care,
+      remedied the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed parts of its
+      limbs very rapidly. It was further reduced in bulk by falling under the
+      wagon and having the whole train pass over it, but singularly enough its
+      greatest attenuation was in the head and shoulders&mdash;the complexion
+      peeling off as a solid layer, followed by the disappearance of distinct
+      strata of its extraordinary composition. This continued until the head and
+      shoulders were much too small for even its reduced frame, and all the
+      devices of childish millinery&mdash;a shawl secured with tacks and well
+      hammered in, and a hat which tilted backward and forward and never
+      appeared at the same angle&mdash;failed to restore symmetry. Until one
+      dreadful morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole upper structure
+      disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing erect from the
+      spinal column. Even an imaginative child like Mary could not accept this
+      sort of thing as a head. Later in the day Jack Roper, the blacksmith at
+      the &ldquo;Crossing,&rdquo; was concerned at the plaintive appearance before his forge
+      of a little girl clad in a bright-blue pinafore of the same color as her
+      eyes, carrying her monstrous offspring in her arms. Jack recognized her
+      and instantly divined the situation. &ldquo;You haven't,&rdquo; he suggested kindly,
+      &ldquo;got another head at home&mdash;suthin' left over,&rdquo; Mary shook her head
+      sadly; even her prolific maternity was not equal to the creation of
+      children in detail. &ldquo;Nor anythin' like a head?&rdquo; he persisted
+      sympathetically. Mary's loving eyes filled with tears. &ldquo;No, nuffen!&rdquo; &ldquo;You
+      couldn't,&rdquo; he continued thoughtfully, &ldquo;use her the other side up?&mdash;we
+      might get a fine pair o' legs outer them irons,&rdquo; he added, touching the
+      two prongs with artistic suggestion. &ldquo;Now look here&rdquo;&mdash;he was about to
+      tilt the doll over when a small cry of feminine distress and a swift
+      movement of a matronly little arm arrested the evident indiscretion. &ldquo;I
+      see,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;Well, you come here tomorrow, and we'll fix up
+      suthin' to work her.&rdquo; Jack was thoughtful the rest of the day, more than
+      usually impatient with certain stubborn mules to be shod, and even knocked
+      off work an hour earlier to walk to Big Bend and a rival shop. But the
+      next morning when the trustful and anxious mother appeared at the forge
+      she uttered a scream of delight. Jack had neatly joined a hollow iron
+      globe, taken from the newel post of some old iron staircase railing, to
+      the two prongs, and covered it with a coat of red fireproof paint. It was
+      true that its complexion was rather high, that it was inclined to be
+      top-heavy, and that in the long run the other dolls suffered considerably
+      by enforced association with this unyielding and implacable head and
+      shoulders, but this did not diminish Mary's joy over her restored
+      first-born. Even its utter absence of features was no defect in a family
+      where features were as evanescent as in hers, and the most ordinary
+      student of evolution could see that the &ldquo;Amplach&rdquo; ninepins were in
+      legitimate succession to the globular-headed &ldquo;Misery.&rdquo; For a time I think
+      that Mary even preferred her to the others. Howbeit it was a pretty sight
+      to see her on a summer afternoon sitting upon a wayside stump, her other
+      children dutifully ranged around her, and the hard, unfeeling head of
+      Misery pressed deep down into her loving little heart as she swayed from
+      side to side, crooning her plaintive lullaby. Small wonder that the bees
+      took up the song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above
+      her head the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft
+      Sierran air&mdash;or Heaven knows what&mdash;let slip flickering lights
+      and shadows to play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking
+      down upon it with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it
+      smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive. &ldquo;Gloriana&rdquo;&mdash;pronounced
+      as two words: &ldquo;Glory Anna&rdquo;&mdash;being the work of her father, who also
+      named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of canvas wagon-covering, girt so
+      as to define a neck and waist, with a rudely inked face&mdash;altogether a
+      weak, pitiable, manlike invention; and &ldquo;Johnny Dear,&rdquo; alleged to be the
+      representative of John Doremus, a young storekeeper who occasionally
+      supplied Mary with gratuitous sweets. Mary never admitted this, and as we
+      were all gentlemen along that road, we were blind to the suggestion.
+      &ldquo;Johnny Dear&rdquo; was originally a small plaster phrenological cast of a head
+      and bust, begged from some shop window in the county town, with a body
+      clearly constructed by Mary herself. It was an ominous fact that it was
+      always dressed as a BOY, and was distinctly the most HUMAN-looking of all
+      her progeny. Indeed, in spite of the faculties that were legibly printed
+      all over its smooth, white, hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike.
+      Left sometimes by Mary astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen
+      had been known to dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a
+      mystified smile, and it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up
+      the Pioneer Coach at the request of curious and imploring passengers, and
+      then grimly installed &ldquo;Johnny Dear&rdquo; beside him on the box seat, publicly
+      delivering him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed confusion and the
+      first blush we had ever seen on her round, chubby, sunburnt cheeks. It may
+      seem strange that with her great popularity and her well-known maternal
+      instincts, she had not been kept fully supplied with proper and more
+      conventional dolls; but it was soon recognized that she did not care for
+      them&mdash;left their waxen faces, rolling eyes, and abundant hair in
+      ditches, or stripped them to help clothe the more extravagant creatures of
+      her fancy. So it came that &ldquo;Johnny Dear's&rdquo; strictly classical profile
+      looked out from under a girl's fashionable straw sailor hat, to the utter
+      obliteration of his prominent intellectual faculties; the Amplach twins
+      wore bonnets on their ninepins heads, and even an attempt was made to fit
+      a flaxen scalp on the iron-headed Misery. But her dolls were always a
+      creation of her own&mdash;her affection for them increasing with the
+      demand upon her imagination. This may seem somewhat inconsistent with her
+      habit of occasionally abandoning them in the woods or in the ditches. But
+      she had an unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of Nature, and
+      trusted her children to the breast of the Great Mother as freely as she
+      did herself in her own motherlessness. And this confidence was rarely
+      betrayed. Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear never touched
+      her lost waifs. Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach twin buried
+      under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared smilingly in the spring in
+      all its wooden and painted integrity. We were all Pantheists then&mdash;and
+      believed this implicitly. It was only when exposed to the milder forces of
+      civilization that Mary had anything to fear. Yet even then, when Patsy
+      O'Connor's domestic goat had once tried to &ldquo;sample&rdquo; the lost Misery, he
+      had retreated with the loss of three front teeth, and Thompson's mule came
+      out of an encounter with that iron-headed prodigy with a sprained hind leg
+      and a cut and swollen pastern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these were the simple Arcadian days of the road between Big Bend and
+      Reno, and progress and prosperity, alas! brought changes in their wake. It
+      was already whispered that Mary ought to be going to school, and Mr.
+      Amplach&mdash;still happily oblivious of the liberties taken with his name&mdash;as
+      trustee of the public school at Duckville, had intimated that Mary's
+      bohemian wanderings were a scandal to the county. She was growing up in
+      ignorance, a dreadful ignorance of everything but the chivalry, the deep
+      tenderness, the delicacy and unselfishness of the rude men around her, and
+      obliviousness of faith in anything but the immeasurable bounty of Nature
+      toward her and her children. Of course there was a fierce discussion
+      between &ldquo;the boys&rdquo; of the road and the few married families of the
+      settlement on this point, but, of course, progress and &ldquo;snivelization&rdquo;&mdash;as
+      the boys chose to call it&mdash;triumphed. The projection of a railroad
+      settled it; Robert Foulkes, promoted to a foremanship of a division of the
+      line, was made to understand that his daughter must be educated. But the
+      terrible question of Mary's family remained. No school would open its
+      doors to that heterogeneous collection, and Mary's little heart would have
+      broken over the rude dispersal or heroic burning of her children. The
+      ingenuity of Jack Roper suggested a compromise. She was allowed to select
+      one to take to school with her; the others were ADOPTED by certain of her
+      friends, and she was to be permitted to visit them every Saturday
+      afternoon. The selection was a cruel trial, so cruel that, knowing her
+      undoubted preference for her firstborn, Misery, we would not have
+      interfered for worlds, but in her unexpected choice of &ldquo;Johnny Dear&rdquo; the
+      most unworldly of us knew that it was the first glimmering of feminine
+      tact&mdash;her first submission to the world of propriety that she was now
+      entering. &ldquo;Johnny Dear&rdquo; was undoubtedly the most presentable; even more,
+      there was an educational suggestion in its prominent, mapped-out
+      phrenological organs. The adopted fathers were loyal to their trust.
+      Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept the iron-headed Misery on
+      a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk; nobody but himself and Mary
+      ever knew the secret, stolen, and thrilling interviews that took place
+      during the first days of their separation. Certain facts, however,
+      transpired concerning Mary's equal faithfulness to another of her
+      children. It is said that one Saturday afternoon, when the road manager of
+      the new line was seated in his office at Reno in private business
+      discussion with two directors, a gentle tap was heard at the door. It was
+      opened to an eager little face, a pair of blue eyes, and a blue pinafore.
+      To the astonishment of the directors, a change came over the face of the
+      manager. Taking the child gently by the hand, he walked to his desk, on
+      which the papers of the new line were scattered, and drew open a drawer
+      from which he took a large ninepin extraordinarily dressed as a doll. The
+      astonishment of the two gentlemen was increased at the following quaint
+      colloquy between the manager and the child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's doing remarkably well in spite of the trying weather, but I have
+      had to keep her very quiet,&rdquo; said the manager, regarding the ninepin
+      critically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ess,&rdquo; said Mary quickly, &ldquo;It's just the same with Johnny Dear; his cough
+      is f'ightful at nights. But Misery's all right. I've just been to see
+      her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a good deal of scarlet fever around,&rdquo; continued the manager with
+      quiet concern, &ldquo;and we can't be too careful. But I shall take her for a
+      little run down the line tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The eyes of Mary sparkled and overflowed like blue water. Then there was a
+      kiss, a little laugh, a shy glance at the two curious strangers, the blue
+      pinafore fluttered away, and the colloquy ended. She was equally attentive
+      in her care of the others, but the rag baby &ldquo;Gloriana,&rdquo; who had found a
+      home in Jim Carter's cabin at the Ridge, living too far for daily visits,
+      was brought down regularly on Saturday afternoon to Mary's house by Jim,
+      tucked in asleep in his saddle bags or riding gallantly before him on the
+      horn of his saddle. On Sunday there was a dress parade of all the dolls,
+      which kept Mary in heart for the next week's desolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there came one Saturday and Sunday when Mary did not appear, and it
+      was known along the road that she had been called to San Francisco to meet
+      an aunt who had just arrived from &ldquo;the States.&rdquo; It was a vacant Sunday to
+      &ldquo;the boys,&rdquo; a very hollow, unsanctified Sunday, somehow, without that
+      little figure. But the next, Sunday, and the next, were still worse, and
+      then it was known that the dreadful aunt was making much of Mary, and was
+      sending her to a grand school&mdash;a convent at Santa Clara&mdash;where
+      it was rumored girls were turned out so accomplished that their own
+      parents did not know them. But WE knew that was impossible to our Mary;
+      and a letter which came from her at the end of the month, and before the
+      convent had closed upon the blue pinafore, satisfied us, and was balm to
+      our anxious hearts. It was characteristic of Mary; it was addressed to
+      nobody in particular, and would&mdash;but for the prudence of the aunt&mdash;have
+      been entrusted to the post office open and undirected. It was a single
+      sheet, handed to us without a word by her father; but as we passed it from
+      hand to hand, we understood it as if we had heard our lost playfellow's
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ther's more houses in 'Frisco than you kin shake a stick at and wimmens
+      till you kant rest, but mules and jakasses ain't got no sho, nor
+      blacksmiffs shops, wich is not to be seen no wear. Rapits and Skwirls also
+      bares and panfers is on-noun and unforgotten on account of the streets and
+      Sunday skoles. Jim Roper you orter be very good to Mizzery on a kount of
+      my not bein' here, and not harten your hart to her bekos she is top heavy&mdash;which
+      is ontroo and simply an imptient lie&mdash;like you allus make. I have a
+      kinary bird wot sings deliteful&mdash;but isn't a yellerhamer sutch as I
+      know, as you'd think. Dear Mister Montgommery, don't keep Gulan Amplak to
+      mutch shet up in office drors; it isn't good for his lungs and chest. And
+      don't you ink his head&mdash;nother! youre as bad as the rest. Johnny
+      Dear, you must be very kind to your attopted father, and you, Glory Anna,
+      must lov your kind Jimmy Carter verry mutch for taking you hossback so
+      offen. I has been buggy ridin' with an orficer who has killed injuns real!
+      I am comin' back soon with grate affeckshun, so luke out and mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was three years before she returned, and this was her last and only
+      letter. The &ldquo;adopted fathers&rdquo; of her children were faithful, however, and
+      when the new line was opened, and it was understood that she was to be
+      present with her father at the ceremony, they came, with a common
+      understanding, to the station to meet their old playmate. They were ranged
+      along the platform&mdash;poor Jack Roper a little overweighted with a
+      bundle he was carrying on his left arm. And then a young girl in the
+      freshness of her teens and the spotless purity of a muslin frock that
+      although brief in skirt was perfect in fit, faultlessly booted and gloved,
+      tripped from the train, and offered a delicate hand in turn to each of her
+      old friends. Nothing could be prettier than the smile on the cheeks that
+      were no longer sunburnt; nothing could be clearer than the blue eyes
+      lifted frankly to theirs. And yet, as she gracefully turned away with her
+      father, the faces of the four adopted parents were found to be as red and
+      embarrassed as her own on the day that Yuba Bill drove up publicly with
+      &ldquo;Johnny Dear&rdquo; on the box seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You weren't such a fool,&rdquo; said Jack Montgomery to Roper, &ldquo;as to bring
+      Misery here with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was,&rdquo; said Roper with a constrained laugh&mdash;&ldquo;and you?&rdquo; He had just
+      caught sight of the head of a ninepin peeping from the manager's pocket.
+      The man laughed, and then the four turned silently away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mary&rdquo; had indeed come back to them; but not &ldquo;The Mother of Five!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0024" id="link2H_4_0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BULGER'S REPUTATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      We all remembered very distinctly Bulger's advent in Rattlesnake Camp. It
+      was during the rainy season&mdash;a season singularly inducive to settled
+      reflective impressions as we sat and smoked around the stove in Mosby's
+      grocery. Like older and more civilized communities, we had our periodic
+      waves of sentiment and opinion, with the exception that they were more
+      evanescent with us, and as we had just passed through a fortnight of
+      dissipation and extravagance, owing to a visit from some gamblers and
+      speculators, we were now undergoing a severe moral revulsion, partly
+      induced by reduced finances and partly by the arrival of two families with
+      grownup daughters on the hill. It was raining, with occasional warm
+      breaths, through the open window, of the southwest trades, redolent of the
+      saturated spices of the woods and springing grasses, which perhaps were
+      slightly inconsistent with the hot stove around which we had congregated.
+      But the stove was only an excuse for our listless, gregarious gathering;
+      warmth and idleness went well together, and it was currently accepted that
+      we had caught from the particular reptile which gave its name to our camp
+      much of its pathetic, lifelong search for warmth, and its habit of
+      indolently basking in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry our
+      damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against it; but as
+      the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive in upon them
+      through the open window without moving, and seemed to take infinite
+      delight in the amount of steam they generated, even that pretense dropped.
+      Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun striking
+      cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm stone beside
+      it, could not have typified us better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
+      reflective severity:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if we're
+      going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at least straighten
+      up the camp, and not have it look like a cross between a tenement alley
+      and a broken-down circus. I declare, I was just sick when these two Baker
+      girls started to make a short cut through the camp. Darned if they didn't
+      turn round and take to the woods and the rattlers again afore they got
+      halfway. And that benighted idiot, Tom Rollins, standin' there in the
+      ditch, spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he looked like a spotted
+      tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards and forrards and sayin',
+      'This way, ladies; this way!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't,&rdquo; returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking up from
+      his steaming boots; &ldquo;I didn't start in night afore last to dance 'The
+      Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my hair and a red
+      blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new potato patch, in order
+      that it might 'increase and multiply.' I didn't sing 'Sabbath Morning
+      Bells' with an anvil accompaniment until twelve o'clock at night over at
+      the Crossing, so that they might dream of their Happy Childhood's Home. It
+      seems to me that it wasn't me did it. I might be mistaken&mdash;it was
+      late&mdash;but I have the impression that it wasn't me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From the silence that followed, this would seem to have been clearly a
+      recent performance of the previous speaker, who, however, responded quite
+      cheerfully:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An evenin' o' simple, childish gaiety don't count. We've got to start in
+      again FAIR. What we want here is to clear up and encourage decent
+      immigration, and get rid o' gamblers and blatherskites that are makin'
+      this yer camp their happy hunting-ground. We don't want any more permiskus
+      shootin'. We don't want any more paintin' the town red. We don't want any
+      more swaggerin' galoots ridin' up to this grocery and emptyin' their
+      six-shooters in the air afore they 'light. We want to put a stop to it
+      peacefully and without a row&mdash;and we kin. We ain't got no bullies of
+      our own to fight back, and they know it, so they know they won't get no
+      credit bullyin' us; they'll leave, if we're only firm. It's all along of
+      our cussed fool good-nature; they see it amuses us, and they'll keep it up
+      as long as the whisky's free. What we want to do is, when the next man
+      comes waltzin' along&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A distant clatter from the rocky hillside here mingled with the puff of
+      damp air through the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks as ef we might hev a show even now,&rdquo; said Tom Rollins, removing his
+      feet from the stove as we all instinctively faced toward the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon you're in with us in this, Mosby?&rdquo; said Briggs, turning toward
+      the proprietor of the grocery, who had been leaning listlessly against the
+      wall behind his bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Arter the man's had a fair show,&rdquo; said Mosby, cautiously. He deprecated
+      the prevailing condition of things, but it was still an open question
+      whether the families would prove as valuable customers as his present
+      clients. &ldquo;Everything in moderation, gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sound of galloping hoofs came nearer, now swishing in the soft mud of
+      the highway, until the unseen rider pulled up before the door. There was
+      no shouting, however, nor did he announce himself with the usual salvo of
+      firearms. But when, after a singularly heavy tread and the jingle of spurs
+      on the platform, the door flew open to the newcomer, he seemed a
+      realization of our worst expectations. Tall, broad, and muscular, he
+      carried in one hand a shotgun, while from his hip dangled a heavy navy
+      revolver. His long hair, unkempt but oiled, swept a greasy circle around
+      his shoulders; his enormous mustache, dripping with wet, completely
+      concealed his mouth. His costume of fringed buckskin was wild and outre
+      even for our frontier camp. But what was more confirmative of our
+      suspicions was that he was evidently in the habit of making an impression,
+      and after a distinct pause at the doorway, with only a side glance at us,
+      he strode toward the bar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As there don't seem to be no hotel hereabouts, I reckon I kin put up my
+      mustang here and have a shakedown somewhere behind that counter,&rdquo; he said.
+      His voice seemed to have added to its natural depth the hoarseness of
+      frequent overstraining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye ain't got no bunk to spare, you boys, hev ye?&rdquo; asked Mosby, evasively,
+      glancing at Percy Briggs without looking at the stranger. We all looked at
+      Briggs also; it was HIS affair after all&mdash;HE had originated this
+      opposition. To our surprise he said nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger leaned heavily on the counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was speaking to YOU,&rdquo; he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and slightly
+      accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on the bar. &ldquo;Ye
+      don't seem to catch on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mosby smiled feebly, and again cast an imploring glance at Briggs. To our
+      greater astonishment, Briggs said, quietly: &ldquo;Why don't you answer the
+      stranger, Mosby?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Mosby, suavely, to the newcomer, while an angry flush
+      crossed his check as he recognized the position in which Briggs had placed
+      him. &ldquo;Of course, you're welcome to what doings I hev here, but I reckoned
+      these gentlemen over there,&rdquo; with a vicious glance at Briggs, &ldquo;might fix
+      ye up suthin' better; they're so pow'ful kind to your sort.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger threw down a gold piece on the counter and said: &ldquo;Fork out
+      your whisky, then,&rdquo; waited until his glass was filled, took it in his
+      hand, and then, drawing an empty chair to the stove, sat down beside
+      Briggs. &ldquo;Seein' as you're that kind,&rdquo; he said, placing his heavy hand on
+      Briggs's knee, &ldquo;mebbe ye kin tell me ef thar's a shanty or a cabin at
+      Rattlesnake that I kin get for a couple o' weeks. I saw an empty one at
+      the head o' the hill. You see, gennelmen,&rdquo; he added confidentially as he
+      swept the drops of whisky from his long mustache with his fingers and
+      glanced around our group, &ldquo;I've got some business over at Bigwood,&rdquo; our
+      nearest town, &ldquo;but ez a place to stay AT it ain't my style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with Bigwood?&rdquo; said Briggs, abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's too howlin', too festive, too rough; thar's too much yellin' and
+      shootin' goin' day and night. Thar's too many card sharps and gay
+      gamboliers cavortin' about the town to please me. Too much permiskus
+      soakin' at the bar and free jimjams. What I want is a quiet place what a
+      man kin give his mind and elbow a rest from betwixt grippin' his shootin'
+      irons and crookin' in his whisky. A sort o' slow, quiet, easy place LIKE
+      THIS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We all stared at him, Percy Briggs as fixedly as any. But there was not
+      the slightest trace of irony, sarcasm, or peculiar significance in his
+      manner. He went on slowly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When I struck this yer camp a minit ago; when I seed that thar ditch
+      meanderin' peaceful like through the street, without a hotel or free
+      saloon or express office on either side; with the smoke just a curlin'
+      over the chimbley of that log shanty, and the bresh just set fire to and a
+      smolderin' in that potato patch with a kind o' old-time stingin' in your
+      eyes and nose, and a few women's duds just a flutterin' on a line by the
+      fence, I says to myself: 'Bulger&mdash;this is peace! This is wot you're
+      lookin' for, Bulger&mdash;this is wot you're wantin'&mdash;this is wot
+      YOU'LL HEV!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you've business over at Bigwood. What business?&rdquo; said Briggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a peculiar business, young fellow,&rdquo; returned the stranger, gravely.
+      &ldquo;Thar's different men ez has different opinions about it. Some allows it's
+      an easy business, some allows it's a rough business; some says it's a sad
+      business, others says it's gay and festive. Some wonders ez how I've got
+      into it, and others wonder how I'll ever get out of it. It's a payin'
+      business&mdash;it's a peaceful sort o' business when left to itself. It's
+      a peculiar business&mdash;a business that sort o' b'longs to me, though I
+      ain't got no patent from Washington for it. It's MY OWN business.&rdquo; He
+      paused, rose, and saying, &ldquo;Let's meander over and take a look at that
+      empty cabin, and ef she suits me, why, I'll plank down a slug for her on
+      the spot, and move in tomorrow,&rdquo; walked towards the door. &ldquo;I'll pick up
+      suthin' in the way o' boxes and blankets from the grocery,&rdquo; he added,
+      looking at Mosby, &ldquo;and ef thar's a corner whar I kin stand my gun and a
+      nail to hang up my revolver&mdash;why, I'm all thar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also, and not
+      only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty cabin, but
+      assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a fortnight's occupancy.
+      Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on his return for some
+      explanation of this singular change in his attitude toward the stranger.
+      He coolly reminded us, however, that while his intention of excluding
+      ruffianly adventurers from the camp remained the same, he had no right to
+      go back on the stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord with
+      our own, and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with them,
+      that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a mild
+      firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might attend
+      his abrupt dismissal. We were all satisfied except Mosby, who had not yet
+      recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he was pleased to call
+      &ldquo;craw-fishing.&rdquo; &ldquo;Seemed to me his account of his business was
+      extraordinary satisfactory! Sorter filled the bill all round&mdash;no
+      mistake thar,&rdquo; he suggested, with a malicious irony. &ldquo;I like a man that's
+      outspoken.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understood him very well,&rdquo; said Briggs, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In course you did. Only when you've settled in your MIND whether he was
+      describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe you'll let ME
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the stranger again
+      regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to leave matters in
+      Briggs's hands. Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into the empty cabin the next
+      day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes from the grocery, which he
+      quickly extemporized into tables and chairs, and the purchase of some
+      necessary cooking utensils, soon made himself at home. The rest of the
+      camp, now thoroughly aroused, made a point of leaving their work in the
+      ditches, whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's
+      tenement in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
+      tormenting. But they could not find that he was doing anything of a
+      suspicious character&mdash;except, perhaps, from the fact that it was not
+      OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them to security.
+      He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking in his doorway. On
+      the second day he checked this itinerant curiosity by taking the
+      initiative himself, and quietly walking from claim to claim and from cabin
+      to cabin with a pacific but by no means a satisfying interest. The shadow
+      of his tall figure carrying his inseparable gun, which had not yet
+      apparently &ldquo;stood in the corner,&rdquo; falling upon an excavated bank beside
+      the delving miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could not
+      explain; a few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from their
+      noontide gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr. Bulger was
+      seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before a poker party in
+      the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless gamblers to weakly
+      recede from &ldquo;a bluff&rdquo; and allow his adversary to sweep the board. After
+      this it was felt that matters were becoming serious. There was no
+      subsequent patrolling of the camp before the stranger's cabin. Their
+      curiosity was singularly abated. A general feeling of repulsion, kept
+      within bounds partly by the absence of any overt act from Bulger, and
+      partly by an inconsistent over-consciousness of his shotgun, took its
+      place. But an unexpected occurrence revived it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening, as the usual social circle were drawn around Mosby's stove,
+      the lazy silence was broken by the familiar sounds of pistol shots and a
+      series of more familiar shrieks and yells from the rocky hill road. The
+      circle quickly recognized the voices of their old friends the roisterers
+      and gamblers from Sawyer's Dam; they as quickly recognized the returning
+      shouts here and there from a few companions who were welcoming them. I
+      grieve to say that in spite of their previous attitude of reformation a
+      smile of gratified expectancy lit up the faces of the younger members, and
+      even the older ones glanced dubiously at Briggs. Mosby made no attempt to
+      conceal a sigh of relief as he carefully laid out an extra supply of
+      glasses in his bar. Suddenly the oncoming yells ceased, the wild gallop of
+      hoofs slackened into a trot, and finally halted, and even the responsive
+      shouts of the camp stopped also. We all looked vacantly at each other;
+      Mosby leaped over his counter and went to the door; Briggs followed with
+      the rest of us. The night was dark, and it was a few minutes before we
+      could distinguish a straggling, vague, but silent procession moving
+      through the moist, heavy air on the hill. But, to our surprise, it was
+      moving away from us&mdash;absolutely LEAVING the camp! We were still
+      staring in expectancy when out of the darkness slowly emerged a figure
+      which we recognized at once as Captain Jim, one of the most reckless
+      members of our camp. Pushing us back into the grocery he entered without a
+      word, closed the door behind him, and threw himself vacantly into a chair.
+      We at once pressed around him. He looked up at us dazedly, drew a long
+      breath, and said slowly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no use, gentlemen! Suthin's GOT to be done with that Bulger; and
+      mighty quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; we asked eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Matter!&rdquo; he repeated, passing his hand across his forehead. &ldquo;Matter! Look
+      yere! Ye all of you heard them boys from Sawyer's Dam coming over the
+      hill? Ye heard their music&mdash;mebbe ye heard US join in the chorus?
+      Well, on they came waltzing down the hill, like old times, and we waitin'
+      for 'em. Then, jest as they passed the old cabin, who do you think they
+      ran right into&mdash;shooting iron, long hair and mustache, and all that&mdash;standing
+      there plump in the road? why, Bulger!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well!&mdash;Whatever it was&mdash;don't ask ME&mdash;but, dern my skin,
+      ef after a word or two from HIM&mdash;them boys just stopped yellin',
+      turned round like lambs, and rode away, peaceful-like, along with him. We
+      ran after them a spell, still yellin', when that thar Bulger faced around,
+      said to us that he'd 'come down here for quiet,' and ef he couldn't hev it
+      he'd have to leave with those gentlemen WHO WANTED IT too! And I'm gosh
+      darned ef those GENTLEMEN&mdash;you know 'em all&mdash;Patsey Carpenter,
+      Snapshot Harry, and the others&mdash;ever said a darned word, but kinder
+      nodded 'So long' and went away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Our astonishment and mystification were complete; and I regret to say, the
+      indignation of Captain Jim and Mosby equally so. &ldquo;If we're going to be
+      bossed by the first newcomer,&rdquo; said the former, gloomily, &ldquo;I reckon we
+      might as well take our chances with the Sawyer's Dam boys, whom we know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef we are going to hev the legitimate trade of Rattlesnake interfered
+      with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired road agent,&rdquo; said
+      Mosby, &ldquo;we might as well invite the hull of Joaquin Murietta's gang here
+      at once! But I suppose this is part o' Bulger's particular 'business,'&rdquo; he
+      added, with a withering glance at Briggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand it all,&rdquo; said Briggs, quietly. &ldquo;You know I told you that
+      bullies couldn't live in the same camp together. That's human nature&mdash;and
+      that's how plain men like you and me manage to scud along without getting
+      plugged. You see, Bulger wasn't going to hev any of his own kind jumpin'
+      his claim here. And I reckon he was pow'ful enough to back down Sawyer's
+      Dam. Anyhow, the bluff told&mdash;and here we are in peace and quietness.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Until he lets us know what is his little game,&rdquo; sneered Mosby.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, such is the force of mysterious power that although it was
+      exercised against what we firmly believed was the independence of the
+      camp, it extorted a certain respect from us. A few thought it was not a
+      bad thing to have a professional bully, and even took care to relate the
+      discomfiture of the wicked youth of Sawyer's Dam for the benefit of a
+      certain adjacent and powerful camp who had looked down upon us. He
+      himself, returning the same evening from his self-imposed escort,
+      vouchsafed no other reason than the one he had already given. Preposterous
+      as it seemed, we were obliged to accept it, and the still more
+      preposterous inference that he had sought Rattlesnake Camp solely for the
+      purpose of acquiring and securing its peace and quietness. Certainly he
+      had no other occupation; the little work he did upon the tailings of the
+      abandoned claim which went with his little cabin was scarcely a pretense.
+      He rode over on certain days to Bigwood on account of his business, but no
+      one had ever seen him there, nor could the description of his manner and
+      appearance evoke any information from the Bigwoodians. It remained a
+      mystery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It had also been feared that the advent of Bulger would intensify that
+      fear and dislike of riotous Rattlesnake which the two families had shown,
+      and which was the origin of Briggs's futile attempt at reformation. But it
+      was discovered that since his arrival the young girls had shown less
+      timidity in entering the camp, and had even exchanged some polite
+      conversation and good-humoured badinage with its younger and more
+      impressible members. Perhaps this tended to make these youths more
+      observant, for a few days later, when the vexed question of Bulger's
+      business was again under discussion, one of them remarked, gloomily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I reckon there ain't no doubt WHAT he's here for!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The youthful prophet was instantly sat upon after the fashion of all
+      elderly critics since Job's. Nevertheless, after a pause he was permitted
+      to explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only this morning, when Lance Forester and me were chirping with them
+      gals out on the hill, who should we see hanging around in the bush but
+      that cussed Bulger! We allowed at first that it might be only a new style
+      of his interferin', so we took no notice, except to pass a few remarks
+      about listeners and that sort o' thing, and perhaps to bedevil the girls a
+      little more than we'd hev done if we'd been alone. Well, they laughed, and
+      we laughed&mdash;and that was the end of it. But this afternoon, as Lance
+      and me were meandering down by their cabin, we sorter turned into the
+      woods to wait till they'd come out. Then all of a suddent Lance stopped as
+      rigid as a pointer that's flushed somethin', and says, 'B'gosh!' And thar,
+      under a big redwood, sat that slimy hypocrite Bulger, twisting his long
+      mustaches and smiling like clockwork alongside o' little Meely Baker&mdash;you
+      know her, the pootiest of the two sisters&mdash;and she smilin' back on
+      him. Think of it! that unknown, unwashed, longhaired tramp and bully, who
+      must be forty if a day, and that innocent gal of sixteen. It was simply
+      disgustin'!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I need not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to at
+      once improved the occasion. 'What more could be expected? Women, the world
+      over, were noted for this sort of thing! This long-haired, swaggering
+      bully, with his air of mystery, had captivated them, as he always had done
+      since the days of Homer. Simple merit, which sat lowly in barrooms, and
+      conceived projects for the public good around the humble, unostentatious
+      stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon learn this bitter lesson. And
+      in this case youth too, perhaps, was right in its conjectures, for this
+      WAS, no doubt, the little game of the perfidious Bulger. We recalled the
+      fact that his unhallowed appearance in camp was almost coincident with the
+      arrival of the two families. We glanced at Briggs; to our amazement, for
+      the first time he looked seriously concerned. But Mosby in the meantime
+      leaned his elbows lazily over the counter and, in a slow voice, added fuel
+      to the flame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't hev spoken of it before,&rdquo; he said, with a sidelong glance at
+      Briggs, &ldquo;for it might be all in the line o' Bulger's 'business,' but
+      suthin' happened the other night that, for a minit, got me! I was passin'
+      the Bakers' shanty, and I heard one of them gals a singing a camp-meeting
+      hymn. I don't calkilate to run agin you young fellers in any sparkin' or
+      canoodlin' that's goin' on, but her voice sounded so pow'ful soothin' and
+      pretty thet I jest stood there and listened. Then the old woman&mdash;old
+      Mother Baker&mdash;SHE joined in, and I listened too. And then&mdash;dern
+      my skin!&mdash;but a man's voice joined in&mdash;jest belching outer that
+      cabin!&mdash;and I sorter lifted myself up and kem away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That voice, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Mosby, lingering artistically as he took up
+      a glass and professionally eyed it before wiping it with his towel, &ldquo;that
+      voice, cumf'bly fixed thar in thet cabin among them wimen folks, was
+      Bulger's!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Briggs got up, with his eyes looking the darker for his flushed face.
+      &ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; he said huskily, &ldquo;thar's only one thing to be done. A lot of
+      us have got to ride over to Sawyer's Dam tomorrow morning and pick up as
+      many square men as we can muster; there's a big camp meeting goin' on
+      there, and there won't be no difficulty in that. When we've got a big
+      enough crowd to show we mean business, we must march back here and ride
+      Bulger out of this camp! I don't hanker arter Vigilance Committees, as a
+      rule&mdash;it's a rough remedy&mdash;it's like drinkin' a quart o' whisky
+      agin rattlesnake poison but it's got to be done! We don't mind being sold
+      ourselves but when it comes to our standin' by and seein' the only
+      innocent people in Rattlesnake given away&mdash;we kick! Bulger's got to
+      be fired outer this camp! And he will be!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For when, the next morning, a determined and thoughtful procession of the
+      best and most characteristic citizens of Rattlesnake Camp filed into
+      Sawyer's Dam, they found that their mysterious friends had disappeared,
+      although they met with a fraternal but subdued welcome from the general
+      camp. But any approach to the subject of their visit, however, was
+      received with a chilling dissapproval. Did they not know that lawlessness
+      of any kind, even under the rude mantle of frontier justice, was to be
+      deprecated and scouted when a &ldquo;means of salvation, a power of
+      regeneration,&rdquo; such as was now sweeping over Sawyer's Dam, was at hand?
+      Could they not induce this man who was to be violently deported to
+      accompany them willingly to Sawyer's Dam and subject himself to the
+      powerful influence of the &ldquo;revival&rdquo; then in full swing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rattlesnake boys laughed bitterly, and described the man of whom they
+      talked so lightly; but in vain. &ldquo;It's no use, gentlemen,&rdquo; said a more
+      worldly bystander, in a lower voice, &ldquo;the camp meetin's got a strong grip
+      here, and betwixt you and me there ain't no wonder. For the man that runs
+      it&mdash;the big preacher&mdash;has got new ways and methods that fetches
+      the boys every time. He don't preach no cut-and-dried gospel; he don't
+      carry around no slop-shop robes and clap 'em on you whether they fit or
+      not; but he samples and measures the camp afore he wades into it. He
+      scouts and examines; he ain't no mere Sunday preacher with a comfortable
+      house and once-a-week church, but he gives up his days and nights to it,
+      and makes his family work with him, and even sends 'em forward to explore
+      the field. And he ain't no white-choker shadbelly either, but fits
+      himself, like his gospel, to the men he works among. Ye ought to hear him
+      afore you go. His tent is just out your way. I'll go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Too dejected to offer any opposition, and perhaps a little curious to see
+      this man who had unwittingly frustrated their design of lynching Bulger,
+      they halted at the outer fringe of worshipers who packed the huge
+      inclosure. They had not time to indulge their cynicisms over this swaying
+      mass of emotional, half-thinking, and almost irresponsible beings, nor to
+      detect any similarity between THEIR extreme methods and the scheme of
+      redemption they themselves were seeking, for in a few moments, apparently
+      lifted to his feet on a wave of religious exultation, the famous preacher
+      arose. The men of Rattlesnake gasped for breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Bulger!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Briggs quickly recovered himself. &ldquo;By what name,&rdquo; said he, turning
+      passionately towards his guide, &ldquo;does this man&mdash;this impostor&mdash;call
+      himself here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baker.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baker?&rdquo; echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Baker?&rdquo; repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; returned their guide. &ldquo;You oughter know it too! For he sent his
+      wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample your camp, a
+      week ago! Come, now, what are you givin' us?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0025" id="link2H_4_0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IN THE TULES
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one of the
+      Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only known the
+      &ldquo;dugout&rdquo; or canoe as a means of conveyance across the scant streams whose
+      fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long, narrow,
+      hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as a &ldquo;prairie
+      schooner,&rdquo; in which he journeyed across the plains to California in '53,
+      did not help his conception by that nautical figure. And when at last he
+      dropped upon the land of promise through one of the Southern mountain
+      passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks of a great yellow
+      river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like grasses that were
+      unknown to him. The river, broadening as it debouched through many
+      channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE of his
+      journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant meadows which
+      blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the great stream
+      itself, he found the prospect &ldquo;good&rdquo; according to his lights and prairial
+      experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a temporary cabin, he
+      resolved to rest here and &ldquo;settle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings he had
+      passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery and
+      occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him
+      independent of neighbors. He took his first meal in his new solitude under
+      a spreading willow, but so near his natural boundary that the waters
+      gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The sun sank,
+      deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the stream of
+      Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was not even a
+      gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the frontiersman
+      in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it was his; he was
+      alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with less concern over
+      his three thousand miles' transference of habitation than the man of
+      cities who had moved into a next street. When the sun sank, he rolled
+      himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and went quietly to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could not
+      determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a deep
+      throbbing through the silence of the night&mdash;a pulsation that seemed
+      even to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As it came nearer
+      it separated itself into a labored, monotonous panting, continuous, but
+      distinct from an equally monotonous but fainter beating of the waters, as
+      if the whole track of the river were being coursed and trodden by a
+      multitude of swiftly trampling feet. A strange feeling took possession of
+      him&mdash;half of fear, half of curious expectation. It was coming nearer.
+      He rose, leaped hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night
+      was dark; at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky
+      pierced with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed to
+      be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
+      constellation&mdash;a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
+      three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him and
+      apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he involuntarily drew
+      back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and
+      resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by
+      enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light that
+      he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the
+      meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all this was
+      nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and open
+      blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and wonderful
+      spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women moved through brilliantly lit
+      and elaborately gilt saloons; in one a banquet seemed to be spread, served
+      by white-jacketed servants; in another were men playing cards around
+      marble-topped tables; in another the light flashed back again from the
+      mirrors and glistening glasses and decanters of a gorgeous refreshment
+      saloon; in smaller openings there was the shy disclosure of dainty white
+      curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate apartments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified. It was as if some invisible
+      Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world of which he had
+      never dreamed. It was THE world&mdash;a world of which he knew nothing in
+      his simple, rustic habits and profound Western isolation&mdash;sweeping by
+      him with the rush of an unknown planet. In another moment it was gone; a
+      shower of sparks shot up from one of the towers and fell all around him,
+      and then vanished, even as he remembered the set piece of &ldquo;Fourth of July&rdquo;
+       fireworks had vanished in his own rural town when he was a boy. The
+      darkness fell with it too. But such was his utter absorption and
+      breathless preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself,
+      and he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the low
+      banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later from the
+      opposite direction on its return trip. He watched it the next night and
+      the next. Hereafter he never missed it, coming or going&mdash;whatever the
+      hard and weary preoccupations of his new and lonely life. He felt he could
+      not have slept without seeing it go by. Oddly enough, his interest and
+      desire did not go further. Even had he the time and money to spend in a
+      passage on the boat, and thus actively realize the great world of which he
+      had only these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness kept him
+      from it. It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs that his
+      ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was dimly
+      conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling with it
+      he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien criticism. For there was
+      much that he did not understand, and some things that grated upon his
+      lonely independence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little longer
+      in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the retreating boat.
+      Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain irregular splashing in the
+      water, quite different from the regular, diagonally crossing surges that
+      the boat swept upon the bank. Looking at it more intently, he saw a black
+      object turning in the water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable
+      uplifting of a black arm in an unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It
+      was a struggling man. But it was quickly evident that the current was too
+      strong and the turbulence of the shallow water too great for his efforts.
+      Without a moment's hesitation, clad as he was in only his shirt and
+      trousers, Morse strode into the reeds, and the next moment, with a call of
+      warning, was swimming toward the now wildly struggling figure. But, from
+      some unknown reason, as Morse approached him nearer the man uttered some
+      incoherent protest and desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's
+      extended arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man, Morse, a
+      skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and propelled him at
+      arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as much reluctance as
+      incapacity, toward the bank. As their feet touched the reeds and slimy
+      bottom the man's resistance ceased, and he lapsed quite listlessly in
+      Morse's arms. Half lifting, half dragging his burden, he succeeded at last
+      in gaining the strip of meadow, and deposited the unconscious man beneath
+      the willow tree. Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up and
+      wringing the water from his clothes. He then saw for the first time, by
+      the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly dressed and of
+      striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that bright and fascinating
+      world which Morse had been contemplating in his solitude. He eagerly took
+      the proffered tin cup and drank the whisky. Then he rose to his feet,
+      staggered a few steps forward, and glanced curiously around him at the
+      still motionless wagon, the few felled trees and evidence of &ldquo;clearing,&rdquo;
+       and even at the rude cabin of logs and canvas just beginning to rise from
+      the ground a few paces distant, and said, impatiently:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where the devil am I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse hesitated. He was unable to name the locality of his dwelling-place.
+      He answered briefly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the right bank of the Sacramento.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
+      resentment. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; he said, with ironical gravity, &ldquo;and I suppose that this
+      water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River. Thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only settled
+      there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your nearest town, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't any. Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the crossroads,
+      twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've heard on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger's look of suspicion passed. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, in an imperative
+      fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of habit as the
+      occasion, &ldquo;I want a horse, and mighty quick, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'ain't got any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No horse? How did you get to this place?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said, with a
+      half-pitying, half-humorous smile: &ldquo;Pike&mdash;aren't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California slang for a
+      denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt, he replied simply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, &ldquo;you must beg or
+      steal a horse from your neighbors.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then send fifteen miles! Stop.&rdquo; He opened his still clinging shirt and
+      drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. &ldquo;There! there's two
+      hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a horse. Sabe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thar ain't anyone to send,&rdquo; said Morse, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say you are all alone here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you fished me out&mdash;all by yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly stretched out
+      his hand and grasped his companion's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over there
+      tomorrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was goin' on to say,&rdquo; said Morse, simply, &ldquo;that if you'll lie by
+      tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and fetch
+      you back a horse afore noon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's enough.&rdquo; He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse. &ldquo;Did
+      you never hear,&rdquo; he said, with a singular smile, &ldquo;that it was about the
+      meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a drowning man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Morse, simply. &ldquo;I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
+      DIDN'T.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That depends upon the man you save,&rdquo; said the stranger, with the same
+      ambiguous smile, &ldquo;and whether the SAVING him is only putting things off.
+      Look here,&rdquo; he added, with an abrupt return to his imperative style,
+      &ldquo;can't you give me some dry clothes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a &ldquo;hickory shirt,&rdquo; well worn, but
+      smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The stranger put them
+      on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of sticks and
+      dry leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that for?&rdquo; said the stranger, suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A fire to dry your clothes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not any fire tonight if I know it,&rdquo; he said, brusquely. Before Morse
+      could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone,
+      dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, &ldquo;Now, tell me all
+      about yourself, and what you are doing here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he had
+      left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a
+      &ldquo;location.&rdquo; He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom and
+      its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon to acquire.
+      The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting position, and,
+      taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean his nails in the
+      bright moonlight&mdash;an occupation which made the simple Morse wander
+      vaguely in his narration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever till
+      you'll shake yourself out of your boots?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and walk
+      over you and your cabin and your stock?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in. I suppose
+      you can give me a pair of blankets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse pointed to the wagon. &ldquo;Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you kin
+      lie there.&rdquo; Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence and
+      abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful kempany
+      o' nights. I never seed one afore I kem here,&rdquo; and then, with the
+      inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further
+      preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late
+      experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a quietly
+      searching eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me.
+      What else did you see? Anything before that&mdash;before you saw me in the
+      water?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;the boat had got well off before I saw you at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;Well, I'm going to turn in.&rdquo; He walked to the
+      wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it with his wet
+      clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A moment later he seemed
+      to be in a profound slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy, that
+      he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination of this man
+      had been so complete that Morse, although by nature independent and
+      self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question his right or to resent
+      his rudeness. He had accepted his guest's careless or premeditated silence
+      regarding the particulars of his accident as a matter of course, and had
+      never dreamed of questioning him. That it was a natural accident of that
+      great world so apart from his own experiences he did not doubt, and
+      thought no more about it. The advent of the man himself was greater to him
+      than the causes which brought him there. He was as yet quite unconscious
+      of the complete fascination this mysterious stranger held over him, but he
+      found himself shyly pleased with even the slight interest he had displayed
+      in his affairs, and his hand felt yet warm and tingling from his sudden
+      soft but expressive grasp, as if it had been a woman's. There is a simple
+      intuition of friendship in some lonely, self-abstracted natures that is
+      nearly akin to love at first sight. Even the audacities and insolence of
+      this stranger affected Morse as he might have been touched and captivated
+      by the coquetries or imperiousness of some bucolic virgin. And this
+      reserved and shy frontiersman found himself that night sleepless, and
+      hovering with an abashed timidity and consciousness around the wagon that
+      sheltered his guest, as if he had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit
+      couch of some slumbering Amaryllis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was off by daylight&mdash;after having placed a rude breakfast by the
+      side of the still sleeping guest&mdash;and before midday he had returned
+      with a horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the amount he
+      had paid for the horse, the man said curtly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's that for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing the
+      pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So your name's Martin Morse! Well&mdash;goodby, Morsey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. &ldquo;You didn't tell me your
+      name,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;In case&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In case I'm WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack.&rdquo; He smiled, and,
+      nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and
+      living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he
+      could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow strip of meadow was
+      haunted by him. There was the tree under which he had first placed him,
+      and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but
+      well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments he had worn and returned
+      lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong alkali
+      flavor of his own. He was early by the river side, having a vague hope, he
+      knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him among the
+      passengers. He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the
+      rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the
+      stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the water
+      of some black object that had caught against the bank, but had been
+      dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint resemblance to
+      his first vision of the preceding night. But a second glance at the
+      helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him that it was a DEAD
+      man, and of a type and build far different from his former companion.
+      There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an enormous wound in his
+      throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen. An inexplicable fear
+      came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian
+      massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from
+      some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the
+      far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely knowing why, he dragged
+      the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as if he were
+      disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then, to his preposterous
+      terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat and the beat of its
+      paddles were &ldquo;slowing&rdquo; as the vague bulk came in sight, until a huge wave
+      from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat
+      pulsating through the sedge that half submerged him. The flashing of three
+      or four lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him
+      dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid his house
+      and wagon completely from view. A vague murmur of voices from the deck was
+      suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly
+      revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through the water, and the great
+      fabric moved solemnly away. A sense of relief came over him, he knew not
+      why, and he was conscious that for the first time he had not cared to look
+      at the boat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its clothing
+      a few articles of identification and some papers of formality and
+      precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some law papers from their
+      resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and electors' notices which he
+      had seen in the papers. He then buried the corpse in a shallow trench,
+      which he dug by the light of the moon. He had no question of
+      responsibility; his pioneer training had not included coroners' inquests
+      in its experience; in giving the body a speedy and secure burial from
+      predatory animals he did what one frontiersman would do for another&mdash;what
+      he hoped might be done for him. If his previous unaccountable feelings
+      returned occasionally, it was not from that; but rather from some
+      uneasiness in regard to his late guest's possible feelings, and a regret
+      that he had not been here at the finding of the body. That it would in
+      some way have explained his own accident he did not doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat did not &ldquo;slow up&rdquo; the next night, but passed as usual; yet three
+      or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its coming with his
+      old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity&mdash;which was his nearest
+      approach to imagination. He was then able to examine it more closely, for
+      the appearance of the stranger whom he now began to call &ldquo;his friend&rdquo; in
+      his verbal communings with himself&mdash;but whom he did not seem destined
+      to again discover; until one day, to his astonishment, a couple of fine
+      horses were brought to his clearing by a stock-drover. They had been
+      &ldquo;ordered&rdquo; to be left there. In vain Morse expostulated and questioned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?&rdquo; said the drover, with business
+      brusqueness; &ldquo;and I reckon there ain't no other man o' that name around
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Morse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, they're YOURS.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But who sent them?&rdquo; insisted Morse. &ldquo;What was his name, and where does he
+      live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o' buyers,&rdquo; said
+      the drover dryly; &ldquo;but the horses is 'Morgan,' you can bet your life.&rdquo; He
+      grinned as he rode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to his
+      again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he lived in
+      that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals were of great
+      service to him in &ldquo;rounding up&rdquo; the stock he now easily took in for
+      pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having a partner or a hired man.
+      The idea that this superior gentleman in fine clothes might ever appear to
+      him in the former capacity had even flitted through his brain, but he had
+      rejected it with a sigh. But the thought that, with luck and industry, he
+      himself might, in course of time, approximate to Captain Jack's evident
+      station, DID occur to him, and was an incentive to energy. Yet it was
+      quite distinct from the ordinary working man's ambition of wealth and
+      state. It was only that it might make him more worthy of his friend. The
+      great world was still as it had appeared to him in the passing boat&mdash;a
+      thing to wonder at&mdash;to be above&mdash;and to criticize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke with
+      listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his daily
+      labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and a
+      feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river, as if his
+      one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in its yellow stream.
+      But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange dreams assailed him of dead
+      bodies arising with swollen and distorted lips to touch his own as he
+      strove to drink, or of his mysterious guest battling with him in its
+      current, and driving him ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe his
+      parched and crackling limbs in its flood, he would be confronted with the
+      dazzling lights of the motionless steamboat and the glare of stony eyes&mdash;until
+      he fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he knew not, until one
+      morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man sitting by his bed
+      and a Negress in the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'&rdquo; said the stranger, dropping
+      Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes, &ldquo;but you're all
+      right now, and will pull through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; stammered Morse feebly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you come here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone. There
+      she is.&rdquo; He pointed to the smiling Negress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;WHO ordered you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. &ldquo;One of your friends, of
+      course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what was his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Really, I don't remember. But don't distress yourself. He has settled for
+      everything right royally. You have only to get strong now. My duty is
+      ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse. Only when you are strong
+      again, I say&mdash;and HE says&mdash;keep back farther from the river.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him through the
+      first days of his brief convalescence would tell him nothing more. He
+      quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for a new and strange phase
+      of his simple, childish affection for his benefactor, partly superinduced
+      by his illness, was affecting him. He was beginning to feel the pain of an
+      unequal friendship; he was dimly conscious that his mysterious guest was
+      only coldly returning his hospitality and benefits, while holding aloof
+      from any association with him&mdash;and indicating the immeasurable
+      distance that separated their future intercourse. He had withheld any kind
+      message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even his NAME. The shy,
+      proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled beneath the fancied
+      slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach or resentment. He could
+      not return the horses, although in a fit of childish indignation he had
+      resolved not to use them; he could not reimburse him for the doctor's
+      bill, although he had sent away the nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river, with a
+      faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might mysteriously
+      be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out his location and
+      abandoning it, that he might escape the cold surveillance of his heartless
+      friend. All this was undoubtedly childish&mdash;but there is an
+      irrepressible simplicity of youth in all deep feeling, and the worldly
+      inexperience of the frontiersman left him as innocent as a child. In this
+      phase of his unrequited affection he even went so far as to seek some news
+      of Captain Jack at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish quest, even
+      to take the steamboat from thence to Stockton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
+      natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained
+      for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and&mdash;had
+      he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary&mdash;VULGAR.
+      Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and action
+      of those who frequented it&mdash;and for whom it was built&mdash;were of a
+      lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, this gave him none of his
+      former sense of critical superiority, but only of his own utter and
+      complete isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
+      deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,
+      unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had so
+      often done in his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;
+      to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did
+      not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and
+      excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of
+      slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in
+      his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man to
+      man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian tracks;
+      the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with the lazy,
+      restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this continual
+      struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of passage. For
+      above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish haste of speed
+      and exertion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the ponderous
+      piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and news, the
+      banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the reading-room,
+      even the luxurious couches in the staterooms, were all dominated,
+      thrilled, and pulsating with the perpetual throb of the demon of hurry and
+      unrest. And when at last a horrible fascination dragged him into the
+      engine room, and he saw the cruel relentless machinery at work, he seemed
+      to recognize and understand some intelligent but pitiless Moloch, who was
+      dragging this feverish world at its heels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could
+      view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs
+      unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality. He
+      knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the fringe
+      of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points where a
+      few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage beyond
+      them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware that two
+      men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat, and were
+      standing before him looking upon the bank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was about here, I reckon,&rdquo; said one, listlessly, as if continuing a
+      previous lagging conversation, &ldquo;that it must have happened. For it was
+      after we were making for the bend we've just passed that the deputy, goin'
+      to the stateroom below us, found the door locked and the window open. But
+      both men&mdash;Jack Despard and Seth Hall, the sheriff&mdash;weren't to be
+      found. Not a trace of 'em. The boat was searched, but all for nothing. The
+      idea is that the sheriff, arter getting his prisoner comf'ble in the
+      stateroom, took off Jack's handcuffs and locked the door; that Jack, who
+      was mighty desp'rate, bolted through the window into the river, and the
+      sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him. Others allow&mdash;for the chairs
+      and things was all tossed about in the stateroom&mdash;that the two men
+      clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and chucked him out, and then slipped
+      cl'ar into the water himself, for the stateroom window was just ahead of
+      the paddle box, and the cap'n allows that no man or men could fall afore
+      the paddles and live. Anyhow, that was all they ever knew of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there wasn't no trace of them found?&rdquo; said the second man, after a
+      long pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and slung 'em
+      round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of the river bed, with
+      all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and they mightn't come up for
+      ages; or else the wheels might have waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento until
+      there wasn't enough left of 'em to float, and dropped 'em when the boat
+      stopped.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take,&rdquo; resumed the
+      second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him sure!
+      And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them gamblers, and
+      allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or a pistol wasn't to be
+      washed out of life by water.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and motionless.
+      Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly out of this awful
+      revelation&mdash;the thought that his friend was still true to him&mdash;and
+      that his strange absence and mysterious silence were fully accounted for
+      and explained. And with it came the more thrilling fancy that this man was
+      alive now to HIM alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the question,
+      while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in reference to its effect
+      upon the chances of Captain Jack and the power it gave his enemies than
+      his own conscience. He would rather that his friend should have proven the
+      proscribed outlaw who retained an unselfish interest in him than the
+      superior gentleman who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought he
+      understood now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying moods&mdash;even
+      his bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable curse entailed
+      upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he recked little; enough
+      that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern in his illness was heightened
+      by that fear, and this assurance of his protecting friendship thrilled him
+      with pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his farm,
+      where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he did so,
+      returning on the same boat. He was now fully recovered from his illness,
+      and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to put himself in a position
+      to help the mysterious fugitive when the time should come. The remote farm
+      should always be a haven of refuge for him, and in this hope he forbore to
+      take any outside help, remaining solitary and alone, that Captain Jack's
+      retreat should be inviolate. And so the long, dry season passed, the hay
+      was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the first rains, dimpling
+      like shot the broadening surface of the river, were all that broke his
+      unending solitude. In this enforced attitude of waiting and expectancy he
+      was exalted and strengthened by a new idea. He was not a religious man,
+      but, dimly remembering the exhortations of some camp meeting of his
+      boyhood, he conceived the idea that he might have been selected to work
+      out the regeneration of Captain Jack. What might not come of this meeting
+      and communing together in this lonely spot? That anything was due to the
+      memory of the murdered sheriff, whose bones were rotting in the trench
+      that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did not occur to him. Perhaps his
+      mind was not large enough for the double consideration. Friendship and
+      love&mdash;and, for the matter of that, religion&mdash;are eminently
+      one-ideaed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out of
+      his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring to his
+      middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door fell out
+      as from that inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed like a pack
+      of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over his head like a
+      withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against it, and thence
+      out into what might have been another world! For the rain had ceased, and
+      the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water! It was
+      not an overflow, but the whole rushing river magnified and repeated a
+      thousand times, which, even as he gasped for breath and clung to the roof,
+      was bearing him away he knew not whither. But it was bearing him away upon
+      its center, for as he cast one swift glance toward his meadows he saw they
+      were covered by the same sweeping torrent, dotted with his sailing
+      hayricks and reaching to the wooded foothills. It was the great flood of
+      '54. In its awe-inspiring completeness it might have seemed to him the
+      primeval Deluge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
+      overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at
+      last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree. Here he was for
+      the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from this height was only the
+      more appalling. Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past
+      year's industry, had disappeared. He was now conscious for the first time
+      of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together on a
+      slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the flood.
+      The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed. The
+      lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the burden of
+      the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which they had
+      caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough. The
+      habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by drifting
+      sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown and remote
+      neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling of some unhappy
+      farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered house. When day
+      broke he was cold and hungry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of the
+      waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread
+      before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence impressed him. In the
+      afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse, until
+      the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor. He had but one idea now&mdash;the
+      coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength to swim to
+      it. He did not know until later that it could no longer follow the old
+      channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and hearing. With
+      his disappointment and exposure that night came a return of his old fever.
+      His limbs were alternately racked with pain or benumbed and lifeless. He
+      could scarcely retain his position&mdash;at times he scarcely cared to&mdash;and
+      speculated upon ending his sufferings by a quick plunge downward. In other
+      moments of lucid misery he was conscious of having wandered in his mind;
+      of having seen the dead face of the murdered sheriff, washed out of his
+      shallow grave by the flood, staring at him from the water; to this was
+      added the hallucination of noises. He heard voices, his own name called by
+      a voice he knew&mdash;Captain Jack's!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and
+      plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had a
+      cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light&mdash;of the black
+      hull of a tug not many yards away&mdash;of moving figures&mdash;the
+      sensation of a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand
+      upon his collar, and&mdash;unconsciousness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and rowed
+      through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was taken in
+      through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel and cared for.
+      But all his questions yielded only the information that the tug&mdash;a
+      privately procured one, not belonging to the Public Relief Association&mdash;had
+      been dispatched for him with special directions, by a man who acted as one
+      of the crew, and who was the one who had plunged in for him at the last
+      moment. The man had left the boat at Stockton. There was nothing more?
+      Yes!&mdash;he had left a letter. Morse seized it feverishly. It contained
+      only a few lines:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from drowning, and
+      shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAPTAIN JACK.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The astounded man attempted to rise&mdash;to utter an exclamation&mdash;but
+      fell back, unconscious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed&mdash;and then only as an
+      impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to restock the
+      farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-packer offered him a
+      situation as muleteer in a pack train going to the mountains&mdash;for he
+      knew tracks and passes and could ride. The mountains gave him back a
+      little of the vigor he had lost in the river valley, but none of its
+      dreams and ambitions. One day, while tracking a lost mule, he stopped to
+      slake his thirst in a waterhole&mdash;all that the summer had left of a
+      lonely mountain torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast
+      also, he was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some bits
+      of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to attract
+      his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with him. They were
+      gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody wondered. To the
+      Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural. It was &ldquo;nigger luck&rdquo;&mdash;the
+      luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the inexperienced, the nonseeker&mdash;the
+      irony of the gods!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
+      temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed
+      to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of
+      excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on the
+      outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had already
+      assembled there&mdash;a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his way
+      through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the changed
+      and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of a cart,
+      which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around his neck,
+      was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end of the rope
+      drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the doomed man
+      caught those of Morse&mdash;his expression changed&mdash;a kindly smile
+      lit his face&mdash;he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an
+      easy gesture of farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,
+      and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized
+      another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished
+      crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,
+      the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse
+      staggered forward FREE&mdash;with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he
+      did not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with
+      his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act of
+      devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled aghast
+      at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed man himself
+      would have set him free. But they say&mdash;and it is credibly recorded&mdash;that
+      as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless sacrifice at his
+      feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a curse so awful and
+      sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran cold, and then
+      leaped furiously to their cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a jerk
+      of his head&mdash;&ldquo;Go on, and be damned to you! I'm ready.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack Despard
+      were buried in the same grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0026" id="link2H_4_0026">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The largest tent of the Tasajara camp meeting was crowded to its utmost
+      extent. The excitement of that dense mass was at its highest pitch. The
+      Reverend Stephen Masterton, the single erect, passionate figure of that
+      confused medley of kneeling worshipers, had reached the culminating pitch
+      of his irresistible exhortatory power. Sighs and groans were beginning to
+      respond to his appeals, when the reverend brother was seen to lurch
+      heavily forward and fall to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the effect was that of a part of his performance; the groans
+      redoubled, and twenty or thirty brethren threw themselves prostrate in
+      humble imitation of the preacher. But Sister Deborah Stokes, perhaps
+      through some special revelation of feminine intuition, grasped the fallen
+      man, tore loose his black silk necktie, and dragged him free of the
+      struggling, frantic crowd whose paroxysms he had just evoked. Howbeit he
+      was pale and unconscious, and unable to continue the service. Even the
+      next day, when he had slightly recovered, it was found that any attempt to
+      renew his fervid exhortations produced the same disastrous result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A council was hurriedly held by the elders. In spite of the energetic
+      protests of Sister Stokes, it was held that the Lord &ldquo;was wrestlin' with
+      his sperrit,&rdquo; and he was subjected to the same extraordinary treatment
+      from the whole congregation that he himself had applied to THEM. Propped
+      up pale and trembling in the &ldquo;Mourners' Bench&rdquo; by two brethren, he was
+      &ldquo;striven with,&rdquo; exhorted, prayed over, and admonished, until insensibility
+      mercifully succeeded convulsions. Spiritual therapeutics having failed, he
+      was turned over to the weak and carnal nursing of &ldquo;womenfolk.&rdquo; But after a
+      month of incapacity he was obliged to yield to &ldquo;the flesh,&rdquo; and, in the
+      local dialect, &ldquo;to use a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It so chanced that the medical practitioner of the district was a man of
+      large experience, of military training, and plain speech. When, therefore,
+      he one day found in his surgery a man of rude Western type, strong-limbed
+      and sunburned, but trembling, hesitating and neurotic in movement, after
+      listening to his symptoms gravely, he asked, abruptly: &ldquo;And how much are
+      you drinking now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a lifelong abstainer,&rdquo; stammered his patient in quivering
+      indignation. But this was followed by another question so frankly
+      appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm Stephen Masterton&mdash;known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
+      Northern California district,&rdquo; he thundered&mdash;&ldquo;and an enemy of the
+      flesh in all its forms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, &ldquo;but as you are
+      suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous system,
+      and the depression following prolonged artificial exaltation&mdash;it
+      makes little difference whether the cause be spiritual, as long as there
+      is a certain physical effect upon your BODY&mdash;which I believe you have
+      brought to me to cure. Now&mdash;as to diet? you look all wrong there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My food is of the simplest&mdash;I have no hankering for fleshpots,&rdquo;
+       responded the patient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks SIMPLE?&rdquo;
+       said the doctor, coolly; &ldquo;they are COMMON enough, and if you were working
+      with your muscles instead of your nerves in that frame of yours they might
+      not hurt you; but you are suffering as much from eating more than you can
+      digest as the veriest gourmand. You must stop all that. Go down to a quiet
+      watering-place for two months.&rdquo; . . .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go to a watering-place?&rdquo; interrupted Masterton; &ldquo;to the haunt of the
+      idle, the frivolous and wanton&mdash;never!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'&rdquo; said the doctor, with
+      a shrug, &ldquo;although a little idleness and frivolity with different food
+      wouldn't hurt you&mdash;but you must go somewhere and change your habits
+      and mode of life COMPLETELY. I will find you some sleepy old Spanish town
+      in the southern country where you can rest and diet. If this is
+      distasteful to you,&rdquo; he continued, grimly, &ldquo;you can always call it 'a
+      trial.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he found
+      himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved, hilly
+      street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the mountain road
+      itself. It broadened suddenly into a square or plaza, flanked on each side
+      by an irregular row of yellowing adobe houses, with the inevitable
+      verandaed tienda in each corner, and the solitary, galleried fonda, with a
+      half-Moorish archway leading into an inner patio or courtyard in the
+      center.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission church,
+      a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the two belfry
+      towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the ultima thule of
+      every traveler. But all that the eye rested on was ruined, worn, and
+      crumbling. The adobe houses were cracked by the incessant sunshine of the
+      half-year-long summer, or the more intermittent earthquake shock; the
+      paved courtyard of the fonda was so uneven and sunken in the center that
+      the lumbering wagon and faded diligencia stood on an incline, and the
+      mules with difficulty kept their footing while being unladen; the whitened
+      plaster had fallen from the feet of the two pillars that flanked the
+      Mission doorway, like bandages from a gouty limb, leaving the reddish core
+      of adobe visible; there were apparently as many broken tiles in the
+      streets and alleys as there were on the heavy red roofs that everywhere
+      asserted themselves&mdash;and even seemed to slide down the crumbling
+      walls to the ground. There were hopeless gaps in grille and grating of
+      doorways and windows, where the iron bars had dropped helplessly out, or
+      were bent at different angles. The walls of the peaceful Mission garden
+      and the warlike presidio were alike lost in the escalading vines or
+      leveled by the pushing boughs of gnarled pear and olive trees that now
+      surmounted them. The dust lay thick and impalpable in hollow and gutter,
+      and rose in little vapory clouds with a soft detonation at every stroke of
+      his horse's hoofs. Over all this dust and ruin, idleness seemed to reign
+      supreme. From the velvet-jacketed figures lounging motionless in the
+      shadows of the open doorways&mdash;so motionless that only the lazy drift
+      of cigarette smoke betokened their breathing&mdash;to the reclining peons
+      in the shade of a catalpa, or the squatting Indians in the arroyo&mdash;all
+      was sloth and dirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rev. Stephen Masterton felt his throat swell with his old exhortative
+      indignation. A gaudy yellow fan waved languidly in front of a black
+      rose-crested head at a white-curtained window. He knew he was stifling
+      with righteous wrath, and clapped his spurs to his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, in a few days, by the aid of a letter to the innkeeper, he
+      was installed in a dilapidated adobe house, not unlike those he had seen,
+      but situated in the outskirts and overlooking the garden and part of the
+      refectory of the old Mission. It had even a small garden of its own&mdash;if
+      a strip of hot wall, overburdened with yellow and white roses, a dozen
+      straggling callas, a bank of heliotrope, and an almond tree could be
+      called a garden. It had an open doorway, but so heavily recessed in the
+      thick walls that it preserved seclusion, a sitting-room, and an alcoved
+      bedroom with deep embrasured windows that however excluded the unwinking
+      sunlight and kept an even monotone of shade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strange to say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust,
+      absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely
+      inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and
+      decay&mdash;the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile
+      with a spicelike piquancy, and left no stain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf, ministered
+      to his simple wants. But these wants had also been regulated by Dr.
+      Duchesne. He found himself, with some grave doubts of his effeminacy,
+      breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate instead of his usual bowl of
+      molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a crisp tortilla instead of the heavy
+      saleratus bread, greasy flapjack, or the lard-fried steak, and, more
+      wonderful still, completing his repast with purple grapes from the Mission
+      wall. He could not deny that it was simple&mdash;that it was even
+      refreshing and consistent with the climate and his surroundings. On the
+      other hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest peasant&mdash;and were
+      not those peons slothful idolaters?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the end of the week&mdash;his correspondence being also restricted by
+      his doctor to a few lines to himself regarding his progress&mdash;he wrote
+      to that adviser:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The trembling and unquiet has almost ceased; I have less nightly turmoil
+      and visions; my carnal appetite seems to be amply mollified and soothed by
+      these viands, whatever may be their ultimate effect upon the weakness of
+      our common sinful nature. But I should not be truthful to you if I did not
+      warn you that I am viewing with the deepest spiritual concern a decided
+      tendency toward sloth, and a folding of the hands over matters that often,
+      I fear, are spiritual as well as temporal. I would ask you to consider, in
+      a spirit of love, if it be not wise to rouse my apathetic flesh, so as to
+      strive, even with the feeblest exhortations, against this sloth in others&mdash;if
+      only to keep one's self from falling into the pit of easy indulgence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      What answer he received is not known, but it is to be presumed that he
+      kept loyal faith with his physician, and gave himself up to simple walks
+      and rides and occasional meditation. His solitude was not broken in upon;
+      curiosity was too active a vice, and induced too much exertion for his
+      indolent neighbors, and the Americano's basking seclusion, though unlike
+      the habits of his countrymen, did not affect them. The shopkeeper and
+      innkeeper saluted him always with a profound courtesy which awakened his
+      slight resentment, partly because he was conscious that it was grateful to
+      him, and partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in them a less
+      satisfied condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own garden,
+      through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-coated shadow
+      slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and gentle that he was
+      startled at first into an awkward imitation of it himself, and then into
+      an angry self-examination. He knew that he loathed that long-skirted,
+      womanlike garment, that dangling, ostentatious symbol, that air of secrecy
+      and mystery, and he inflated his chest above his loosely tied cravat and
+      unbuttoned waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom. But he was
+      conscious the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this meeting,
+      and in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined observance
+      of his doctor's orders. But when he was strong again, and fitted for his
+      Master's work, how strenuously he should improve the occasion this gave
+      him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her slaves and worshipers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book&mdash;the Bible&mdash;were
+      regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or three strokes from the
+      cracked bell that hung in the open belfry which reared itself beyond the
+      gnarled pear tees. He could not say that it was aggressive or persistent,
+      like his own church bells, nor that it even expressed to him any religious
+      sentiment. Moreover, it was not a &ldquo;Sabbath&rdquo; bell, but a DAILY one, and
+      even then seemed to be only a signal to ears easily responsive, rather
+      than a stern reminder. And the hour was always a singularly witching one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
+      yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild oats on
+      the hillside were all of the one color of old gold. It was when the
+      quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza was blending with
+      the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through the clefts of the coast
+      range, until a refreshing balm seemed to fall like a benediction on all
+      nature. It was when the trade-wind-swept and irritated surfaces of the
+      rocky gorge beyond were soothed with clinging vapors; when the pines above
+      no longer rocked monotonously, and the great undulating sea of the
+      wild-oat plains had gone down and was at rest. It was at this hour, one
+      afternoon, that, with the released scents of the garden, there came to him
+      a strange and subtle perfume that was new to his senses. He laid aside his
+      book, went into the garden, and, half-unconscious of his trespass, passed
+      through the Mission orchard and thence into the little churchyard beside
+      the church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking at the strange inscriptions in an unfamiliar tongue, he was
+      singularly touched with the few cheap memorials lying upon the graves&mdash;like
+      childish toys&mdash;and for the moment overlooked the papistic emblems
+      that accompanied them. It struck him vaguely that Death, the common
+      leveler, had made even the symbols of a faith eternal inferior to those
+      simple records of undying memory and affection, and he was for a moment
+      startled into doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He walked to the door of the church; to his surprise it was open. Standing
+      upon the threshold, he glanced inside, and stood for a moment utterly
+      bewildered. In a man of refined taste and education that bizarre and
+      highly colored interior would have only provoked a smile or shrug; to
+      Stephen Masterton's highly emotional nature, but artistic inexperience,
+      strangely enough it was profoundly impressive. The heavily timbered,
+      roughly hewn roof, barred with alternate bands of blue and Indian red, the
+      crimson hangings, the gold and black draperies, affected this religious
+      backwoodsman exactly as they were designed to affect the heathen and
+      acolytes for whose conversion the temple had been reared. He could
+      scarcely take his eyes from the tinsel-crowned Mother of Heaven,
+      resplendent in white and gold and glittering with jewels; the radiant
+      shield before the Host, illuminated by tall spectral candles in the
+      mysterious obscurity of the altar, dazzled him like the rayed disk of the
+      setting sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A gentle murmur, as of the distant sea, came from the altar. In his naive
+      bewilderment he had not seen the few kneeling figures in the shadow of
+      column and aisle; it was not until a man, whom he recognized as a muleteer
+      he had seen that afternoon gambling and drinking in the fonda, slipped by
+      him like a shadow and sank upon his knees in the center of the aisle that
+      he realized the overpowering truth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      HE, Stephen Masterton, was looking upon some rite of Popish idolatry! He
+      was turning quickly away when the keeper of the tienda&mdash;a man of
+      sloth and sin&mdash;gently approached him from the shadow of a column with
+      a mute gesture, which he took to be one of invitation. A fierce protest of
+      scorn and indignation swelled to his throat, but died upon his lips. Yet
+      he had strength enough to erect his gaunt emaciated figure, throwing out
+      his long arms and extended palms in the attitude of defiant exorcism, and
+      then rush swiftly from the church. As he did so he thought he saw a faint
+      smile cross the shopkeeper's face, and a whispered exchange of words with
+      a neighboring worshiper of more exalted appearance came to his ears. But
+      it was not intelligible to his comprehension.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day he wrote to his doctor in that quaint grandiloquence of
+      written speech with which the half-educated man balances the slips of his
+      colloquial phrasing:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Do not let the purgation of my flesh be unduly protracted. What with the
+      sloth and idolatries of Baal and Ashteroth, which I see daily around me, I
+      feel that without a protest not only the flesh but the spirit is
+      mortified. But my bodily strength is mercifully returning, and I found
+      myself yesterday able to take a long ride at that hour which they here
+      keep sacred for an idolatrous rite, under the beautiful name of &ldquo;The
+      Angelus.&rdquo; Thus do they bear false witness to Him! Can you tell me the
+      meaning of the Spanish words &ldquo;Don Keyhotter&rdquo;? I am ignorant of these
+      sensuous Southern languages, and am aware that this is not the correct
+      spelling, but I have striven to give the phonetic equivalent. It was used,
+      I am inclined to think, in reference to MYSELF, by an idolater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      P.S.&mdash;You need not trouble yourself. I have just ascertained that the
+      words in question were simply the title of an idle novel, and, of course,
+      could not possibly refer to ME.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Howbeit it was as &ldquo;Don Quixote&rdquo;&mdash;that is, the common Spaniard's
+      conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic and
+      madman&mdash;that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all unconsciously
+      through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-pitying, half-smiling
+      glances of the people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of his meditations, his single volume, and his habit of retiring
+      early, he found his evenings were growing lonely and tedious. He missed
+      the prayer meeting, and, above all, the hymns. He had a fine baritone
+      voice, sympathetic, as may be imagined, but not cultivated. One night, in
+      the seclusion of his garden, and secure in his distance from other
+      dwellings, he raised his voice in a familiar camp-meeting hymn with a
+      strong Covenanter's ring in the chorus. Growing bolder as he went on, he
+      at last filled the quiet night with the strenuous sweep of his chant.
+      Surprised at his own fervor, he paused for a moment, listening, half
+      frightened, half ashamed of his outbreak. But there was only the trilling
+      of the night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a coyote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
+      instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
+      contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance. But he was relieved,
+      nevertheless. His pent-up emotion had found vent, and without the nervous
+      excitement that had followed his old exaltation. That night he slept
+      better. He had found the Lord again&mdash;with Psalmody!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same simplicity, but
+      with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations, which his more hopeful
+      mood gently rendered. At the conclusion of the first verse he was,
+      however, distinctly conscious of being followed by the same twanging sound
+      he had heard on the previous night, and which even his untutored ear could
+      recognize as an attempt to accompany him. But before he had finished the
+      second verse the unknown player, after an ingenious but ineffectual essay
+      to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with an impatient and almost
+      pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the sounding-board of the unseen
+      instrument. Masterton finished it alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the locality of
+      the hidden player. The sound evidently came from the Mission garden; but
+      in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate his Indian
+      housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was uninterrupted by
+      any sound from the former musician. A sense of disappointment, he knew not
+      why, came over him. The kindly overture of the unseen player had been a
+      relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely concluded the hymn when the
+      familiar sound again struck his ears. But this time the musician played
+      boldly, confidently, and with a singular skill on the instrument.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some confusion, a
+      soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint and fascinating, was
+      mischievously uplifted. But alas! even to his ears, ignorant of the
+      language, it was very clearly a song of levity and wantonness, of freedom
+      and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its fascination that
+      he fancied it was reclaimed by the delightful childlike and innocent
+      expression of the singer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and, overcome by
+      a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the garden and glided with
+      an Indian softness of tread toward the voice. The moon shone full upon the
+      ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage. Half hiding,
+      half mingling with one of them&mdash;an indistinct bulk of light-colored
+      huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest&mdash;hung the unknown
+      musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that Masterton
+      actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the figure without
+      attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the crumbling debris
+      with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little cry from above. He
+      had barely time to recover his position before the singer, impulsively
+      leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and fell outward. But Masterton
+      was tall, alert, and self-possessed, and threw out his long arms. The next
+      moment they were full of soft flounces, a struggling figure was against
+      his breast, and a woman's frightened little hands around his neck. But he
+      had broken her fall, and almost instantly, yet with infinite gentleness,
+      he released her unharmed, with hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in an
+      upright position against the wall. Even her guitar, still hanging from her
+      shoulder by a yellow ribbon, had bounded elastic and resounding against
+      the wall, but lay intact at her satin-slippered feet. She caught it up
+      with another quick little cry, but this time more of sauciness than fear,
+      and drew her little hand across its strings, half defiantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you are not hurt?&rdquo; said the circuit preacher, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no extravagance to
+      liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was
+      lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like a
+      pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin that
+      made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other color
+      could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old wife of the
+      shopkeeper, he felt that, for all her childish voice and features, she was
+      a grown woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before her,
+      and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily against the wall
+      and shrugged her shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was the fault of you,&rdquo; she said, in a broken English that seemed as
+      much infantine as foreign. &ldquo;What for you not remain to yourself in your
+      own CASA? So it come. You creep so&mdash;in the dark&mdash;and shake my
+      wall, and I fall. And she,&rdquo; pointing to the guitar, &ldquo;is a'most broke! And
+      for all thees I have only make to you a serenade. Ingrate!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said Masterton quickly, &ldquo;but I was curious. I thought
+      I might help you, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make yourself another cat on the wall, eh? No; one is enough, thank you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A frown lowered on Masterton's brow. &ldquo;You don't understand me,&rdquo; he said,
+      bluntly. &ldquo;I did not know WHO was here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, BUENO! Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see,&rdquo; she said, tapping her
+      bodice with one little finger, &ldquo;all the same; the niece from Manuel
+      Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there. And you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name is Masterton.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How mooch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Masterton,&rdquo; he repeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook her
+      little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her ear fell to
+      the ground. But she did not heed it, nor the fact that Masterton had
+      picked it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I cannot!&rdquo; she said, poutingly. &ldquo;It is as deefeecult to make go as my
+      guitar with your serenade.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you not say 'Stephen Masterton'?&rdquo; he asked, more gently, with a
+      returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Es-stefen? Ah, ESTEBAN! Yes; Don Esteban! BUENO! Then, Don Esteban, what
+      for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night so fierce? The
+      melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce&mdash;ah! he is weeked! Ess
+      it how the Americano make always his serenade?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Masterton's brow again darkened. And his hymn of exultation had been
+      mistaken by these people&mdash;by this&mdash;this wanton child!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was no serenade,&rdquo; he replied, curtly; &ldquo;it was in the praise of the
+      Lord!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of how mooch?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of the Lord of Hosts&mdash;of the Almighty in Heaven.&rdquo; He lifted his long
+      arms reverently on high.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from the
+      wall. At a secure distance she stopped. &ldquo;Then you are a soldier, Don
+      Esteban?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will make
+      die 'in His army'? Oh, yes; you have said.&rdquo; She gathered up her guitar
+      tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him gravely, and said,
+      &ldquo;You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night,&rdquo; and began to glide away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, Miss&mdash;Miss Ramirez,&rdquo; called Masterton. &ldquo;I&mdash;that is
+      you&mdash;you have&mdash;forgotten your rose,&rdquo; he added, feebly, holding
+      up the flower. She halted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours. I have drop,
+      you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours. Good a' night, COMANDANTE Don
+      Esteban!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance,
+      suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in its
+      ruined and helpless structure. Stephen Masterton gazed after her stupidly,
+      still holding the rose in his hand. Then he threw it away and re-entered
+      his home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently&mdash;so
+      fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped
+      from his mind, and went to bed. He slept well and dreamlessly. The next
+      morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed to
+      him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it did
+      not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early sunshine,
+      even to the wall where she had stood. But he had not taken into account
+      the vivifying freshness of the morning, the renewed promise of life and
+      resurrection in the pulsing air and potent sunlight, and as he stood there
+      he seemed to see the figure of the young girl again leaning against the
+      wall in all the charm of her irrepressible and innocent youth. More than
+      that, he found the whole scene re-enacting itself before him; the nebulous
+      drapery half hidden in the foliage, the cry and the fall; the momentary
+      soft contact of the girl's figure against his own, the clinging arms
+      around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her flounces&mdash;all this
+      came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when it occurred.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow rose
+      still lying in the debris where he had thrown it&mdash;but still pure,
+      fresh, and unfaded. He picked it up again, with a singular fancy that it
+      was the girl herself, and carried it into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful thought
+      occurred to him. Was not the episode of last night a special providence?
+      Was not that young girl, wayward and childlike, a mere neophyte in her
+      idolatrous religion, as yet unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented to
+      him as a brand to be snatched from the burning? Was not this the
+      opportunity of conversion he had longed for&mdash;this the chance of
+      exercising his gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the napkin
+      of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED? His illness,
+      his consequent exile to this land of false gods&mdash;this contiguity to
+      the Mission&mdash;was not all this part of a supremely ordered plan for
+      the girl's salvation&mdash;and was HE not elected and ordained for that
+      service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious instrument
+      in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt to accompany
+      him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that predestined force
+      within her? Was not even that wantonness and frivolity contrasted with her
+      childishness&mdash;which he had at first misunderstood&mdash;the stirrings
+      of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to abandon her in that struggle of
+      good and evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the
+      little flower on the table&mdash;as if it were a shrine&mdash;with a flash
+      of resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties
+      in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in this
+      transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve
+      enabled him to make more freely, with some information&mdash;which a later
+      talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed
+      in detail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with her
+      uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first
+      communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could
+      play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes&mdash;of a certainty. She was
+      gay, and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for
+      any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed it
+      was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would make her
+      an easier convert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion? For
+      the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his whole
+      nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and exhort
+      her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he remembered
+      her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith; he must &ldquo;be wise
+      as the serpent and harmless as the dove.&rdquo; He must work upon her soul
+      alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any clandestine
+      association with a girl from mere human affection, saw no wrong in a
+      covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation. Ignorant as he was
+      of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the usages of society, he
+      began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with all the intrigue of a
+      gallant. The perspicacity as well as the intuition of a true lover had
+      descended upon him in this effort of mere spiritual conquest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the yellow
+      Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to be delivered
+      secretly to Miss Ramirez. To his great relief and some surprise the old
+      woman grinned with intelligence, and her withered hand closed with a
+      certain familiar dexterity over the epistle and the accompanying gratuity.
+      To a man less naively one-ideaed it might have awakened some suspicion;
+      but to the more sanguine hopefulness of Masterton it only suggested the
+      fancy that Concepcion herself might prove to be open to conversion, and
+      that he should in due season attempt HER salvation also. But that would be
+      later. For Concepcion was always with him and accessible; the girl was
+      not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and almost
+      businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself. Will you
+      oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission tonight at early
+      candlelight? It would avert worldly suspicion if you brought also your
+      guitar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with great
+      difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she had, however,
+      slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait for an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer would be,
+      but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the girl's opportunities
+      of coming, and regretted that he had not given her a choice of time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her willingness,
+      and doubt the potency of his note. He was accustomed to exhort ORALLY&mdash;perhaps
+      he ought to have waited for the chance of SPEAKING to her directly without
+      writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the moon rose he was already in the garden. Lingering at first in the
+      shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams fell on the wall
+      and its crests of foliage. But nothing moved among that ebony tracery; his
+      ear was strained for the familiar tinkle of the guitar&mdash;all was
+      silent. As the moon rose higher he at last boldly walked to the wall, and
+      listened for any movement on the other side of it. But nothing stirred.
+      She was evidently NOT coming&mdash;his note had failed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a light
+      laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from beneath his
+      own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed familiar to
+      him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a long black
+      mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She
+      looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden
+      doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the
+      difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim
+      perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was looking for you on the wall,&rdquo; he stammered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MADRE DE DIOS!&rdquo; she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, &ldquo;you
+      would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when
+      you shake the tree? No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't brought your guitar,&rdquo; he continued, still more awkwardly, as
+      he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where go
+      Pepita? She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her tink-a-tink
+      in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.' And then&mdash;it ess
+      finish!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something in
+      this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency of an
+      awkward man he went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you had
+      not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon.&rdquo; She
+      stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only her
+      mischievous eyes were visible, added: &ldquo;You had not asked me then to come
+      to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame,
+      mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but above
+      all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite pleasure&mdash;that
+      frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance than
+      at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly caught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A treek? A treek?&rdquo; she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly, as
+      if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him and
+      dropped her fan from her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wanted to talk with you,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;on far more serious matters. I
+      wished to&mdash;&rdquo; but he stopped. He could not address this quaint
+      child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured or
+      the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer
+      responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at
+      his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He flushed&mdash;and then burst out bluntly, &ldquo;I want to talk with you
+      about your soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your immortal soul, unhappy girl.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?&rdquo; Her eyes grew rounder,
+      though she faced him boldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a Minister of the Gospel,&rdquo; he said, in hurried entreaty. &ldquo;You must
+      hear me for a moment. I would save your soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission&mdash;you moost seek
+      her there! My mortal BODY,&rdquo; she added, with a mischievous smile, &ldquo;say to
+      you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'&rdquo; She dropped him a little curtsy and&mdash;ran
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, Miss Ramirez,&rdquo; said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already
+      slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly
+      beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure, and
+      vanish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he had
+      left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the garden.
+      His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that his defeat was
+      owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the incorrigibility of his
+      subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the
+      girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have borne
+      it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false testimony for
+      their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the triumph of her
+      conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his purpose incompatible
+      with that sisterly affection he had so often preached to the women of his
+      flock? He might have taken her hand, and called her &ldquo;Sister Pepita,&rdquo; even
+      as he had called Deborah &ldquo;Sister.&rdquo; He recalled the fact that he had for an
+      instant held her struggling in his arms: he remembered the thrill that the
+      recollection had caused him, and somehow it now sent a burning blush
+      across his face. He hurried back into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled
+      resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl's
+      soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him an
+      equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and work
+      upon his feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his
+      mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation
+      from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation
+      presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's guitar in
+      the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran into
+      the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he
+      unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was not
+      upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew that
+      they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one of his
+      own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice rose with
+      the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of purely oral
+      imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the &ldquo;s,&rdquo; were
+      Pepita's own:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
+     As ye journey essweetly ssing;
+     Essing your great Redeemer's praise,
+     Glorioos in Hees works and ways.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more
+      wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular
+      hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose
+      again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled his
+      throat:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     We are traveling home to God,
+     In the way our farzers trod,
+     They are happy now, and we
+     Soon their happiness shall see.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      The simple, almost childish words&mdash;so childish that they might have
+      been the fitting creation of her own childish lips&mdash;here died away
+      with a sweep and crash of the whole strings. Breathless silence followed,
+      in which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his own heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Ramirez,&rdquo; he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own. There
+      was no reply. &ldquo;Pepita!&rdquo; he repeated; it was strangely like the accent of a
+      lover, but he no longer cared. Still the singer's voice was silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until he came
+      to the fissure. It was overgrown with vines and brambles almost as
+      impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in her delicate crape
+      dress, so could he! He brushed roughly through, and found himself in a
+      glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the white wall of the Mission
+      church.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by the
+      rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into the orchard
+      had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a figure in a
+      parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and running from the
+      wall, began to course through the trees until it became apparently a part
+      of that involved pattern. Nothing daunted, however, Stephen Masterton
+      pursued, his speed increased as he recognized the flounces of Pepita's
+      barred dress, but the young girl had the advantage of knowing the
+      locality, and could evade her pursuer by unsuspected turns and doubles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect
+      silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering
+      shepherd. Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a tiled roof
+      that was now visible as projecting over the presidio wall, and was
+      evidently her goal of refuge. He redoubled his speed; with skillful
+      audacity and sheer strength of his broad shoulders he broke through a
+      dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was swiftly skirting, and suddenly
+      appeared between her and her house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself in the
+      hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her side, and
+      caught her panting figure in his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should do and
+      what he should say to her. To his simple appeal for her companionship and
+      willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness, that should invite her
+      trustfulness in him; he would confess his wrong and ask her forgiveness of
+      his abrupt solicitations; he would propose to teach her more hymns, they
+      would practice psalmody together; even this priest, the custodian of her
+      soul, could not object to that; but chiefly he would thank her: he would
+      tell her how she had pleased him, and this would lead to more serious and
+      thoughtful converse. All this was in his mind while he ran, was upon his
+      lips as he caught her and for an instant she lapsed, exhausted, in his
+      arms. But, alas! even in that moment he suddenly drew her toward him, and
+      kissed her as only a lover could!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with the dusty
+      decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned to Tasajara. He
+      came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who, having for the twelfth time
+      added to the population of the settlement, was not &ldquo;doing as well&rdquo; as
+      everybody&mdash;except, possibly, Dr. Duchesne&mdash;expected. After he
+      had made this hollow-eyed, over-burdened, undernourished woman as
+      comfortable as he could in her rude, neglected surroundings, to change the
+      dreary chronicle of suffering, he turned to the husband, and said, &ldquo;And
+      what has become of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in your&mdash;vocation?&rdquo;
+       A long groan came from the deacon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse,&rdquo; said the doctor, earnestly. &ldquo;I
+      thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him&mdash;I beg your pardon&mdash;I
+      mean,&rdquo; he added, hurriedly, &ldquo;he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he
+      was picking up his strength again and doing well!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In his weak, gross, sinful flesh&mdash;yes, no doubt,&rdquo; returned the
+      Deacon, scornfully, &ldquo;and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who
+      value the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost
+      to eternal life forever. Not,&rdquo; he continued in sanctimonious
+      vindictiveness, &ldquo;but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's
+      steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what has he done?&rdquo; persisted Dr. Duchesne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; said the doctor, &ldquo;so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?&mdash;not
+      anybody's wife? Eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has entered the Church of Rome,&rdquo; said the Deacon, indignantly, &ldquo;he has
+      forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he is the
+      consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But are you SURE?&rdquo; said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; returned the Deacon angrily, &ldquo;didn't Brother Bulkley, on account
+      of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make a
+      special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its
+      wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of
+      practicing on an organ&mdash;he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in
+      the tents of the Lord&mdash;in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female
+      Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a Jesuit
+      priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young Jezebel of a
+      singer teaches the children to chant in unknown tongues? Didn't he find
+      him living with a wrinkled Indian witch who called him 'Padrone'&mdash;and
+      speaking her gibberish? Didn't he find him, who left here a man mortified
+      in flesh and spirit and pale with striving with sinners, fat and rosy from
+      native wines and fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy in colored apparel?
+      And last of all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a rumor was spread far
+      and wide that this miserable backslider was to take to himself a wife&mdash;in
+      one of these strange women&mdash;that very Jezebel who seduced him? What
+      do you call that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It looks a good deal like human nature,&rdquo; said the doctor, musingly, &ldquo;but
+      I call it a cure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0027" id="link2H_4_0027">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half hour
+      he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval dream.
+      Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that carried
+      him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of his own
+      people, and the sympathetic community of New World tastes and expressions
+      still filled his mind until he woke up, or rather, as it seemed to him,
+      was falling asleep in the past of this Old World town which had once held
+      his ancestors. Although a republican, he had liked to think of them in
+      quaint distinctive garb, representing state and importance&mdash;perhaps
+      even aristocratic pre-eminence&mdash;content to let the responsibility of
+      such &ldquo;bad eminence&rdquo; rest with them entirely, but a habit of
+      conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led him also to
+      regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the quaint market
+      place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in a doorway, with a
+      timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of his progenitors. For,
+      unlike some of his traveling countrymen in Europe, he was not a snob, and
+      it struck him&mdash;as an American&mdash;that it was, perhaps, better to
+      think of his race as having improved than as having degenerated. In these
+      ingenuous meditations he had passed the long rows of quaint, high houses,
+      whose sagging roofs and unpatched dilapidations were yet far removed from
+      squalor, until he had reached the road bordered by poplars, all so unlike
+      his own country's waysides&mdash;and knew that he had wandered far from
+      his hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the way he
+      had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or turning that would
+      eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet extend his
+      experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a narrow grass
+      lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as public as the
+      highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was not a
+      thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had
+      something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be at
+      least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on the
+      exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the
+      direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park
+      of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban
+      space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,
+      until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he
+      diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,
+      whose line he had been following.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking
+      in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and
+      being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was
+      singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting
+      serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his way.
+      The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times he could
+      see not only the light through it but even the moving figures of the
+      speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At last he
+      determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged on the
+      other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself behind a
+      somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their backs toward
+      him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his own, and all
+      gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a handsome
+      building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which now seemed to
+      arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in uniform.
+      Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from the others that he
+      was enabled to see the house between her and her companions, he was
+      confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond braids of a young girl
+      of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly intruded upon some august
+      ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into the hedge, but so silently that
+      his momentary presence was evidently undetected. When he regained the park
+      side he glanced back through the interstices; there was no movement of the
+      figures nor break in the silence to indicate that his intrusion had been
+      observed. With a long breath of relief he hurried from the park.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little modern
+      adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval reflections, and
+      almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained porter in the courtyard was
+      in regard to the park. There was no public park in Alstadt! The Herr
+      possibly alluded to the Hof Gardens&mdash;the Schloss, which was in the
+      direction he indicated. The Schloss was the residency of the hereditary
+      Grand Duke. JA WOHL! He was stopping there with several Hoheiten. There
+      was naturally a party there&mdash;a family reunion. But it was a private
+      enclosure. At times, when the Grand Duke was &ldquo;not in residence,&rdquo; it was
+      open to the public. In point of fact, at such times tickets of admission
+      were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige each. There was not, of
+      truth, much to see except a model farm and dairy&mdash;the pretty toy of a
+      previous Grand Duchess.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the modern life
+      of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long walk, he passed the
+      landlord and a man in half-military uniform on the landing near his room.
+      As he entered his apartment he had a vague impression, without exactly
+      knowing why, that the landlord and the military stranger had just left it.
+      This feeling was deepened by the evident disarrangement of certain
+      articles in his unlocked portmanteau and the disorganization of his
+      writing case. A wave of indignation passed over him. It was followed by a
+      knock at the door, and the landlord blandly appeared with the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A thousand pardons,&rdquo; said the former, smilingly, &ldquo;but Herr Sanderman, the
+      Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you. I hope we are not
+      intruding?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not NOW,&rdquo; said the American, dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have to ask only a few formal questions,&rdquo; said the Ober-Inspector in
+      excellent but somewhat precise English, &ldquo;to supplement the report which,
+      as a stranger, you may not know is required by the police from the
+      landlord in regard to the names and quality of his guests who are foreign
+      to the town. You have a passport?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have,&rdquo; said the American still more dryly. &ldquo;But I do not keep it in an
+      unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An admirable precaution,&rdquo; said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness. &ldquo;May I
+      see it? Thanks,&rdquo; he added, glancing over the document which the American
+      produced from his pocket. &ldquo;I see that you are a born American citizen&mdash;and
+      an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented this little
+      contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman, that your name is German?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two centuries
+      ago,&rdquo; said Hoffman, curtly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are indeed honored by your return to it,&rdquo; returned Sanderman suavely,
+      &ldquo;but it was the circumstance of your name being a local one, and the
+      possibility of your still being a German citizen liable to unperformed
+      military duty, which has caused the trouble.&rdquo; His manner was clearly civil
+      and courteous, but Hoffman felt that all the time his own face and
+      features were undergoing a profound scrutiny from the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you are making sure that you will know me again?&rdquo; said Hoffman, with
+      a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I trust, indeed, both,&rdquo; returned Sanderman, with a bow, &ldquo;although you
+      will permit me to say that your description here,&rdquo; pointing to the
+      passport, &ldquo;scarcely does you justice. ACH GOTT! it is the same in all
+      countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without knowing
+      that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in the remark that
+      caused him to color with a new uneasiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the door. &ldquo;I
+      hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by doing anything I
+      can to render your visit here a pleasant one. Perhaps,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;it is
+      not for long.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he imagined
+      was a possible sneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have not yet determined my movements,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
+      military salute and departed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile urbanity of
+      the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the official visit to his
+      guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and even introduced him to a
+      singularly artistic-looking man of middle age, wearing an order in his
+      buttonhole, whom he met casually in the hall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our Court photographer,&rdquo; explained the landlord with some fervor, &ldquo;at
+      whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten and
+      Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would give me a
+      visit,&rdquo; said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman with an
+      intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the Police Inspector,
+      &ldquo;and I would be charmed if he would avail himself of my poor skill to
+      transmit his picturesque features to my unique collection.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he was
+      conscious of being struck with this second examination of his face, and
+      the allusion to his personality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air. The Herr would
+      still like to see the Schloss? Hoffman, who had quite forgotten his
+      adventure in the park, looked vacant. JA WOHL&mdash;the Hof authorities
+      had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated to the hotel proprietor
+      that he might have permission to visit the model farm and dairy. As the
+      American still looked indifferent the porter pointed out with some
+      importance that it was a Ducal courtesy not to be lightly treated; that
+      few, indeed, of the burghers themselves had ever been admitted to this
+      eccentric whim of the late Grand Duchess. He would, of course, be silent
+      about it; the Court would not like it known that they had made an
+      exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would enter quickly
+      and boldly alone. There would be a housekeeper or a dairymaid to show him
+      over the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American, was
+      inclined to classify as a &ldquo;free pass&rdquo; to a somewhat heavy &ldquo;side show,&rdquo; he
+      gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning after breakfast set
+      out to visit the model farm and dairy. Dismissing his driver, as he had
+      been instructed, Hoffman entered the gateway with a mingling of expectancy
+      and a certain amusement over the &ldquo;boldness&rdquo; which the porter had suggested
+      should characterize his entrance. Before him was a beautifully kept lane
+      bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which seemed to sink into the
+      distance. He was instinctively following it when he became aware that he
+      was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the livery of a chasseur, who was
+      walking among the trees almost abreast of him, keeping pace with his step,
+      and after the first introductory military salute preserving a ceremonious
+      silence. There was something so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward
+      a peaceful, rural industry that by the time they had reached the bottom of
+      the lane the American had quite recovered his good humor. But here a new
+      astonishment awaited him. Nestling before him in a green amphitheater lay
+      a little wooden farm-yard and outbuildings, which irresistibly suggested
+      that it had been recently unpacked and set up from a box of Nuremberg
+      toys. The symmetrical trees, the galleried houses with preternaturally
+      glazed windows, even the spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the
+      white-fenced barnyards were all unreal, wooden and toylike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was quite
+      prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size, he looked
+      about him for some real being to dispel the illusion. The mysterious
+      chasseur had disappeared. But under the arch of an arbor, which seemed to
+      be composed of silk ribbons, green glass, and pink tissue paper, stood a
+      quaint but delightful figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for another.
+      For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden china&mdash;so
+      daintily delicate and unique it was in color and arrangement. It was that
+      of a young girl dressed in some forgotten medieval peasant garb of velvet
+      braids, silver-staylaced corsage, lace sleeves, and helmeted metallic
+      comb. But, after the Dresden method, the pale yellow of her hair was
+      repeated in her bodice, the pink of her cheeks was in the roses of her
+      chintz overskirt. The blue of her eyes was the blue of her petticoat; the
+      dazzling whiteness of her neck shone again in the sleeves and stockings.
+      Nevertheless she was real and human, for the pink deepened in her cheeks
+      as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she recognized the civility with
+      a grave little curtsy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have come to see the dairy,&rdquo; she said in quaintly accurate English;
+      &ldquo;I will show you the way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you please,&rdquo; said Hoffman, gaily, &ldquo;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what?&rdquo; she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely astonished eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
+      contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment. Nothing
+      daunted, however, he went on:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couldn't we shake all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The look of wonder returned. &ldquo;Shake all that?&rdquo; she repeated. &ldquo;I do not
+      understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick of
+      showing them. I think, too, I've about sized the whole show. Wouldn't it
+      be better if we sat down in that arbor&mdash;supposing it won't fall down&mdash;and
+      you told me all about the lot? It would save you a heap of trouble and
+      keep your pretty frock cleaner than trapesing round. Of course,&rdquo; he said,
+      with a quick transition to the gentlest courtesy, &ldquo;if you're conscientious
+      about this thing we'll go on and not spare a cow. Consider me in it with
+      you for the whole morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming laugh. It
+      revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a certain barbaric trace
+      in its cadence which civilized restraint had not entirely overlaid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,&rdquo; he
+      said to himself as he laughed too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle but
+      singular significance she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think you must see the dairy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the brown curls
+      on his forehead. &ldquo;By all means,&rdquo; he said instantly, and began walking by
+      her side in modest but easy silence. Now that he thought her a
+      conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
+      entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you Americans&mdash;in your rich and prosperous country, with your
+      large lands and your great harvests&mdash;you must know all about
+      farming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never was in a dairy in my life,&rdquo; said Hoffman gravely. &ldquo;I'm from the
+      city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept in
+      cellars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand. Then she
+      apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of mischief in her
+      eyes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the Grand Duke
+      and Duchess and the Princesses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em&mdash;standing like
+      wax figures&mdash;the other side of the park lodge, the other day&mdash;and
+      got away as soon as I could. I think I prefer the cows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her head was slightly turned away. He had to content himself with looking
+      down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly buckled shoes
+      that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, &ldquo;if it's part
+      of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that, too. I dare say you
+      could make them interesting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why,&rdquo; she said with her head still slightly turned away toward a
+      figure&mdash;a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time, Hoffman
+      perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur had done&mdash;&ldquo;why
+      did you come here at all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The first time was a fool accident,&rdquo; he returned frankly. &ldquo;I was making a
+      short cut through what I thought was a public park. The second time was
+      because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom I found going through
+      my things, but who apologized&mdash;as I suppose&mdash;by getting me an
+      invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I thought it only the
+      square thing to both of 'em to accept it. But I'm mighty glad I came; I
+      wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand dollars. You see I haven't struck
+      anyone I cared to talk to since.&rdquo; Here he suddenly remarked that she
+      hadn't looked at him, and that the delicate whiteness of her neck was
+      quite suffused with pink, and stopped instantly. Presently he said quite
+      easily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who's the chorus?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lady?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know&mdash;just
+      as if she didn't catch on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's the head housekeeper of the farm. Perhaps you would prefer to have
+      her show you the dairy; shall I call her?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
+      petticoats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on me. But
+      here's the dairy. Don't let her come inside among those pans of fresh milk
+      with that smile, or there'll be trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and the
+      figure passed on as they entered the dairy. It was beautifully clean and
+      fresh. With a persistence that he quickly recognized as mischievous and
+      ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability accepted with even
+      greater gravity and assumption of interest, she showed him all the
+      details. From thence they passed to the farmyard, where he hung with
+      breathless attention over the names of the cows and made her repeat them.
+      Although she was evidently familiar with the subject, he could see that
+      her zeal was fitful and impatient.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose we sit down,&rdquo; he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic seat in
+      the center of the green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sir down?&rdquo; she repeated wonderingly. &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To talk. We'll knock off and call it half a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,&rdquo; she
+      said quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I? I don't think these particulars were in my invitation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a bright
+      eye around the field.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said gently, &ldquo;there are no other sightseers waiting, and your
+      conscience is clear,&rdquo; and he moved toward the rustic seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly not&mdash;there,&rdquo; she added in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung the
+      miniature stream.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are not staying long in Alstadt?&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his trousers,
+      but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him fixedly in the eye
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you have relations here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but they are dead two hundred years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed again with a slight expression of relief. They had entered the
+      copse and were walking in dense shadow when she suddenly stopped and sat
+      down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise he found that they were quite
+      alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell me about these relatives,&rdquo; she said, slightly drawing aside her
+      skirt to make room for him on the seat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not require a second invitation. He not only told her all about his
+      ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more recent and more
+      nearly related to him; about his own life, his vocation&mdash;he was a
+      clever newspaper correspondent with a roving commission&mdash;his
+      ambitions, his beliefs and his romance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And then, perhaps, of this visit&mdash;you will also make 'copy'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but shook his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;No&mdash;this is YOU. The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER is
+      big pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you from me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly around
+      it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even then&mdash;as if in
+      forgetfulness or indifference&mdash;permitted her hand to rest
+      unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to gallantry,
+      neither was it a rejection of an unconscious familiarity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you haven't told me about yourself,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I,&rdquo; she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a laugh and
+      a sidelong glance, &ldquo;of what importance is that to you? It is the Grand
+      Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you Americans seek to know. I
+      am&mdash;what I am&mdash;as you see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet,&rdquo; said Hoffman with charming decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I WHAT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even know
+      your name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She laughed again, and after a pause, said: &ldquo;Elsbeth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you Americans are really so very formal&mdash;eh?&rdquo; she said slyly,
+      looking at her imprisoned hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, yes,&rdquo; returned Hoffman, disengaging it. &ldquo;I suppose we are
+      respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are neither to write nor inquire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes in
+      which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated, but for
+      the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented her words with a
+      slight pressure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your landlord:
+      'Pack up my luggage. I have finished with this old town and my ancestors,
+      and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see, and I shall leave Alstadt
+      tomorrow!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you! I don't catch on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of what necessity should you? I have said it. That should be enough for a
+      chivalrous American like you.&rdquo; She again significantly looked down at her
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I can
+      say no more,&rdquo; he said seriously; &ldquo;but give me some reason for it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah so!&rdquo; she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. &ldquo;Then I must tell
+      you. You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess. Well! THEY KNOW
+      YOU. The day before yesterday you were wandering in the park, as you
+      admit. You say, also, you got through the hedge and interrupted some
+      ceremony. That ceremony was not a Court function, Mr. Hoffman, but
+      something equally sacred&mdash;the photographing of the Ducal family
+      before the Schloss. You say that you instantly withdrew. But after the
+      photograph was taken the plate revealed a stranger standing actually by
+      the side of the Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the Grand
+      Duke himself. That stranger was you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the picture was spoiled,&rdquo; said the American, with a quiet laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should not say that,&rdquo; returned the lady, with a demure glance at her
+      companion's handsome face, &ldquo;and I do not believe that the Princess&mdash;who
+      first saw the photograph&mdash;thought so either. But she is very young
+      and willful, and has the reputation of being very indiscreet, and
+      unfortunately she begged the photographer not to destroy the plate, but to
+      give it to her, and to say nothing about it, except that the plate was
+      defective, and to take another. Still it would have ended there if her
+      curiosity had not led her to confide a description of the stranger to the
+      Police Inspector, with the result you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled into a
+      family group that was being photographed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her curiosity
+      about you,&rdquo; corrected the fair stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But look here! I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay for the
+      plate.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you do want to see the Princess?&rdquo; said the young girl smiling; &ldquo;you
+      are like the others.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don't see how they can
+      prevent it if I choose to remain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with your
+      passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for examination. You
+      will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of the town and be ordered to
+      leave it. You will be shadowed by the police until you quarrel with them&mdash;like
+      a free American&mdash;and you are conducted to the frontier. Perhaps you
+      will strike an officer who has insulted you, and then you are finished on
+      the spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat over his
+      curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suppose I am content to risk it&mdash;having first laid the whole matter
+      and its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that he could make
+      it hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they happened to 'down me.'
+      By Jove! I shouldn't mind being the martyr of an international episode if
+      they'd spare me long enough to let me get the first 'copy' over to the
+      other side.&rdquo; His eyes sparkled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story, and you
+      have no evidence. They would demand to know your informant, and I should
+      be disgraced, and the Princess, who is already talked about, made a
+      subject of scandal. But no matter! It is right that an American's
+      independence shall not be interfered with.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and slightly
+      turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the handkerchief away, and in
+      so doing possessed himself of her other hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;Elsbeth. You know I wouldn't give you
+      away, whatever happened. But couldn't I get hold of that photographer&mdash;I
+      saw him, he wanted me to sit to him&mdash;and make him tell me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He wanted you to sit to him,&rdquo; she said hurriedly, &ldquo;and did you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;He was a little too fresh and previous, though I
+      thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; She said something to herself in German which he did not understand,
+      and then added aloud:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you shall
+      not sit for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?&rdquo; He added ruefully,
+      &ldquo;But I'd like to make him give himself away to me somehow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go near him
+      nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you with his
+      instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you must go. I must see
+      the Princess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go, too. I will explain it to her,&rdquo; said Hoffman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her hands.
+      &ldquo;Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see. You are curious&mdash;you,
+      too; you wish to see this lady who is interested in you. I ought to have
+      known it. You are all alike.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as a
+      charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry&mdash;but
+      retained her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wish to see her that I may have the right to see
+      you&mdash;that you shall not lose your place here through me; that I may
+      come again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must never come here again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you have an
+      afternoon off. You shall show me the town&mdash;the houses of my ancestors&mdash;their
+      tombs; possibly&mdash;if the Grand Duke rampages&mdash;the probable site
+      of my own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
+      questioning blue ones. &ldquo;Do not you Americans know that it is not the
+      fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women to walk
+      together&mdash;unless they are VERLOBT?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;VER&mdash;which?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Engaged.&rdquo; She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
+      mischievously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So much the better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ACH GOTT!&rdquo; She made a gesture of hopelessness at his incorrigibility, and
+      again attempted to withdraw her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive hands.
+      Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and instantly released
+      her. She as instantly vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Elsbeth,&rdquo; he called quickly. &ldquo;Elsbeth!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color from the
+      dense foliage&mdash;quite to his astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush,&rdquo; she said, with her finger on her lips. &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess,&rdquo; he laughed
+      as her head disappeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He strolled back toward the gate. Scarcely had he quitted the shrubbery
+      before the same chasseur made his appearance with precisely the same
+      salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance, accompanied him to the
+      gate. At the corner of the street he hailed a droshky and was driven to
+      his hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The landlord came up smiling. He trusted that the Herr had greatly enjoyed
+      himself at the Schloss. It was a distinguished honor&mdash;in fact, quite
+      unprecedented. Hoffman, while he determined not to commit himself, nor his
+      late fair companion, was nevertheless anxious to learn something more of
+      her relations to the Schloss. So pretty, so characteristic, and marked a
+      figure must be well known to sightseers. Indeed, once or twice the idea
+      had crossed his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left him more
+      conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had deemed
+      possible. He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown by the
+      same attendants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue when he
+      was in residence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And were these attendants in costume?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet&mdash;he knew
+      not why. But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it was not
+      entrusted to everyday menials&mdash;and he briefly described it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious and
+      arch intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;ACH GOTT! yes!&rdquo; He remembered now (with his finger on his nose) that when
+      there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were filled with
+      shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of the Grand Duke's
+      own theatrical company, who assumed the characters with great vivacity.
+      Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke had treated the Herr to this
+      special courtesy. Yes&mdash;there was one pretty, blonde young lady&mdash;the
+      Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most popular soubrette, who would play it to the
+      life! And the description fitted her to a hair! Ah, there was no doubt of
+      it; many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
+      corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight. Ah, it would be a
+      great joke&mdash;quite colossal! if he took a front seat where she could
+      see him. And the good man rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only equal to
+      his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true one, and that he
+      himself had been ridiculously deceived. The mystery of his fair
+      companion's costume, which he had accepted as part of the &ldquo;show&rdquo;; the
+      inconsistency of her manner and her evident occupation; her undeniable
+      wish to terminate the whole episode with that single interview; her
+      mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic innocence; her perfect self-control
+      and experienced acceptance of his gallantry under the simulated attitude
+      of simplicity&mdash;all now struck him as perfectly comprehensible. He
+      recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain picturesque realistic
+      details in the dairy&mdash;which she had not spared him; he recognized it
+      now even in their bowered confidences (how like a pretty ballet scene
+      their whole interview on the rustic bench was!), and it breathed through
+      their entire conversation&mdash;to their theatrical parting at the close!
+      And the whole story of the photograph was, no doubt, as pure a dramatic
+      invention as the rest! The Princess's romantic interest in him&mdash;that
+      Princess who had never appeared (why had he not detected the old,
+      well-worn, sentimental situation here?)&mdash;was all a part of it. The
+      dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by the police was a necessary
+      culmination to the little farce. Thank Heaven! he had not &ldquo;risen&rdquo; at the
+      Princess, even if he had given himself away to the clever actress in her
+      own humble role. Then the humor of the whole situation predominated and he
+      laughed until the tears came to his eyes, and his forgotten ancestors
+      might have turned over in their graves without his heeding them. And with
+      this humanizing influence upon him he went to the theater.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance was a
+      special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to himself. He
+      tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close to the next box,
+      where there was a solitary occupant&mdash;an officer&mdash;apparently as
+      lonely as himself. He had made up his mind that when his fair deceiver
+      appeared he would let her see by his significant applause that he
+      recognized her, but bore no malice for the trick she had played on him.
+      After all, he had kissed her&mdash;he had no right to complain. If she
+      should recognize him, and this recognition led to a withdrawal of her
+      prohibition, and their better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at
+      her pleasant artifice. Her vocation was certainly a more independent and
+      original one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and
+      inequality he cared nothing. He found himself longing for the glance of
+      her calm blue eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the seriousness of
+      her sweetly restrained lips. There was no doubt that he should know her
+      even as the heroine of DER CZAR UND DER ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him.
+      He was becoming impatient. And the performance evidently was waiting. A
+      stir in the outer gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms
+      into the royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
+      cause. As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged from
+      the background of uniforms and took their places in the front of the box,
+      Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic Princess. Suddenly he
+      saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of diamonds that startled him, and
+      then a glance that transfixed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He leaned over to his neighbor. &ldquo;Who is the young lady in the box?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Princess Alexandrine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the daughter of
+      the Grand Duke&mdash;there is none other there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage. Then he rose
+      quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box. When he reached the
+      gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at the royal box. Her eyes
+      had followed him, and as he remained a moment motionless in the doorway
+      her lips parted in a grateful smile, and she waved her fan with a faint
+      but unmistakable gesture of farewell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next morning he left Alstadt. There was some little delay at the Zoll
+      on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk it was
+      accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to him by the
+      Customhouse Inspector. Hoffman did not open it until he was alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a narrow,
+      irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself standing side by side
+      with a young German girl, who, in the estimation of his compatriots, is by
+      no means stylish and only passably good-looking. When he is joked by his
+      friends about the post of honor given to this production, and questioned
+      as to the lady, he remains silent. The Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie
+      Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt, among her other royal qualities, knew
+      whom to trust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0028" id="link2H_4_0028">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of &ldquo;Chu Chu,&rdquo; a
+      Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of Enriquez
+      Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was also brother to
+      Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had freely given both the
+      mustang and my youthful affections. I consider it a proof of the
+      superiority of masculine friendship that neither the subsequent desertion
+      of the mustang nor that of the young lady ever made the slightest
+      difference to Enriquez or me in our exalted amity. To a wondering doubt as
+      to what I ever could possibly have seen in his sister to admire he joined
+      a tolerant skepticism of the whole sex. This he was wont to express in
+      that marvelous combination of Spanish precision and California slang for
+      which he was justly famous. &ldquo;As to thees women and their little game,&rdquo; he
+      would say, &ldquo;believe me, my friend, your old Oncle 'Enry is not in it. No;
+      he will ever take a back seat when lofe is around. For why? Regard me
+      here! If she is a horse, you shall say, 'She will buck-jump,' 'She will
+      ess-shy,' 'She will not arrive,' or 'She will arrive too quick.' But if it
+      is thees women, where are you? For when you shall say, 'She will ess-shy,'
+      look you, she will walk straight; or she will remain tranquil when you
+      think she buck-jump; or else she will arrive and, look you, you will not.
+      You shall get left. It is ever so. My father and the brother of my father
+      have both make court to my mother when she was but a senorita. My father
+      think she have lofe his brother more. So he say to her: 'It is enofe;
+      tranquillize yourself. I will go. I will efface myself. Adios! Shake
+      hands! Ta-ta! So long! See you again in the fall.' And what make my
+      mother? Regard me! She marry my father&mdash;on the instant! Of thees
+      women, believe me, Pancho, you shall know nothing. Not even if they shall
+      make you the son of your father or his nephew.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general tendency of
+      Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little story. It is only fair
+      to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so cheerfully
+      maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing with them.
+      Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race he moved
+      with great freedom and popularity. He danced well; when we went to
+      fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures always
+      procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments, I presume,
+      shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings, or envy. I have a
+      vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, a somewhat
+      corybantic dance which left much to the invention of the performers, and
+      very little to the imagination of the spectator. In one of the figures a
+      gaudy handkerchief, waved more or less gracefully by dancer and danseuse
+      before the dazzled eyes of each other, acted as love's signal, and was
+      used to express alternate admiration and indifference, shyness and
+      audacity, fear and transport, coyness and coquetry, as the dance
+      proceeded. I need not say that Enriquez' pantomimic illustration of these
+      emotions was peculiarly extravagant; but it was always performed and
+      accepted with a gravity that was an essential feature of the dance. At
+      such times sighs would escape him which were supposed to portray the
+      incipient stages of passion; snorts of jealousy burst from him at the
+      suggestion of a rival; he was overtaken by a sort of St. Vitus's dance
+      that expressed his timidity in making the first advances of affection; the
+      scorn of his ladylove struck him with something like a dumb ague; and a
+      single gesture of invitation from her produced marked delirium. All this
+      was very like Enriquez; but on the particular occasion to which I refer, I
+      think no one was prepared to see him begin the figure with the waving of
+      FOUR handkerchiefs! Yet this he did, pirouetting, capering, brandishing
+      his silken signals like a ballerina's scarf in the languishment or fire of
+      passion, until, in a final figure, where the conquered and submitting fair
+      one usually sinks into the arms of her partner, need it be said that the
+      ingenious Enriquez was found in the center of the floor supporting four of
+      the dancers! Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits
+      of the crowd or by his evident success with the fair. &ldquo;Ah, believe me, it
+      is nothing,&rdquo; he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he leaned
+      against the doorway. &ldquo;Possibly, I shall have to offer the chocolate or the
+      wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade in the moonlight on the
+      veranda. It is ever so. Unless, my friend,&rdquo; he said, suddenly turning
+      toward me in an excess of chivalrous self-abnegation, &ldquo;unless you shall
+      yourself take my place. Behold, I gif them to you! I vamos! I vanish! I
+      make track! I skedaddle!&rdquo; I think he would have carried his extravagance
+      to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of partners, and
+      committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at that moment parted
+      before the remaining dancers, and left one of the onlookers, a tall,
+      slender girl, calmly surveying them through gold-rimmed eyeglasses in
+      complete critical absorption. I stared in amazement and consternation; for
+      I recognized in the fair stranger Miss Urania Mannersley, the
+      Congregational minister's niece!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth of the
+      Encinal. She was at once the envy and the goad of the daughters of those
+      Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had settled in the valley. She was
+      correct, she was critical, she was faultless and observant. She was
+      proper, yet independent; she was highly educated; she was suspected of
+      knowing Latin and Greek; she even spelled correctly! She could wither the
+      plainest field nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the flowers
+      their botanical names. She never said &ldquo;Ain't you?&rdquo; but &ldquo;Aren't you?&rdquo; She
+      looked upon &ldquo;Did I which?&rdquo; as an incomplete and imperfect form of &ldquo;What
+      did I do?&rdquo; She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was believed to have
+      read them. She was from Boston. What could she possibly be doing at a
+      free-and-easy fandango?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there, her
+      outward appearance would have attracted attention. Contrasted with the
+      gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her plain, tightly
+      fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were sufficiently notable
+      in themselves, even had they not seemed, like the girl herself, a kind of
+      quiet protest to the glaring flounces before her. Her small, straight
+      waist and flat back brought into greater relief the corsetless, waistless,
+      swaying figures of the Mexican girls, and her long, slim, well-booted
+      feet, peeping from the stiff, white edges of her short skirt, made their
+      broad, low-quartered slippers, held on by the big toe, appear more
+      preposterous than ever. Suddenly she seemed to realize that she was
+      standing there alone, but without fear or embarrassment. She drew back a
+      little, glancing carelessly behind her as if missing some previous
+      companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine. She smiled an easy
+      recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested more curiously upon
+      Enriquez, who was still by my side. I disengaged myself and instantly
+      joined her, particularly as I noticed that a few of the other bystanders
+      were beginning to stare at her with little reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?&rdquo; she said quietly.
+      Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my face, she went
+      on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and was going
+      home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I heard the music,
+      and dropped in. I don't know what has become of her,&rdquo; she added, glancing
+      round the room again; &ldquo;she seemed perfectly wild when she saw that
+      creature over there bounding about with his handkerchiefs. You were
+      speaking to him just now. Do tell me&mdash;is he real?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should think there was little doubt of that,&rdquo; I said with a vague
+      laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; she said simply. &ldquo;Is he quite sane? Does he do
+      that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was too much. I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a scion of
+      one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance was a national
+      gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and a patron, and that he
+      was my dearest friend. At the same time I was conscious that I wished she
+      hadn't seen his last performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?&rdquo; she said.
+      &ldquo;I don't believe it. It was only like him.&rdquo; As I hesitated over this
+      palpable truth, she went on: &ldquo;I do wish he'd do it again. Don't you think
+      you could make him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps he might if YOU asked him,&rdquo; I said a little maliciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I shouldn't do that,&rdquo; she returned quietly. &ldquo;All the same, I do
+      believe he is really going to do it&mdash;or something else. Do look!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by the
+      delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested himself of his
+      coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied together, picturesquely
+      around his waist, preparatory to some new performance. I tried furtively
+      to give him a warning look, but in vain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't he really too absurd for anything?&rdquo; said Miss Mannersley, yet with
+      a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice. &ldquo;You know, I never saw
+      anything like this before. I wouldn't have believed such a creature could
+      have existed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been of any
+      avail. For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he struck a few
+      chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center of the floor, swaying
+      his body languishingly from side to side in time with the music and the
+      pitch of a thin Spanish tenor. It was a gypsy love song. Possibly Miss
+      Mannersley's lingual accomplishments did not include a knowledge of
+      Castilian, but she could not fail to see that the gestures and
+      illustrative pantomime were addressed to her. Passionately assuring her
+      that she was the most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes were
+      like votive tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of being a
+      &ldquo;brigand&rdquo; and &ldquo;assassin&rdquo; in her attitude toward &ldquo;his heart,&rdquo; he balanced
+      with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary cloak in front of
+      her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on, and with a final
+      astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of his guitar, sank on one
+      knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque
+      extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's absolute
+      unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness. The applause of
+      dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and hearty; her only contribution
+      to it was a slight parting of her thin red lips in a half-incredulous
+      smile. In the silence that followed the applause, as Enriquez walked
+      pantingly away, I heard her saying, half to herself, &ldquo;Certainly a most
+      extraordinary creature!&rdquo; In my indignation I could not help turning
+      suddenly upon her and looking straight into her eyes. They were brown,
+      with that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of nearsighted
+      persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny. She only repeated
+      carelessly, &ldquo;Isn't he?&rdquo; and added: &ldquo;Please see if you can find Jocasta. I
+      suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he won't be doing it
+      again. Ah! there she is. Good gracious, child! what have you got there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly holding
+      out toward her mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heavens! I don't want it. Keep it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain glitter in
+      the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who were watching her
+      curiously. But I think she was as oblivious of this as she was of
+      Enriquez' particular attentions. As we reached the street I felt that I
+      ought to say something more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know,&rdquo; I began casually, &ldquo;that although those poor people meet here
+      in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely pastoral and
+      a national custom; and these girls are all honest, hardworking peons or
+      servants enjoying themselves in quite the old idyllic fashion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said the young girl, half-abstractedly. &ldquo;Of course it's a
+      Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those old Andalusian
+      immigrants two hundred years ago. It's quite Arabic in its suggestions. I
+      have got something like it in an old CANCIONERO I picked up at a bookstall
+      in Boston. But,&rdquo; she added, with a gasp of reminiscent satisfaction,
+      &ldquo;that's not like HIM! Oh, no! HE is decidedly original. Heavens! yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly
+      awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala. Yet he
+      looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated in what I
+      thought was a necessary warning. He, however, quickly precipitated it.
+      Glancing after the retreating figures of the two women, he said: &ldquo;Thees
+      mees from Boston is return to her house. You do not accompany her? I
+      shall. Behold me&mdash;I am there.&rdquo; But I linked my arm firmly in his.
+      Then I pointed out, first, that she was already accompanied by a servant;
+      secondly, that if I, who knew her, had hesitated to offer myself as an
+      escort, it was hardly proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that
+      liberty; that Miss Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which he,
+      as a Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But will she not regard lofe&mdash;the admiration excessif?&rdquo; he said,
+      twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; she will not,&rdquo; I returned sharply; &ldquo;and you ought to understand that
+      she is on a different level from your Manuelas and Carmens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon, my friend,&rdquo; he said gravely; &ldquo;thees women are ever the same.
+      There is a proverb in my language. Listen: 'Whether the sharp blade of the
+      Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it shall find behind it ever the
+      same heart to wound.' I am that Toledo blade&mdash;possibly it is you, my
+      friend. Wherefore, let us together pursue this girl of Boston on the
+      instant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining his
+      mercurial impulses for the moment. He halted, and puffed vigorously at his
+      cigarette; but the next instant he started forward again. &ldquo;Let us,
+      however, follow with discretion in the rear; we shall pass her house; we
+      shall gaze at it; it shall touch her heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just parted
+      from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of attempting it
+      alone, and I thought it better to humor him by consenting to walk with him
+      in that direction; but I felt it necessary to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your
+      performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I were
+      you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are saying she ees shock?&rdquo; said Enriquez, gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he saw my
+      hesitation. &ldquo;Then she have jealousy of the senoritas,&rdquo; he observed, with
+      insufferable complacency. &ldquo;You observe! I have already said. It is ever
+      so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I could stand it no longer. &ldquo;Look here, Harry,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;if you must know
+      it, she looks upon you as an acrobat&mdash;a paid performer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;&mdash;his black eyes sparkled&mdash;&ldquo;the torero, the man who fights
+      the bull, he is also an acrobat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes; but she thinks you a clown!&mdash;a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO&mdash;there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I have make her laugh?&rdquo; he said coolly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;BUENO!&rdquo; he said cheerfully. &ldquo;Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make feenish
+      with a sigh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I turned to look at him in the moonlight. His face presented its habitual
+      Spanish gravity&mdash;a gravity that was almost ironical. His small black
+      eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity&mdash;the
+      irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be possible
+      that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of Miss Mannersley.
+      I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss Pinkey Smith, a
+      blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly rebounded. As we
+      walked on slowly I continued more persuasively: &ldquo;Of course this is only
+      your nonsense; but don't you see, Miss Mannersley thinks it all in earnest
+      and really your nature?&rdquo; I hesitated, for it suddenly struck me that it
+      WAS really his nature. &ldquo;And&mdash;hang it all!&mdash;you don't want her to
+      believe you a common buffoon., or some intoxicated muchacho.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Intoxicated?&rdquo; repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment. &ldquo;Yes;
+      that is the word that shall express itself. My friend, you have made a
+      shot in the center&mdash;you have ring the bell every time! It is
+      intoxication&mdash;but not of aguardiente. Look! I have long time an
+      ancestor of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young
+      girl&mdash;a mere peasant girl&mdash;pass to the confessional. He look her
+      in her eye, he stagger&rdquo;&mdash;here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into
+      the road&mdash;&ldquo;he fall!&rdquo;&mdash;he would have suited the action to the
+      word if I had not firmly held him up. &ldquo;They have taken him home, where he
+      have remain without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the
+      drunkenness of lofe. And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not
+      even pretty. The name of my ancestor was&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don Quixote de La Mancha,&rdquo; I suggested maliciously. &ldquo;I suspected as much.
+      Come along. That will do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My ancestor's name,&rdquo; continued Enriquez, gravely, &ldquo;was Antonio
+      Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same. Thees Don Quixote of
+      whom you speak exist not at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind. Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house, don't
+      make a fool of yourself again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a wonderful moonlight night. The deep redwood porch of the
+      Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak&mdash;the largest in
+      the Encinal&mdash;was diapered in black and silver. As the women stepped
+      upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the door. Miss
+      Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a last look at the
+      beauty of the night as Jocasta entered. Her glance fell upon us as we
+      passed. She nodded carelessly and unaffectedly to me, but as she
+      recognized Enriquez she looked a little longer at him with her previous
+      cold and invincible curiosity. To my horror Enriquez began instantly to
+      affect a slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but I
+      gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as the
+      door closed finally on the young lady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not comprehend, friend Pancho,&rdquo; he said gravely, &ldquo;but those eyes
+      in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror. They burn,
+      they consume me here like paper. Let us affix to ourselves thees tree. She
+      will, without doubt, appear at her window. We shall salute her for good
+      night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will do nothing of the kind,&rdquo; I said sharply. Finding that I was
+      determined, he permitted me to lead him away. I was delighted to notice,
+      however, that he had indicated the window which I knew was the minister's
+      study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear of the house, this later
+      incident was probably not overseen by the young lady or the servant. But I
+      did not part from Enriquez until I saw him safely back to the sala, where
+      I left him sipping chocolate, his arm alternating around the waists of his
+      two previous partners in a delightful Arcadian and childlike simplicity,
+      and an apparent utter forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next day, being
+      Sunday, I missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout Catholic I remembered
+      that he was at mass in the morning, and possibly at the bullfight at San
+      Antonio in the afternoon. But I was somewhat surprised on the Monday
+      morning following, as I was crossing the plaza, to have my arm taken by
+      the Rev. Mr. Mannersley in the nearest approach to familiarity that was
+      consistent with the reserve of this eminent divine. I looked at him
+      inquiringly. Although scrupulously correct in attire, his features always
+      had a singular resemblance to the national caricature known as &ldquo;Uncle
+      Sam,&rdquo; but with the humorous expression left out. Softly stroking his
+      goatee with three fingers, he began condescendingly: &ldquo;You are, I think,
+      more or less familiar with the characteristics and customs of the Spanish
+      as exhibited by the settlers here.&rdquo; A thrill of apprehension went through
+      me. Had he heard of Enriquez' proceedings? Had Miss Mannersley cruelly
+      betrayed him to her uncle? &ldquo;I have not given that attention myself to
+      their language and social peculiarities,&rdquo; he continued, with a large wave
+      of the hand, &ldquo;being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs
+      and superstitions&rdquo;&mdash;it struck me that this was apt to be a common
+      fault of people of the Mannersley type&mdash;&ldquo;but I have refrained from a
+      personal discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held somewhat broad
+      views on the subject of their remarkable missionary work, and have
+      suggested a scheme of co-operation with them, quite independent of
+      doctrinal teaching, to my brethren of other Protestant Christian sects.
+      These views I first incorporated in a sermon last Sunday week, which I am
+      told has created considerable attention.&rdquo; He stopped and coughed slightly.
+      &ldquo;I have not yet heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to
+      believe that my remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address me on
+      this topic. I had a vague remembrance of having heard that he had said
+      something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of his flock, but
+      nothing more. He continued: &ldquo;I have just said that I was unacquainted with
+      the characteristics of the Spanish-American race. I presume, however, they
+      have the impulsiveness of their Latin origin. They gesticulate&mdash;eh?
+      They express their gratitude, their joy, their affection, their emotions
+      generally, by spasmodic movements? They naturally dance&mdash;sing&mdash;eh?&rdquo;
+       A horrible suspicion crossed my mind; I could only stare helplessly at
+      him. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said graciously; &ldquo;perhaps it is a somewhat general
+      question. I will explain myself. A rather singular occurrence happened to
+      me the other night. I had returned from visiting a parishioner, and was
+      alone in my study reviewing my sermon for the next day. It must have been
+      quite late before I concluded, for I distinctly remember my niece had
+      returned with her servant fully an hour before. Presently I heard the
+      sounds of a musical instrument in the road, with the accents of someone
+      singing or rehearsing some metrical composition in words that, although
+      couched in a language foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me
+      the impression of being distinctly adulatory. For some little time, in the
+      greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the
+      performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle
+      curiosity to the window. From thence, standing in my dressing-gown, and
+      believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the
+      roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared
+      to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own
+      invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and in
+      a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me. Beyond
+      my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an
+      adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the
+      various phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation were
+      successively portrayed. He placed his hands upon his head, his heart, and
+      even clasped them together in this manner.&rdquo; To my consternation the
+      reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most extravagant pantomime. &ldquo;I
+      am willing to confess,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that I was singularly moved by
+      them, as well as by the highly creditable and Christian interest that
+      evidently produced them. At last I opened the window. Leaning out, I told
+      him that I regretted that the lateness of the hour prevented any further
+      response from me than a grateful though hurried acknowledgment of his
+      praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be glad to see him for a few
+      moments in the vestry before service the next day, or at early
+      candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class. I told him that as my
+      sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical brotherhood and the
+      exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing could be more gratifying to
+      me than his spontaneous and unsolicited testimony to my motives. He
+      appeared for an instant to be deeply affected, and, indeed, quite overcome
+      with emotion, and then gracefully retired, with some agility and a slight
+      saltatory movement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He paused. A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and I
+      looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once Enriquez'
+      ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished by a master
+      hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face betrayed no
+      ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he had
+      complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade to his
+      niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by my
+      companion's next words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast. She
+      had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she agreed with me
+      as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition of my liberal efforts
+      toward his coreligionists. It was she, in fact, who suggested that your
+      knowledge of these people might corroborate my impressions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was dumfounded. Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized Enriquez'
+      hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield him? But this was
+      so inconsistent with her utter indifference to him, except as a grotesque
+      study, that she would have been more likely to tell her uncle all about
+      his previous performance. Nor could it be that she wished to conceal her
+      visit to the fandango. She was far too independent for that, and it was
+      even possible that the reverend gentleman, in his desire to know more of
+      Enriquez' compatriots, would not have objected. In my confusion I meekly
+      added my conviction to hers, congratulated him upon his evident success,
+      and slipped away. But I was burning with a desire to see Enriquez and know
+      all. He was imaginative but not untruthful. Unfortunately, I learned that
+      he was just then following one of his erratic impulses, and had gone to a
+      rodeo at his cousin's, in the foothills, where he was alternately
+      exercising his horsemanship in catching and breaking wild cattle and
+      delighting his relatives with his incomparable grasp of the American
+      language and customs, and of the airs of a young man of fashion. Then my
+      thoughts recurred to Miss Mannersley. Had she really been oblivious that
+      night to Enriquez' serenade? I resolved to find out, if I could, without
+      betraying Enriquez. Indeed, it was possible, after all, that it might not
+      have been he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chance favored me. The next evening I was at a party where Miss
+      Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a distinguished&mdash;I
+      had almost written a popular&mdash;guest. But, as I have formerly stated,
+      although the youthful fair of the Encinal were flattered by her casual
+      attentions, and secretly admired her superior style and aristocratic calm,
+      they were more or less uneasy under the dominance of her intelligence and
+      education, and were afraid to attempt either confidence or familiarity.
+      They were also singularly jealous of her, for although the average young
+      man was equally afraid of her cleverness and her candor, he was not above
+      paying a tremulous and timid court to her for its effect upon her humbler
+      sisters. This evening she was surrounded by her usual satellites,
+      including, of course, the local notables and special guests of
+      distinction. She had been discussing, I think, the existence of glaciers
+      on Mount Shasta with a spectacled geologist, and had participated with
+      charming frankness in a conversation on anatomy with the local doctor and
+      a learned professor, when she was asked to take a seat at the piano. She
+      played with remarkable skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and
+      brilliantly. As she sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening
+      dress, her regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her
+      high shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and
+      provocative intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant
+      attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me
+      plainer than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to
+      do with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don
+      Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her slim,
+      narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her
+      delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly
+      thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the ceiling in
+      an effort of memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something of Chopin's,&rdquo; suggested the geologist, ardently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That exquisite sonata!&rdquo; pleaded the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Suthin' of Rubinstein. Heard him once,&rdquo; said a gentleman of Siskiyou. &ldquo;He
+      just made that pianner get up and howl. Play Rube.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish coquetry
+      in her manner. Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the keys with a
+      glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords, down went the low
+      pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she presently began to hum to
+      herself. I started&mdash;as well I might&mdash;for I recognized one of
+      Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar solos. It was audacious; it
+      was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar. As I remembered it&mdash;as he sang
+      it&mdash;it recounted the adventures of one Don Francisco, a provincial
+      gallant and roisterer of the most objectionable type. It had one hundred
+      and four verses, which Enriquez never spared me. I shuddered as in a
+      pleasant, quiet voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical
+      praise of the PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came
+      caressingly from her thin red lips. But the company was far differently
+      affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were evidently
+      catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody whistled the air from a
+      distant corner; even the faces of the geologist and doctor brightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tarantella, I presume?&rdquo; blandly suggested the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. &ldquo;It is a
+      Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century,&rdquo; she said dryly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It seemed sorter familiar, too,&rdquo; hesitated one of the young men, timidly,
+      &ldquo;like as if&mdash;don't you know?&mdash;you had without knowing it, don't
+      you know?&rdquo;&mdash;he blushed slightly&mdash;&ldquo;sorter picked it up
+      somewhere.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval
+      manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it,&rdquo; returned Miss
+      Mannersley coldly as she turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not inclined to let her off so easily. I presently made my way
+      to her side. &ldquo;Your uncle was complimentary enough to consult me as to the
+      meaning of the appearance of a certain exuberant Spanish visitor at his
+      house the other night.&rdquo; I looked into her brown eyes, but my own slipped
+      off her velvety pupils without retaining anything. Then she reinforced her
+      gaze with a pince-nez, and said carelessly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's you? How are you? Well, could you give him any information?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only generally,&rdquo; I returned, still looking into her eyes. &ldquo;These people
+      are impulsive. The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and quicksilver.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled slightly. &ldquo;That reminds me of your volatile friend. He was
+      mercurial enough, certainly. Is he still dancing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And singing sometimes,&rdquo; I responded pointedly. But she only added
+      casually, &ldquo;A singular creature,&rdquo; without exhibiting the least
+      consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser. I felt that
+      Enriquez alone could enlighten me. I must see him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I did, but not in the way I expected. There was a bullfight at San Antonio
+      the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance being changed in
+      deference to the Sabbatical habits of the Americans. An additional
+      attraction was offered in the shape of a bull-and-bear fight, also a
+      concession to American taste, which had voted the bullfight &ldquo;slow,&rdquo; and
+      had averred that the bull &ldquo;did not get a fair show.&rdquo; I am glad that I am
+      able to spare the reader the usual realistic horrors, for in the
+      Californian performances there was very little of the brutality that
+      distinguished this function in the mother country. The horses were not
+      miserable, worn-out hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the display
+      of horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but secured an
+      almost absolute safety to horse and rider. I never saw a horse gored;
+      although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in wheeling quickly to
+      avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained their animals without
+      injury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn
+      outskirts of an old Spanish village. It was a rudely built oval
+      amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed only
+      over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial &ldquo;notables,&rdquo; but
+      now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives, with a sprinkling of
+      American travelers and ranchmen. The impalpable adobe dust of the arena
+      was being whirled into the air by the strong onset of the afternoon trade
+      winds, which happily, however, helped also to dissipate a reek of garlic,
+      and the acrid fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk cigarettes. I was
+      leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the meager and circuslike
+      procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen, when my attention was
+      attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery. A lady and gentleman of a
+      quality that was evidently unfamiliar to the rest of the audience were
+      picking their way along the rickety benches to a front seat. I recognized
+      the geologist with some surprise, and the lady he was leading with still
+      greater astonishment. For it was Miss Mannersley, in her precise,
+      well-fitting walking-costume&mdash;a monotone of sober color among the
+      parti-colored audience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was not
+      only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I had been to
+      Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that her uncle might have
+      given her permission to come, as a recognition of the Sunday concession of
+      the management, as well as to conciliate his supposed Catholic friends. I
+      watched her sitting there until the first bull had entered, and, after a
+      rather brief play with the picadors and banderilleros, was dispatched. At
+      the moment when the matador approached the bull with his lethal weapon I
+      was not sorry for an excuse to glance at Miss Mannersley. Her hands were
+      in her lap, her head slightly bent forward over her knees. I fancied that
+      she, too, had dropped her eyes before the brutal situation; to my horror,
+      I saw that she had a drawing-book in her hand and was actually sketching
+      it. I turned my eyes in preference to the dying bull.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was, however, more
+      sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers. He accepted the irony
+      of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and he declined the challenge of
+      whirling and insulting picadors. He bristled with banderillas like a
+      hedgehog, but remained with his haunches backed against the barrier, at
+      times almost hidden in the fine dust raised by the monotonous stroke of
+      his sullenly pawing hoof&mdash;his one dull, heavy protest. A vague
+      uneasiness had infected his adversaries; the picadors held aloof, the
+      banderilleros skirmished at a safe distance. The audience resented only
+      the indecision of the bull. Galling epithets were flung at him, followed
+      by cries of &ldquo;ESPADA!&rdquo; and, curving his elbow under his short cloak, the
+      matador, with his flashing blade in hand, advanced and&mdash;stopped. The
+      bull remained motionless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down upon the
+      arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it around the tiers
+      of benches and the balcony, and for a moment seemed to stop the
+      performance. I heard an exclamation from the geologist, who had risen to
+      his feet. I fancied I heard even a faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but the
+      next moment, as the dust was slowly settling, we saw a sheet of paper in
+      the air, that had been caught up in this brief cyclone, dropping, dipping
+      from side to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly descended in the
+      very middle of the arena. It was a leaf from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook,
+      the one on which she had been sketching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at last
+      excited the bull's growing but tardy ire. He glanced at it with murky,
+      distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet troubled fury. Whether he
+      detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or whether he
+      recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his surroundings,
+      I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador, taking advantage
+      of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at the audience,
+      advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young man cleared the
+      barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the matador to one
+      side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony and Miss Mannersley
+      with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the bull, knelt down
+      before him with an exaggerated humility, and held up the drawing as if for
+      his inspection. A roar of applause broke from the audience, a cry of
+      warning and exasperation from the attendants, as the goaded bull suddenly
+      charged the stranger. But he sprang to one side with great dexterity, made
+      a courteous gesture to the matador as if passing the bull over to him, and
+      still holding the paper in his hand, re-leaped the barrier, and rejoined
+      the audience in safety. I did not wait to see the deadly, dominant thrust
+      with which the matador received the charging bull; my eyes were following
+      the figure now bounding up the steps to the balcony, where with an
+      exaggerated salutation he laid the drawing in Miss Mannersley's lap and
+      vanished. There was no mistaking that thin lithe form, the narrow black
+      mustache, and gravely dancing eyes. The audacity of conception, the
+      extravagance of execution, the quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to
+      no one but Enriquez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of the bull
+      away. She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved focus of a hundred
+      eager and curious eyes. She smiled slightly as she saw me. &ldquo;I was just
+      telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary creature it was, and how you knew
+      him. He must have had great experience to do that sort of thing so
+      cleverly and safely. Does he do it often? Of course, not just that. But
+      does he pick up cigars and things that I see they throw to the matador?
+      Does he belong to the management? Mr. Briggs thinks the whole thing was a
+      feint to distract the bull,&rdquo; she added, with a wicked glance at the
+      geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; I said dryly, &ldquo;that his act was as unpremeditated and
+      genuine as it was unusual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake. What
+      right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more genuine than
+      her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that they were, was it fair
+      in me to give my friend away to this heartless coquette? &ldquo;You are not very
+      gallant,&rdquo; she said, with a slight laugh, as I was hesitating, and turned
+      away with her escort before I could frame a reply. But at least Enriquez
+      was now accessible, and I should gain some information from him. I knew
+      where to find him, unless he were still lounging about the building,
+      intent upon more extravagance; but I waited until I saw Miss Mannersley
+      and Briggs depart without further interruption.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the outskirts of
+      the village. When I arrived there I found Enriquez' pinto mustang steaming
+      in the corral, and although I was momentarily delayed by the servants at
+      the gateway, I was surprised to find Enriquez himself lying languidly on
+      his back in a hammock in the patio. His arms were hanging down listlessly
+      on each side as if in the greatest prostration, yet I could not resist the
+      impression that the rascal had only just got into the hammock when he
+      heard of my arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time,&rdquo; he said, in accents of
+      exaggerated weakness. &ldquo;I am absolutely exhaust. I am bursted, caved in,
+      kerflummoxed. I have behold you, my friend, at the barrier. I speak not, I
+      make no sign at the first, because I was on fire; I speak not at the
+      feenish&mdash;for I am exhaust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see; the bull made it lively for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He instantly bounded up in the hammock. &ldquo;The bull! Caramba! Not a thousand
+      bulls! And thees one, look you, was a craven. I snap my fingers over his
+      horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then&mdash;what was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.
+      Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones to the
+      sky. &ldquo;He asks me&mdash;thees friend of my soul, thees brother of my life,
+      thees Pancho that I lofe&mdash;what it was? He would that I should tell
+      him why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand, crack in the
+      voice, and am generally wipe out! And yet he, my pardner&mdash;thees
+      Francisco&mdash;know that I have seen the mees from Boston! That I have
+      gaze into the eye, touch the hand, and for the instant possess the picture
+      that hand have drawn! It was a sublime picture, Pancho,&rdquo; he said, sitting
+      up again suddenly, &ldquo;and have kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword
+      have touch even the bone of hees back and make feenish of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Enriquez,&rdquo; I said bluntly, &ldquo;have you been serenading that
+      girl?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and said: &ldquo;Ah,
+      yes. What would you? It is of a necessity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; I retorted, &ldquo;then you ought to know that her uncle took it all to
+      himself&mdash;thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his
+      religious tolerance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not even smile. &ldquo;BUENO,&rdquo; he said gravely. &ldquo;That make something,
+      too. In thees affair it is well to begin with the duenna. He is the
+      duenna.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; I went on relentlessly, &ldquo;her escort told her just now that your
+      exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull, suggested by
+      the management.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bah! her escort is a geologian. Naturally, she is to him as a stone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment with a
+      sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock, bidding me wait his
+      return from a messenger in the gateway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock that
+      Enriquez had quitted. A scrap of paper was lying in its meshes, which at
+      first appeared to be of the kind from which Enriquez rolled his
+      cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it away, I found it was of much
+      firmer and stouter material. Looking at it more closely, I was surprised
+      to recognize it as a piece of the tinted drawing-paper torn off the
+      &ldquo;block&rdquo; that Miss Mannersley had used. It had been deeply creased at right
+      angles as if it had been folded; it looked as if it might have been the
+      outer half of a sheet used for a note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited my
+      curiosity. I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss Mannersley, for
+      I had seen it in her hand. Had she given him another? And if so, why had
+      it been folded to the destruction of the drawing? Or was it part of a note
+      which he had destroyed? In the first impulse of discovery I walked quickly
+      with it toward the gateway where Enriquez had disappeared, intending to
+      restore it to him. He was just outside talking with a young girl. I
+      started, for it was Jocasta&mdash;Miss Mannersley's maid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and indignation
+      with which we illogically are apt to resent the withholding of a friend's
+      confidence, even in matters concerning only himself. It was no use for me
+      to reason that it was no business of mine, that he was right in keeping a
+      secret that concerned another&mdash;and a lady; but I was afraid I was
+      even more meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my theory of
+      his conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him. I continued to
+      walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried good-by, alleging
+      the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but without appearing to
+      recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to my further discomfiture,
+      the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink, threw his arms around my
+      neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, &ldquo;Ah! you see&mdash;you comprehend&mdash;but
+      you are the mirror of discretion!&rdquo; and returned to Jocasta. But whether
+      this meant that he had received a message from Miss Mannersley, or that he
+      was trying to suborn her maid to carry one, was still uncertain. He was
+      capable of either. During the next two or three weeks I saw him
+      frequently; but as I had resolved to try the effect of ignoring Miss
+      Mannersley in our conversation, I gathered little further of their
+      relations, and, to my surprise, after one or two characteristic
+      extravagances of allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject, too. Only one
+      afternoon, as we were parting, he said carelessly: &ldquo;My friend, you are
+      going to the casa of Mannersley tonight. I too have the honor of the
+      invitation. But you will be my Mercury&mdash;my Leporello&mdash;you will
+      take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed, desolated,
+      prostrate, and flabbergasted&mdash;that I cannot arrive, for I have of
+      that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-in-law, who has a
+      quinsy to the death. It is sad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
+      advances. I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; I said bluntly. &ldquo;Nothing keeps you from going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment that
+      seemed to make him absolutely infirm, &ldquo;it is everything that shall
+      restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and tremble
+      under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the geologian
+      by the throat. Ask me another conundrum that shall be easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found Miss
+      Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and pretty.
+      The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me might have
+      been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez. I delivered
+      his excuses as naturally as I could. She stiffened for an instant, and
+      seemed an inch higher. &ldquo;I am so sorry,&rdquo; she said at last in a level voice.
+      &ldquo;I thought he would have been so amusing. Indeed, I had hoped we might try
+      an old Moorish dance together which I have found and was practicing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would have been delighted, I know. It's a great pity he didn't come
+      with me,&rdquo; I said quickly; &ldquo;but,&rdquo; I could not help adding, with emphasis on
+      her words, &ldquo;he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,&rdquo;
+       returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, &ldquo;except that it
+      justifies my respect for his character.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know why I did not relate this to him. Possibly I had given up
+      trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have an idea that he
+      could take care of himself. But I was somewhat surprised a few days later
+      when, after asking me to go with him to a rodeo at his uncle's he added
+      composedly, &ldquo;You will meet Mees Boston.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
+      extravagance. For the rodeo&mdash;a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
+      purpose of lassoing and branding them&mdash;was a rather brutal affair,
+      and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair&mdash;a property
+      stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners&mdash;and strangers,
+      particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain access to its mysteries
+      and the fiesta that followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how did she get an invitation?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;You did not dare to ask&mdash;&rdquo;
+       I began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend,&rdquo; said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, &ldquo;the great and
+      respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable oncle, and other
+      Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the inexpressible honor to
+      solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle that she shall come&mdash;that
+      she shall of her own superior eye behold the barbaric customs of our
+      race.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before him,
+      laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face. But the
+      actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out of
+      them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his
+      chair. &ldquo;I shall be there, friend Pancho,&rdquo; he said, with a preposterous
+      gasp. &ldquo;I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her
+      at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred
+      spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the
+      ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend Pancho. I shall be
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was as good as his word. When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle, installed
+      Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the long
+      valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant Enriquez selected a bull
+      from the frightened and galloping herd, and, cleverly isolating him from
+      the band, lassoed his hind legs, and threw him exactly before the platform
+      where Miss Mannersley was seated. It was Enriquez who caught the unbroken
+      mustang, sprang from his own saddle to the bare back of his captive, and
+      with the lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches at Miss
+      Mannersley's feet. It was Enriquez who, in the sports that followed,
+      leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the chicken buried to its
+      head in the sand, without wringing its neck, and tossed it unharmed and
+      fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore the same look of
+      animation that I had seen in her face at our previous meeting. Although
+      she did not bring her sketchbook with her, as at the bullfight, she did
+      not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which took place under her
+      very eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to my
+      actual knowledge, even exchanged words. And now, although she was the
+      guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the field, and apart
+      from her. Nor, as far as I could detect, did either apparently make any
+      effort to have it otherwise. The peculiar circumstance seemed to attract
+      no attention from anyone else. But for what I alone knew&mdash;or thought
+      I knew&mdash;of their actual relations, I should have thought them
+      strangers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad patio of
+      Don Pedro's casa would bring them together. And later in the evening, as
+      we were all sitting on the veranda watching the dancing of the Mexican
+      women, whose white-flounced sayas were monotonously rising and falling to
+      the strains of two melancholy harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined us from the
+      house. She seemed to be utterly absorbed and abstracted in the barbaric
+      dances, and scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing with her cheek
+      resting on her hand. Suddenly she arose with a little cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked two or three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing&mdash;only I have lost my fan.&rdquo; She had risen, and was looking
+      abstractedly on the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Half a dozen men jumped to their feet. &ldquo;Let me fetch it,&rdquo; they said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank you. I think I know where it is, and will go for it myself.&rdquo;
+       She was moving away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity. Such a thing was not to be
+      heard of in his casa. If the senorita would not permit HIM&mdash;an old
+      man&mdash;to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her cavalier of
+      the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Enriquez was not to be found. I glanced at Miss Mannersley's somewhat
+      disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it. I thought I saw a flush
+      of relief come into her pale cheek as she said, in a lower voice, &ldquo;On the
+      stone seat in the garden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting. I knew the gardens,
+      and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen yards from the
+      casa. The moon shone full upon it. There, indeed, lay the little
+      gray-feathered fan. But beside it, also, lay the crumpled black
+      gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had worn at the rodeo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back. As I passed through
+      the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me. The man stared. Did I
+      not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two minutes ago?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley without a
+      word. &ldquo;BUENO,&rdquo; said Don Pedro, gravely; &ldquo;it is as well. There shall be no
+      bones broken over the getting of it, for Enriquez, I hear, has had to
+      return to the Encinal this very evening.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Mannersley retired early. I did not inform her of my discovery, nor
+      did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret. There was no doubt that she
+      and Enriquez had been together, perhaps not for the first time; but what
+      was the result of their interview? From the young girl's demeanor and
+      Enriquez' hurried departure, I could only fear the worst for him. Had he
+      been tempted into some further extravagance and been angrily rebuked, or
+      had he avowed a real passion concealed under his exaggerated mask and been
+      deliberately rejected? I tossed uneasily half the night, following in my
+      dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever starting from my
+      sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping hoofs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there before me,
+      and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly discussing
+      something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and consciously as I
+      approached. There was an air of indefinite uneasiness everywhere. A
+      strange fear came over me with the chill of the early morning air. Had
+      anything happened to Enriquez? I had always looked upon his extravagance
+      as part of his playful humor. Could it be possible that under the sting of
+      rejection he had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement real?
+      Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were the
+      case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had risen.
+      The woman started, and looked covertly round before she replied. Did not
+      Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid had not slept in their
+      beds that night, but had gone, none knew where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility in this
+      suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the retreating family group.
+      But as I entered the corridor a vaquero touched me on the shoulder. He had
+      evidently just dismounted, and was covered with the dust of the road. He
+      handed me a note written in pencil on a leaf from Miss Mannersley's
+      sketchbook. It was in Enriquez' hand, and his signature was followed by
+      his most extravagant rubric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility think I
+      am no more. That is where you shall slip up, my little brother! I am much
+      more&mdash;I am two times as much, for I have marry Miss Boston. At the
+      Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp! No cards shall be left! I
+      kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-law. You shall say to him that we
+      fly to the South wilderness as the combined evangelical missionary to the
+      heathen! Miss Boston herself say this. Ta-ta! How are you now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Your own Enriquez.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1312-h.htm or 1312-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/1/1312/
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo;), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (&ldquo;the Foundation&rdquo;
+ or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; appears, or with which the phrase &ldquo;Project
+Gutenberg&rdquo; is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase &ldquo;Project Gutenberg&rdquo; associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+&ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original &ldquo;Plain Vanilla ASCII&rdquo; or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, &ldquo;Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.&rdquo;
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+&ldquo;Defects,&rdquo; such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the &ldquo;Right
+of Replacement or Refund&rdquo; described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+
+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/old/1312.txt b/old/1312.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25f0840
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,12782 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Selected Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 3, 2006 [EBook #1312]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+MIGGLES
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+MLISS
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing,
+into four quite distinct parts. First, we have the precocious boyhood,
+with its eager response to the intellectual stimulation of cultured
+parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek with amazing facility;
+devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving,
+Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable success, attempted
+various forms of composition. Then, compelled by economic necessity, he
+left school at thirteen, and for three years worked first in a lawyer's
+office, and then in a merchant's counting house.
+
+The second period, that of his migration to California, includes all
+that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving in
+California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-teacher, drug-store
+clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. He
+worked for a while on the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he was
+dismissed for objecting editorially to the contemporary California sport
+of murdering Indians), then on the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved
+his first moderate acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswold
+of New York. In 1864 he was given the secretaryship of the California
+mint, a virtual sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.
+The first volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES,
+CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS
+were published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which
+had aspirations of becoming "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," was
+established, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he wrote
+most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF ROARING
+CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM TRUTHFUL JAMES,
+among others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor and
+Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to picturesquely novel material,
+with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editors
+began to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointed
+him Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him
+the practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to one
+year's literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the ascendant.
+
+However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
+policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed, were
+the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the OVERLAND
+MONTHLY. Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the East, he
+left California (permanently, as it proved). The East, however, was
+financially unappreciative. Harte wrote an unsuccessful novel and
+collaborated with Mark Twain on an unremunerative play. His attempts
+to increase his income by lecturing were even less rewarding. From
+his departure from California in 1872 to his death thirty years later,
+Harte's struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and
+to these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "a
+peculiarly characteristic Western American literature." Henceforth Harte
+accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer, and as an
+entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an artist."
+
+The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
+appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a
+throat cancer. He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--perhaps
+intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him when
+circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his death, the
+separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained permanent. Harte,
+however, continued to provide for them as liberally as he was able. In
+Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION,
+and UNSER KARL. In 1880 he transferred to the more lucrative consulship
+of Glasgow, and ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of
+his stay there. In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably
+for political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.
+He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his death.
+
+Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp. His mining
+experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his portraits of
+mining life are wholly impressionistic. "No one," Mark Twain wrote,
+"can talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning it with pick and
+shovel and drill and fuse." Yet, Twain added elsewhere, "Bret Harte got
+his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put
+both of them into his tales alive." That is, perhaps, the final comment.
+Much could be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over
+the life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings
+are obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
+Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that "There
+are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons which
+we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte." The figure is
+perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for admiration. First,
+Harte originated a new and incalculably influential type of story: the
+romantically picturesque "human-interest" story. "He created the local
+color story," Prof. Blankenship remarks, "or at least popularized
+it, and he gave new form and intent to the short story." Character
+motivating action is central to this type of story, rather than mood
+dominating incident. Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful
+one, admirably suited to his subjects. He can manage the humorous or the
+pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more remarkable than
+his excesses. His sentences have both force and flow; his backgrounds
+are crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures have
+their own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of the
+theatric finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings down
+his curtain dramatically and effectively.
+
+ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.
+
+
+
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+
+There was commotion in Roaring Camp. It could not have been a fight,
+for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called together the entire
+settlement. The ditches and claims were not only deserted, but "Tuttle's
+grocery" had contributed its gamblers, who, it will be remembered,
+calmly continued their game the day that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot
+each other to death over the bar in the front room. The whole camp
+was collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.
+Conversation was carried on in a low tone, but the name of a woman
+was frequently repeated. It was a name familiar enough in the
+camp,--"Cherokee Sal."
+
+Perhaps the less said of her the better. She was a coarse and, it is to
+be feared, a very sinful woman. But at that time she was the only woman
+in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore extremity, when she
+most needed the ministration of her own sex. Dissolute, abandoned, and
+irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a martyrdom hard enough to bear
+even when veiled by sympathizing womanhood, but now terrible in her
+loneliness. The primal curse had come to her in that original isolation
+which must have made the punishment of the first transgression so
+dreadful. It was, perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a
+moment when she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she
+met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet
+a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy
+Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation of her
+condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and
+two bowers in his sleeve.
+
+It will be seen also that the situation was novel. Deaths were by no
+means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. People had
+been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with no possibility of
+return; but this was the first time that anybody had been introduced AB
+INITIO. Hence the excitement.
+
+"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as "Kentuck,"
+addressing one of the loungers. "Go in there, and see what you kin do.
+You've had experience in them things."
+
+Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection. Stumpy, in other climes,
+had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to
+some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp--a city of
+refuge--was indebted to his company. The crowd approved the choice, and
+Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the majority. The door closed on the
+extempore surgeon and midwife, and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked
+its pipe, and awaited the issue.
+
+The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these
+were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were
+reckless. Physically they exhibited no indication of their past lives
+and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion
+of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and
+intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous
+man was scarcely over five feet in height, with a soft voice and an
+embarrassed, timid manner. The term "roughs" applied to them was a
+distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of
+fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but
+these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The
+strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had
+but one eye.
+
+Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around
+the cabin. The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills and a
+river. The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of a hill that
+faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon. The suffering woman
+might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon she lay,--seen it winding
+like a silver thread until it was lost in the stars above.
+
+A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering. By
+degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned. Bets were freely
+offered and taken regarding the result. Three to five that "Sal would
+get through with it;" even that the child would survive; side bets as
+to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger. In the midst of an
+excited discussion an exclamation came from those nearest the door, and
+the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines,
+the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp,
+querulous cry,--a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The
+pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to
+crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.
+
+The camp rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a
+barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
+mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
+discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some
+other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast. Within an hour she had
+climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the stars, and so
+passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame, forever. I do not think
+that the announcement disturbed them much, except in speculation as
+to the fate of the child. "Can he live now?" was asked of Stumpy. The
+answer was doubtful. The only other being of Cherokee Sal's sex
+and maternal condition in the settlement was an ass. There was some
+conjecture as to fitness, but the experiment was tried. It was less
+problematical than the ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and
+apparently as successful.
+
+When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour, the
+door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already formed
+themselves into a queue, entered in single file. Beside the low bunk or
+shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly outlined below
+the blankets, stood a pine table. On this a candle-box was placed,
+and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay the last arrival at
+Roaring Camp. Beside the candle-box was placed a hat. Its use was
+soon indicated. "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with a singular mixture of
+authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--"gentlemen will please pass in
+at the front door, round the table, and out at the back door. Them as
+wishes to contribute anything toward the orphan will find a hat handy."
+The first man entered with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he
+looked about him, and so unconsciously set an example to the next. In
+such communities good and bad actions are catching. As the procession
+filed in comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather
+to Stumpy in the character of showman; "Is that him?" "Mighty small
+specimen;" "Has n't more 'n got the color;" "Ain't bigger nor a
+derringer." The contributions were as characteristic: A silver tobacco
+box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold specimen; a
+very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from Oakhurst the
+gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring (suggested by the pin,
+with the remark from the giver that he "saw that pin and went two
+diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible (contributor not detected); a
+golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the initials, I regret to say, were not
+the giver's); a pair of surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England
+note for 5 pounds; and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin. During
+these proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead
+on his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his
+right. Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the curious
+procession. As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the
+child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger,
+and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed.
+Something like a blush tried to assert itself in his weather-beaten
+cheek. "The damned little cuss!" he said, as he extricated his finger,
+with perhaps more tenderness and care than he might have been deemed
+capable of showing. He held that finger a little apart from its fellows
+as he went out, and examined it curiously. The examination provoked the
+same original remark in regard to the child. In fact, he seemed to
+enjoy repeating it. "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton,
+holding up the member, "the damned little cuss!"
+
+It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose. A light burnt in the
+cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed that night.
+Nor did Kentuck. He drank quite freely, and related with great gusto his
+experience, invariably ending with his characteristic condemnation of
+the newcomer. It seemed to relieve him of any unjust implication of
+sentiment, and Kentuck had the weaknesses of the nobler sex. When
+everybody else had gone to bed, he walked down to the river and
+whistled reflectingly. Then he walked up the gulch past the cabin,
+still whistling with demonstrative unconcern. At a large redwood-tree he
+paused and retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin. Halfway down
+to the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at
+the door. It was opened by Stumpy. "How goes it?" said Kentuck, looking
+past Stumpy toward the candle-box. "All serene!" replied Stumpy.
+"Anything up?" "Nothing." There was a pause--an embarrassing one--Stumpy
+still holding the door. Then Kentuck had recourse to his finger, which
+he held up to Stumpy. "Rastled with it,--the damned little cuss," he
+said, and retired.
+
+The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp
+afforded. After her body had been committed to the hillside, there was
+a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done with her
+infant. A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and enthusiastic. But an
+animated discussion in regard to the manner and feasibility of providing
+for its wants at once sprang up. It was remarkable that the argument
+partook of none of those fierce personalities with which discussions
+were usually conducted at Roaring Camp. Tipton proposed that they should
+send the child to Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female
+attention could be procured. But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce
+and unanimous opposition. It was evident that no plan which entailed
+parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be entertained.
+"Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog would swap it, and
+ring in somebody else on us." A disbelief in the honesty of other camps
+prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other places.
+
+The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with objection.
+It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed to accept Roaring
+Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that "they didn't want any more
+of the other kind." This unkind allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as
+it may seem, was the first spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the
+camp's regeneration. Stumpy advanced nothing. Perhaps he felt a certain
+delicacy in interfering with the selection of a possible successor in
+office. But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the
+mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child. There was
+something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that pleased
+the camp. Stumpy was retained. Certain articles were sent for to
+Sacramento. "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag of gold-dust
+into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be got,--lace, you know,
+and filigree-work and frills,--damn the cost!"
+
+Strange to say, the child thrived. Perhaps the invigorating climate of
+the mountain camp was compensation for material deficiencies. Nature
+took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the
+Sierra foothills,--that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal
+cordial at once bracing and exhilarating,--he may have found food and
+nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime
+and phosphorus. Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter
+and good nursing. "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and
+mother to him! Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the helpless
+bundle before him, "never go back on us."
+
+By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name became
+apparent. He had generally been known as "The Kid," "Stumpy's Boy,"
+"The Coyote" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and even by Kentuck's
+endearing diminutive of "The damned little cuss." But these were felt
+to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at last dismissed under another
+influence. Gamblers and adventurers are generally superstitious, and
+Oakhurst one day declared that the baby had brought "the luck" to
+Roaring Camp. It was certain that of late they had been successful.
+"Luck" was the name agreed upon, with the prefix of Tommy for greater
+convenience. No allusion was made to the mother, and the father was
+unknown. "It's better," said the philosophical Oakhurst, "to take a
+fresh deal all round. Call him Luck, and start him fair." A day was
+accordingly set apart for the christening. What was meant by this
+ceremony the reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of
+the reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp. The master of ceremonies
+was one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the
+greatest facetiousness. This ingenious satirist had spent two days
+in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
+allusions. The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to stand
+godfather. But after the procession had marched to the grove with music
+and banners, and the child had been deposited before a mock altar,
+Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd. "It ain't my style to spoil
+fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eyeing the faces around him,
+"but it strikes me that this thing ain't exactly on the squar. It's
+playing it pretty low down on this yer baby to ring in fun on him that
+he ain't goin' to understand. And ef there's goin' to be any godfathers
+round, I'd like to see who's got any better rights than me." A silence
+followed Stumpy's speech. To the credit of all humorists be it said that
+the first man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped
+of his fun. "But," said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
+"we're here for a christening, and we'll have it. I proclaim you Thomas
+Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the State of
+California, so help me God." It was the first time that the name of the
+Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in the camp. The form
+of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous than the satirist had
+conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw it and nobody laughed.
+"Tommy" was christened as seriously as he would have been under a
+Christian roof and cried and was comforted in as orthodox fashion.
+
+And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp. Almost
+imperceptibly a change came over the settlement. The cabin assigned to
+"Tommy Luck"--or "The Luck," as he was more frequently called--first
+showed signs of improvement. It was kept scrupulously clean and
+whitewashed. Then it was boarded, clothed, and papered. The rose wood
+cradle, packed eighty miles by mule, had, in Stumpy's way of putting it,
+"sorter killed the rest of the furniture." So the rehabilitation of the
+cabin became a necessity. The men who were in the habit of lounging
+in at Stumpy's to see "how 'The Luck' got on" seemed to appreciate
+the change, and in self-defense the rival establishment of "Tuttle's
+grocery" bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors. The
+reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended to
+produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness. Again Stumpy imposed a
+kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of
+holding The Luck. It was a cruel mortification to Kentuck--who, in the
+carelessness of a large nature and the habits of frontier life, had
+begun to regard all garments as a second cuticle, which, like a snake's,
+only sloughed off through decay--to be debarred this privilege from
+certain prudential reasons. Yet such was the subtle influence of
+innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a
+clean shirt and face still shining from his ablutions. Nor were moral
+and social sanitary laws neglected. "Tommy," who was supposed to spend
+his whole existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be
+disturbed by noise. The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp
+its infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of
+Stumpy's. The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian gravity.
+Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts, and throughout
+the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D--n the luck!" and
+"Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new personal bearing.
+Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed to have a soothing,
+tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by "Man-o'-War Jack," an
+English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular
+as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the
+Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged
+dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa."
+It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side
+to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval
+ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his
+song,--it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious
+deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the desired
+effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under the trees
+in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes and drinking in
+the melodious utterances. An indistinct idea that this was pastoral
+happiness pervaded the camp. "This 'ere kind o' think," said the Cockney
+Simmons, meditatively reclining on his elbow, "is 'evingly." It reminded
+him of Greenwich.
+
+On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch from
+whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken. There, on a blanket
+spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were working in the
+ditches below. Latterly there was a rude attempt to decorate this bower
+with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and generally some one would
+bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles, azaleas, or the painted
+blossoms of Las Mariposas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact
+that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they
+had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet. A flake of glittering
+mica, a fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of
+the creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened,
+and were invariably pat aside for The Luck. It was wonderful how many
+treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for Tommy."
+Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of fairyland had
+before, it is to be hoped that Tommy was content. He appeared to be
+serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine gravity about him, a
+contemplative light in his round gray eyes, that sometimes worried
+Stumpy. He was always tractable and quiet, and it is recorded that once,
+having crept beyond his "corral,"--a hedge of tessellated pine boughs,
+which surrounded his bed,--he dropped over the bank on his head in
+the soft earth, and remained with his mottled legs in the air in that
+position for at least five minutes with unflinching gravity. He was
+extricated without a murmur. I hesitate to record the many other
+instances of his sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the
+statements of prejudiced friends. Some of them were not without a tinge
+of superstition. "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one
+day, in a breathless state of excitement "and dern my skin if he was
+a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap. There they was,
+just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-jawin' at each
+other just like two cherrybums." Howbeit, whether creeping over the pine
+boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking at the leaves above him, to
+him the birds sang, the squirrels chattered, and the flowers bloomed.
+Nature was his nurse and playfellow. For him she would let slip between
+the leaves golden shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp;
+she would send wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and
+resinous gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily,
+the bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
+
+Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp. They were "flush times," and
+the luck was with them. The claims had yielded enormously. The camp
+was jealous of its privileges and looked suspiciously on strangers. No
+encouragement was given to immigration, and, to make their seclusion
+more perfect, the land on either side of the mountain wall that
+surrounded the camp they duly preempted. This, and a reputation for
+singular proficiency with the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring
+Camp inviolate. The expressman--their only connecting link with the
+surrounding world--sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp. He
+would say, "They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over
+any street in Red Dog. They've got vines and flowers round their houses,
+and they wash themselves twice a day. But they're mighty rough on
+strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby."
+
+With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further improvement.
+It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite
+one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who
+might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this
+concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in
+regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for
+by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve
+could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority
+meekly yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.
+And it did.
+
+The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills. The snow
+lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a river,
+and every river a lake. Each gorge and gulch was transformed into a
+tumultuous watercourse that descended the hillsides, tearing down giant
+trees and scattering its drift and debris along the plain. Red Dog had
+been twice under water, and Roaring Camp had been forewarned. "Water put
+the gold into them gulches," said Stumpy. "It been here once and will
+be here again!" And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its
+banks and swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.
+
+In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber,
+and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the
+fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp.
+When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was
+gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky owner; but
+the pride, the hope, the joy, The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared.
+They were returning with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled
+them.
+
+It was a relief-boat from down the river. They had picked up, they
+said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below. Did
+anybody know them, and did they belong here?
+
+It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly crushed
+and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in his arms. As
+they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was
+cold and pulseless. "He is dead," said one. Kentuck opened his eyes.
+"Dead?" he repeated feebly. "Yes, my man, and you are dying too." A
+smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. "Dying!" he repeated; "he's
+a-taking me with him. Tell the boys I've got The Luck with me now;" and
+the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to
+cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever
+to the unknown sea.
+
+
+
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+
+As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker
+Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was
+conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding
+night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he
+approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull
+in the air which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked
+ominous.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
+indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause was
+another question. "I reckon they're after somebody," he reflected;
+"likely it's me." He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which
+he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat
+boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
+
+In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody." It had lately
+suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and
+a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction,
+quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked
+it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper
+persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then
+hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in
+the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to
+say that some of these were ladies. It is but due to the sex, however,
+to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in
+such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to
+sit in judgment.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
+category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible
+example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets
+of the sums he had won from them. "It's agin justice," said Jim Wheeler,
+"to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry
+away our money." But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the
+breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst
+overruled this narrower local prejudice.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the
+less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was
+too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an
+uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the
+dealer.
+
+A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to
+the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to
+be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed
+escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman
+familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won the title of
+"Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected sluice-robber and
+confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the
+spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch
+which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader
+spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at
+the peril of their lives.
+
+As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
+few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother
+Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The
+philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother
+Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements
+of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths
+that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the
+easy good humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging
+his own riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess
+rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy.
+The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble,
+faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with
+malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping
+anathema.
+
+The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced the
+regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some
+invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain range. It was
+distant a day's severe travel. In that advanced season, the party soon
+passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foothills into
+the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and
+difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the
+ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party
+halted.
+
+The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheater,
+surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped
+gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley.
+It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been
+advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy
+Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned
+for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a
+philosophic commentary on the folly of "throwing up their hand before
+the game was played out." But they were furnished with liquor, which in
+this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.
+In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or
+less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
+state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton
+snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock,
+calmly surveying them.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which
+required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own
+language, he "couldn't afford it." As he gazed at his recumbent fellow
+exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah trade, his habits of life,
+his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred
+himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and
+other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a
+moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and
+more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not
+help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was
+most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He
+looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the
+circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley
+below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard
+his own name called.
+
+A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the
+newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as the
+"Innocent" of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over
+a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire
+fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless youth. After
+the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind
+the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a good little man, but
+you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again." He then handed
+him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a
+devoted slave of Tom Simson.
+
+There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting
+of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek
+his fortune. "Alone?" No, not exactly alone; in fact (a giggle), he had
+run away with Piney Woods. Didn't Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that
+used to wait on the table at the Temperance House? They had been engaged
+a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away,
+and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they
+were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
+company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a stout,
+comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree, where she
+had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with
+propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not fortunate.
+He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle
+Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough
+to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a superior power that would not
+bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying
+further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no
+provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, the Innocent met
+this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra
+mule loaded with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a
+log house near the trail. "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said the
+Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and I can shift for myself."
+
+Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
+bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire
+up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the
+joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of
+his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he
+found them seated by a fire--for the air had grown strangely chill
+and the sky overcast--in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was
+actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who
+was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many
+days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect,
+to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into
+amiability. "Is this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward
+scorn as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the
+tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the
+alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular
+nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist
+into his mouth.
+
+As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the
+tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles.
+The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart
+for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a
+kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the
+swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were
+probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity,
+and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the
+men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and
+cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing
+strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave
+it--snow!
+
+He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers,
+for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been
+lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse
+to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they
+were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in
+the snow.
+
+The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with
+his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered
+peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin
+Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended
+by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his
+shoulders, stroked his mustaches and waited for the dawn. It came slowly
+in a whirling mist of snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye. What
+could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He
+looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two
+words--"snowed in!"
+
+A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party,
+had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious fingers of
+Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might
+last ten days longer. "That is," said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the
+Innocent, "if you're willing to board us. If you ain't--and perhaps
+you'd better not--you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with
+provisions." For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring
+himself to disclose Uncle Billy's rascality, and so offered the
+hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally
+stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother
+Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate's defection.
+"They'll find out the truth about us all when they find out anything,"
+he added, significantly, "and there's no good frightening them now."
+
+Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr.
+Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion.
+"We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow'll melt, and we'll
+all go back together." The cheerful gaiety of the young man, and Mr.
+Oakhurst's calm, infected the others. The Innocent with the aid of pine
+boughs extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess
+directed Piney in the rearrangement of the interior with a taste and
+tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their
+fullest extent. "I reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat,"
+said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that
+reddened her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
+requested Piney not to "chatter." But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a
+weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter
+echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first
+naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had prudently cached. "And
+yet it don't somehow sound like whisky," said the gambler. It was not
+until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still-blinding
+storm and the group around it that he settled to the conviction that it
+was "square fun."
+
+Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as something
+debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain
+that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say cards once" during that
+evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordion, produced somewhat
+ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his pack. Notwithstanding some
+difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney
+Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to
+an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castanets. But the
+crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting
+hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and
+vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing
+to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to
+infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:
+
+"I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+
+And I'm bound to die in His army."
+
+The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
+group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in token of
+the vow.
+
+At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
+stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose
+professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible
+amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson somehow managed
+to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself
+to the Innocent by saying that he had "often been a week without sleep."
+"Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when
+a man gets a streak of luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired. The luck
+gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty
+queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to
+change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you.
+We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you come along,
+and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along
+you're all right. For," added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance,
+
+"'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+
+And I'm bound to die in His army.'"
+
+The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-curtained
+valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of
+provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that
+mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry
+landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed
+drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted,
+trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the
+castaways still clung. Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of
+the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw
+it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
+direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and
+perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity.
+It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. "Just you go out
+there and cuss, and see." She then set herself to the task of amusing
+"the child," as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney
+was no chicken, but it was a soothing and original theory of the pair
+thus to account for the fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
+
+When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the
+accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the
+flickering campfire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching
+void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by
+Piney--storytelling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions
+caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed
+too but for the Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray
+copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious translation of the ILIAD. He now proposed
+to narrate the principal incidents of that poem--having thoroughly
+mastered the argument and fairly forgotten the words--in the current
+vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric
+demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in
+the winds, and the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath
+of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.
+Most especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-heels," as the
+Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles."
+
+So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week passed
+over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again
+from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the land. Day by day
+closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from
+their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white that towered twenty
+feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish
+their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in
+the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary
+prospect and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst
+settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess,
+more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother
+Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken and fade. At
+midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. "I'm going,"
+she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, "but don't say anything
+about it. Don't waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and
+open it." Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton's rations for
+the last week, untouched. "Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to
+the sleeping Piney. "You've starved yourself," said the gambler. "That's
+what they call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again
+and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
+
+The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
+forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the
+snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of
+snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle. "There's one
+chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said, pointing to Piney; "but
+it's there," he added, pointing toward Poker Flat. "If you can reach
+there in two days she's safe." "And you?" asked Tom Simson. "I'll stay
+here," was the curt reply.
+
+The lovers parted with a long embrace. "You are not going, too?" said
+the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him.
+"As far as the canyon," he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the
+Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame and her trembling limbs rigid
+with amazement.
+
+Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the
+whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that someone
+had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer.
+The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
+
+The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other's
+faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the
+position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the
+Duchess's waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That
+night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the
+protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
+
+Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
+gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept
+closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney, can you
+pray?" "No, dear," said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing
+exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney's shoulder,
+spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the
+head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
+
+The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow,
+shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and
+settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds
+looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace
+of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully
+flung from above.
+
+They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices
+and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
+brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from
+the equal peace that dwelt upon them which was she that had sinned. Even
+the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them
+still locked in each other's arms.
+
+But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they
+found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore
+the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
+
+              BENEATH THIS TREE
+               LIES THE BODY
+                     OF
+               JOHN OAKHURST,
+         WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
+          ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
+                    AND
+             HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
+          ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
+
+And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his
+heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at
+once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
+
+
+
+
+MIGGLES
+
+
+We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the
+passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle
+over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last poetical
+quotation. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed
+through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it--altogether a
+limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut
+down too late. The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet in
+a half-conscious propriety of attitude, shown even in the disposition
+of the handkerchief which she held to her forehead and which partially
+veiled her face. The lady from Virginia City, traveling with her
+husband, had long since lost all individuality in a wild confusion of
+ribbons, veils, furs, and shawls. There was no sound but the rattling
+of wheels and the dash of rain upon the roof. Suddenly the stage stopped
+and we became dimly aware of voices. The driver was evidently in the
+midst of an exciting colloquy with someone in the road--a colloquy of
+which such fragments as "bridge gone," "twenty feet of water," "can't
+pass," were occasionally distinguishable above the storm. Then came
+a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the parting
+adjuration:
+
+"Try Miggles's."
+
+We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of a
+horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our way to
+Miggles's.
+
+Who and where was Miggles? The Judge, our authority, did not remember
+the name, and he knew the country thoroughly. The Washoe traveler
+thought Miggles must keep a hotel. We only knew that we were stopped by
+high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was our rock of refuge.
+A ten minutes splashing through a tangled by-road, scarcely wide enough
+for the stage, and we drew up before a barred and boarded gate in a
+wide stone wall or fence about eight feet high. Evidently Miggles's, and
+evidently Miggles did not keep a hotel.
+
+The driver got down and tried the gate. It was securely locked. "Miggles!
+O Miggles!"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Migg-ells! You Miggles!" continued the driver, with rising wrath.
+
+"Migglesy!" joined the expressman, persuasively. "O Miggy! Mig!"
+
+But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles. The Judge,
+who had finally got the window down, put his head out and propounded
+a series of questions, which if answered categorically would have
+undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, but which the driver evaded by
+replying that "if we didn't want to sit in the coach all night, we had
+better rise up and sing out for Miggles."
+
+So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately. And when
+we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the roof called for
+"Maygells!" whereat we all laughed. While we were laughing, the driver
+cried "Shoo!"
+
+We listened. To our infinite amazement the chorus of "Miggles" was
+repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and
+supplemental "Maygells."
+
+"Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.
+
+"Extraordinary damned skunk!" roared the driver, contemptuously. "Come
+out of that, Miggles, and show yourself! Be a man, Miggles! Don't hide
+in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles," continued Yuba Bill,
+now dancing about in an excess of fury.
+
+"Miggles!" continued the voice. "O Miggles!"
+
+"My good man! Mr. Myghail!" said the Judge, softening the asperities of
+the name as much as possible. "Consider the inhospitality of refusing
+shelter from the inclemency of the weather to helpless females. Really,
+my dear sir--" But a succession of "Miggles," ending in a burst of
+laughter, drowned his voice.
+
+Yuba Bill hesitated no longer. Taking a heavy stone from the road, he
+battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the enclosure.
+We followed. Nobody was to be seen. In the gathering darkness all that
+we could distinguish was that we were in a garden--from the rosebushes
+that scattered over us a minute spray from their dripping leaves--and
+before a long, rambling wooden building.
+
+"Do you know this Miggles?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.
+
+"No, nor, don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer Stage
+Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.
+
+"But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge as he thought of the barred
+gate.
+
+"Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better go
+back and sit in the coach till yer introduced? I'm going in," and he
+pushed open the door of the building.
+
+A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on the
+large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously papered, and
+the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque pattern; somebody
+sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace. All this we saw as we
+crowded together into the room, after the driver and expressman.
+
+"Hello, be you Miggles?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.
+
+The figure neither spoke nor stirred. Yuba Bill walked wrathfully toward
+it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face. It was a
+man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large eyes, in which
+there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous solemnity which I had
+sometimes seen in an owl's. The large eyes wandered from Bill's face
+to the lantern, and finally fixed their gaze on that luminous object,
+without further recognition.
+
+Bill restrained himself with an effort.
+
+"Miggles! Be you deaf? You ain't dumb anyhow, you know"; and Yuba Bill
+shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.
+
+To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable
+stranger apparently collapsed--sinking into half his size and an
+undistinguishable heap of clothing.
+
+"Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and
+hopelessly retiring from the contest.
+
+The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious invertebrate
+back into his original position. Bill was dismissed with the lantern to
+reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that from the helplessness of
+this solitary man there must be attendants near at hand, and we all
+drew around the fire. The Judge, who had regained his authority, and had
+never lost his conversational amiability--standing before us with his
+back to the hearth--charged us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:
+
+"It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has reached
+that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and yellow leaf,'
+or has suffered some premature abatement of his mental and physical
+faculties. Whether he is really the Miggles--"
+
+Here he was interrupted by "Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!" and, in
+fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key as it had
+once before been delivered unto us.
+
+We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm. The Judge, in
+particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to come
+directly over his shoulder. The cause, however, was soon discovered in
+a large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the fireplace, and
+who immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence which contrasted
+singularly with his previous volubility. It was, undoubtedly, his voice
+which we had heard in the road, and our friend in the chair was not
+responsible for the discourtesy. Yuba Bill, who re-entered the room
+after an unsuccessful search, was loath to accept the explanation, and
+still eyed the helpless sitter with suspicion. He had found a shed in
+which he had put up his horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical.
+"Thar ain't nobody but him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar
+damned old skeesicks knows it."
+
+But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based. Bill had
+scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the porch,
+the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and with flash of
+white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter absence of ceremony or
+diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the door, and, panting, leaned
+back against it.
+
+"Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!"
+
+And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman, whose
+wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of the feminine
+curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of whose head, topped
+by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little feet and ankles, hidden
+somewhere in the recesses of her boy's brogans, all was grace--this was
+Miggles, laughing at us, too, in the most airy, frank, offhand manner
+imaginable.
+
+"You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath, and holding one little
+hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless discomfiture of
+our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba Bill, whose
+features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous and imbecile
+cheerfulness--"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles away when you passed
+down the road. I thought you might pull up here, and so I ran the
+whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--and--and--I'm out of
+breath--and--that lets me out."
+
+And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with
+a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us;
+attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt;
+laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly on
+her lap.
+
+The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant
+compliment.
+
+"I'll trouble you for that thar harpin," said Miggles, gravely. Half
+a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing hairpin was
+restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the room, looked
+keenly in the face of the invalid. The solemn eyes looked back at hers
+with an expression we had never seen before. Life and intelligence
+seemed to struggle back into the rugged face. Miggles laughed again--it
+was a singularly eloquent laugh--and turned her black eyes and white
+teeth once more toward us.
+
+"This afflicted person is--" hesitated the Judge.
+
+"Jim," said Miggles.
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Brother?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Husband?"
+
+Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady passengers
+who I had noticed did not participate in the general masculine
+admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, "No; it's Jim."
+
+There was an awkward pause. The lady passengers moved closer to each
+other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and the
+tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at this
+emergency. But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious, broke the
+silence. "Come," she said briskly, "you must be hungry. Who'll bear a
+hand to help me get tea?"
+
+She had no lack of volunteers. In a few moments Yuba Bill was engaged
+like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the expressman was
+grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the arduous duty of slicing
+bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each man his good-humored
+and voluble counsel. And when Miggles, assisted by the Judge and
+our Hibernian "deck passenger," set the table with all the available
+crockery, we had become quite joyous, in spite of the rain that beat
+against windows, the wind that whirled down the chimney, the two ladies
+who whispered together in the corner, or the magpie who uttered a
+satirical and croaking commentary on their conversation from his perch
+above. In the now bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were
+papered with illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and
+discrimination. The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from candle
+boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the skin of
+some animal. The armchair of the helpless Jim was an ingenious variation
+of a flour barrel. There was neatness, and even a taste for the
+picturesque, to be seen in the few details of the long low room.
+
+The meal was a culinary success. But more, it was a social
+triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in
+guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet bearing
+throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any concealment on
+her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our prospects, of the
+journey, of the weather, of each other--of everything but our host and
+hostess. It must be confessed that Miggles's conversation was never
+elegant, rarely grammatical, and that at times she employed expletives
+the use of which had generally been yielded to our sex. But they were
+delivered with such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually
+followed by a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest
+that it seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.
+
+Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy body
+against the outer walls of the house. This was shortly followed by a
+scratching and sniffling at the door. "That's Joaquin," said Miggles, in
+reply to our questioning glances; "would you like to see him?" Before
+we could answer she had opened the door, and disclosed a half-grown
+grizzly, who instantly raised himself on his haunches, with his
+forepaws hanging down in the popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked
+admiringly at Miggles, with a very singular resemblance in his manner to
+Yuba Bill. "That's my watch dog," said Miggles, in explanation. "Oh,
+he don't bite," she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into
+a corner. "Does he, old Toppy?" (the latter remark being addressed
+directly to the sagacious Joaquin). "I tell you what, boys," continued
+Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA MINOR, "you
+were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when you dropped
+in tonight." "Where was he?" asked the Judge. "With me," said Miggles.
+"Lord love you; he trots round with me nights like as if he was a man."
+
+We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind. Perhaps we
+all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking through the rainy
+woods, with her savage guardian at her side. The Judge, I remember, said
+something about Una and her lion; but Miggles received it as she did
+other compliments, with quiet gravity. Whether she was altogether
+unconscious of the admiration she excited--she could hardly have been
+oblivious of Yuba Bill's adoration--I know not; but her very frankness
+suggested a perfect sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the
+younger members of our party.
+
+The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to the
+opinions of those of her own sex who were present. In fact, the repast
+over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers that no pine
+boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice upon the hearth
+could wholly overcome. Miggles felt it; and, suddenly declaring that
+it was time to "turn in," offered to show the ladies to their bed in an
+adjoining room. "You boys will have to camp out here by the fire as well
+as you can," she added, "for thar ain't but the one room."
+
+Our sex--by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger
+portion of humanity--has been generally relieved from the imputation of
+curiosity, or a fondness for gossip. Yet I am constrained to say
+that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than we crowded together,
+whispering, snickering, smiling, and exchanging suspicions, surmises,
+and a thousand speculations in regard to our pretty hostess and her
+singular companion. I fear that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic,
+who sat like a voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene
+indifference of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels.
+In the midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and
+Miggles re-entered.
+
+But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had flashed
+upon us. Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for a moment on
+the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to have left behind
+her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a moment before. Coming
+into the room, she drew a low stool beside the paralytic's chair, sat
+down, drew the blanket over her shoulders, and saying, "If it's all the
+same to you, boys, as we're rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight,"
+took the invalid's withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon
+the dying fire. An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory
+to more confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous
+curiosity, kept us silent. The rain still beat upon the roof, wandering
+gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary brightness, until, in a
+lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly lifted up her head, and, throwing
+her hair over her shoulder, turned her face upon the group and asked:
+
+"Is there any of you that knows me?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53. Everybody knew me there, and
+everybody had the right to know me. I kept the Polka saloon until I came
+to live with Jim. That's six years ago. Perhaps I've changed some."
+
+The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her. She turned her
+head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she again spoke,
+and then more rapidly:
+
+"Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me. There's
+no great harm done, anyway. What I was going to say was this: Jim
+here"--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--"used to know me,
+if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me. I reckon he spent all
+he had. And one day--it's six years ago this winter--Jim came into my
+back room, sat down on my sofy, like as you see him in that chair, and
+never moved again without help. He was struck all of a heap, and never
+seemed to know what ailed him. The doctors came and said as how it
+was caused all along of his way of life--for Jim was mighty free and
+wild-like--and that he would never get better, and couldn't last long
+anyway. They advised me to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he
+was no good to anyone and would be a baby all his life. Perhaps it was
+something in Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I
+said 'No.' I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen
+like yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
+bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of travel,
+you see, and I brought my baby here."
+
+With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke, slowly
+shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the ruined man
+between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow behind it, as if
+she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions. Silent and
+expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed, and smitten
+with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an invisible arm around
+her.
+
+Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:
+
+"It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about yer, for
+I was used to company and excitement. I couldn't get any woman to help
+me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the Indians hereabout,
+who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything sent from the North
+Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through. The Doctor would run up from
+Sacramento once in a while. He'd ask to see 'Miggles's baby,' as
+he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd say, 'Miggles; you're a
+trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem so lonely after that. But
+the last time he was here he said, as he opened the door to go, 'Do you
+know, Miggles, your baby will grow up to be a man yet and an honor to
+his mother; but not here, Miggles, not here!' And I thought he went away
+sad--and--and--" and here Miggles's voice and head were somehow both
+lost completely in the shadow.
+
+"The folks about here are very kind," said Miggles, after a pause,
+coming a little into the light again. "The men from the fork used to
+hang around here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the women are
+kind--and don't call. I was pretty lonely until I picked up Joaquin in
+the woods yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and taught him to beg
+for his dinner; and then thar's Polly--that's the magpie--she knows no
+end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of evenings with her talk,
+and so I don't feel like as I was the only living being about the ranch.
+And Jim here," said Miggles, with her old laugh again, and coming out
+quite into the firelight, "Jim--why, boys, you would admire to see how
+much he knows for a man like him. Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he
+looks at 'em just as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're
+sitting alone, I read him those things on the wall. Why, Lord!" said
+Miggles, with her frank laugh, "I've read him that whole side of the
+house this winter. There never was such a man for reading as Jim."
+
+"Why," asked the Judge, "do you not marry this man to whom you have
+devoted your youthful life?"
+
+"Well, you see," said Miggles, "it would be playing it rather low down
+on Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then, too, if we
+were man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound to do what I do
+now of my own accord."
+
+"But you are young yet and attractive--"
+
+"It's getting late," said Miggles, gravely, "and you'd better all turn
+in. Good night, boys"; and, throwing the blanket over her head, Miggles
+laid herself down beside Jim's chair, her head pillowed on the low stool
+that held his feet, and spoke no more. The fire slowly faded from the
+hearth; we each sought our blankets in silence; and presently there was
+no sound in the long room but the pattering of the rain upon the roof
+and the heavy breathing of the sleepers.
+
+It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream. The storm had
+passed, the stars were shining, and through the shutterless window the
+full moon, lifting itself over the solemn pines without, looked into
+the room. It touched the lonely figure in the chair with an infinite
+compassion, and seemed to baptize with a shining flood the lowly head of
+the woman whose hair, as in the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him
+she loved. It even lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba
+Bill, half-reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
+savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward. And then I fell asleep
+and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me, and "All
+aboard" ringing in my ears.
+
+Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone. We
+wandered about the house and lingered long after the horses were
+harnessed, but she did not return. It was evident that she wished to
+avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we had
+come. After we had helped the ladies into the coach, we returned to
+the house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic Jim, as solemnly
+settling him back into position after each handshake. Then we looked for
+the last time around the long low room, at the stool where Miggles had
+sat, and slowly took our seats in the waiting coach. The whip cracked,
+and we were off!
+
+But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six
+horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk. For
+there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her hair
+flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and her white
+teeth flashing a last "good-by." We waved our hats in return. And then
+Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination, madly lashed his horses
+forward, and we sank back in our seats. We exchanged not a word until we
+reached the North Fork, and the stage drew up at the Independence House.
+Then, the Judge leading, we walked into the barroom and took our places
+gravely at the bar.
+
+"Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?" said the Judge, solemnly taking
+off his white hat.
+
+They were.
+
+"Well, then, here's to MIGGLES. GOD BLESS HER!"
+
+Perhaps He had. Who knows?
+
+
+
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+
+I do not think that we ever knew his real name. Our ignorance of it
+certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy Bar in
+1854 most men were christened anew. Sometimes these appellatives were
+derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in the case of "Dungaree
+Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as shown in "Saleratus Bill,"
+so called from an undue proportion of that chemical in his daily bread;
+or for some unlucky slip, as exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild,
+inoffensive man, who earned that baleful title by his unfortunate
+mispronunciation of the term "iron pyrites." Perhaps this may have been
+the beginning of a rude heraldry; but I am constrained to think that
+it was because a man's real name in that day rested solely upon his own
+unsupported statement. "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston,
+addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of such
+Cliffords!" He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose name happened
+to be really Clifford, as "Jay-bird Charley"--an unhallowed inspiration
+of the moment that clung to him ever after.
+
+But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any other
+than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a separate and
+distinct individuality we only learned later. It seems that in 1853 he
+left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco, ostensibly to procure a wife. He
+never got any farther than Stockton. At that place he was attracted by
+a young person who waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his
+meals. One morning he said something to her which caused her to smile
+not unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over
+his upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen. He
+followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more toast
+and victory. That day week they were married by a justice of the peace,
+and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be
+made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy
+Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all sentiment was modified by a
+strong sense of humor.
+
+Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the reason
+that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took occasion to
+say something to the bride on his own account, at which, it is said,
+she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--this time as far
+as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and where they went to
+housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the peace. Tennessee's
+Partner took the loss of his wife simply and seriously, as was his
+fashion. But to everybody's surprise, when Tennessee one day returned
+from Marysville, without his Partner's wife--she having smiled and
+retreated with somebody else--Tennessee's Partner was the first man to
+shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered
+in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their
+indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look
+in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous
+appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to
+practical detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.
+
+Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the Bar.
+He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief. In these
+suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised; his continued
+intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted could only be
+accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of crime. At last
+Tennessee's guilt became flagrant. One day he overtook a stranger on his
+way to Red Dog. The stranger afterward related that Tennessee beguiled
+the time with interesting anecdote and reminiscence, but illogically
+concluded the interview in the following words: "And now, young man,
+I'll trouble you for your knife, your pistols, and your money. You see
+your weppings might get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a
+temptation to the evilly disposed. I think you said your address was
+San Francisco. I shall endeavor to call." It may be stated here that
+Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
+could wholly subdue.
+
+This exploit was his last. Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
+against the highwayman. Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
+fashion as his prototype, the grizzly. As the toils closed around him,
+he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his revolver at the
+crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up Grizzly Canyon; but at its
+farther extremity he was stopped by a small man on a gray horse. The
+men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both
+self-possessed and independent; and both types of a civilization that
+in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the
+nineteenth, simply "reckless." "What have you got there?--I call,"
+said Tennessee, quietly. "Two bowers and an ace," said the stranger,
+as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife. "That takes me,"
+returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers' epigram, he threw away his
+useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.
+
+
+It was a warm night. The cool breeze which usually sprang up with the
+going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was that
+evening withheld from Sandy Bar. The little canyon was stifling with
+heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on the Bar sent forth
+faint, sickening exhalations. The feverishness of day, and its fierce
+passions, still filled the camp. Lights moved restlessly along the bank
+of the river, striking no answering reflection from its tawny current.
+Against the blackness of the pines the windows of the old loft above the
+express office stood out staringly bright; and through their curtainless
+panes the loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
+deciding the fate of Tennessee. And above all this, etched on the dark
+firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned with remoter
+passionless stars.
+
+The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent with a
+judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to justify, in
+their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest and indictment. The
+law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not vengeful. The excitement and
+personal feeling of the chase were over; with Tennessee safe in their
+hands they were ready to listen patiently to any defense, which they
+were already satisfied was insufficient. There being no doubt in their
+own minds, they were willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any
+that might exist. Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged,
+on general principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense
+than his reckless hardihood seemed to ask. The Judge appeared to be more
+anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned, evidently took
+a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had created. "I don't take any
+hand in this yer game," had been his invariable but good-humored reply
+to all questions. The Judge--who was also his captor--for a moment
+vaguely regretted that he had not shot him "on sight" that morning,
+but presently dismissed this human weakness as unworthy of the judicial
+mind. Nevertheless, when there was a tap at the door, and it was said
+that Tennessee's Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was
+admitted at once without question. Perhaps the younger members of the
+jury, to whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed
+him as a relief.
+
+For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure. Short and stout, with a
+square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in a loose duck
+"jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red soil, his aspect
+under any circumstances would have been quaint, and was now even
+ridiculous. As he stooped to deposit at his feet a heavy carpetbag he
+was carrying, it became obvious, from partially developed legends and
+inscriptions, that the material with which his trousers had been patched
+had been originally intended for a less ambitious covering. Yet he
+advanced with great gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each
+person in the room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious,
+perplexed face on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
+complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady himself, and
+thus addressed the Judge:
+
+"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd
+just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--my
+pardner. It's a hot night. I disremember any sich weather before on the
+Bar."
+
+He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other meteorological
+recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket handkerchief, and for
+some moments mopped his face diligently.
+
+"Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?" said the Judge,
+finally.
+
+"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief. "I come yar
+as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off and on, wet
+and dry, in luck and out o' luck. His ways ain't allers my ways, but
+thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar ain't any liveliness
+as he's been up to, as I don't know. And you sez to me, sez
+you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez you, 'Do you know
+anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--confidential-like, as
+between man and man--'What should a man know of his pardner?'"
+
+"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently, feeling,
+perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning to humanize
+the Court.
+
+"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner. "It ain't for me to say
+anything agin' him. And now, what's the case? Here's Tennessee wants
+money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of his old pardner.
+Well, what does Tennessee do? He lays for a stranger, and he fetches
+that stranger. And you lays for HIM, and you fetches HIM; and the
+honors is easy. And I put it to you, bein' a far-minded man, and to you,
+gentlemen, all, as far-minded men, ef this isn't so."
+
+"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions to ask
+this man?"
+
+"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily. "I play this yer hand
+alone. To come down to the bedrock, it's just this: Tennessee, thar, has
+played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a stranger, and on this yer
+camp. And now, what's the fair thing? Some would say more; some
+would say less. Here's seventeen hundred dollars in coarse gold and a
+watch--it's about all my pile--and call it square!" And before a hand
+could be raised to prevent him, he had emptied the contents of the
+carpetbag upon the table.
+
+For a moment his life was in jeopardy. One or two men sprang to their
+feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a suggestion to
+"throw him from the window" was only overridden by a gesture from the
+Judge. Tennessee laughed. And apparently oblivious of the excitement,
+Tennessee's Partner improved the opportunity to mop his face again with
+his handkerchief.
+
+When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the use
+of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense could not be
+condoned by money, his face took a more serious and sanguinary hue,
+and those who were nearest to him noticed that his rough hand trembled
+slightly on the table. He hesitated a moment as he slowly returned the
+gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not yet entirely caught the elevated
+sense of justice which swayed the tribunal, and was perplexed with the
+belief that he had not offered enough. Then he turned to the Judge, and
+saying, "This yer is a lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner,"
+he bowed to the jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him
+back. "If you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it
+now." For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
+strange advocate met. Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and,
+saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand. Tennessee's Partner took
+it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was passin' to see
+how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively fall, and adding that
+it was a warm night, again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and
+without another word withdrew.
+
+The two men never again met each other alive. For the unparalleled
+insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted, weak,
+or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the mind of that
+mythical personage any wavering determination of Tennessee's fate; and
+at the break of day he was marched, closely guarded, to meet it at the
+top of Marley's Hill.
+
+How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
+perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly reported,
+with the addition of a warning moral and example to all future
+evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was present, and
+to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the reader. But the beauty
+of that midsummer morning, the blessed amity of earth and air and sky,
+the awakened life of the free woods and hills, the joyous renewal and
+promise of Nature, and above all, the infinite Serenity that thrilled
+through each, was not reported, as not being a part of the social
+lesson. And yet, when the weak and foolish deed was done, and a life,
+with its possibilities and responsibilities, had passed out of the
+misshapen thing that dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the
+flowers bloomed, the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the
+RED DOG CLARION was right.
+
+Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the ominous
+tree. But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn to the singular
+appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at the side of the road.
+As they approached, they at once recognized the venerable "Jenny" and
+the two-wheeled cart as the property of Tennessee's Partner--used by him
+in carrying dirt from his claim; and a few paces distant the owner
+of the equipage himself, sitting under a buckeye tree, wiping the
+perspiration from his glowing face. In answer to an inquiry, he said he
+had come for the body of the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the
+committee." He didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait." He
+was not working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the
+"diseased," he would take him. "Ef thar is any present," he added, in
+his simple, serious way, "as would care to jine in the fun'l, they
+kin come." Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have already
+intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar--perhaps it was from something even
+better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers accepted the invitation
+at once.
+
+It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands of
+his Partner. As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed that
+it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a section of
+sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of pine. The cart was
+further decorated with slips of willow, and made fragrant with buckeye
+blossoms. When the body was deposited in the box, Tennessee's Partner
+drew over it a piece of tarred canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow
+seat in front, with his feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey
+forward. The equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which
+was habitual with "Jenny" even under less solemn circumstances. The
+men--half curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled
+along beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the
+homely catafalque. But, whether from the narrowing of the road or some
+present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company fell to the
+rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming the external show
+of a formal procession. Jack Folinsbee, who had at the outset played a
+funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary trombone, desisted, from
+a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not having, perhaps, your true
+humorist's capacity to be content with the enjoyment of his own fun.
+
+The way led through Grizzly Canyon--by this time clothed in funereal
+drapery and shadows. The redwoods, burying their moccasined feet in
+the red soil, stood in Indian file along the track, trailing an uncouth
+benediction from their bending boughs upon the passing bier. A hare,
+surprised into helpless inactivity, sat upright and pulsating in the
+ferns by the roadside as the cortege went by. Squirrels hastened to gain
+a secure outlook from higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their
+wings, fluttered before them like outriders, until the outskirts of
+Sandy Bar were reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
+
+Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
+cheerful place. The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely outlines,
+the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building of the
+California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of decay
+superadded. A few paces from the cabin there was a rough enclosure,
+which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's matrimonial felicity
+had been used as a garden, but was now overgrown with fern. As we
+approached it we were surprised to find that what we had taken for a
+recent attempt at cultivation was the broken soil about an open grave.
+
+The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers of
+assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had displayed
+throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin on his back and
+deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave. He then nailed down
+the board which served as a lid; and mounting the little mound of
+earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly mopped his face with his
+handkerchief. This the crowd felt was a preliminary to speech; and they
+disposed themselves variously on stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.
+
+"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, "has been running free
+all day, what's the natural thing for him to do? Why, to come home. And
+if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do?
+Why, bring him home! And here's Tennessee has been running free, and we
+brings him home from his wandering." He paused, and picked up a fragment
+of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't
+the first time that I've packed him on my back, as you see'd me now.
+It ain't the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he
+couldn't help himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have
+waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home,
+when he couldn't speak, and didn't know me. And now that it's the last
+time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--"you
+see it's sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen," he added,
+abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the fun'l's over; and my
+thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for your trouble."
+
+Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the grave,
+turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments' hesitation
+gradually withdrew. As they crossed the little ridge that hid Sandy
+Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they could see Tennessee's
+Partner, his work done, sitting upon the grave, his shovel between his
+knees, and his face buried in his red bandanna handkerchief. But it was
+argued by others that you couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief
+at that distance; and this point remained undecided.
+
+
+In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
+Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten. A secret investigation had
+cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a
+suspicion of his general sanity. Sandy Bar made a point of calling on
+him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses. But from
+that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline;
+and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were
+beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee's grave, he took
+to his bed. One night, when the pines beside the cabin were swaying in
+the storm, and trailing their slender fingers over the roof, and the
+roar and rush of the swollen river were heard below, Tennessee's
+Partner lifted his head from the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for
+Tennessee; I must put 'Jinny' in the cart"; and would have risen from
+his bed but for the restraint of his attendant. Struggling, he still
+pursued his singular fancy: "There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old
+girl. How dark it is! Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,
+old gal. Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down right
+in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill.
+Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--all by himself,
+sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!"
+
+And so they met.
+
+
+
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+
+Sandy was very drunk. He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty much
+the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before. How long
+he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't care; how long
+he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite and unconsidered.
+A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical condition, suffused and
+saturated his moral being.
+
+The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in particular,
+was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red Gulch to
+attract attention. Earlier in the day some local satirist had erected a
+temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the inscription, "Effects
+of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods," with a hand pointing to
+McCorkle's saloon. But this, I imagine, was, like most local satire,
+personal; and was a reflection upon the unfairness of the process
+rather than a commentary upon the impropriety of the result. With this
+facetious exception, Sandy had been undisturbed. A wandering mule,
+released from his pack, had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and
+sniffed curiously at the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep
+sympathy which the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty
+boots, and curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one
+eye in the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
+and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside him.
+
+Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around until
+they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open meadow with
+gigantic parallels of black and yellow. Little puffs of red dust, lifted
+by the plunging hoofs of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon
+the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred
+not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other
+philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.
+
+"Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock that she had just
+dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
+afternoon walk. Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on the
+azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking her
+way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little shivers of
+disgust and some feline circumlocution. And then she came suddenly upon
+Sandy!
+
+Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex. But when she
+had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became overbold, and
+halted for a moment--at least six feet from this prostrate monster--with
+her white skirts gathered in her hand, ready for flight. But neither
+sound nor motion came from the bush. With one little foot she then
+overturned the satirical headboard, and muttered "Beasts!"--an epithet
+which probably, at that moment, conveniently classified in her mind the
+entire male population of Red Gulch. For Miss Mary, being possessed of
+certain rigid notions of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated
+the demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so justly
+celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a newcomer, perhaps
+fairly earned the reputation of being "stuck-up."
+
+As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
+heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy temperature,
+and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side. To pick it up and to
+place it over his face was a work requiring some courage, particularly
+as his eyes were open. Yet she did it, and made good her retreat. But
+she was somewhat concerned, on looking back, to see that the hat was
+removed, and that Sandy was sitting up and saying something.
+
+The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was satisfied
+that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful; that from
+childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no people but
+condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and that his right
+to dispense with them when he pleased was inalienable. This was the
+statement of his inner consciousness. Unfortunately, its outward
+expression was vague, being limited to a repetition of the following
+formula--"Su'shine all ri'! Wasser maar, eh? Wass up, su'shine?"
+
+Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of
+distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
+
+"Wass up? Wasser maar?" continued Sandy, in a very high key.
+
+"Get up, you horrid man!" said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed; "get
+up, and go home."
+
+Sandy staggered to his feet. He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
+trembled. He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
+
+"Wass I go home for?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
+
+"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person with
+great disfavor.
+
+To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and vest,
+threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging wildly
+forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of the river.
+
+"Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and then,
+with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse and locked
+herself in.
+
+That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the blacksmith's
+wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her husband ever got
+drunk. "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger, reflectively, "let's see: Abner
+hasn't been tight since last 'lection." Miss Mary would have liked to
+ask if he preferred lying in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold
+bath would have hurt him; but this would have involved an explanation,
+which she did not then care to give. So she contented herself with
+opening her gray eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs. Stidger--a fine
+specimen of Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject
+altogether. The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in Boston:
+"I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community the least
+objectionable. I refer, my dear, to the men, of course. I do not know
+anything that could make the women tolerable."
+
+In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except that
+her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously, another
+direction. She noticed, however, that every morning a fresh cluster of
+azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her desk. This was not
+strange, as her little flock were aware of her fondness for flowers, and
+invariably kept her desk bright with anemones, syringas, and lupines;
+but, on questioning them, they one and all professed ignorance of the
+azaleas. A few days later, Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest
+to the window, was suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous
+laughter that threatened the discipline of the school. All that Miss
+Mary could get from him was, that someone had been "looking in the
+winder." Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle
+with the intruder. As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came
+plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and inexpressibly
+sheepish and guilty-looking.
+
+These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of, in
+her present humor. But it was somewhat confusing to observe, also,
+that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation, was
+amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-colored,
+silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of barber's razor
+or Delilah's shears. So that the cutting speech which quivered on
+her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she contented herself with
+receiving his stammering apology with supercilious eyelids and the
+gathered skirts of uncontamination. When she re-entered the schoolroom,
+her eyes fell upon the azaleas with a new sense of revelation. And
+then she laughed, and the little people all laughed, and they were all
+unconsciously very happy.
+
+It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged boys
+came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of water,
+which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that Miss Mary
+compassionately seized the pail and started for the spring herself. At
+the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path, and a blue-shirted arm
+dexterously but gently relieved her of her burden. Miss Mary was both
+embarrassed and angry. "If you carried more of that for yourself," she
+said, spitefully, to the blue arm, without deigning to raise her lashes
+to its owner, "you'd do better." In the submissive silence that followed
+she regretted the speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that
+he stumbled. Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which
+Miss Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.
+The next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
+mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.
+
+Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
+"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in the
+newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box seat to
+the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention, on the ground
+that he had a habit of "cussin' on upgrades," and gave her half the
+coach to herself. Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having once silently ridden
+with her in the same coach, afterward threw a decanter at the head of a
+confederate for mentioning her name in a barroom. The overdressed mother
+of a pupil whose paternity was doubtful had often lingered near this
+astute Vestal's temple, never daring to enter its sacred precincts, but
+content to worship the priestess from afar.
+
+With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue skies,
+glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights passed over Red
+Gulch. Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the sedate and proper woods.
+Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger, that the balsamic odors of
+the firs "did her chest good," for certainly her slight cough was less
+frequent and her step was firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending
+lesson which the patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful
+or listless ears. And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill,
+and took the children with her. Away from the dusty road, the straggling
+shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless engines, the cheap
+finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of paint and colored glass,
+and the thin veneering which barbarism takes upon itself in such
+localities--what infinite relief was theirs! The last heap of ragged
+rock and clay passed, the last unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting
+woods opened their long files to receive them! How the children--perhaps
+because they had not yet grown quite away from the breast of the
+bounteous Mother--threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with
+uncouth caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary
+herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the purity of
+spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran like a crested
+quail at the head of her brood until, romping, laughing, and panting,
+with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat hanging by a knotted ribbon
+from her throat, she came suddenly and violently, in the heart of the
+forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!
+
+The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that ensued
+need not be indicated here. It would seem, however, that Miss Mary had
+already established some acquaintance with this ex-drunkard. Enough that
+he was soon accepted as one of the party; that the children, with that
+quick intelligence which Providence gives the helpless, recognized a
+friend, and played with his blond beard and long silken mustache, and
+took other liberties--as the helpless are apt to do. And when he had
+built a fire against a tree, and had shown them other mysteries of
+woodcraft, their admiration knew no bounds. At the close of two such
+foolish, idle, happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the
+schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the sloping
+hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very much the same
+attitude as he had lain when first they met. Nor was the similitude
+greatly forced. The weakness of an easy, sensuous nature that had found
+a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be feared was now finding an
+equal intoxication in love.
+
+I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself. I know that he
+longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a savage,
+or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this sallow-faced,
+gray-eyed schoolmistress. As I should like to present him in a heroic
+attitude, I stay my hand with great difficulty at this moment, being
+only withheld from introducing such an episode by a strong conviction
+that it does not usually occur at such times. And I trust that my
+fairest reader, who remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some
+uninteresting stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who
+rescues, will forgive the omission.
+
+So they sat there, undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead and
+the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow below.
+What they said matters little. What they thought--which might have been
+interesting--did not transpire. The woodpeckers only learned how
+Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's house, to come to
+California, for the sake of health and independence; how Sandy was an
+orphan, too; how he came to California for excitement; how he had lived
+a wild life, and how he was trying to reform; and other details, which,
+from a woodpecker's viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and
+a waste of time. But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and
+when the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
+the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at the
+outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of her weary
+life.
+
+As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of Red
+Gulch--to use a local euphuism--"dried up" also. In another day Miss
+Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch would know her
+no more. She was seated alone in the schoolhouse, her cheek resting on
+her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those daydreams in which Miss
+Mary--I fear to the danger of school discipline--was lately in the habit
+of indulging. Her lap was full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland
+memories. She was so preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a
+gentle tapping at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
+remembrance of far-off woodpeckers. When at last it asserted itself more
+distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and opened the door.
+On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion and audacity of whose
+dress were in singular contrast to her timid, irresolute bearing.
+
+Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her anonymous
+pupil. Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was only fastidious;
+but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-unconsciously settled
+her white cuffs and collar, and gathered closer her own chaste skirts.
+It was, perhaps, for this reason that the embarrassed stranger, after a
+moment's hesitation, left her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the
+dust beside the door, and then sat down at the farther end of a long
+bench. Her voice was husky as she began:
+
+"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
+couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to my
+Tommy."
+
+Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the poor
+attention she could give him.
+
+"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
+through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war paint,"
+and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench nearer the
+schoolmistress. "I thank you, miss, for that! and if I am his mother,
+there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than him. And if I ain't
+much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer, angeler teacher lives
+than he's got."
+
+Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
+shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
+
+"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know," she
+went on, hurriedly. "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in broad day, to
+do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me, miss--not for me,
+but for the darling boy."
+
+Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting her
+lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her knees,
+she went on, in a low voice:
+
+"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and I
+ain't the proper person to bring him up. I thought some, last year, of
+sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked of bringing
+a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I knew it was all
+right, and I could keep my boy a little longer. And O, miss, he loves
+you so much; and if you could hear him talk about you, in his pretty
+way, and if he could ask you what I ask you now, you couldn't refuse
+him.
+
+"It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
+strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should
+take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
+gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I ain't
+goin' to cry about that. For I come to ask you to take my Tommy--God
+bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--to--take him
+with you."
+
+She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
+fallen on her knees beside her.
+
+"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his. Put him in some good
+school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to forget his
+mother. Do with him what you like. The worst you can do will be kindness
+to what he will learn with me. Only take him out of this wicked life,
+this cruel place, this home of shame and sorrow. You will; I know you
+will--won't you? You will--you must not, you cannot say no! You will
+make him as pure, as gentle as yourself; and when he has grown up, you
+will tell him his father's name--the name that hasn't passed my lips
+for years--the name of Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy! Miss
+Mary!--do not take your hand away! Miss Mary, speak to me! You will take
+my boy? Do not put your face from me. I know it ought not to look on
+such as me. Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!"
+
+Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her way to
+the open window. She stood there, leaning against the casement, her
+eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading from the western sky.
+There was still some of its light on her pure young forehead, on her
+white collar, on her clasped white hands, but all fading slowly away.
+The suppliant had dragged herself, still on her knees, beside her.
+
+"I know it takes time to consider. I will wait here all night; but I
+cannot go until you speak. Do not deny me now. You will!--I see it in
+your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams. I see it in
+your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!"
+
+The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with something
+of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out. The sun had set on Red
+Gulch. In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's voice sounded pleasantly.
+
+"I will take the boy. Send him to me tonight."
+
+The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips. She
+would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she dared not.
+She rose to her feet.
+
+"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary, suddenly.
+
+"No, nor cares. He has never even seen the child to know it."
+
+"Go to him at once--tonight--now! Tell him what you have done. Tell him
+I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--see--the child
+again. Wherever it may be, he must not come; wherever I may take it, he
+must not follow! There, go now, please--I'm weary, and--have much yet to
+do!"
+
+They walked together to the door. On the threshold the woman turned.
+
+"Good night."
+
+She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet. But at the same moment the
+young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her own pure
+breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked the door.
+
+
+It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane Bill
+took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for the
+schoolmistress was one of his passengers. As he entered the highroad, in
+obedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he suddenly reined up
+his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy hopped out at the command of
+Miss Mary. "Not that bush, Tommy--the next."
+
+Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a tall
+azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.
+
+"All right now?"
+
+"All right."
+
+And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
+
+
+
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+
+A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and boot
+heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it evident that
+one of the inside passengers was a woman. A disposition on the part
+of loungers at the stations to congregate before the window, and some
+concern in regard to the appearance of coats, hats, and collars, further
+indicated that she was lovely. All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the
+box seat, noted with the smile of cynical philosophy. Not that he
+depreciated the sex, but that he recognized therein a deceitful element,
+the pursuit of which sometimes drew mankind away from the equally
+uncertain blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr.
+Hamlin was a professional exponent.
+
+So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped down,
+he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil was
+fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and grave
+indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing to good
+breeding. With his closely buttoned figure and self-contained air he
+was a marked contrast to the other passengers, with their feverish
+restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even Bill Masters, a graduate
+of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his overflowing vitality, his
+intense appreciation of lawlessness and barbarism, and his mouth filled
+with crackers and cheese, I fear cut but an unromantic figure beside
+this lonely calculator of chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric
+gravity.
+
+The driver called "All aboard!" and Mr. Hamlin returned to the coach.
+His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the level of the
+open window, when, at the same moment, what appeared to him to be the
+finest eyes in the world suddenly met his. He quietly dropped down
+again, addressed a few words to one of the inside passengers, effected
+an exchange of seats, and as quietly took his place inside. Mr. Hamlin
+never allowed his philosophy to interfere with decisive and prompt
+action.
+
+I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the other
+passengers--particularly those who were making themselves most agreeable
+to the lady. One of them leaned forward, and apparently conveyed to
+her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's profession in a single epithet.
+Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or whether he recognized in the informant
+a distinguished jurist from whom, but a few evenings before, he had won
+several thousand dollars, I cannot say. His colorless face betrayed no
+sign; his black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the
+legal gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of
+his neighbor. An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from his
+maternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling wheels
+rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the stage drew up at
+the International Hotel for dinner. The legal gentleman and a member of
+Congress leaped out, and stood ready to assist the descending goddess,
+while Colonel Starbottle, of Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and
+shawl. In this multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion
+and delay. Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach,
+took the lady's hand--with that decision and positiveness which a
+hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire--and in an instant had
+dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again lifted her
+to the platform. An audible chuckle on the box, I fear, came from
+that other cynic, "Yuba Bill," the driver. "Look keerfully arter that
+baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with affected concern, as he
+looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily bringing up the rear of the
+triumphant procession to the waiting-room.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner. His horse was already saddled, and
+awaiting him. He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill, and
+out into the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one leaving
+pleasant fancy behind him. The inmates of dusty cabins by the roadside
+shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after him, recognizing the
+man by his horse, and speculating what "was up with Comanche Jack." Yet
+much of this interest centered in the horse, in a community where
+the time made by "French Pete's" mare in his run from the Sheriff of
+Calaveras eclipsed all concern in the ultimate fate of that worthy.
+
+The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself. He
+checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used as a
+cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly from
+his fingers. As he rode on, the character of the landscape changed and
+became more pastoral. Openings in groves of pine and sycamore disclosed
+some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering vine trailed over the
+porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her cradled babe under the roses
+of another. A little farther on Mr. Hamlin came upon some barelegged
+children wading in the willowy creek, and so wrought upon them with a
+badinage peculiar to himself that they were emboldened to climb up
+his horse's legs and over his saddle, until he was fain to develop an
+exaggerated ferocity of demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some
+kisses and coin. And then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all
+signs of habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so
+singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender, that I
+wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen. Mr. Hamlin's voice was not
+cultivated; the subject of his song was some sentimental lunacy borrowed
+from the Negro minstrels; but there thrilled through all some occult
+quality of tone and expression that was unspeakably touching. Indeed, it
+was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of
+cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before
+him through the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a
+way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow hawk, fresh from
+his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit,
+stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority of
+man. With a superior predatory capacity, HE couldn't sing.
+
+But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and at his
+former pace. Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded hillsides, stumps,
+and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of woodland and ravine, and
+indicated his approach to civilization. Then a church steeple came in
+sight, and he knew that he had reached home. In a few moments he was
+clattering down the single narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic
+ruin of races, ditches, and tailings at the foot of the hill, and
+dismounted before the gilded windows of the "Magnolia" saloon. Passing
+through the long barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a
+dark passage, opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in
+a dimly lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the
+locality, showed signs of abuse. The inlaid center table was overlaid
+with stained disks that were not contemplated in the original design.
+The embroidered armchairs were discolored, and the green velvet lounge,
+on which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was soiled at the foot with the red
+soil of Wingdam.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage. He lay still, looking at a highly
+colored painting above him representing a young creature of opulent
+charms. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that he had never
+seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he should, he would not,
+probably, fall in love with her. Perhaps he was thinking of another
+style of beauty. But just then someone knocked at the door. Without
+rising, he pulled a cord that apparently shot back a bolt, for the door
+swung open, and a man entered.
+
+The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust--a vigor not borne out in
+the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and disfigured by
+dissipation. He appeared to be also under the influence of liquor, for
+he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said, "I thought Kate was here,"
+stammered, and seemed confused and embarrassed.
+
+Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam
+coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.
+
+"You didn't come up on the stage," continued the newcomer, "did you?"
+
+"No," replied Hamlin; "I left it at Scott's Ferry. It isn't due for half
+an hour yet. But how's luck, Brown?"
+
+"Damn bad," said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of weak
+despair; "I'm cleaned out again, Jack," he continued, in a whining tone
+that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure, "can't you help me
+with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup? You see I've got to send money
+home to the old woman, and--you've won twenty times that amount from
+me."
+
+The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack overlooked
+it, and handed the sum to his visitor. "The old-woman business is about
+played out, Brown," he added, by way of commentary; "why don't you say
+you want to buck agin' faro? You know you ain't married!"
+
+"Fact, sir," said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere contact
+of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some dignity to his
+frame. "I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if I do say it--in the
+States. It's three year since I've seen her, and a year since I've writ
+to her. When things is about straight, and we get down to the lead, I'm
+going to send for her."
+
+"And Kate?" queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.
+
+Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
+confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but poorly
+carried out, and said:
+
+"Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know. But
+come, what do you say to a little game? Give us a show to double this
+hundred."
+
+Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend. Perhaps he knew that
+the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred that it should
+flow back into his own coffers rather than any other. He nodded his
+head, and drew his chair toward the table. At the same moment there came
+a rap upon the door.
+
+"It's Kate," said Mr. Brown.
+
+Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened. But, for the
+first time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved and
+abashed, and for the first time in his life the hot blood crimsoned his
+colorless cheeks to his forehead. For before him stood the lady he had
+lifted from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown--dropping his cards with a
+hysterical laugh--greeted as:
+
+"My old woman, by thunder!"
+
+They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her
+husband. I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the story.
+And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head of "Touching
+Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching incidents, peculiar
+to California life, occurred last week in our city. The wife of one of
+Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the effete civilization of the East
+and its inhospitable climate, resolved to join her noble husband
+upon these golden shores. Without informing him of her intention,
+she undertook the long journey, and arrived last week. The joy of the
+husband may be easier imagined than described. The meeting is said
+to have been indescribably affecting. We trust her example may be
+followed."
+
+
+Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful
+speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily
+improved. He bought out his partners in the "Nip and Tuck" lead, with
+money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two after his
+wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's theory that Brown
+had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have been furnished by Mr.
+Jack Hamlin. He built and furnished the "Wingdam House," which pretty
+Mrs. Brown's great popularity kept overflowing with guests. He was
+elected to the Assembly, and gave largess to churches. A street in
+Wingdam was named in his honor.
+
+Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and fortunate,
+he grew pale, thin, and anxious. As his wife's popularity increased,
+he became fretful and impatient. The most uxorious of husbands, he
+was absurdly jealous. If he did not interfere with his wife's social
+liberty, it was because it was maliciously whispered that his first and
+only attempt was met by an outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him
+into silence. Much of this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex
+whom she had supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which,
+like most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,
+whether of masculine force or feminine beauty. It should be remembered,
+too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had been the
+unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps not more
+ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished an older Greek
+democracy. I think that Brown was dimly conscious of this. But his only
+confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX reputation naturally precluded
+any open intimacy with the family, and whose visits were infrequent.
+
+It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,
+large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh incense
+of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another incense
+which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent. Beside her sat Colonel
+Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a later addition to her court in
+the shape of a foreign tourist. She was in good spirits.
+
+"What do you see down the road?" inquired the gallant Colonel, who had
+been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's attention
+was diverted.
+
+"Dust," said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh. "Only Sister Anne's 'flock of
+sheep.'"
+
+The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther back
+than last week's paper, took a more practical view. "It ain't sheep," he
+continued; "it's a horseman. Judge, ain't that Jack Hamlin's gray?"
+
+But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was
+growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the parlor.
+
+Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after dinner.
+Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's companions; perhaps,
+like other weak natures, he found pleasure in the exercise of absolute
+power over inferior animals. He had a certain gratification in the
+training of a chestnut mare, whom he could beat or caress as pleased
+him, which he couldn't do with Mrs. Brown. It was here that he
+recognized a certain gray horse which had just come in, and, looking
+a little farther on, found his rider. Brown's greeting was cordial and
+hearty, Mr. Hamlin's somewhat restrained. But at Brown's urgent request,
+he followed him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to
+a small room looking out upon the stable yard. It was plainly furnished
+with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.
+
+"This yer's my home, Jack," said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw himself
+upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair. "Her room's t'other
+end of the hall. It's more'n six months since we've lived together, or
+met, except at meals. It's mighty rough papers on the head of the house,
+ain't it?" he said, with a forced laugh. "But I'm glad to see you,
+Jack, damn glad," and he reached from the bed, and again shook the
+unresponsive hand of Jack Hamlin.
+
+"I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable; though,
+for the matter of that, it's all round town. Don't strike a light. We
+can talk here in the moonshine. Put up your feet on that winder, and sit
+here beside me. Thar's whisky in that jug."
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information. Brown of Calaveras
+turned his face to the wall and continued:
+
+"If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind. But it's loving her,
+and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate, and no one to put
+down the brake; that's what gits me! But I'm glad to see ye, Jack, damn
+glad."
+
+In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his
+companion's hand again. He would have detained it, but Jack slipped it
+into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked, listlessly, "How long
+has this been going on?"
+
+"Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
+Magnolia. I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't know how
+much I loved her till then. And she hasn't been the same woman since.
+
+"But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about, and
+I'm glad you've come. It ain't that she doesn't love me any more; it
+ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along, for, perhaps, I
+staked her love and lost it, as I did everything else at the Magnolia;
+and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some women, and thar ain't no great
+harm done, 'cept to the fools. But, Jack, I think--I think she loves
+somebody else. Don't move, Jack; don't move; if your pistol hurts ye,
+take it off.
+
+"It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and lonesome,
+and kinder nervous and scared-like. And sometimes I've ketched her
+lookin' at me sort of timid and pitying. And she writes to somebody.
+And for the last week she's been gathering her own things--trinkets,
+and furbelows, and jew'lry--and, Jack, I think she's goin' off. I could
+stand all but that. To have her steal away like a thief--" He put his
+face downward to the pillow, and for a few moments there was no sound
+but the ticking of a clock on the mantel. Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and
+moved to the open window. The moon no longer shone into the room, and
+the bed and its occupant were in shadow. "What shall I do, Jack?" said
+the voice from the darkness.
+
+The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: "Spot the
+man, and kill him on sight."
+
+"But, Jack?"
+
+"He's took the risk!"
+
+"But will that bring HER back?"
+
+Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.
+
+"Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table. It's a
+comfort to see ye, if nothin' else."
+
+Jack hesitated, and then complied. He drew a pack of cards from his
+pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed. But Brown's face was
+turned to the wall. When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the cards, he cut them,
+and dealt one card on the opposite side of the table and toward the bed,
+and another on his side of the table for himself. The first was a deuce,
+his own card, a king. He then shuffled and cut again. This time "dummy"
+had a queen, and himself a four-spot. Jack brightened up for the third
+deal. It brought his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again. "Two
+out of three," said Jack, audibly.
+
+"What's that, Jack?" said Brown.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and his
+imaginary opponent aces. The force of habit is sometimes confusing.
+
+Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the
+anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown slept.
+Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on the town
+of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully--its harsh outlines softened and
+subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in the moonlight that
+flowed over all. In the hush he could hear the gurgling of water in the
+ditches, and the sighing of the pines beyond the hill. Then he looked
+up at the firmament, and as he did so a star shot across the twinkling
+field. Presently another, and then another. The phenomenon suggested to
+Mr. Hamlin a fresh augury. If in another fifteen minutes another star
+should fall--He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the
+phenomenon was not repeated.
+
+The clock struck two, and Brown still slept. Mr. Hamlin approached the
+table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the flickering
+candlelight. It contained only a single line, written in pencil, in a
+woman's hand:
+
+"Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three."
+
+The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke. "Are you there Jack?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't go yet. I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times. I thought
+that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the parson, Jack,
+was--who do you think?--you!"
+
+The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed--the paper still in
+his hand.
+
+"It's a good sign, ain't it?" queried Brown.
+
+"I reckon. Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?"
+
+The "old man," thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the
+assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.
+
+"Smoke?"
+
+Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.
+
+"Light?"
+
+Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for his
+companion. He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and dropped
+the fragment--a fiery star--from the open window. He watched it as it
+fell, and then returned to his friend.
+
+"Old man," he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, "in ten
+minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark. We won't see each
+other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice: sell out all you've
+got, take your wife with you, and quit the country. It ain't no place
+for you, nor her. Tell her she must go; make her go, if she won't.
+Don't whine because you can't be a saint, and she ain't an angel. Be a
+man--and treat her like a woman. Don't be a damn fool. Good-by."
+
+He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like
+a deer. At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler and
+backed him against the wall. "Saddle my horse in two minutes, or I'll--"
+The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.
+
+"The missis said you was to have the buggy," stammered the man.
+
+"Damn the buggy!"
+
+The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded
+hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.
+
+"Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?" said the man, who, like all his class,
+admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really concerned in his
+welfare.
+
+"Stand aside!"
+
+The man fell back. With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was into the
+road. In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes, he was but a
+moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a star just loosed
+from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.
+
+But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles away,
+heard a voice, pure as a skylark's, singing afield. They who were asleep
+turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and love and olden
+days. Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers, already at work, ceased
+their labors and leaned upon their picks, to listen to a romantic
+vagabond ambling away against the rosy sunrise.
+
+
+
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+
+When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
+was patent. Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools, and
+tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward the open
+bay, were all hard facts. So were the few green tussocks, with their
+scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant dampness. And if
+you choose to indulge your fancy--although the flat monotony of the
+Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line of scattered drift gave
+an unpleasant consciousness of the spent waters, and made the dead
+certainty of the returning tide a gloomy reflection which no present
+sunshine could dissipate. The greener meadowland seemed oppressed with
+this idea, and made no positive attempt at vegetation until the work of
+reclamation should be complete. In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry
+bushes one might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled
+and soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.
+
+The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
+depressing. The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
+curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
+teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and syllabled
+complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power of written
+expression. Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls at all cheerful
+and inspiring. Certainly not the blue heron standing mid-leg deep in the
+water, obviously catching cold in a reckless disregard of wet feet
+and consequences; nor the mournful curlew, the dejected plover, or
+the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit to join him in his suicidal
+contemplation; nor the impassive kingfisher--an ornithological
+Marius--reviewing the desolate expanse; nor the black raven that went to
+and fro over the face of the marsh continually, but evidently couldn't
+make up his mind whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited
+in the reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
+give a definite answer. On the contrary, it was evident at a glance that
+the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on the birds, and
+that the season of migration was looked forward to with a feeling
+of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of extravagant
+anticipation by the callow, brood. But if Dedlow Marsh was cheerless
+at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it when the tide was
+strong and full. When the damp air blew chilly over the cold, glittering
+expanse, and came to the faces of those who looked seaward like another
+tide; when a steel-like glint marked the low hollows and the sinuous
+line of slough; when the great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees
+arose again, and went forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings,
+drifting hither and thither, but getting no farther toward any goal
+at the falling tide or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the
+legend; when the glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor
+furrow on the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and
+shut out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
+when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way, started
+at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the boat's keel, or
+shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around like the floating hair
+of a corpse, and knew by these signs that they were lost upon Dedlow
+Marsh and must make a night of it, and a gloomy one at that--then you
+might know something of Dedlow Marsh at high water.
+
+Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never failed
+to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon Dedlow Marsh.
+Although the event was briefly recorded in the county paper, I had the
+story, in all its eloquent detail, from the lips of the principal actor.
+I cannot hope to catch the varying emphasis and peculiar coloring of
+feminine delineation, for my narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give
+at least its substance.
+
+She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-sized
+river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary formed by
+the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which constituted the
+southwestern boundary of a noble bay. The house in which she lived was
+a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few feet by stout piles, and
+was three miles distant from the settlements upon the river. Her husband
+was a logger--a profitable business in a county where the principal
+occupation was the manufacture of lumber.
+
+It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb of a
+high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to the lower
+end of the bay. As she stood by the door of the little cabin when the
+voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the southeastern sky, and
+she remembered hearing her husband say to his companions that they must
+endeavor to complete their voyage before the coming of the southwesterly
+gale which he saw brewing. And that night it began to storm and blow
+harder than she had ever before experienced, and some great trees fell
+in the forest by the river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.
+
+But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew that
+one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong hand, and
+that had he feared for her he would not have left her. This, and her
+domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly baby, helped to keep
+her mind from dwelling on the weather, except, of course, to hope that
+he was safely harbored with the logs at Utopia in the dreary distance.
+But she noticed that day, when she went out to feed the chickens and
+look after the cow, that the tide was up to the little fence of their
+garden-patch, and the roar of the surf on the south beach, though miles
+away, she could hear distinctly. And she began to think that she would
+like to have someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that
+if it had not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable,
+she would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
+nearest neighbor. But then, you see, he might have returned in the
+storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long exposure
+for baby, who was croupy and ailing.
+
+But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like sleeping
+or even lying down. The storm had somewhat abated, but she still "sat
+and sat," and even tried to read. I don't know whether it was a Bible or
+some profane magazine that this poor woman read, but most probably the
+latter, for the words all ran together and made such sad nonsense that
+she was forced at last to put the book down and turn to that dearer
+volume which lay before her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf
+as yet unsoiled, and try to look forward to its mysterious future. And,
+rocking the cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still
+was wide-awake as ever.
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her clothes.
+How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke with a dreadful
+choking in her throat, and found herself standing, trembling all over,
+in the middle of the room, with her baby clasped to her breast, and she
+was "saying something." The baby cried and sobbed, and she walked up
+and down trying to hush it when she heard a scratching at the door. She
+opened it fearfully, and was glad to see it was only old Pete, their
+dog, who crawled, dripping with water, into the room. She would like to
+have looked out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to
+see how things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
+could hardly hold it. Then she sat down a little while, and then walked
+up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a little while.
+Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she thought she heard
+once or twice something scrape slowly against the clapboards, like the
+scraping of branches. Then there was a little gurgling sound, "like the
+baby made when it was swallowing"; then something went "click-click"
+and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up in bed. When she did so she was
+attracted by something else that seemed creeping from the back door
+toward the center of the room. It wasn't much wider than her little
+finger, but soon it swelled to the width of her hand, and began
+spreading all over the floor. It was water.
+
+She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing but
+water. She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw nothing
+but water. She ran to the side window, and throwing that open, she saw
+nothing but water. Then she remembered hearing her husband once say that
+there was no danger in the tide, for that fell regularly, and people
+could calculate on it, and that he would rather live near the bay than
+the river, whose banks might overflow at any time. But was it the tide?
+So she ran again to the back door, and threw out a stick of wood. It
+drifted away toward the bay. She scooped up some of the water and put it
+eagerly to her lips. It was fresh and sweet. It was the river, and not
+the tide!
+
+It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither faint
+nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his merciful
+hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful moment--that fear
+dropped from her like a garment, and her trembling ceased. It was then
+and thereafter that she never lost her self-command, through all the
+trials of that gloomy night.
+
+She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a table
+upon it and on that she put the cradle. The water on the floor
+was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice moved so
+perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet doors all flew
+open. Then she heard the same rasping and thumping against the wall,
+and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree, which had lain near
+the road at the upper end of the pasture, had floated down to the house.
+Luckily its long roots dragged in the soil and kept it from moving as
+rapidly as the current, for had it struck the house in its full career,
+even the strong nails and bolts in the piles could not have withstood
+the shock. The hound had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched
+near the roots shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her
+mind. She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about
+the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung
+again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
+leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining a
+footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots,
+she held in the other her moaning child. Then something cracked near the
+front porch, and the whole front of the house she had just quitted fell
+forward--just as cattle fall on their knees before they lie down--and at
+the same moment the great redwood tree swung round and drifted away with
+its living cargo into the black night.
+
+For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her crying
+babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the uncertainty of
+her situation, she still turned to look at the deserted and water-swept
+cabin. She remembered even then, and she wonders how foolish she was to
+think of it at that time, that she wished she had put on another dress
+and the baby's best clothes; and she kept praying that the house would
+be spared so that he, when he returned, would have something to come to,
+and it wouldn't be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what
+had become of her and baby? And at the thought she grew sick and faint.
+But she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
+long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half a
+revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water. The hound, who kept
+distracting her by running up and down the tree and howling, at last
+fell off at one of these collisions. He swam for some time beside her,
+and she tried to get the poor beast up on the tree, but he "acted silly"
+and wild, and at last she lost sight of him forever. Then she and her
+baby were left alone. The light which had burned for a few minutes
+in the deserted cabin was quenched suddenly. She could not then
+tell whither she was drifting. The outline of the white dunes on the
+peninsula showed dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a
+line with the river. It must be about slack water, and she had
+probably reached the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the
+overflowing waters of the river. Unless the tide fell soon, there was
+present danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to
+sea or crushed in the floating drift. That peril averted, if she were
+carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
+of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till daylight.
+Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from the river, and
+the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Then again it was only
+the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her heart. She found at about
+this time that she was so chilled and stiffened in her cramped position
+that she could scarcely move, and the baby cried so when she put it to
+her breast that she noticed the milk refused to flow; and she was so
+frightened at that, that she put her head under her shawl, and for the
+first time cried bitterly.
+
+When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind her, and
+she knew that her ark had again swung round. She dipped up the water to
+cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt as her tears. There
+was a relief, though, for by this sign she knew that she was drifting
+with the tide. It was then the wind went down, and the great and awful
+silence oppressed her. There was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed
+sides of the great trunk on which she rested, and around her all was
+black gloom and quiet. She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak,
+and to know that she had not lost her voice. She thought then--it was
+queer, but she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the
+night when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
+creation were blotted out from the world. She thought, too, of mariners
+clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to rafts, and
+beaten to death by the cruel sea. She tried to thank God that she was
+thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby, who had fallen into a
+fretful sleep. Suddenly, away to the southward, a great light lifted
+itself out of the gloom, and flashed and flickered, and flickered and
+flashed again. Her heart fluttered quickly against the baby's cold
+cheek. It was the lighthouse at the entrance of the bay. As she was yet
+wondering, the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and
+then seemed to lie quiet and still. She put out her hand and the current
+gurgled against it. The tree was aground, and, by the position of the
+light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the Dedlow Marsh.
+
+Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not been
+for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would have
+felt safe and relieved. Perhaps it was this which tended to make all her
+impressions mournful and gloomy. As the tide rapidly fell, a great flock
+of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and crying. Then the plover
+flew up and piped mournfully as they wheeled around the trunk, and at
+last fearlessly lit upon it like a gray cloud. Then the heron flew over
+and around her, shrieking and protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt
+legs only a few yards from her. But, strangest of all, a pretty white
+bird, larger than a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled
+around and around her. At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite
+over her shoulder. She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
+neck, and it never appeared to move. It stayed there so long that she
+thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to attract her
+attention. But when she did so, the child was so chilled and cold, and
+had such a blue look under the little lashes which it didn't raise at
+all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird flew away, and she fainted.
+
+Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much, after
+all, to any but herself. For when she recovered her senses it was bright
+sunlight, and dead low water. There was a confused noise of guttural
+voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an Indian "hushaby," and
+rocking herself from side to side before a fire built on the marsh,
+before which she, the recovered wife and mother, lay weak and weary. Her
+first thought was for her baby, and she was about to speak, when a young
+squaw, who must have been a mother herself, fathomed her thought and
+brought her the "mowitch," pale but living, in such a queer little
+willow cradle all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that
+she laughed and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw
+showed their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
+"Plenty get well, skeena mowitch," "wagee man come plenty soon," and she
+could have kissed their brown faces in her joy. And then she found that
+they had been gathering berries on the marsh in their queer, comical
+baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown fluttering on the tree from afar,
+and the old squaw couldn't resist the temptation of procuring a new
+garment, and came down and discovered the "wagee" woman and child. And
+of course she gave the garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and
+when HE came at last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older
+in his anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to
+the canoe. For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
+the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman was
+his wife. And at the next high tide he towed the tree away back home,
+although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another house, using the
+old tree for the foundation and props, and called it after her, "Mary's
+Ark!" But you may guess the next house was built above high-water mark.
+And that's all.
+
+Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the Dedlow
+Marsh. But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle over it at
+high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog, as I have,
+to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to appreciate duly the
+blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.
+
+
+
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+
+As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark night,
+a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger. Let me assure the
+reader that I have no ulterior design in making this assertion. A
+long course of light reading has forewarned me what every experienced
+intelligence must confidently look for from such a statement. The
+storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such obvious beginnings; who is
+to the expectant reader in danger of being robbed or half-murdered, or
+frightened by an escaped lunatic, or introduced to his ladylove for the
+first time, deserves to be detected. I am relieved to say that none of
+these things occurred to me. The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew
+no other banditti than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had
+not yet reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free
+will in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
+she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these depressing
+circumstances long enough to have made the slightest impression on me.
+
+I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on the
+vehicle. Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was visible on its
+roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion clung tenaciously to
+its wheels. I opened the door; the stage creaked easily, and in the
+gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned me, like ghostly hands, to come
+in now and have my sufferings out at once.
+
+I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which struck
+me as appalling and mysterious. A lounger on the steps of the hotel,
+who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected with the stage
+company, gravely descended, and walking toward the conveyance, tried
+the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated in the carriage, and
+returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor. Hardly had he resumed
+his position when another individual, equally disinterested, impassively
+walked down the steps, proceeded to the back of the stage, lifted it,
+expectorated carefully on the axle, and returned slowly and pensively to
+the hotel. A third spectator wearily disengaged himself from one of
+the Ionic columns of the portico and walked to the box, remained for a
+moment in serious and expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then
+returned to his column. There was something so weird in this baptism
+that I grew quite nervous.
+
+Perhaps I was out of spirits. A number of infinitesimal annoyances,
+winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk at the stage
+office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had not predisposed
+me to cheerfulness. The inmates of the Eureka House, from a social
+viewpoint, were not attractive. There was the prevailing opinion--so
+common to many honest people--that a serious style of deportment and
+conduct toward a stranger indicates high gentility and elevated station.
+Obeying this principle, all hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper,
+and general remark merged into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of
+several bad cases of diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam. When I left
+the dining-room, with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively
+on mustard and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door. A
+piano, harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to
+a diffident and uncertain touch. On the white wall the shadow of an
+old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and shadowy
+curls. "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the face is open
+disgrace.'" I heard no more. Dreading some susceptibility to sincere
+expression on the subject of female loveliness, I walked away, checking
+the compliment that otherwise might have risen unbidden to my lips, and
+have brought shame and sorrow to the household.
+
+It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me that
+I stood hesitatingly before the stage door. The driver, about to mount,
+was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the hotel. He had
+the wearied look which was the distinguishing expression of Wingdam.
+Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and receipted for, he took no
+further notice of me. I looked longingly at the box seat, but he did
+not respond to the appeal. I flung my carpetbag into the chasm, dived
+recklessly after it, and--before I was fairly seated--with a great
+sigh, a creaking of unwilling springs, complaining bolts, and harshly
+expostulating axle, we moved away. Rather the hotel door slipped behind,
+the sound of the piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved
+solemnly upon us.
+
+To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity
+that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely
+distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
+peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the
+open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that,
+leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the fragrant sigh
+of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon the highway we
+had ruthlessly disturbed. But in the darkness our progress, more the
+guidance of some mysterious instinct than any apparent volition of
+our own, gave an indefinable charm of security to our journey that a
+moment's hesitation or indecision on the part of the driver would have
+destroyed.
+
+I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that rest
+so often denied me in its crowded condition. It was a weak delusion.
+When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that the ordinary
+conveniences for making several people distinctly uncomfortable were
+distributed throughout my individual frame. At last, resting my arms
+on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic effort I became sufficiently
+composed to be aware of a more refined species of torture. The springs
+of the stage, rising and falling regularly, produced a rhythmical beat
+which began to absorb my attention painfully. Slowly this thumping
+merged into a senseless echo of the mysterious female of
+the hotel parlor, and shaped itself into this awful and
+benumbing axiom--"Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace.
+Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace." Inequalities of the road only
+quickened its utterance or drawled it to an exasperating length.
+
+It was of no use to consider the statement seriously. It was of no
+use to except to it indignantly. It was of no use to recall the many
+instances where praise to the face had redounded to the everlasting
+honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell sentimentally
+on modest genius and courage lifted up and strengthened by open
+commendation; of no use to except to the mysterious female, to picture
+her as rearing a thin-blooded generation on selfish and mechanically
+repeated axioms--all this failed to counteract the monotonous repetition
+of this sentence. There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was
+about to accept it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of
+darkness and necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some
+other annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
+moments. How quiet the driver was!
+
+Was there any driver? Had I any reason to suppose that he was not lying
+gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with blackened face
+who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither? The thing is perfectly
+feasible. And what is this fancy now being jolted out of me? A story?
+It's of no use to keep it back--particularly in this abysmal vehicle,
+and here it comes: I am a Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because
+the peerage is not so well known, and the country is better adapted to
+romantic incident--a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in
+the nobility. My name is something LIGNY. I am coming from Paris to my
+country seat at St. Germain. It is a dark night, and I fall asleep
+and tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
+angel. The carriage at last stops at the chateau. It is so dark that
+when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who holds the
+carriage door. But what of that?--PESTE! I am heavy with sleep. The same
+obscurity also hides the old familiar indecencies of the statues on the
+terrace; but there is a door, and it opens and shuts behind me smartly.
+Then I find myself in a trap, in the presence of the brigand who has
+quietly gagged poor Andre and conducted the carriage thither. There
+is nothing for me to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say,
+"PARBLEU!" draw my rapier, and die valorously! I am found a week or two
+after outside a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through
+my ruffled linen and my pockets stripped. No; on second thoughts, I
+am rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
+assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an intimate
+friend.
+
+Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing the
+driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. I
+could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky woods, relieving a
+lighter sky. A few stars widely spaced in this picture glimmered sadly.
+I noticed again the infinite depth of patient sorrow in their serene
+faces; and I hope that the vandal who first applied the flippant
+"twinkle" to them may not be driven melancholy-mad by their reproachful
+eyes. I noticed again the mystic charm of space that imparts a sense
+of individual solitude to each integer of the densest constellation,
+involving the smallest star with immeasurable loneliness. Something of
+this calm and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern.
+When I awoke the full moon was rising. Seen from my window, it had an
+indescribably unreal and theatrical effect. It was the full moon of
+NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so palpably to
+a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until the CASTA DIVA is
+sung--the "inconstant moon" that then and thereafter remains fixed in
+the heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated
+by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that
+improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills
+ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping
+springs essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of
+the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast
+improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond delusion.
+
+My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon. A familiar
+sound had assured me of his presence in the full possession of at least
+one of his most important functions. Frequent and full expectoration
+convinced me that his lips were as yet not sealed by the gag of
+highwaymen, and soothed my anxious ear. With this load lifted from my
+mind, and assisted by the mild presence of Diana, who left, as when
+she visited Endymion, much of her splendor outside my cavern--I looked
+around the empty vehicle. On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin. I
+picked it up with an interest that, however, soon abated. There was no
+scent of the roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil. No
+bend or twist in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's
+character. I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's." I tried
+to imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it might
+have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which provoked the
+wrath of the aged female. But in vain. It was reticent and unswerving in
+its upright fidelity, and at last slipped listlessly through my fingers.
+
+I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
+contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I was
+unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my childish
+recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist those
+impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in the heavens,
+had begun to separate the formless masses of the shadowy landscape.
+Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages, changed places before
+my window. The sharp outlines of the distant hills came back, as
+in daylight, but little softened in the dry, cold, dewless air of a
+California summer night. I was wondering how late it was, and thinking
+that if the horses of the night traveled as slowly as the team before
+us, Faustus might have been spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden
+spasm of activity attacked my driver. A succession of whip-snappings,
+like a pack of Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me. The stage
+leaped forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
+white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
+It must be Slumgullion! As I descended from the stage I addressed the
+driver:
+
+"I thought you changed horses on the road?"
+
+"So we did. Two hours ago."
+
+"That's odd. I didn't notice it."
+
+"Must have been asleep, sir. Hope you had a pleasant nap. Bully place
+for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!"
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+
+His name was Fagg--David Fagg. He came to California in '52 with us,
+in the SKYSCRAPER. I don't think he did it in an adventurous way. He
+probably had no other place to go to. When a knot of us young fellows
+would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned to go, and how
+sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show daguerreotypes and
+locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the man of no account used to
+sit by and listen with a pained, mortified expression on his plain face,
+and say nothing. I think he had nothing to say. He had no associates
+except when we patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal
+of sport to us. He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind.
+He never got his sea legs on, either. And I never shall forget how
+we all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,
+and--But you know that time-honored joke. And then we had such a
+splendid lark with him. Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the sight of
+him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a fancy to him,
+and send him little delicacies and books from the cabin. You ought
+to have witnessed the rich scene that took place when he came up,
+stammering and very sick, to thank her! Didn't she flash up grandly and
+beautifully and scornfully? So like "Medora," Rattler said--Rattler knew
+Byron by heart--and wasn't old Fagg awfully cut up? But he got over it,
+and when Rattler fell sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him.
+You see he was a good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and
+spirit.
+
+He had absolutely no idea of poetry. I've seen him sit stolidly by,
+mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring apostrophe
+of Byron's to the ocean. He asked Rattler once, quite seriously, if he
+thought Byron was ever seasick. I don't remember Rattler's reply, but I
+know we all laughed very much, and I have no doubt it was something good
+for Rattler was smart.
+
+When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand "feed."
+We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion. Of course we
+didn't invite Fagg. Fagg was a steerage passenger, and it was necessary,
+you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little discretion. But Old
+Fagg, as we called him--he was only about twenty-five years old, by the
+way--was the source of immense amusement to us that day. It appeared
+that he had conceived the idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and
+actually started off afoot. We had a good time, and shook hands with one
+another all around, and so parted. Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet
+some of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each
+other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets. I know that
+we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker swore
+he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a very
+contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who borrowed money
+at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter in a restaurant,
+didn't like to meet such people.
+
+When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at Mugginsville,
+in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it. I stopped at the
+Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and rode round the town and
+out to the claim. One of those individuals whom newspaper correspondents
+call "our intelligent informant," and to whom in all small communities
+the right of answering questions is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed
+out to me. Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and
+he never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and
+added: "You see, stranger," (he addressed the bank before him) "gold is
+sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his pick)
+but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his
+pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period).
+He was green, and let the boys about here jump him"--and the rest of his
+sentence was confided to his hat, which he had removed to wipe his manly
+brow with his red bandanna.
+
+I asked him who was the original proprietor.
+
+"His name war Fagg."
+
+I went to see him. He looked a little older and plainer. He had worked
+hard, he said, and was getting on "so-so." I took quite a liking to
+him and patronized him to some extent. Whether I did so because I was
+beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as Rattler and Mixer is
+not necessary for me to state.
+
+You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
+shareholders were done! Well, the next thing I heard was that Rattler,
+who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at Mugginsville keeping
+bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville Hotel, and that old Fagg had
+struck it rich, and didn't know what to do with his money. All this was
+told me by Mixer, who had been there, settling up matters, and likewise
+that Fagg was sweet upon the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid
+hotel. And so by hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old
+Robins, the hotel man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie
+Robins and Fagg. Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing,
+and would do just as her father wished. I thought it would be a good
+thing for Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man
+he might be of some account. So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to look
+after things.
+
+It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for
+me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had
+tried to snub me two years ago. I talked to him about old Fagg and
+Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful. He never
+liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't. Did Nellie
+like anybody else? He turned around to the mirror behind the bar and
+brushed up his hair! I understood the conceited wretch. I thought I'd
+put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry up matters. I had a long talk
+with him. You could see by the way the poor fellow acted that he was
+badly stuck. He sighed, and promised to pluck up courage to hurry
+matters to a crisis. Nellie was a good girl, and I think had a sort of
+quiet respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already
+taken captive by Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and
+pleasing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I. We are more
+apt to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic
+worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them, quite
+as convenient. The difficulty with women is that their feelings are apt
+to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you know, reasoning is out
+of the question. This is what old Fagg would have known had he been of
+any account. But he wasn't. So much the worse for him.
+
+It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when in
+walked old Fagg. I was surprised to see him down, but we talked over the
+current topics in that mechanical manner of people who know that they
+have something else to say, but are obliged to get at it in that formal
+way. After an interval Fagg in his natural manner said:
+
+"I'm going home!"
+
+"Going home?"
+
+"Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States. I came
+to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I have executed
+a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs. I have some papers I'd
+like to leave with you. Will you take charge of them?"
+
+"Yes," I said. "But what of Nellie?"
+
+His face fell. He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in one
+of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld. At length he
+said:
+
+"I shall not marry Nellie--that is"--he seemed to apologize internally
+for the positive form of expression--"I think that I had better not."
+
+"David Fagg," I said with sudden severity, "you're of no account!"
+
+To my astonishment his face brightened. "Yes," said he, "that's it!--I'm
+of no account! But I always knew it. You see I thought Rattler loved
+that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him better than she did
+me, and would be happier I dare say with him. But then I knew that old
+Robins would have preferred me to him, as I was better off--and the
+girl would do as he said--and, you see, I thought I was kinder in the
+way--and so I left. But," he continued, as I was about to interrupt him,
+"for fear the old man might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough
+to set him up in business for himself in Dogtown. A pushing, active,
+brilliant fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be
+in his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know, if
+he doesn't. Good-by."
+
+I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be at all
+amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to attend to
+it, and he left. A few weeks passed. The return steamer arrived, and a
+terrible incident occupied the papers for days afterward. People in all
+parts of the State conned eagerly the details of an awful shipwreck, and
+those who had friends aboard went away by themselves, and read the long
+list of the lost under their breath. I read of the gifted, the gallant,
+the noble, and loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was
+the first to read the name of David Fagg. For the "man of no account"
+had "gone home!"
+
+
+
+
+MLISS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler undulations,
+and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side of a great red
+mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket." Seen from the red road at sunset,
+in the red light and the red dust, its white houses look like the
+outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside. The red stage topped
+with red-shirted passengers is lost to view half a dozen times in the
+tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly in out-of-the-way places, and
+vanishing altogether within a hundred yards of the town. It is probably
+owing to this sudden twist in the road that the advent of a stranger
+at Smith's Pocket is usually attended with a peculiar circumstance.
+Dismounting from the vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident
+traveler is apt to walk straight out of town under the impression that
+it lies in quite another direction. It is related that one of the tunnel
+men, two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers
+with a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
+"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had just
+ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's Pocket.
+
+An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
+disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity. There were huge
+fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil, resembling
+more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than the work of
+man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its narrow body and
+disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an enormous fossil of some
+forgotten antediluvian. At every step smaller ditches crossed the road,
+hiding in their sallow depths unlovely streams that crept away to a
+clandestine union with the great yellow torrent below, and here and
+there were the ruins of some cabin with the chimney alone left intact
+and the hearthstone open to the skies.
+
+The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of a
+"pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith. Five thousand dollars were
+taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith. Three thousand dollars were
+expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and in tunneling. And
+then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a pocket, and subject like
+other pockets to depletion. Although Smith pierced the bowels of the
+great red mountain, that five thousand dollars was the first and last
+return of his labor. The mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets,
+and the flume steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.
+Then Smith went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
+hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into saloonkeeping.
+Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking a great deal; then it
+was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard, and then people began to
+think, as they are apt to, that he had never been anything else. But the
+settlement of Smith's Pocket, like that of most discoveries, was happily
+not dependent on the fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected
+tunnels and found pockets. So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with
+its two fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its
+two first families. Occasionally its one long straggling street was
+overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
+imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making outraged
+Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface, look still more
+homely, and putting personal insult on that greater portion of the
+population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of linen, brought merely
+the necessity of cleanliness without the luxury of adornment. Then there
+was a Methodist Church, and hard by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond,
+on the mountainside, a graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.
+
+"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one night
+in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him, carefully
+making those bold and full characters which are supposed to combine the
+extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and had got as far as
+"Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the noun with an insincerity
+of flourish that was quite in the spirit of his text, when he heard a
+gentle tapping. The woodpeckers had been busy about the roof during
+the day, and the noise did not disturb his work. But the opening of the
+door, and the tapping continuing from the inside, caused him to look
+up. He was slightly startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty
+and shabbily clad. Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed,
+lusterless black hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms
+and feet streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him. It was
+Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.
+
+"What can she want here?" thought the master. Everybody knew "Mliss,"
+as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red Mountain.
+Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl. Her fierce, ungovernable
+disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character, were in their way
+as proverbial as the story of her father's weaknesses, and as
+philosophically accepted by the townsfolk. She wrangled with and fought
+the schoolboys with keener invective and quite as powerful arm. She
+followed the trails with a woodman's craft, and the master had met
+her before, miles away, shoeless, stockingless, and bareheaded on the
+mountain road. The miners' camps along the stream supplied her with
+subsistence during these voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.
+Not but that a larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.
+The Rev. Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the
+hotel as servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced
+her to his scholars at Sunday school. But she threw plates occasionally
+at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap witticisms of the
+guests, and created in the Sabbath school a sensation that was so
+inimical to the orthodox dullness and placidity of that institution
+that, with a decent regard for the starched frocks and unblemished
+morals of the two pink-and-white-faced children of the first families,
+the reverend gentleman had her ignominiously expelled. Such were the
+antecedents, and such the character of Mliss as she stood before the
+master. It was shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding
+feet, and asked his pity. It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
+commanded his respect.
+
+"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her hard
+glance on his, "because I knew you was alone. I wouldn't come here when
+them gals was here. I hate 'em and they hates me. That's why. You keep
+school, don't you? I want to be teached!"
+
+If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled hair
+and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master would
+have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing more. But
+with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his species, her
+boldness awakened in him something of that respect which all original
+natures pay unconsciously to one another in any grade. And he gazed at
+her the more fixedly as she went on still rapidly, her hand on that door
+latch and her eyes on his:
+
+"My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith! You can bet your life on that. My
+father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with him.
+Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"
+
+"Well?" said the master.
+
+Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly, for
+no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her nature, the
+master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise. She stopped; she began
+to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers; and the rigid line
+of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little teeth, relaxed and quivered
+slightly. Then her eyes dropped, and something like a blush struggled up
+to her cheek and tried to assert itself through the splashes of redder
+soil, and the sunburn of years. Suddenly she threw herself forward,
+calling on God to strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless,
+with her face on the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart
+would break.
+
+The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass. When,
+with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs the MEA
+CULPA of childish penitence--that "she'd be good, she didn't mean to,"
+etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left Sabbath school.
+
+Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why? Oh, yes. What did he
+(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for? What did he tell her
+that God hated her for? If God hated her, what did she want to go to
+Sabbath school for? SHE didn't want to be "beholden" to anybody who
+hated her.
+
+Had she told McSnagley this?
+
+Yes, she had.
+
+The master laughed. It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in the
+little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant with the
+sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected himself with
+a sigh. The sigh was quite as sincere in its way, however, and after a
+moment of serious silence he asked about her father.
+
+Her father? What father? Whose father? What had he ever done for her?
+Why did the girls hate her? Come now! what made the folks say, "Old
+Bummer Smith's Mliss!" when she passed? Yes; oh yes. She wished he was
+dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her sobs broke forth anew.
+
+The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could what you
+or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories from childish
+lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or I the unnatural
+facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and the omnipresent shadow
+of her drunken father. Then, raising her to her feet, he wrapped his
+shawl around her, and, bidding her come early in the morning, he walked
+with her down the road. There he bade her "good night." The moon shone
+brightly on the narrow path before them. He stood and watched the bent
+little figure as it staggered down the road, and waited until it had
+passed the little graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it
+turned and stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against
+the far-off patient stars. Then he went back to his work. But the lines
+of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of never-ending
+road, over which childish figures seemed to pass sobbing and crying into
+the night. Then, the little schoolhouse seeming lonelier than before, he
+shut the door and went home.
+
+The next morning Mliss came to school. Her face had been washed, and her
+coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with the comb,
+in which both had evidently suffered. The old defiant look shone
+occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and more subdued.
+Then began a series of little trials and self-sacrifices, in which
+master and pupil bore an equal part, and which increased the confidence
+and sympathy between them. Although obedient under the master's eye,
+at times during recess, if thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss
+would rage in ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage,
+finding himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek
+the master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
+dreadful Mliss. There was a serious division among the townspeople on
+the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from such evil
+companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course of the master
+in his work of reclamation. Meanwhile, with a steady persistence that
+seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back afterward, the master
+drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her past life, as though it
+were but her natural progress down the narrow path on which he had
+set her feet the moonlit night of their first meeting. Remembering the
+experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock
+of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.
+But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those
+few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older,
+the wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
+that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes,
+it did not take the shape of a lesson. A few of the plainer people had
+made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was enabled to assume
+the garments of respect and civilization; and often a rough shake of
+the hand, and words of homely commendation from a red-shirted and burly
+figure, sent a glow to the cheek of the young master, and set him to
+thinking if it was altogether deserved.
+
+Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and the
+master was sitting late one evening over the moral and sententious
+copies, when there came a tap at the door and again Mliss stood before
+him. She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps
+but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his
+former apparition. "Are you busy?" she asked. "Can you come with
+me?"--and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way she
+said, "Come, then, quick!"
+
+They passed out of the door together and into the dark road. As they
+entered the town the master asked her whither she was going. She
+replied, "To see my father."
+
+It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial title, or
+indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man." It was the first
+time in three months that she had spoken of him at all, and the master
+knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him since her great change.
+Satisfied from her manner that it was fruitless to question her purpose,
+he passively followed. In out-of-the-way places, low groggeries,
+restaurants, and saloons; in gambling hells and dance houses, the
+master, preceded by Mliss, came and went. In the reeking smoke and
+blasphemous outcries of low dens, the child, holding the master's hand,
+stood and anxiously gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one
+absorbing nature of her pursuit. Some of the revelers, recognizing
+Mliss, called to the child to sing and dance for them, and would have
+forced liquor upon her but for the interference of the master. Others,
+recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass. So an hour slipped
+by. Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a cabin on the
+other side of the creek crossed by the long flume, where she thought he
+still might be. Thither they crossed--a toilsome half-hour's walk--but
+in vain. They were returning by the ditch at the abutment of the flume,
+gazing at the lights of the town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly,
+sharply, a quick report rang out on the clear night air. The echoes
+caught it, and carried it round and round Red Mountain, and set the
+dogs to barking all along the streams. Lights seemed to dance and move
+quickly on the outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream
+rippled quite audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from
+the hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
+the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to fall
+thicker, heavier, and deadlier. The master turned toward Mliss with an
+unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had gone. Oppressed by
+a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail to the river's bed, and,
+jumping from boulder to boulder, reached the base of Red Mountain and
+the outskirts of the village. Midway of the crossing he looked up and
+held his breath in awe. For high above him on the narrow flume he saw
+the fluttering little figure of his late companion crossing swiftly in
+the darkness.
+
+He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a central
+point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among a crowd of
+awe-stricken and sorrowful men. Out from among them the child appeared,
+and, taking the master's hand, led him silently before what seemed a
+ragged hole in the mountain. Her face was quite white, but her excited
+manner gone, and her look that of one to whom some long-expected
+event had at last happened--an expression that to the master in his
+bewilderment seemed almost like relief. The walls of the cavern were
+partly propped by decaying timbers. The child pointed to what appeared
+to be some ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late
+occupant. The master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent
+over them. It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a
+bullet in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
+heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly described
+in the gulches and tunnels. It was thought there that Mliss had
+"struck a good lead." So when there was a new grave added to the
+little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a little board
+and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER came out quite
+handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of one of "our oldest
+Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of noble intellects," and
+otherwise genteelly shelving our dear brother with the past. "He leaves
+an only child to mourn his loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an
+exemplary scholar, thanks to the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley." The
+Rev. McSnagley, in fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion,
+and, indirectly attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of
+her father, made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial
+effects of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation
+drove most of the children into speechless horror, and caused the
+pink-and-white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse
+to be comforted.
+
+The long dry summer came. As each fierce day burned itself out in little
+whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the upspringing
+breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the green wave which
+in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew sere and dry and
+hard. In those days the master, strolling in the little churchyard of
+a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised to find a few wild flowers
+plucked from the damp pine forests scattered there, and oftener rude
+wreaths hung upon the little pine cross. Most of these wreaths were
+formed of a sweet-scented grass, which the children loved to keep in
+their desks, intertwined with the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa,
+and the wood anemone, and here and there the master noticed the
+dark-blue cowl of the monkshood, or deadly aconite. There was something
+in the odd association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
+occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his esthetic
+sense. One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded ridge he came
+upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a prostrate pine on
+a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes of lifeless branches,
+her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and crooning to herself one of
+the Negro melodies of her younger life. Recognizing him at a distance,
+she made room for him on her elevated throne, and with a grave
+assumption of hospitality and patronage that would have been ridiculous
+had it not been so terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab
+apples. The master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious
+and deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in her
+lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as long
+as she remained his pupil. This done--as the master had tested her
+integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange feeling which had
+overcome him on seeing them died away.
+
+Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became known,
+the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and kindhearted
+specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her maidenhood as the
+"Per-rairie Rose." Being one of those who contend resolutely against
+their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a long series of self-sacrifices and
+struggles, had at last subjugated her naturally careless disposition to
+principles of "order," which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope,
+as "Heaven's first law." But she could not entirely govern the orbits
+of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her own
+"Jeemes" sometimes collided with her. Again her old nature asserted
+itself in her children. Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard "between
+meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes, leaving those
+important articles on the threshold, for the delight of a barefooted
+walk down the ditches. Octavia and Cassandra were "keerless" of their
+clothes. So with but one exception, however much the "Prairie Rose"
+might have trimmed and pruned and trained her own matured luxuriance,
+the little shoots came up defiantly wild and straggling. That
+one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher, aged fifteen. She was the
+realization of her mother's immaculate conception--neat, orderly, and
+dull.
+
+It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie" was
+a consolation and model for Mliss. Following this fallacy, Mrs. Morpher
+threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad," and set her up
+before the child for adoration in her penitential moments. It was not,
+therefore, surprising to the master to hear that Clytie was coming to
+school, obviously as a favor to the master and as an example for Mliss
+and others. For "Clytie" was quite a young lady. Inheriting her mother's
+physical peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
+Mountain region, she was an early bloomer. The youth of Smith's Pocket,
+to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in April and
+languished in May. Enamored swains haunted the schoolhouse at the hour
+of dismissal. A few were jealous of the master.
+
+Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's eyes
+to another. He could not help noticing that Clytie was romantic; that
+in school she required a great deal of attention; that her pens were
+uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she usually accompanied the
+request with a certain expectation in her eye that was somewhat
+disproportionate to the quality of service she verbally required; that
+she sometimes allowed the curves of a round, plump white arm to rest on
+his when he was writing her copies; that she always blushed and flung
+back her blond curls when she did so. I don't remember whether I have
+stated that the master was a young man--it's of little consequence,
+however; he had been severely educated in the school in which Clytie
+was taking her first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible
+curves and factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he
+was. Perhaps an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this
+asceticism. He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she
+returned to the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and
+did not find it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he
+endeavored to make himself particularly agreeable--partly from the
+fact, I imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
+already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.
+
+The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to school.
+Noon came, but not Mliss. Questioning Clytie on the subject, it appeared
+that they had left the school together, but the willful Mliss had taken
+another road. The afternoon brought her not. In the evening he called on
+Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly heart was really alarmed. Mr. Morpher had
+spent all day in search of her, without discovering a trace that might
+lead to her discovery. Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice,
+but that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with his
+innocence. Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that the child
+would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was almost as terrible,
+muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of soap and water. Sick at
+heart, the master returned to the schoolhouse. As he lit his lamp and
+seated himself at his desk, he found a note lying before him addressed
+to himself, in Mliss's handwriting. It seemed to be written on a
+leaf torn from some old memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious
+trifling, had been sealed with six broken wafers. Opening it almost
+tenderly, the master read as follows:
+
+
+RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away. Never to come back.
+NEVER, NEVER, NEVER. You can give my beeds to Mary Jennings, and my
+Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from a tobacco-box] to
+Sally Flanders. But don't you give anything to Clytie Morpher. Don't
+you dare to. Do you know what my opinion is of her, it is this, she is
+perfekly disgustin. That is all and no more at present from
+
+Yours respectfully,
+
+MELISSA SMITH.
+
+
+The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon lifted
+its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the trail that
+led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the coming and going
+of little feet. Then, more satisfied in mind, he tore the missive into
+fragments and scattered them along the road.
+
+At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike
+fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its
+form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who
+had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge
+where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and
+tasseled branches, but the throne was vacant. As he drew nearer, what
+might have been some frightened animal started through the crackling
+limbs. It ran up the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered
+itself in some friendly foliage. The master, reaching the old seat,
+found the nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he
+met the black eyes of the errant Mliss. They gazed at each other without
+speaking. She was first to break the silence.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked curtly.
+
+The master had decided on a course of action. "I want some crab apples,"
+he said humbly.
+
+"Sha'n't have 'em! go away. Why don't you get 'em of Clytemnerestera?"
+(It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express her contempt in additional
+syllables to that classical young woman's already long-drawn title.) "O
+you wicked thing!"
+
+"I am hungry, Lissy. I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday. I am
+famished!" and the young man in a state of remarkable exhaustion leaned
+against the tree.
+
+Melissa's heart was touched. In the bitter days of her gypsy life
+she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated. Overcome by his
+heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she said:
+
+"Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind you
+don't tell," for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and squirrels.
+
+But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
+hunger probably blinding his senses. Mliss grew uneasy. At length she
+peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and questioned:
+
+"If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch me?"
+
+The master promised.
+
+"Hope you'll die if you do!"
+
+The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit. Mliss slid down
+the tree. For a few moments nothing transpired but the munching of the
+pine nuts. "Do you feel better?" she asked, with some solicitude. The
+master confessed to a recuperated feeling, and then, gravely thanking
+her, proceeded to retrace his steps. As he expected, he had not gone far
+before she called him. He turned. She was standing there quite white,
+with tears in her widely opened orbs. The master felt that the right
+moment had come. Going up to her, he took both her hands, and looking
+in her tearful eyes, said, gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first
+evening you came to see me?"
+
+Lissy remembered.
+
+"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
+something and be better, and I said--"
+
+"Come," responded the child, promptly.
+
+"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he was
+lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to come and
+teach him to be better?"
+
+The child hung her head for a few moments in silence. The master waited
+patiently. Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the couple, and
+raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and gazed at them.
+A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of the fallen tree, and
+there stopped.
+
+"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the child
+smiled. Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked, and a long
+pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs full on the
+doubting face and irresolute little figure. Suddenly she took the
+master's hand in her quick way. What she said was scarcely audible, but
+the master, putting the black hair back from her forehead, kissed her;
+and so, hand in hand, they passed out of the damp aisles and forest
+odors into the open sunlit road.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars, Mliss
+still retained an offensive attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps
+the jealous element was not entirely lulled in her passionate little
+breast. Perhaps it was only that the round curves and plump outline
+offered more extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions
+were under the master's control, her enmity occasionally took a new and
+irrepressible form.
+
+The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
+conceive that she had ever possessed a doll. But the master, like many
+other professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori than a
+priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll, but then it was emphatically Mliss's
+doll--a smaller copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had been a
+secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher. It had been the old-time
+companion of Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of suffering.
+Its original complexion was long since washed away by the weather and
+anointed by the slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss had in
+days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers
+had been. Mliss had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
+endearment. She never exhibited it in the presence of other children. It
+was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the schoolhouse, and only
+allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling a stern duty to her
+doll, as she would to herself, it knew no luxuries.
+
+Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another doll
+and gave it to Mliss. The child received it gravely and curiously. The
+master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a slight resemblance
+in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became
+evident before long that Mliss had also noticed the same resemblance.
+Accordingly she hammered its waxen head on the rocks when she was
+alone, and sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck to and from
+school. At other times, setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion
+of its patient and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in revenge
+of what she considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's
+excellences upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of
+the rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
+ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine away
+and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.
+
+In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help noticing
+in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless, and vigorous
+perception. She knew neither the hesitancy nor the doubts of childhood.
+Her answers in class were always slightly dashed with audacity. Of
+course she was not infallible. But her courage and daring in passing
+beyond her own depth and that of the floundering little swimmers around
+her, in their minds outweighed all errors of judgment. Children are
+not better than grown people in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the
+little red hand flashed above her desk, there was a wondering silence,
+and even the master was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own
+experience and judgment.
+
+Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and entertained
+his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts. He could not but see
+that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and willful. That there was but
+one better quality which pertained to her semisavage disposition--the
+faculty of physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another, though
+not always an attribute of the noble savage--Truth. Mliss was both
+fearless and sincere; perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
+synonymous.
+
+The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and had
+arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think sincerely, that
+he was generally the slave of his own prejudices, when he determined
+to call on the Rev. McSnagley for advice. This decision was somewhat
+humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were not friends. But he
+thought of Mliss, and the evening of their first meeting; and perhaps
+with a pardonable superstition that it was not chance alone that
+had guided her willful feet to the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a
+complacent consciousness of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked
+back his dislike and went to McSnagley.
+
+The reverend gentleman was glad to see him. Moreover, he observed
+that the master was looking "peartish," and hoped he had got over the
+"neuralgy" and "rheumatiz." He himself had been troubled with a dumb
+"ager" since last conference. But he had learned to "rastle and pray."
+
+Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
+of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain,
+Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher. "She is an
+adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young family,"
+added Mr. McSnagley; "and there's that mannerly young gal--so well
+behaved--Miss Clytie." In fact, Clytie's perfections seemed to affect
+him to such an extent that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The
+master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place, there was an enforced
+contrast with poor Mliss in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there
+was something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs.
+Morpher's earliest born. So that the master, after a few futile
+efforts to say something natural, found it convenient to recall another
+engagement, and left without asking the information required, but in his
+after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley the
+full benefit of having refused it.
+
+Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the close
+communion of old. The child seemed to notice the change in the master's
+manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one of their long
+postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting a stump, looked
+full in his face with big, searching eyes. "You ain't mad?" said she,
+with an interrogative shake of the black braids. "No." "Nor bothered?"
+"No." "Nor hungry?" (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that might attack
+a person at any moment.) "No." "Nor thinking of her?" "Of whom, Lissy?"
+"That white girl." (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who
+was a very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.) "No." "Upon your
+word?" (A substitute for "Hope you'll die!" proposed by the master.)
+"Yes." "And sacred honor?" "Yes." Then Mliss gave him a fierce little
+kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For two or three days after
+that she condescended to appear more like other children, and be, as she
+expressed it, "good."
+
+Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket, and as
+his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually
+becoming the capital of the State not entirely definite, he contemplated
+a change. He had informed the school trustees privately of his
+intentions, but educated young men of unblemished moral character being
+scarce at that time, he consented to continue his school term through
+the winter to early spring. None else knew of his intention except his
+one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people
+of Wingdam as "Duchesny." He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,
+Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence was partly the result of
+a constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
+the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he never
+really believed he was going to do anything before it was done.
+
+He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a selfish instinct, perhaps,
+which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was foolish,
+romantic, and unpractical. He even tried to imagine that she would do
+better under the control of an older and sterner teacher. Then she was
+nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red Mountain, would
+be a woman. He had done his duty. After Smith's death he addressed
+letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister
+of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master, she stated her intention of
+leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few
+months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the
+master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some
+loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better
+guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter,
+Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
+afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent
+Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent mistakes, and impaled
+them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
+
+When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered
+in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few
+ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or
+Examination. So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were
+gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children
+in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a witness box. As
+usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were the
+lucky recipients of the honors. The reader will imagine that in the
+present instance Mliss and Clytie were preeminent, and divided
+public attention; Mliss with her clearness of material perception
+and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid self-esteem and saintlike
+correctness of deportment. The other little ones were timid and
+blundering. Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course, captivated the
+greatest number and provoked the greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents
+had unconsciously awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose
+athletic forms were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded
+faces looked in at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
+an unexpected circumstance.
+
+McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the pleasing
+entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the vaguest and
+most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal tone; and
+Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was tracking the course of our
+spotted ball through space, and keeping time with the music of the
+spheres, and defining the tethered orbits of the planets, when McSnagley
+impressively arose. "Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of
+this yere yearth and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it
+had been a doing of it since the creashun, eh?" Mliss nodded a scornful
+affirmative. "Well, war that the truth?" said McSnagley, folding his
+arms. "Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips tightly. The
+handsome outlines at the windows peered further in the schoolroom, and a
+saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and soft blue eyes, belonging
+to the biggest scamp in the diggings, turned toward the child and
+whispered, "Stick to it, Mliss!" The reverend gentleman heaved a
+deep sigh, and cast a compassionate glance at the master, then at the
+children, and then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman softly
+elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive curves were enhanced by a
+gorgeous and massive specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest
+worshipers, worn in honor of the occasion. There was a momentary
+silence. Clytie's round cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big
+eyes were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked white book muslin
+rested softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the
+master, and the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:
+
+"Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!" There
+was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant expression on
+McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and a comical look of
+disappointment reflected from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly over
+her astronomy, and then shut the book with a loud snap. A groan burst
+from McSnagley, an expression of astonishment from the schoolroom, a
+yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red fist down on the desk,
+with the emphatic declaration:
+
+"It's a damn lie. I don't believe it!"
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The long wet season had drawn near its close. Signs of spring were
+visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents. The pine forests
+exhaled the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding, the
+ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring. On the green upland
+which climbed Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long spike of the
+monkshood shot up from its broad-leaved stool, and once more shook
+its dark-blue bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was soft and
+green, its crest just tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.
+The little graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
+and the mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
+reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one. General superstition
+had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.
+
+There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating that,
+at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would perform, for
+a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and "screaming farces"; that,
+alternating pleasantly with this, there would be some melodrama and a
+grand divertisement which would include singing, dancing, etc. These
+announcements occasioned a great fluttering among the little folk,
+and were the theme of much excitement and great speculation among the
+master's scholars. The master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of
+thing was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous
+evening the master and Mliss "assisted."
+
+The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
+melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
+But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and felt
+something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect upon her
+excitable nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at each stroke of
+her panting little heart. Her small passionate lips were slightly parted
+to give vent to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids threw up and
+arched her black eyebrows. She did not laugh at the dismal comicalities
+of the funny man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly
+affected to the delicate extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief,
+as was the tender-hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller"
+and ogling the master at the same moment. But when the performance was
+over, and the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a
+long deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a
+half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture. Then she said, "Now take me
+home!" and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more
+in fancy on the mimic stage.
+
+On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to ridicule
+the whole performance. Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss thought that the
+young lady who acted so beautifully was really in earnest, and in love
+with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in love
+with him it was a very unfortunate thing! "Why?" said Mliss, with an
+upward sweep of the drooping lid. "Oh! well, he couldn't support his
+wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week for his fine clothes,
+and then they wouldn't receive as much wages if they were married as if
+they were merely lovers--that is," added the master, "if they are not
+already married to somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty
+young countess takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain,
+or snuffs the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant. As
+to the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and must
+cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of that
+mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for I bought
+some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty
+good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think people
+ought to take advantage of it and give him black eyes and throw him in
+the mud. Do you? I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half a
+long time, before I would throw it up in his face, as the fellow did the
+other night at Wingdam."
+
+Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in his
+eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a faint
+idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species of sardonic
+humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her speech. But
+the young man continued in this strain until they had reached Mrs.
+Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving
+the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and shading
+his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren
+glances, he excused himself, and went home.
+
+For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company, Mliss
+was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was
+for once omitted, owing to the absence of his trustworthy guide. As he
+was putting away his books and preparing to leave the schoolhouse, a
+small voice piped at his side, "Please, sir?" The master turned and
+there stood Aristides Morpher.
+
+"Well, my little man," said the master, impatiently, "what is it?
+quick!"
+
+"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
+agin."
+
+"What's that, sir?" said the master, with that unjust testiness with
+which we always receive disagreeable news.
+
+"Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
+talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now; and
+please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a speech
+as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted right off by
+heart," and the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.
+
+"What actor?" asked the master.
+
+"Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And gold pin. And gold chain,"
+said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke out his
+breath.
+
+The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant tightness
+in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road. Aristides trotted
+along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his short legs to the
+master's strides, when the master stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped
+up against him. "Where were they talking?" asked the master, as if
+continuing the conversation.
+
+"At the Arcade," said Aristides.
+
+When they reached the main street the master paused. "Run down home,"
+said he to the boy. "If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.
+If she isn't there, stay home; run!" And off trotted the short-legged
+Aristides.
+
+The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building containing
+a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant. As the young man crossed the
+plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by turned and looked
+after him. He looked at his clothes, took out his handkerchief, and
+wiped his face before he entered the barroom. It contained the usual
+number of loungers, who stared at him as he entered. One of them looked
+at him so fixedly and with such a strange expression that the master
+stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only his own reflection in
+a large mirror. This made the master think that perhaps he was a little
+excited, and so he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of
+the tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
+advertisements.
+
+He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and into the
+billiard room. The child was not there. In the latter apartment a person
+was standing by one of the tables with a broad-brimmed glazed hat on his
+head. The master recognized him as the agent of the dramatic company;
+he had taken a dislike to him at their first meeting, from the peculiar
+fashion of wearing his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his
+search was not there, he turned to the man with a glazed hat. He had
+noticed the master, but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in
+which vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a billiard cue in his hand,
+he pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table. The master
+stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their glances met,
+the master walked up to him.
+
+He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to speak,
+something kept rising in his throat and retarded his utterance, and his
+own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low, and resonant. "I
+understand," he began, "that Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my
+scholars, has talked with you about adopting your profession. Is that
+so?"
+
+The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an imaginary
+shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions. Then, walking round
+the table, he recovered the ball and placed it upon the spot. This duty
+discharged, getting ready for another shot, he said:
+
+"S'pose she has?"
+
+The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table in
+his gloved hand, he went on:
+
+"If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her guardian,
+and responsible for her career. You know as well as I do the kind of
+life you offer her. As you may learn of anyone here, I have already
+brought her out of an existence worse than death--out of the streets and
+the contamination of vice. I am trying to do so again. Let us talk like
+men. She has neither father, mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking
+to give her an equivalent for these?"
+
+The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
+looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.
+
+"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master, "but
+she is better than she was. I believe that I have some influence over
+her still. I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no further
+steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman, leave her to me. I
+am willing--" But here something rose again in the master's throat, and
+the sentence remained unfinished.
+
+The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised his
+head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:
+
+"Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't fight here, young man!"
+
+The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the glance
+than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all these. The
+best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a blow. The master
+felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy finding expression in
+the one act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face. The blow
+sent the glazed hat one way and the cue another, and tore the glove
+and skin from the master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened up
+the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt the peculiar shape of his
+beard for some time to come.
+
+There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of many
+feet. Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
+followed each other in rapid succession. Then they closed again about
+his opponent, and the master was standing alone. He remembered picking
+bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve with his left hand. Someone
+was holding his other hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding
+from the blow, but his fingers were clenched around the handle of a
+glittering knife. He could not remember when or how he got it.
+
+The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher. He hurried the master
+to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him as well
+as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss." "It's all right,
+my boy," said Mr. Morpher. "She's home!" And they passed out into the
+street together. As they walked along Mr. Morpher said that Mliss had
+come running into the house a few moments before, and had dragged him
+out, saying that somebody was trying to kill the master at the Arcade.
+Wishing to be alone, the master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not
+seek the agent again that night, and parted from him, taking the road
+toward the schoolhouse. He was surprised in nearing it to find the door
+open--still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
+
+The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most sensitive
+organizations, a selfish basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
+adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible, he thought, that
+such a construction might be put upon his affection for the child,
+which at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had she not voluntarily
+abnegated his authority and affection? And what had everybody else said
+about her? Why should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last
+obliged tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted? And he had
+been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and risked
+his life, to prove what? What had he proved? Nothing? What would the
+people say? What would his friends say? What would McSnagley say?
+
+In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to meet was
+Mliss. He entered the door, and going up to his desk, told the child, in
+a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to be alone. As she
+rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting down, buried his head in his
+hands. When he looked up again she was still standing there. She was
+looking at his face with an anxious expression.
+
+"Did you kill him?" she asked.
+
+"No!" said the master.
+
+"That's what I gave you the knife for!" said the child, quickly.
+
+"Gave me the knife?" repeated the master, in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the bar. Saw you hit him.
+Saw you both fall. He dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why
+didn't you stick him?" said Mliss rapidly, with an expressive twinkle of
+the black eyes and a gesture of the little red hand.
+
+The master could only look his astonishment.
+
+"Yes," said Mliss. "If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with the
+play-actors. Why was I off with the play-actors? Because you wouldn't
+tell me you was going away. I knew it. I heard you tell the Doctor so.
+I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers. I'd rather die
+first."
+
+With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
+character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding
+them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and in the queer
+pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into when unduly excited:
+
+"That's the poison plant you said would kill me. I'll go with the
+play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here. I don't care which. I won't
+stay here, where they hate and despise me! Neither would you let me, if
+you didn't hate and despise me too!"
+
+The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over the
+edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the corner of
+her apron as if they had been wasps.
+
+"If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss, fiercely, "to keep me from the
+play-actors, I'll poison myself. Father killed himself--why shouldn't
+I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I always carry it
+here," and she struck her breast with her clenched fist.
+
+The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
+the passionate little figure before him. Seizing her hands in his and
+looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:
+
+"Lissy, will you go with ME?"
+
+The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, "Yes."
+
+"But now--tonight?"
+
+"Tonight."
+
+And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that had
+once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it seemed
+she should not tread again alone. The stars glittered brightly above
+them. For good or ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them the
+school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+
+The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
+southwesterly gale. The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by
+the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent; its foam
+clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air
+was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor Commandante,
+Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep embrasured window of the
+Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt breath of the distant sea buffet a
+color into his smoke-dried cheeks.
+
+The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window of
+the guardroom. He may have been reviewing the events of the year now
+about to pass away. But, like the garrison at the Presidio, there
+was little to review; the year, like its predecessors, had been
+uneventful--the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony of simple
+duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The regularly recurring
+feasts and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San Diego, the
+rare transport ship and rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of
+his patriarchal life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly
+no failure. Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the
+wants of Presidio and Mission. Isolated from the family of nations,
+the wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last
+earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on the
+other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness. In short, it
+was that glorious Indian summer of California history around which so
+much poetical haze still lingers--that bland, indolent autumn of
+Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican
+independence and the reviving spring of American conquest.
+
+The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire that
+burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth. A pile of copybooks, the
+work of the Presidio school, lay on the table. As he turned over the
+leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture
+text--the first pious pothooks of the pupils of San Carlos--an audible
+commentary fell from his lips: "'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah,
+little one, excellent!--'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ!
+that upstroke of thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see
+it!" A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right,
+alas! twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He rubbed
+it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued: "'The
+Ishmaelites having arrived--'"
+
+He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
+threshold, and a stranger entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,
+the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned quickly toward
+the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But
+it was not there, and as he recalled that the last time he had seen that
+weapon it was being ridden up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant
+son of Bautista, the tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented
+himself with frowning upon the intruder.
+
+But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful. He
+was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea boots of
+a mariner. Except a villainous smell of codfish, there was little about
+him that was peculiar.
+
+His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more fluent
+than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master of
+the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in Massachusetts, on
+a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of weather
+into the bay of San Carlos. He begged permission to ride out the gale
+under the headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water he
+did not need, having taken in a supply at Bodega. He knew the strict
+surveillance of the Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign
+vessels, and would do nothing against the severe discipline and good
+order of the settlement. There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone
+as he glanced toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the
+open unguarded gate. The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had
+discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and was
+then sound asleep in the corridor.
+
+The Commander hesitated. The port regulations were severe, but he was
+accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old order
+issued ten years before, regarding the American ship COLUMBIA, there
+was no precedent to guide him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
+humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request. It is but just to
+the Commander to say that his inability to enforce a refusal did not
+weigh with his decision. He would have denied with equal disregard of
+consequences that right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded
+so gracefully to this Yankee trading schooner. He stipulated only
+that there should be no communication between the ship and shore. "For
+yourself, Senor Captain," he continued, "accept my hospitality. The
+fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your distinguished
+presence"; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance of
+withdrawing from the guardroom.
+
+Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled fort,
+the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the
+shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting the Commander's offer
+literally, conceived in the reckless spirit of a man who never let
+slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a timely
+reflection of the commercial unimportance of the transaction checked
+him. He only took a capacious quid of tobacco as the Commander gravely
+drew a settle before the fire, and in honor of his guest untied the
+black-silk handkerchief that bound his grizzled brows.
+
+What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes me
+not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to relate.
+I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker, and under
+the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his host, he became
+still more loquacious. And think of a man with a twenty years' budget
+of gossip! The Commander learned, for the first time, how Great Britain
+lost her colonies; of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon,
+whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more highly than the
+Commander's superiors would have liked. And when Peleg turned
+questioner, the Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made himself
+master of the gossip of the Mission and Presidio, the "small-beer"
+chronicles of that pastoral age, the conversion of the heathen, the
+Presidio schools, and even asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!
+It is said that at this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced
+from about his person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled
+trifles, and even forced some of them upon his host. It is further
+alleged that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of
+aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and behaved in
+a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown Spanish
+poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice divers madrigals and
+heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a
+"little one" who was his, the Commander's, "soul"! These allegations,
+perhaps unworthy the notice of a serious chronicler, should be received
+with great caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay. That the
+Commander, however, took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest
+the mysteries of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous
+manner about the apartment, has been denied. Enough for the purposes of
+this narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
+protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had abated,
+took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the GENERAL COURT.
+When the day broke the ship was gone.
+
+I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host. It is said that the
+holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in the
+plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses; that for
+many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the settlement;
+that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed, were
+found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and that several
+bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but
+were quite inadequate to the purposes of provender, were discovered
+in the stable of the blacksmith. But when the reader reflects upon the
+sacredness of a Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of
+the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial indisposition of my
+countrymen to impose upon the confidence of a simple people, he will at
+once reject this part of the story.
+
+
+A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander. The sun
+was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in bed, and
+through the force of habit rubbed his left eye. As the remembrance of
+the previous night came back to him, he jumped from his couch and ran
+to the window. There was no ship in the bay. A sudden thought seemed to
+strike him, and he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with this, he
+consulted the metallic mirror which hung beside his crucifix. There
+was no mistake; the Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as
+good, save for the purposes of vision, as the left.
+
+Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation, but
+one opinion prevailed at San Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles
+vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to the heathen,
+through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos himself. That their
+beloved Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith, should be the
+recipient of this miraculous manifestation was most fit and seemly. The
+Commander himself was reticent; he could not tell a falsehood--he dared
+not tell the truth. After all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed
+that the powers of his right eye were actually restored, was it wise and
+discreet for him to undeceive them? For the first time in his life the
+Commander thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text
+which has been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of
+being "all things to all men." Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!
+
+For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little settlement.
+The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise
+a baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could look at it without
+winking. It was cold, hard, relentless, and unflinching. More than that,
+it seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing
+through and into the inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon. The
+soldiers of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their
+commander, and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.
+The servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that
+seemed to pursue them. The children of the Presidio school smirched
+their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor Paquita, the prize
+pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke when her patron stood
+beside her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation, and timidity
+took the place of trust, confidence, and security throughout San Carlos.
+Whenever the Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.
+
+Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
+miraculous acquisition. Unconscious of its effect upon others, he only
+saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the crafty Peleg
+had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve. His most trusty retainers
+stammered, blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,
+confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or extravagant excuses
+and apologies met his mildest inquiries. The very children that he
+loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be conscious of some hidden
+sin. The result of this constant irritation showed itself more plainly.
+For the first half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at variance.
+He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful in speech. Gradually, however,
+his voice took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,
+impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was plain
+that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to the
+Commander.
+
+It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
+solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed, the few who were first to ascribe the
+right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the special grace of
+the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of witchcraft and the agency
+of Luzbel, the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo
+Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander or amenable to local
+authority. But the reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no
+power over the political executive, and all attempts at spiritual
+advice failed signally. He retired baffled and confused from his first
+interview with the Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction
+in the fateful power of his glance. The holy Father contradicted
+himself, exposed the fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is
+asserted, committed himself to several undoubted heresies. When the
+Commander stood up at mass, if the officiating priest caught that
+skeptical and searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined. Even the
+power of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the
+affections of the people and the good order of the settlement departed
+from San Carlos.
+
+As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the white
+walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern
+jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to have borrowed his
+dry, hard glare. The earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a blight
+had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed
+and ardently prayed for, came not. The sky was as tearless as the
+right eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and
+plotting among the Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the
+more firmly, tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and
+looked up his Toledo.
+
+The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the hour
+of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom. He no longer attended
+the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such times to some
+solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent meditation. The
+firelight played upon the low beams and rafters, but left the bowed
+figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting thus, he felt a small hand
+touch his arm, and looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little
+Indian pupil, at his knee. "Ah, littlest of all," said the Commander,
+with something of his old tenderness, lingering over the endearing
+diminutives of his native speech--"sweet one, what doest thou here? Art
+thou not afraid of him whom everyone shuns and fears?"
+
+"No," said the little Indian, readily, "not in the dark. I hear your
+voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I see not
+your eye, Senor Commandante. That only I fear--and that, O senor, O my
+father," said the child, lifting her little arms towards his--"that I
+know is not thine own!"
+
+The Commander shuddered and turned away. Then, recovering himself, he
+kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire. A few hours
+later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he sought his own
+couch and slept peacefully.
+
+At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through the
+low embrasure of the Commander's apartment. Other figures were flitting
+through the parade ground, which the Commander might have seen had he
+not slept so quietly. The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch and
+listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration. Something glittered in
+the firelight as the savage lifted his arm; another moment and the sore
+perplexities of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have been over, when
+suddenly the savage started and fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The
+Commander slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and
+unaltered, glared coldly on the would-be assassin. The man fell to the
+earth in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.
+
+To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast upon
+the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of a moment.
+Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians were speedily
+driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received a
+blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand to that mysterious organ,
+it was gone. Never again was it found, and never again, for bale or
+bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Commander.
+
+With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos. The rain
+returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored between
+priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over the sere
+hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their martial
+preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral
+content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San Carlos. And
+far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master, Peleg Scudder,
+trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering glass
+eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to the chiefs.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+
+PART I--IN THE FIELD
+
+It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably
+conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and
+my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape
+affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
+performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena--a California sky.
+The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures
+in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and the
+herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering
+stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have
+removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long
+since given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
+
+It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under
+that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons
+were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry
+atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic
+which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical
+for such thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the
+spectator, with the old diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted
+features.
+
+In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any
+but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and
+the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was
+consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed,
+with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the
+plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I
+urged my horse forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought me to a
+corral, and a little beyond a house, so low and broad it seemed at first
+sight to be half-buried in the earth.
+
+My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like some
+monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the
+vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls
+for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
+projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle,
+or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking
+tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the
+sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded
+existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed
+against the rattling wind.
+
+To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the
+rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a
+slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and
+met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led
+the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were
+reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect
+repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound
+started from a dark corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by
+the old man into obscurity, and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I
+instantly received the impression that for a long time the group by the
+fire had not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly
+stated my business.
+
+Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo
+Rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so
+as to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been
+some intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted
+adjacent--"settled land warrants," interrupted the old man. "Ah, yes!
+Land warrants--and then this was Mr. Tryan?"
+
+I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other
+public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face. It was
+certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of
+that mining operation known as "ground sluicing"; the harder lines of
+underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and
+soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.
+
+There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere
+of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement of the contest,
+with a fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent and
+unrestrained expression. He told me--what I had already learned--that
+the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the
+loose phraseology of the DESENO as beginning in the VALDA or skirt
+of the hill, its precise location long the subject of litigation.
+I listened and answered with little interest, for my mind was still
+distracted by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as
+by his odd face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the
+silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the
+wind was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark
+addressed to the recumbent figures.
+
+"Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar's,
+tomorrow?"
+
+There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided
+answer.
+
+"Kin you go, Kerg?"
+
+"Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?"
+
+This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
+hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was
+lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.
+
+"Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?"
+
+"Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to pack
+her and the baby agin."
+
+I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for
+the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the
+finest things I had ever seen.
+
+"Wise?"
+
+Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched
+boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.
+
+"I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down
+the river."
+
+"Said he wouldn't without'en order. Said it was like pulling gum teeth
+to get the money from you even then."
+
+There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's parsimony,
+and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in
+honorable retirement.
+
+"Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with wimmin
+and children, p'r'aps you'll go," said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,
+intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.
+
+Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:
+
+"Got no saddle."
+
+"Wot's gone of your saddle?"
+
+"Kerg, there"--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might
+have worn at the sacrifice.
+
+"You lie!" returned Kerg, cheerfully.
+
+Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his
+head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met
+his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side,
+and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take
+the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance
+that I required no guide when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his
+voice:
+
+"Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him? He'll go and introduce you
+to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler."
+
+The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic
+allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a
+light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger
+present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again,
+and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped
+lightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly
+on mine.
+
+Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made
+upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he
+cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.
+
+The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the
+prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame, listening
+to the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair
+which had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered
+a crazy table in one corner, with an ink bottle and pen; the latter
+in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and
+farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked
+the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild
+flavor of the horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the
+inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the shadowy
+gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it difficult to
+believe I had ever known a different existence. My profession had often
+led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained
+habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable
+I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts--which I think occur
+naturally to people in like situations--that this was the general rule
+of humanity and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception. It
+was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl
+caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark
+platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was
+occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed woman was
+already taking her repast as she at the same time gave nourishment to
+a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed
+with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat
+without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace,
+and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and
+dried apples.
+
+The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the
+table often betrayed the presence of the "wellspring of pleasure." The
+conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing
+notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a
+vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast that when a chance
+allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder
+Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed
+bitterly against the system of ranch-holding by the "greasers," as he
+was pleased to term the native Californians. As the same ideas have
+been sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be
+worthy of record.
+
+"Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer doors.
+Whar's the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants--most of 'em
+made arter the 'Merrikans got possession. More fools the 'Merrikans for
+lettin' 'em hold 'em. Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan and blood money.
+
+"Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country? Wot
+for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not
+so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin' home
+and smokin'. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and
+crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wurent
+allowed in Mizzoori."
+
+At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and
+met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George. The act did not
+escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the
+rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.
+
+"It was agin Nater, and agin God," added Tryan. "God never intended
+gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.
+That's why he sent 'Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate
+for lazy lopers. She never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and
+smoked away."
+
+How long he continued and with what further illustration I could not
+say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I
+was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a
+smaller room, and pointed to a bed.
+
+"You'd better sleep there tonight," he said; "you'll be more
+comfortable, and I'll call you early."
+
+I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were
+then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.
+
+A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The "boys"
+returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was
+thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it
+did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it
+lit. In half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by
+day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its
+owner's full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed
+George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and
+shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the
+wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place
+insupportable, I seized my hat and opening the door, ran out briskly
+into the night.
+
+The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind,
+whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar
+faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran
+not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house
+was lost in the alder bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before
+me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I
+noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress
+was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as
+resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of
+the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous
+interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears,
+and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the star, I sought the
+house again.
+
+But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The
+door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside
+the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as
+though he were hunting up prophecies against the "Greaser." I turned to
+enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying
+beside the house, on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy
+slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had
+given up his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake
+him, but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I
+went to bed with a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil
+figure soothing me to sleep.
+
+
+I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and
+grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed,
+ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the
+day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been
+magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash
+of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin basin, helped to
+brighten me. It was still early, but the family had already breakfasted
+and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in the distance showed that the
+unfortunate Tom had already "packed" his relatives away. I felt more
+cheerful--there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of
+a good night's rest. After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,
+in a few moments we were mounted and dashing down the plain.
+
+We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked
+with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its
+banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning's ride, the
+far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky, the
+crisp dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by
+the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and
+picturesque with flying riata. He rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed,
+untiring in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty
+were concealed by the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which
+levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel
+bit that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.
+
+Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we
+again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be "Chu Chu," staid and
+respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of plank
+roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white
+feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust. "Give her her
+head; don't you see she likes it?" and Chu Chu seems to like it, and
+whether bitten by native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of
+the roan, "blood" asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude
+of years is beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek
+widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side,
+carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are
+scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded together in vast
+restless herds. George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as
+if to include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, "Ours!"
+
+"About how many, George?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head," says George, reflecting. "We don't
+know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run."
+
+"What are they worth?"
+
+"About thirty dollars a head."
+
+I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing
+George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan
+household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says,
+apologetically:
+
+"I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says
+it ain't no use to settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'. In fact,
+he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through,
+and we'd have to get up and move stakes further down."
+
+Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
+passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center of
+the mass. I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and in a few
+moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
+"TORO!" shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a
+way for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their
+spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering flank.
+
+Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might
+have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of
+Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to
+meet the exigencies of a six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to
+wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.
+
+"That's not our brand," says George; "they're strange stock," and he
+points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of
+Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But
+the herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again
+recourse to the authoritative "TORO," and with swinging riata divides
+the "bossy bucklers" on either side. When we are free, and breathing
+somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack
+anyone.
+
+"Never horsemen--sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but
+curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a
+chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the
+pursuit of knowledge. But," adds George, "here's the lower bench of the
+foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that White building you see
+yonder is the casa."
+
+A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe building,
+baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the
+charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the
+sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable
+coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water,
+from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the center of a
+low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied
+about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving
+his gamboge-colored face. The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added to
+the cathedral gloom of the building.
+
+As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
+advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness
+and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much
+devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by
+the effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white
+teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we
+entered.
+
+It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which
+would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had
+just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened
+calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the smoke curling
+placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had
+finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation.
+George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in
+broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed his vicinity.
+When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far
+the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his
+black-silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native
+Californians affect. A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he
+was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in
+half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again "loping" in the
+staring sunlight.
+
+But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by
+restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by
+way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further
+intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned
+with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious "QUE
+BUENO?--Your courts are always just."
+
+The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing
+monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find
+the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview
+the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I
+was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as
+clearly as my recollection served.
+
+"The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this initial
+point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen."
+
+Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried
+grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose
+from his stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph
+Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:
+
+"And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land
+in the fashion of my country."
+
+He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
+
+"I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES. Take the
+LLANO!--and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till
+their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it
+be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it
+of mine!"
+
+We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the
+passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill
+concealing his triumph, interrupted:
+
+"Let him curse on. He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than the
+cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side
+of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers."
+
+Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet
+sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his
+native invective.
+
+"Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not!--open not, I say, your lying, Judas
+lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-r-r-ramba!"
+
+With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant
+thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had
+been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle and
+galloped away.
+
+George turned to me:
+
+"Will you go back with us tonight?"
+
+I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and
+the roaring wind, and hesitated.
+
+"Well then, goodby."
+
+"Goodby, George."
+
+Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far when I
+turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was
+already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it,
+and a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last
+indistinct impression of George Tryan.
+
+
+PART II--IN THE FLOOD
+
+
+Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was again
+in the valley of the Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation
+had erased the memory of that event as completely as I supposed it had
+obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted. The great flood of
+1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some indefinite yearning, I took
+my carpetbag and embarked for the inundated valley.
+
+There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the
+GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water. The only sound was the
+pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two weeks,
+and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as they
+silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on errands of relief to
+friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed soberly on
+the one absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by curiosity
+listened eagerly to newer details. But with that human disposition to
+seize upon any circumstance that might give chance event the exaggerated
+importance of instinct, I was half-conscious of something more than
+curiosity as an impelling motive.
+
+The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted
+us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of
+Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the
+hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a
+dripping rubber-cased mariner called "Joe," and, wrapping myself in a
+shining cloak of the like material, about as suggestive of warmth as
+court plaster might have been, took my seat in the stern sheets of his
+boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part from the steamer that to
+most of the passengers was the only visible connecting link between
+us and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled away and entered the
+city, stemming a rapid current as we shot the levee.
+
+We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy
+thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation. The turbid water
+which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right angles
+in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature had revenged herself on
+the local taste by disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling houses
+on street corners, where they presented abrupt gables to the current, or
+by capsizing them in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding in
+and out of low-arched doorways. The water was over the top of the
+fences surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels
+and private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as
+roughly boarded floors. And a silence quite as suggestive as the
+visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer echoed
+to carriage wheel or footfall. The low ripple of water, the occasional
+splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of life
+and habitation.
+
+With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I lie
+lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to
+the music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as his brother of
+the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee "Giuseppe" has the advantage of
+earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic description of the terrors
+of the past week and of noble deeds of self-sacrifice and devotion,
+occasionally pointing out a balcony from which some California Bianca
+or Laura had been snatched, half-clothed and famished. Giuseppe is
+otherwise peculiar, and refuses the proffered fare, for--am I not a
+citizen of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the suffering
+cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard
+Society? No! Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money. Still, if I
+must spend it, there is the Howard Society, and the women and children
+without food and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.
+
+I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal, bleak
+place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,
+and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite. But here
+Giuseppe tells me of the "Relief Boat" which leaves for the flooded
+district in the interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has
+taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to the account of
+others, and am accepted of those who go forth to succor and help the
+afflicted. Giuseppe takes charge of my carpetbag, and does not part from
+me until I stand on the slippery deck of "Relief Boat No. 3."
+
+An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was once
+the channel of a peaceful river. But its banks are only defined by
+tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that breaks over a
+vast inland sea. Stretches of "tule" land fertilized by its once regular
+channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly erased. The
+cultivated profile of the old landscape had faded. Dotted lines in
+symmetrical perspective mark orchards that are buried and chilled in the
+turbid flood. The roofs of a few farmhouses are visible, and here and
+there the smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows
+an undaunted life within. Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds
+waiting the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or
+swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses. Wagons are
+stranded everywhere where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the
+moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck from the
+lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from the willows,
+hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling, sapping, hurrying in
+rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their
+suggestive quiet and concealment.
+
+As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
+oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the
+few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary
+rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual
+misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number
+of our passengers. From them we learn how inward-bound vessels report
+to have struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento, fifty miles
+beyond the bar. There is a voluntary contribution taken among the
+generous travelers for the use of our afflicted, and we part company
+with a hearty "Godspeed" on either side. But our signal lights are not
+far distant before a familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable
+Yankee cheer--which scatters the gloom.
+
+Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated banks
+far in the interior. Once or twice black objects loom up near us--the
+wrecks of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the sky toward
+the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us over the waste. As we
+penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide our
+party into smaller boats, and diverge over the submerged prairie. I
+borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and in that practical disguise
+am doubtfully permitted to pass into one of the boats. We give way
+northerly. It is quite dark yet, although the rift of cloud has widened.
+
+It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our oars
+in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer
+is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the silence is broken
+by the "bow oar":
+
+"Light ahead."
+
+All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few seconds a twinkling
+light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as if by the
+shifting position of some black object apparently drifting close upon
+us.
+
+"Stern, all; a steamer!"
+
+"Hold hard there! Steamer be damned!" is the reply of the coxswain.
+"It's a house, and a big one too."
+
+It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of the
+darkness. The light comes from a single candle, which shines through a
+window as the great shape swings by. Some recollection is drifting back
+to me with it as I listen with beating heart.
+
+"There's someone in it, by heavens! Give way, boys--lay her alongside.
+Handsomely, now! The door's fastened; try the window; no! here's
+another!"
+
+In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the floor
+to the depth of several inches. It is a large room, at the farther end
+of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket, holding a candle in
+one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book he holds with the other. I
+spring toward him with an exclamation:
+
+"Joseph Tryan!"
+
+He does not move. We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand gently on
+his shoulder, and say:
+
+"Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and children, where are they? The
+boys--George! Are they here? are they safe?"
+
+He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
+involuntarily recoil before his look. It is a calm and quiet glance,
+free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling
+through our veins. He bowed his head over his book again, taking no
+further notice of us. The men look at me compassionately, and hold their
+peace. I make one more effort:
+
+"Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your
+ranch--the Espiritu Santo? Look up, old man!"
+
+He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket. Presently he
+repeated to himself "The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--Espiritu
+Santo" over and over again, as though it were a lesson he was trying to
+fix in his memory.
+
+I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me fearfully
+by the hand and said:
+
+"Hush!"
+
+We were silent.
+
+"Listen!" He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear, "I'm a
+MOVING OFF!"
+
+"Moving off?"
+
+"Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off. Ah! wot's that? Don't you
+hear?--there! listen!"
+
+We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.
+
+"It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent. They've been here all night.
+I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the old man to
+move farther off. They came nearer and nearer. They whispered under the
+door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their cruel, hard eyes. Ah, why
+don't they quit?"
+
+I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any further
+traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so
+much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a superstitious
+feeling is fast overcoming me. When they have returned, I tell them
+briefly what I know of him, and the old man murmurs again:
+
+"Why don't they quit, then? They have the stock--all gone--gone, gone
+for the hides and hoofs," and he groans bitterly.
+
+"There are other boats below us. The shanty cannot have drifted far, and
+perhaps the family are safe by this time," says the coxswain, hopefully.
+
+We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to
+the boat. He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though its
+strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers in the
+stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in the sky
+shows the coming day.
+
+I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I had
+seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a blanket
+near the boiler and presently fell asleep. But even then the figure of
+the old man often started before me, and a sense of uneasiness about
+George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams. I was awakened
+at about eight o'clock in the morning by the engineer, who told me one
+of the old man's sons had been picked up and was now on board.
+
+"Is it George Tryan?" I ask quickly.
+
+"Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is," adds the engineer,
+with a smile at some luscious remembrance. "You'll find him for'ard."
+
+I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
+irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and
+rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.
+
+He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes
+that have been put out for his disposal. I cannot help thinking that
+circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness. He puts me
+at my ease by at once addressing me:
+
+"These are high old times, ain't they? I say, what do you reckon's
+become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!"
+
+The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
+admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he has at
+last pulled on his feet.
+
+"So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy? He must
+have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old
+woman. Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!"
+
+At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was
+evidently divided between amusement and chagrin. I took advantage of the
+contending emotions to ask about George.
+
+"Don't know whar he is! If he'd tended stock instead of running about
+the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have saved
+suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky! Say you," to a
+passing boatman, "when are you goin' to give us some grub? I'm hungry
+'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I'll turn butcher when things is
+dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller."
+
+I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
+climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.
+
+"Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?" I ask.
+
+"Thar ain't much to do now," says the practical young man. "I'll have to
+lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain't
+worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the
+ole man'll drive stakes next."
+
+"I meant as to your father and George, Wise."
+
+"Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the old
+woman and babies last week. George'll turn up somewhar atween this and
+Altascar's ef he ain't thar now."
+
+I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
+
+"Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock. I shouldn't wonder if
+George helped him drive 'em up the foothills. And his casa's built
+too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah," says Wise, with
+reflective admiration, "those greasers ain't the darned fools people
+thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy."
+But the appearance of "grub" cut this rhapsody short.
+
+"I shall keep on a little farther," I say, "and try to find George."
+
+Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon
+him.
+
+"I don't think you'll save much. What's the percentage--workin' on
+shares, eh!"
+
+I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion of me,
+and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's safety might
+warrant, I walked away.
+
+From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of George's
+self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he had helped
+and rescued. But I did not feel disposed to return until I had seen
+him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to the lower VALDA of the
+foothills, and visit Altascar. I soon perfected my arrangements, bade
+farewell to Wise, and took a last look at the old man, who was sitting
+by the furnace fires quite passive and composed. Then our boat head
+swung round, pulled by sturdy and willing hands.
+
+It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen. Our course lay
+nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that we were in the
+creek of the Espiritu Santo. From time to time the wrecks of barns
+were seen, and we passed many half-submerged willows hung with farming
+implements.
+
+We emerge at last into a broad silent sea. It is the "LLANO DE ESPIRITU
+SANTO." As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower fresh water
+into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride of October
+over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines of the distant
+hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds. The men are rowing
+silently, and I find my mind, released from its tension, growing
+benumbed and depressed as then. The water, too, is getting more shallow
+as we leave the banks of the creek, and with my hand dipped listlessly
+over the thwarts, I detect the tops of chimisal, which shows the tide
+to have somewhat fallen. There is a black mound, bearing to the north of
+the line of alder, making an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the
+right to avoid, I recognize. We pull close alongside and I call to the
+men to stop.
+
+There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, "L. E. S.
+I." Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata. It was George's. It
+had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the loose gravelly soil of
+the mound was deeply dented with horses' hoofs. The stake was covered
+with horsehairs. It was a record, but no clue.
+
+The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
+resting and rowing by turns, and oftener "poling" the shallower surface,
+but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant. My recollection of the
+old survey enables me to guess the relative position of the meanderings
+of the creek, and an occasional simple professional experiment to
+determine the distance gives my crew the fullest faith in my ability.
+Night overtakes us in our impeded progress. Our condition looks more
+dangerous than it really is, but I urge the men, many of whom are still
+new in this mode of navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of
+perfect safety and speedy relief ahead. We go on in this way until about
+eight o'clock, and ground by the willows. We have a muddy walk for a few
+hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the white
+walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us. Lights are moving
+in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose characterizes
+the building.
+
+One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar met
+me on the corridor.
+
+I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who had
+dragged wearily with me. He looked at my hand, which still unconsciously
+held the broken riata. I began, wearily, to tell him about George and
+my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was even his wont, he gravely
+laid his hand on my shoulder.
+
+"POCO A POCO, senor--not now. You are tired, you have hunger, you have
+cold. Necessary it is you should have peace."
+
+He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac, which he
+gave to the men that had accompanied me. They drank and threw themselves
+before the fire in the larger room. The repose of the building was
+intensified that night, and I even fancied that the footsteps on the
+corridor were lighter and softer. The old Spaniard's habitual gravity
+was deeper; we might have been shut out from the world as well as
+the whistling storm, behind those ancient walls with their time-worn
+inheritor.
+
+Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired. In a few minutes two
+smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my men
+ate ravenously. I drank the coffee, but my excitement and weariness kept
+down the instincts of hunger.
+
+I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.
+
+"You have eat?"
+
+I said, "Yes," to please him.
+
+"BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always."
+
+He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of his
+countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience rather than
+a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it almost tenderly
+before him.
+
+"It was made by me, senor."
+
+"I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar," I said. "If I could find
+him--"
+
+"He is here."
+
+"Here! and"--but I could not say "well!" I understood the gravity of
+the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of the
+building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the clue to the
+broken riata at last. Altascar took my hand, and we crossed the corridor
+to a somber apartment. A few tall candles were burning in sconces before
+the window.
+
+In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows, and
+sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury which the
+humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single item of their
+household. I stepped beside it and saw George lying, as I had seen him
+once before, peacefully at rest. But a greater sacrifice than that he
+had known was here, and his generous heart was stilled forever.
+
+"He was honest and brave," said the old man, and turned away. There
+was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her graceful
+outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that buried her
+downcast face. I did not seem to notice her, and, retiring presently,
+left the loving and loved together.
+
+When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting shadows
+of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that morning met the
+horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how that, farther on, he
+found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no marks or bruises on his
+person; that he had probably become exhausted in fording the creek, and
+that he had as probably reached the mound only to die for want of that
+help he had so freely given to others; that, as a last act, he had freed
+his horse. These incidents were corroborated by many who collected
+in the great chamber that evening--women and children--most of them
+succored through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
+above.
+
+He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange perennial
+greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the dusty plain. A
+little slab of sandstone with the initials "G. T." is his monument,
+and one of the bearings of the initial corner of the new survey of the
+"Espiritu Santo Rancho."
+
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+
+In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman. She had a
+quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling complexion,
+and a certain languid grace which passed easily for gentle-womanliness.
+She always dressed becomingly, and in what Fiddletown accepted as the
+latest fashion. She had only two blemishes: one of her velvety eyes,
+when examined closely, had a slight cast; and her left cheek bore a
+small scar left by a single drop of vitriol--happily the only drop of
+an entire phial--thrown upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that
+reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer
+had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was
+generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek
+was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of
+THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an exaggerated
+dimple." Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of the beautifying
+patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the
+blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank
+eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New Orleans. And this woman had a
+scar--a line extending, blank me, from her eye to her blank chin. And
+this woman, sir, thrilled you, sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent
+your blank soul to perdition with her blank fascination! And one day I
+said to her, 'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar,
+blank you?' And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
+that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself, purposely, I
+did, blank me.' These were her very words, sir, and perhaps you think it
+a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank sum you can name and prove
+it, blank me."
+
+Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been in
+love with her. Of this number, about one-half believed that their love
+was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own husband. He alone
+had been known to express skepticism.
+
+The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction was
+Tretherick. He had been divorced from an excellent wife to marry this
+Fiddletown enchantress. She, also, had been divorced; but it was hinted
+that some previous experiences of hers in that legal formality had made
+it perhaps less novel, and probably less sacrificial. I would not have
+it inferred from this that she was deficient in sentiment, or devoid of
+its highest moral expression. Her intimate friend had written (on the
+occasion of her second divorce), "The cold world does not understand
+Clara yet"; and Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the
+exception of a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul
+than the whole caboodle of them put together. Few indeed could read
+those lines entitled "Infelissimus," commencing "Why waves no cypress
+o'er this brow?" originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
+signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of sensibility
+tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his
+cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT
+INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character
+of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable
+answer to the query.
+
+Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical
+manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the
+newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick.
+Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a
+too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite which
+an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced
+in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a
+six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out
+the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a
+certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
+reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several mining
+camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the dreariness of the
+dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may have touched some chord in
+sympathy with this sensitive woman. Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as
+brief as was consistent with some previous legal formalities--they were
+married; and Mr. Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
+"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
+
+The union was not a felicitous one. It was not long before Mr.
+Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
+freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from that
+which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of California scenery
+and her own soul. Being a man of imperfect logic, this caused him to
+beat her; and she, being equally faulty in deduction, was impelled to
+a certain degree of unfaithfulness on the same premise. Then Mr.
+Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs. Tretherick to contribute regularly
+to the columns of the AVALANCHE. It was at this time that Colonel
+Starbottle discovered a similarity in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the
+genius of Sappho, and pointed it out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a
+two-columned criticism, signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE,
+and supported by extensive quotation. As the AVALANCHE did not possess
+a font of Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
+numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of Colonel
+Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit to accept
+the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language with which the
+colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to
+be familiar. Indeed, the next week's INTELLIGENCER contained some vile
+doggerel supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly
+written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing
+eulogium signed "A. S. S."
+
+The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of the
+AVALANCHE. "An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday last,
+between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER and the
+well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon.
+Two shots were fired by the parties without injury to either, although
+it is said that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the
+calves of his legs from the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which
+were not intended for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of
+Melican man's firearms hereafter. The cause of the affray is not known,
+although it is hinted that there is a lady in the case. The rumor that
+points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations have
+often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those that are
+posted."
+
+Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these trying
+circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches. "The old man's
+head is level," said one long-booted philosopher. "Ef the colonel
+kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops the colonel,
+Tretherick is all right. Either way, he's got a sure thing." During
+this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick one day left her
+husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown Hotel, with only the
+clothes she had on her back. Here she staid for several weeks, during
+which period it is only justice to say that she bore herself with the
+strictest propriety.
+
+It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick, unattended,
+left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street toward the fringe of
+dark pines which indicated the extreme limits of Fiddletown. The few
+loungers at that early hour were preoccupied with the departure of the
+Wingdown coach at the other extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick
+reached the suburbs of the settlement without discomposing observation.
+Here she took a cross street or road, running at right angles with the
+main thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
+It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town. The
+dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops. And here she
+was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
+
+The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port
+which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned and
+his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his arm,
+swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease. Mrs. Tretherick, however,
+vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance of her dangerous eyes;
+and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough and a slight strut, took his
+place at her side.
+
+"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at Dutch
+Flat on a spree. There is no one in the house but a Chinaman; and you
+need fear no trouble from him. I," he continued, with a slight inflation
+of the chest that imperiled the security of his button, "I will see that
+you are protected in the removal of your property."
+
+"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered the
+lady as they walked along. "It's so pleasant to meet someone who
+has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened and
+heartless as this." And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes, but not
+until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her companion.
+
+"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously up and
+down the street--"yes, certainly." Perceiving, however, that there
+was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to inform Mrs.
+Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact, had been the
+possession of too much soul. That many women--as a gentleman she would
+excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--but many beautiful women
+had often sought his society, but being deficient, madam, absolutely
+deficient, in this quality, he could not reciprocate. But when two
+natures thoroughly in sympathy, despising alike the sordid trammels of
+a low and vulgar community and the conventional restraints of a
+hypocritical society--when two souls in perfect accord met and mingled
+in poetical union, then--but here the colonel's speech, which had been
+remarkable for a certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost
+inaudible, and decidedly incoherent. Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have
+heard something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
+Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was quite
+virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their destination.
+
+It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint, very
+pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose foremost
+files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced enclosure in
+which it sat. In the vivid sunlight and perfect silence, it had a new,
+uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and painters had just left it. At
+the farther end of the lot, a Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there
+was no other sign of occupancy. "The coast," as the colonel had said,
+was indeed "clear." Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate. The colonel
+would have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture. "Come for me
+in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she said,
+as she smiled, and extended her hand. The colonel seized and pressed it
+with great fervor. Perhaps the pressure was slightly returned; for the
+gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his chest, and trip away as
+smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled boots would permit. When he had
+gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the door, listened a moment in the deserted
+hall, and then ran quickly upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
+
+Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it. On the
+dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
+when she took out her bonnet. On the mantle lay the other glove she
+had forgotten in her flight. The two lower drawers of the bureau were
+half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its marble top lay
+her shawl pin and a soiled cuff. What other recollections came upon her
+I know not; but she suddenly grew quite white, shivered, and listened
+with a beating heart, and her hand upon the door. Then she stepped to
+the mirror, and half-fearfully, half-curiously, parted with her fingers
+the braids of her blond hair above her little pink ear, until she came
+upon an ugly, half-healed scar. She gazed at this, moving her pretty
+head up and down to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast
+in her velvety eyes became very strongly marked indeed. Then she turned
+away with a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where
+hung her precious dresses. These she inspected nervously, and missing
+suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a moment,
+thought she should have fainted. But discovering it the next instant
+lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling of thankfulness
+to a superior Being who protects the friendless for the first time
+sincerely thrilled her. Then, albeit she was hurried for time, she could
+not resist trying the effect of a certain lavender neck ribbon upon the
+dress she was then wearing, before the mirror. And then suddenly she
+became aware of a child's voice close beside her, and she stopped. And
+then the child's voice repeated, "Is it Mamma?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about. Standing in the doorway was a
+little girl of six or seven. Her dress had been originally fine, but was
+torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red, was tumbled
+seriocomically about her forehead. For all this, she was a picturesque
+little thing, even through whose childish timidity there was a certain
+self-sustained air which is apt to come upon children who are left much
+to themselves. She was holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently
+of her own workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
+cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal. A long
+shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her shoulders
+and swept the floor.
+
+The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight. Perhaps she had
+but a small sense of humor. Certainly, when the child, still standing in
+the doorway, again asked, "Is it Mamma?" she answered sharply, "No, it
+isn't," and turned a severe look upon the intruder.
+
+The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the distance,
+said in deliciously imperfect speech:
+
+"Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?"
+
+But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl. Suddenly she whipped it off the
+child's shoulders, and said angrily:
+
+"How dared you take my things, you bad child?"
+
+"Is it yours? Then you are my mamma; ain't you? You are Mamma!" she
+continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid her, she had
+dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts with both hands, was
+dancing up and down before her.
+
+"What's your name, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing the
+small and not very white hands from her garments.
+
+"Tarry."
+
+"Tarry?"
+
+"Yeth. Tarry. Tarowline."
+
+"Caroline?"
+
+"Yeth. Tarowline Tretherick."
+
+"Whose child ARE you?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly, to
+keep down a rising fear.
+
+"Why, yours," said the little creature with a laugh. "I'm your little
+durl. You're my mamma, my new mamma. Don't you know my ol' mamma's dorn
+away, never to turn back any more? I don't live wid my ol' mamma now. I
+live wid you and Papa."
+
+"How long have you been here?" asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
+
+"I fink it's free days," said Carry reflectively.
+
+"You think! Don't you know?" sneered Mrs. Tretherick. "Then, where did
+you come from?"
+
+Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination. With a
+great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and answered:
+
+"Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last week."
+
+"Last week! You said three days just now," returned Mrs. Tretherick with
+severe deliberation.
+
+"I mean a monf," said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer helplessness
+and confusion.
+
+"Do you know what you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick
+shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before her
+and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
+
+But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of Mrs.
+Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself forever.
+
+"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
+her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling exceedingly
+uncomfortable. "Wipe your face now, and run away, and don't bother.
+Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away. "Where's your papa?"
+
+"He's dorn away too. He's sick. He's been dorn"--she hesitated--"two,
+free, days."
+
+"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
+curiously.
+
+"John, the Chinaman. I tresses myselth. John tooks and makes the beds."
+
+"Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any more,"
+said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit. "Stop--where
+are you going?" she added as the child began to ascend the stairs,
+dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
+
+"Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma."
+
+"I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
+re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
+
+Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set to
+work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe. She tore her
+best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung: she scratched
+her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin. All the while, she kept up an
+indignant commentary on the events of the past few moments. She said to
+herself she saw it all. Tretherick had sent for this child of his first
+wife--this child of whose existence he had never seemed to care--just
+to insult her, to fill her place. Doubtless the first wife herself would
+follow soon, or perhaps there would be a third. Red hair, not auburn,
+but RED--of course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother,
+and, if so, she was anything but pretty. Or the whole thing had been
+prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
+kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for when
+needed. She remembered his occasional visits there on--business, as he
+said. Perhaps the mother already was there; but no, she had gone East.
+Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then state of mind, preferred to
+dwell upon the fact that she might be there. She was dimly conscious,
+also, of a certain satisfaction in exaggerating her feelings. Surely
+no woman had ever been so shamefully abused. In fancy, she sketched
+a picture of herself sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among
+the fallen columns of a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful
+attitude, while her husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious
+coach-and-four, with a red-haired woman at his side. Sitting upon
+the trunk she had just packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem
+describing her sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came
+upon her husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds. She
+pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a beautiful
+wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the editor of the
+AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle. And where was Colonel Starbottle all
+this while? Why didn't he come? He, at least, understood her. He--she
+laughed the reckless, light laugh of a few moments before; and then her
+face suddenly grew grave, as it had not a few moments before.
+
+What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time? Why was she so
+quiet? She opened the door noiselessly, and listened. She fancied
+that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and creakings
+and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing on the floor
+above. This, as she remembered, was only an open attic that had been
+used as a storeroom. With a half-guilty consciousness, she crept softly
+upstairs and, pushing the door partly open, looked within.
+
+Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small
+window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the
+barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's
+glowing hair, as if crowned by a red aureole, as she sat upon the floor
+with her exaggerated doll between her knees. She appeared to be talking
+to it; and it was not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was
+rehearsing the interview of a half-hour before. She catechized the
+doll severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its
+stay there, and generally on the measure of time. The imitation of Mrs.
+Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the conversation
+almost a literal reproduction, with a single exception. After she had
+informed the doll that she was not her mother, at the close of the
+interview she added pathetically, "that if she was dood, very dood, she
+might be her mamma, and love her very much."
+
+I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense of
+humor. Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene affected
+her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood tingling to her
+cheek. There was something, too, inconceivably lonely in the situation.
+The unfurnished vacant room, the half-lights, the monstrous doll, whose
+very size seemed to give a pathetic significance to its speechlessness,
+the smallness of the one animate, self-centered figure--all these
+touched more or less deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.
+She could not help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and
+thought what a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the
+room were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
+dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets. And then she
+suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the tread of
+the colonel's cane.
+
+She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in the
+hall. Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and exaggerated
+statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of her wrongs. "Don't
+tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged beforehand; for I know it was!"
+she almost screamed. "And think," she added, "of the heartlessness of
+the wretch, leaving his own child alone here in that way."
+
+"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
+of what he was talking about. In fact, utterly unable as he was to
+comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate of
+her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he intended. He
+stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant, tender, but
+all unintelligently. Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant, experienced a
+sickening doubt of the existence of natures in perfect affinity.
+
+"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in answer
+to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing her hand from
+the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man. "It's of no use:
+my mind is made up. You can send for my trunk as soon as you like; but I
+shall stay here, and confront that man with the proof of his vileness. I
+will put him face to face with his infamy."
+
+I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
+convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded
+by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in
+his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle
+to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental
+nature. But, before he could say anything, Carry appeared on the landing
+above them, looking timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
+
+"That's her," said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly. In her deepest emotions,
+in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration of grammatical
+construction.
+
+"Ah!" said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental affection
+and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected. "Ah! pretty
+little girl, pretty little girl! How do you do? How are you? You find
+yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little girl?" The colonel's impulse
+also was to expand his chest and swing his cane, until it occurred to
+him that this action might be ineffective with a child of six or seven.
+Carry, however, took no immediate notice of this advance, but further
+discomposed the chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick
+and hiding herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
+Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished. Falling back into
+an attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
+resemblance to the "Madonna and Child." Mrs. Tretherick simpered, but
+did not dislodge Carry as before. There was an awkward pause for a
+moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to the child,
+said in a whisper: "Go now. Don't come here again, but meet me tonight
+at the hotel." She extended her hand: the colonel bent over it gallantly
+and, raising his hat, the next moment was gone.
+
+"Do you think," said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and a
+prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls just
+visible in the folds of her dress--"do you think you will be 'dood' if I
+let you stay in here and sit with me?"
+
+"And let me tall you Mamma?" queried Carry, looking up.
+
+"And let you call me Mamma!" assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
+embarrassed laugh.
+
+"Yeth," said Carry promptly.
+
+They entered the bedroom together. Carry's eye instantly caught sight of
+the trunk.
+
+"Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?" she said with a quick nervous look,
+and a clutch at the woman's dress.
+
+"No-o," said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.
+
+"Only playing your dowin' away," suggested Carry with a laugh. "Let me
+play too."
+
+Mrs. Tretherick assented. Carry flew into the next room, and presently
+reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely proceeded to
+pack her clothes. Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they were not many. A
+question or two regarding them brought out some further replies from
+the child; and before many minutes had elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in
+possession of all her earlier history. But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick
+had been obliged to take Carry upon her lap, pending the most
+confidential disclosures. They sat thus a long time after Mrs.
+Tretherick had apparently ceased to be interested in Carry's
+disclosures; and when lost in thought, she allowed the child to rattle
+on unheeded, and ran her fingers through the scarlet curls.
+
+"You don't hold me right, Mamma," said Carry at last, after one or two
+uneasy shiftings of position.
+
+"How should I hold you?" asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
+half-embarrassed laugh.
+
+"Dis way," said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm around
+Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--"dis
+way--dere." After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike some small
+animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
+
+For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe in
+that artificial attitude. And then, whether from some occult sympathy in
+the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began to thrill her.
+She began by remembering an old pain that she had forgotten, an old
+horror that she had resolutely put away all these years. She recalled
+days of sickness and distrust--days of an overshadowing fear--days of
+preparation for something that was to be prevented, that WAS prevented,
+with mortal agony and fear. She thought of a life that might have
+been--she dared not say HAD been--and wondered. It was six years ago;
+if it had lived, it would have been as old as Carry. The arms which were
+folded loosely around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten
+their clasp. And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a
+half-sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
+sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as if
+she would hide it in the grave dug there years before. And the gust that
+shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.
+
+A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily in
+her sleep. But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to do it
+now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that they might
+have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the slowly declining
+sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and abandonment, yet a
+desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay, or despair.
+
+
+Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
+vain. And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his husks,
+he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes and sunbeams.
+
+When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking Mr.
+Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and much
+diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown. THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER openly
+alluded to the "forcible abduction" of the child with the same freedom,
+and it is to be feared the same prejudice, with which it had criticized
+the abductor's poetry. All of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps
+a few of the opposite sex, whose distinctive quality was not,
+however, very strongly indicated, fully coincided in the views of the
+INTELLIGENCER. The majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that
+Mrs. Tretherick had shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty
+slippers was enough for them to know. They mourned the loss of the fair
+abductor more than her offense. They promptly rejected Tretherick as
+an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far as to
+openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief. They reserved an
+ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing that excellent
+man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in barrooms, saloons,
+and other localities not generally deemed favorable to the display
+of sentiment. "She was alliz a skittish thing, Kernel," said one
+sympathizer, with a fine affectation of gloomy concern and great
+readiness of illustration; "and it's kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away
+someday, and stampede that theer colt: but thet she should shake YOU,
+Kernel, diet she should jist shake you--is what gits me. And they do
+say thet you jist hung around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them
+corriders, and histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered
+in and out o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?" It was another generous
+and tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
+on the colonel's wounds. "The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
+prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to the
+stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked you, and
+offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your looks, and ud
+employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so? Well, I'll tell the boys
+it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories DO get round."
+
+Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
+Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
+stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child. He further
+deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento coach,
+and secured a passage for herself and child to San Francisco. It was
+true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal value. But nobody doubted
+it. Even those who were skeptical of the pagan's ability to recognize
+the sacredness of the truth admitted his passionless, unprejudiced
+unconcern. But it would appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of
+this veracious chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.
+
+It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick that
+Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two passing
+Chinamen. They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped with long
+poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages. An animated conversation
+at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother Mongolians--a conversation
+characterized by that usual shrill volubility and apparent animosity
+which was at once the delight and scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who
+did not understand a word of it. Such, at least, was the feeling with
+which Mr. Tretherick on his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was
+passing, regarded their heathenish jargon. The gallant colonel simply
+kicked them out of his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a
+stone at the group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips
+of yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
+small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands. When Ah Fe opened this in the dim
+solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron, freshly washed,
+ironed, and folded. On the corner of the hem were the initials "C. T."
+Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his blouse, and proceeded to wash
+his dishes in the sink with a smile of guileless satisfaction.
+
+Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master. "Me no likee
+Fiddletown. Me belly sick. Me go now." Mr. Tretherick violently
+suggested a profane locality. Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.
+
+Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
+Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
+interested that gentleman. When he concluded, the colonel handed him a
+letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece. "If you bring me an answer, I'll
+double that--sabe, John?" Ah Fe nodded. An interview equally accidental,
+with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another
+gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the
+AVALANCHE. Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance
+on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after
+trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into
+accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother
+Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity. The agony
+of Colonel Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten
+side of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
+clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions of his
+letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese laundry
+of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as peculiarly
+affecting. Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature, rising above the
+levity induced by the mere contemplation of the insignificant details
+of this breach of trust, would find ample retributive justice in the
+difficulties that subsequently attended Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
+
+On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the top of
+the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated Caucasian, whose
+moral nature was shocked at riding with one addicted to opium-smoking.
+At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing stranger--purely an act of
+Christian supererogation. At Dutch Flat he was robbed by well-known
+hands from unknown motives. At Sacramento he was arrested on
+suspicion of being something or other, and discharged with a severe
+reprimand--possibly for not being it, and so delaying the course of
+justice. At San Francisco he was freely stoned by children of the public
+schools; but, by carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened
+progress, he at last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese
+quarters, where his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the
+strong arm of the law.
+
+The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant, and
+on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes to Chy
+Fook's several clients.
+
+It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept hill
+of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that made the
+summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan fancy. There
+was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor shade within or
+without, only one monotonous, universal neutral tint over everything.
+There was a fierce unrest in the wind-whipped streets: there was a
+dreary vacant quiet in the gray houses. When Ah Fe reached the top of
+the hill, the Mission Ridge was already hidden, and the chill sea
+breeze made him shiver. As he put down his basket to rest himself, it
+is possible that, to his defective intelligence and heathen experience,
+this "God's own climate," as was called, seemed to possess but
+scant tenderness, softness, or mercy. But it is possible that Ah
+Fe illogically confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
+schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at this
+hour were generally most aggressive. So he hastened on, and turning a
+corner, at last stopped before a small house.
+
+It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage. There was the little
+strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare veranda, and
+above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one sat. Ah Fe rang
+the bell. A servant appeared, glanced at his basket, and reluctantly
+admitted him, as if he were some necessary domestic animal. Ah Fe
+silently mounted the stairs, and entering the open door of the front
+chamber, put down the basket and stood passively on the threshold.
+
+A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with a
+child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him. Ah Fe instantly
+recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his immobile face
+changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her own placidly. She
+evidently did not recognize him as she began to count the clothes. But
+the child, curiously examining him, suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.
+
+"Why, it's John, Mamma! It's our old John what we had in Fiddletown."
+
+For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened. The child
+clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse. Then he said shortly: "Me
+John--Ah Fe--allee same. Me know you. How do?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at Ah Fe.
+Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Carry's
+perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows.
+With a recollection of past pain, and an obscure suspicion of impending
+danger, she asked him when he had left Fiddletown.
+
+"Longee time. No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick. Likee San Flisco.
+Likee washee. Likee Tally."
+
+Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick. She did not stop to consider
+how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his curt directness
+and sincerity. But she said, "Don't tell anybody you have seen me," and
+took out her pocketbook.
+
+Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty. Ah Fe,
+without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily furnished.
+Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy, saw that both Mrs.
+Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed. Yet it is my duty to
+state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly and firmly over the
+half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to him.
+
+Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of extraordinary
+contortions. After a few moments, he extracted from apparently no
+particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon the basket with the
+remark:
+
+"One piecee washman flagittee."
+
+Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions. At last his efforts
+were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right ear, a
+many-folded piece of tissue paper. Unwrapping this carefully, he at
+last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces, which he handed to Mrs.
+Tretherick.
+
+"You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown. Me findee money. Me
+fetchee money to you. All lightee."
+
+"But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John," said Mrs.
+Tretherick earnestly. "There must be some mistake. It belongs to some
+other person. Take it back, John."
+
+Ah Fe's brow darkened. He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's extended
+hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.
+
+"Me no takee it back. No, no! Bimeby pleesman he catchee me. He say,
+'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.' Me no takee
+back. You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown. Me fetchee money you.
+Me no takee back."
+
+Mrs. Tretherick hesitated. In the confusion of her flight, she MIGHT
+have left the money in the manner he had said. In any event, she had no
+right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by refusing it. So she
+said: "Very well, John, I will keep it. But you must come again and see
+me--" here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated with a new and sudden revelation
+of the fact that any man could wish to see any other than herself--"and,
+and--Carry."
+
+Ah Fe's face lightened. He even uttered a short ventriloquistic laugh
+without moving his mouth. Then, shouldering his basket, he shut the door
+carefully and slid quietly down stairs. In the lower hall he, however,
+found an unexpected difficulty in opening the front door, and, after
+fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment, looked around for some help
+or instruction. But the Irish handmaid who had let him in was
+contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and did not appear.
+
+There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall simply
+record without attempting to explain. On the hall table a scarf,
+evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was lying.
+As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested lightly on the
+table. Suddenly, and apparently of its own volition, the scarf began to
+creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up
+his sleeve slowly, and with an insinuating, snakelike motion; and then
+disappeared somewhere in the recesses of his blouse. Without betraying
+the least interest or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated
+his experiments upon the lock. A moment later the tablecloth of red
+damask, moved by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered
+itself under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same
+hidden channel. What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
+for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
+enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps upon
+the kitchen stairs. Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but patiently
+shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind him again, and
+stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that now shrouded earth
+and sky.
+
+From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's figure
+until it disappeared in the gray cloud. In her present loneliness, she
+felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may have ascribed to
+the higher emotions and the consciousness of a good deed that certain
+expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of the bosom, that was really
+due to the hidden presence of the scarf and tablecloth under his blouse.
+For Mrs. Tretherick was still poetically sensitive. As the gray fog
+deepened into night, she drew Carry closer toward her, and, above
+the prattle of the child, pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic
+recollection at once bitter and dangerous. The sudden apparition of Ah
+Fe linked her again with her past life at Fiddletown. Over the dreary
+interval between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
+thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry stopped
+suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw her small arms
+around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.
+
+Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever dedicated
+to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to transcribe Mrs.
+Tretherick's own theory of this interval and episode, with its feeble
+palliations, its illogical deductions, its fond excuses, and weak
+apologies. It would seem, however, that her experience had been hard.
+Her slender stock of money was soon exhausted. At Sacramento she
+found that the composition of verse, although appealing to the highest
+emotions of the human heart, and compelling the editorial breast to the
+noblest commendation in the editorial pages, was singularly inadequate
+to defray the expenses of herself and Carry. Then she tried the stage,
+but failed signally. Possibly her conception of the passions was
+different from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it
+was certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range, was
+not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights. She had admirers enough
+in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection among the audience.
+In this strait, it occurred to her that she had a voice--a contralto of
+no very great compass or cultivation, but singularly sweet and touching;
+and she finally obtained position in a church choir. She held it for
+three months, greatly to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much
+to the satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
+her during the singing of the last hymn.
+
+I remember her quite distinctly at this time. The light that slanted
+through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall very tenderly on
+her beautiful head with its stacked masses of deerskin-colored hair, on
+the low black arches of her brows, and to deepen the pretty fringes
+that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet. Very pleasant it was to watch
+the opening and shutting of that small straight mouth, with its quick
+revelation of little white teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly
+deepen her satin cheek as you watched. For Mrs. Tretherick was very
+sweetly conscious of admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered
+herself under your eye like a racer under the spur.
+
+And then, of course, there came trouble. I have it from the soprano--a
+little lady who possessed even more than the usual unprejudiced judgment
+of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct was simply shameful; that her
+conceit was unbearable; that, if she considered the rest of the choir
+as slaves, she (the soprano) would like to know it; that her conduct on
+Easter Sunday with the basso had attracted the attention of the whole
+congregation; and that she herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up
+during the service; that her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her
+singing in the choir with a person who had been on the stage, but
+she had waived this. Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs.
+Tretherick had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child
+who sometimes came in the choir was not her own. The tenor confided to
+me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a note
+at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger longer with
+the congregation--an act that could be attributed only to a defective
+moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular dry goods clerk on
+weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently behind his eyebrows on
+the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would put up with it no longer.
+The basso alone--a short German with a heavy voice, for which he seemed
+reluctantly responsible, and rather grieved at its possession--stood up
+for Mrs. Tretherick, and averred that they were jealous of her because
+she was "bretty." The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel,
+wherein Mrs. Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement
+and epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to
+be supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor. This act was
+marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the usual
+soprano solo. Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with triumph, but
+on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they were beggars
+henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the very bread out
+of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a flood of penitent
+tears. They did not come so quickly as in her old poetical days; but
+when they came they stung deeply. She was roused by a formal visit from
+a vestryman--one of the music committee. Mrs. Tretherick dried her long
+lashes, put on a new neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor. She staid
+there two hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that
+the vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters. When
+Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the glass
+and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.
+
+It was not long, however. In due course of time, her enemies received a
+powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's wife. That lady
+called upon several of the church members and on Dr. Cope's family.
+The result was that, at a later meeting of the music committee, Mrs.
+Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to the size of the building
+and she was invited to resign. She did so. She had been out of a
+situation for two months, and her scant means were almost exhausted,
+when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was tossed into her lap.
+
+The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
+shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
+Tretherick still sat drearily at her window. Even Carry had slipped away
+unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp evening paper in
+her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her back to an active
+realization of the present. For Mrs. Tretherick was wont to scan
+the advertisements in the faint hope of finding some avenue of
+employment--she knew not what--open to her needs; and Carry had noted
+this habit.
+
+Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights, and
+opened the paper. Her eye fell instinctively on the following paragraph
+in the telegraphic column:
+
+
+FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this place,
+died last night of delirium tremens. Mr. Tretherick was addicted to
+intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble.
+
+
+Mrs. Tretherick did not start. She quietly turned over another page of
+the paper, and glanced at Carry. The child was absorbed in a book. Mrs.
+Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was
+unusually silent and cold. When Carry was undressed and in bed, Mrs.
+Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, taking
+Carry's flaming head between her hands, said:
+
+"Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?"
+
+"No," said Carry, after a moment's thought.
+
+"But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give you
+nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?"
+
+Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner. "Should YOU, Mamma?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair. "Go to
+sleep," she said sharply, and turned away.
+
+But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around her,
+and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was
+broken up by sobs.
+
+"Don't ky, Mamma," whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of their
+recent conversation. "Don't ky. I fink I SHOULD like a new papa, if he
+loved you very much--very, very much!"
+
+A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
+married. The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
+elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils of the
+State. As I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by
+the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture to quote some of
+his graceful periods. "The relentless shafts of the sly god have been
+lately busy among our gallant Solons. We quote 'one more unfortunate.'
+The latest victim is the Hon. C. Starbottle of Calaveras. The fair
+enchantress in the case is a beautiful widow, a former votary of
+Thespis, and lately a fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most
+fashionable churches of San Francisco, where she commanded a high
+salary."
+
+THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact
+with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press. "The
+new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately advented in the
+legislature with a little bill to change the name of Tretherick
+to Starbottle. They call it a marriage certificate down there. Mr.
+Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we presume the gallant
+colonel is not afraid of ghosts." It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick
+to state that the colonel's victory was by no means an easy one. To
+a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the
+impediment of a rival--a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who
+had first seen and loved Mrs. Tretherick at the theater and church, his
+professional habits debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and
+indeed any other than the most formal public contact with the sex. As
+this gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
+of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous rival.
+Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in professionally to lay
+out a brother senator, who had unhappily fallen by the colonel's pistol
+in an affair of honor; and either deterred by physical consideration
+from rivalry, or wisely concluding that the colonel was professionally
+valuable, he withdrew from the field.
+
+The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward incident.
+During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the charge of
+Colonel Starbottle's sister. On their return to the city, immediately on
+reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle announced her intention of at
+once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's to bring the child home. Colonel
+Starbottle, who had been exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness
+which he had endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally
+buttoned his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking
+unsteadily once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife
+with his most imposing manner.
+
+"I have deferred," said the colonel with an exaggeration of port that
+increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of speech--"I
+have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash my duty ter
+dishclose ter ye. I did no wish to mar sushine mushal happ'ness, to
+bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by unpleasht revelashun.
+Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now. The chile is gone!"
+
+"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Starbottle.
+
+There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
+drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment nearly
+sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.
+
+"I'll splain all in a minit," he said with a deprecating wave of the
+hand. "Everything shall be splained. The-the-the-melencholly event
+wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish releash
+you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile. The mom't Tretherick
+die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too. Thash law. Who's
+chile b'long to? Tretherick? Tretherick dead. Chile can't b'long dead
+man. Damn nonshense b'long dead man. I'sh your chile? no! whose chile
+then? Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Unnerstan?"
+
+"Where is she?" said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a very
+low voice.
+
+"I'll splain all. Chile b'long to 'ts mother. Thash law. I'm lawyer,
+leshlator, and American sis'n. Ish my duty as lawyer, as leshlator, and
+'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother at any coss--any
+coss."
+
+"Where is she?" repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed on
+the colonel's face.
+
+"Gone to 'ts m'o'r. Gone East on shteamer, yesserday. Waffed by fav'rin
+gales to suff'rin p'rent. Thash so!"
+
+Mrs. Starbottle did not move. The colonel felt his chest slowly
+collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to beam
+with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial firmness upon her
+as she sat.
+
+"Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
+Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's." The colonel paused,
+and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently in his
+breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and ruffles, on
+the woman before him. "Why should dark shed-der cass bligh on two sholes
+with single beat? Chile's fine chile, good chile, but summonelse chile!
+Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't gone, Clar'. Conshider dearesht,
+you all's have me!"
+
+Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet. "YOU!" she cried, bringing out a
+chest note that made the chandeliers ring--"You that I married to give
+my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I whistled to my side to
+keep the men off me--YOU!"
+
+She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which had
+been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom, and then
+suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a burning fire
+over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her arched brows and
+mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening of the head.
+
+"Listen!" she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice. "Hear me! If
+you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the child. If you
+ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you must bring her back.
+For where she goes, I go; you hear me! Where she has gone, look for me."
+
+She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of her
+arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some imaginary
+bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door.
+Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear
+of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady
+foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two
+unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from
+time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests,
+until at last he succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions,
+and the narcotic quantity of his potations.
+
+Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her valuables
+and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before in the course
+of this remarkable history. Perhaps some recollection of this was in her
+mind; for she stopped to lean her burning cheeks upon her hand, as if
+she saw again the figure of the child standing in the doorway, and heard
+once more a childish voice asking, "Is it Mamma?" But the epithet now
+stung her to the quick, and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed
+it away with a tear that had gathered in her eye. And then it chanced
+that, in turning over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper
+with a broken sandal string. She uttered a great cry here--the first she
+had uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
+and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to her
+sex. And then she took it to the window, the better to see it through
+her now streaming eyes. Here she was taken with a sudden fit of coughing
+that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she put to her feverish
+lips. And then she suddenly grew very faint. The window seemed to recede
+before her, the floor to sink beneath her feet; and staggering to the
+bed, she fell prone upon it with the sandal and handkerchief pressed
+to her breast. Her face was quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and
+there was a spot upon her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still
+another on the white counterpane of the bed.
+
+The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the white
+curtains in a ghostly way. Later, a gray fog stole softly over the
+roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-wrapping all things
+in an uncertain light and a measureless peace. She lay there very
+quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty bride. And on the
+other side of the bolted door the gallant bridegroom, from his temporary
+couch, snored peacefully.
+
+
+A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
+State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any other
+time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors. A driving snowstorm
+that had whitened every windward hedge, bush, wall, and telegraph pole,
+played around this soft Italian Capital, whirled in and out of the great
+staring wooden Doric columns of its post office and hotel, beat upon the
+cold green shutters of its best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff,
+dark figures in its streets. From the level of the street, the four
+principal churches of the town stood out starkly, even while their
+misshapen spires were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm. Near
+the railroad station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to
+an enormous locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a
+pyramidal row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for
+a few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter
+location. But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for Young
+Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola plainly
+from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue. There was
+no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it was a public
+institution. A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty face at its window,
+were clearly visible all over the township.
+
+The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express brought
+but few of the usual loungers to the depot. Only a single passenger
+alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting sleigh toward the
+Genoa Hotel. And then the train sped away again, with that passionless
+indifference to human sympathies or curiosity peculiar to express
+trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into the station again; the
+station door was locked; and the stationmaster went home.
+
+The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
+of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
+surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and confectionery
+saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane. For even the admirable
+regulations of the Institute failed to entirely develop the physical
+and moral natures of its pupils. They conformed to the excellent dietary
+rules in public, and in private drew upon the luxurious rations of their
+village caterer. They attended church with exemplary formality, and
+flirted informally during service with the village beaux. They received
+the best and most judicious instruction during school hours, and
+devoured the trashiest novels during recess. The result of which was
+an aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young
+creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute. Even Mistress
+Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the exuberant
+spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared that the sight of
+"them young things" did her good, and had even been known to shield them
+by shameless equivocation.
+
+"Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five, we'll
+be missed," said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with an aquiline
+nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader, as she rose
+from her seat. "Have you got the books, Addy?" Addy displayed three
+dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof. "And the provisions,
+Carry?" Carry showed a suspicious parcel filling the pocket of her sack.
+"All right, then. Come, girls, trudge--Charge it," she added, nodding to
+her host as they passed toward the door. "I'll pay you when my quarter's
+allowance comes."
+
+"No, Kate," interposed Carry, producing her purse, "let me pay; it's my
+turn."
+
+"Never!" said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, "even if you do
+have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California. Never!
+Come, girls, forward, march!"
+
+As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their feet.
+Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed. "Sakes alive, galls! ye mussn't
+go out in sich weather. Better let me send word to the Institoot, and
+make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor." But the last sentence was
+lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks as the girls, hand in hand,
+ran down the steps into the storm, and were at once whirled away.
+
+The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast. It
+was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow. For
+some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience kept them
+bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut from the highroad
+across an open field, their strength gave out, the laugh grew less
+frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's brown eyes. When they
+reached the road again, they were utterly exhausted. "Let us go back,"
+said Carry.
+
+"We'd never get across that field again," said Addy.
+
+"Let's stop at the first house, then," said Carry.
+
+"The first house," said Addy, peering through the gathering darkness,
+"is Squire Robinson's." She darted a mischievous glance at Carry that,
+even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick blood to her cheek.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Kate with gloomy irony, "certainly; stop at the squire's
+by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home after by your
+dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from Mrs. Robinson, and
+hopes that the young ladies may be excused this time. No!" continued
+Kate with sudden energy. "That may suit YOU; but I'm going back as I
+came--by the window, or not at all" Then she pounced suddenly, like a
+hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a tendency to sit down on a snowbank
+and whimper, and shook her briskly. "You'll be going to sleep next.
+Stay, hold your tongues, all of you--what's that?"
+
+It was the sound of sleigh bells. Coming down toward them out of the
+darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant. "Hold down your heads,
+girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost." But it was not, for a
+voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly and pleasant, asked
+if its owner could be of any help to them. As they turned toward him,
+they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome sealskin cloak, wearing
+a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by a muffler of the same
+material, disclosing only a pair of long mustaches, and two keen
+dark eyes. "It's a son of old Santa Claus!" whispered Addy. The girls
+tittered audibly as they tumbled into the sleigh; they had regained
+their former spirits. "Where shall I take you?" said the stranger
+quietly. There was a hurried whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To
+the Institute." They drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic
+building loomed up before them. The stranger reined up suddenly. "You
+know the way better than I," he said. "Where do you go in?" "Through the
+back window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness. "I see!"
+responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting quickly, removed
+the bells from the horses. "We can drive as near as you please now,"
+he added by way of explanation. "He certainly is a son of Santa Claus,"
+whispered Addy. "Hadn't we better ask after his father?" "Hush!" said
+Kate decidedly. "He is an angel, I dare say." She added with a delicious
+irrelevance, which was, however, perfectly understood by her feminine
+auditors, "We are looking like three frights."
+
+Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet from
+a dark wall. The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight. There
+was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he handed his fair
+companions to the ground, each was conscious of undergoing an intense
+though respectful scrutiny. He assisted them gravely to open the window,
+and then discreetly retired to the sleigh until the difficult and
+somewhat discomposing ingress was made. He then walked to the window.
+"Thank you and good night!" whispered three voices. A single figure
+still lingered. The stranger leaned over the window sill. "Will you
+permit me to light my cigar here? It might attract attention if I struck
+a match outside." By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate
+very charmingly framed in by the window. The match burnt slowly out
+in his fingers. Kate smiled mischievously. The astute young woman had
+detected the pitiable subterfuge. For what else did she stand at the
+head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years' tuition?
+
+The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
+eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
+was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her heart,
+affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the shoulder of
+Carry, her neighbor. "HE has come," she gasped in a thrilling whisper.
+"Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never clearly understood when
+Kate was in earnest. "Who?--Why, the man who rescued us last night! I
+saw him drive to the door this moment. Don't speak; I shall be better in
+a moment--there!" she said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand
+pathetically across her forehead with a tragic air.
+
+"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited. "I don't
+know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism. "Possibly to
+put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish his young wife, and
+warn her against us."
+
+"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man," rejoined
+Addy thoughtfully.
+
+"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully. "You
+can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful. Besides,
+it's just my fate!"
+
+"Why, Kate," began Carry, in serious concern.
+
+"Hush! Miss Walker is saying something," said Kate, laughing.
+
+"The young ladies will please give attention," said a slow, perfunctory
+voice. "Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the parlor."
+
+Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
+letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced the
+somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the "reception parlor" and
+privately to the pupils as "purgatory." His keen eyes had taken in the
+various rigid details, from the flat steam "radiator," like an enormous
+japanned soda cracker, that heated one end of the room to the monumental
+bust of Dr. Crammer that hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's
+Prayer, executed by a former writing master in such gratuitous variety
+of elegant calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious
+value of the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute,
+which nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher;
+from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English letter, so
+gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human interest, to a
+large photograph of the senior class, in which the prettiest girls were
+Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each other's heads
+and shoulders. His fingers had turned listlessly the leaves of
+school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer, the POEMS of Henry Kirke
+White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF CELEBRATED WOMEN. His
+fancy, and it was a nervously active one, had gone over the partings
+and greetings that must have taken place here, and wondered why the
+apartment had yet caught so little of the flavor of humanity; indeed, I
+am afraid he had almost forgotten the object of his visit when the door
+opened, and Carry Tretherick stood before him.
+
+It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier even
+than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of some
+disappointment, without knowing exactly why. Her abundant waving hair
+was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a peculiar flowerlike
+delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of seaweed in deep water. It
+certainly was not her beauty that disappointed him.
+
+Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on her
+part, quite as vaguely ill at ease. She saw before her one of those men
+whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is to say, correct
+in all the superficial appointments of style, dress, manners, and
+feature. Yet there was a decidedly unconventional quality about him: he
+was totally unlike anything or anybody that she could remember; and as
+the attributes of originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract
+people, she was not entirely prepossessed in his favor.
+
+"I can hardly hope," he began pleasantly, "that you remember me. It is
+eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl. I am afraid I cannot
+even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that might exist between a
+child of six and a young man of twenty-one. I don't think I was fond
+of children. But I knew your mother very well. I was editor of the
+AVALANCHE in Fiddletown when she took you to San Francisco."
+
+"You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know," interposed
+Carry hastily.
+
+Mr. Prince looked at her curiously. "I mean your stepmother," he said
+gravely. "I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother."
+
+"No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years."
+
+There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its distinction
+that began to interest coldly Prince after his first astonishment was
+past.
+
+"As I come from your stepmother now," he went on with a slight laugh,
+"I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point. After your
+father's death, your mother--I mean your stepmother--recognized the fact
+that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick, was legally and morally
+your guardian and, although much against her inclination and affections,
+placed you again in her charge."
+
+"My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and sent
+me home," said Carry with great directness, and the faintest toss of her
+head.
+
+Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically, that
+Carry began to like him. With no other notice of the interruption
+he went on, "After your stepmother had performed this act of simple
+justice, she entered into an agreement with your mother to defray the
+expenses of your education until your eighteenth year, when you were to
+elect and choose which of the two should thereafter be your guardian,
+and with whom you would make your home. This agreement, I think, you are
+already aware of, and, I believe, knew at the time."
+
+"I was a mere child then," said Carry.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Prince, with the same smile. "Still the
+conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your mother;
+and the only time they are likely to give you the least uneasiness will
+be when you come to make up your mind in the choice of your guardian.
+That will be on your eighteenth birthday--the twentieth, I think, of the
+present month."
+
+Carry was silent.
+
+"Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if it
+be already made. I only came to inform you that your stepmother, Mrs.
+Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will pass a few days at the
+hotel. If it is your wish to see her before you make up your mind, she
+will be glad to meet you. She does not, however, wish to do anything to
+influence your judgment.
+
+"Does Mother know she is coming?" said Carry hastily.
+
+"I do not know," said Prince gravely. "I only know that if you conclude
+to see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's permission. Mrs.
+Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the agreement, made ten years
+ago. But her health is very poor; and the change and country quiet of
+a few days may benefit her." Mr. Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon
+the young girl, and almost held his breath until she spoke again.
+
+"Mother's coming up today or tomorrow," she said, looking up.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.
+
+"Is Colonel Starbottle here too?" asked Carry, after a pause.
+
+"Colonel Starbottle is dead. Your stepmother is again a widow."
+
+"Dead!" repeated Carry.
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Prince. "Your stepmother has been singularly
+unfortunate in surviving her affections."
+
+Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so. Mr. Prince smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+Presently Carry began to whimper.
+
+Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.
+
+"I am afraid," he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a
+singular dropping of the corners of his mustache--"I am afraid you are
+taking this too deeply. It will be some days before you are called upon
+to make a decision. Let us talk of something else. I hope you caught no
+cold last evening."
+
+Carry's face shone out again in dimples.
+
+"You must have thought us so queer! It was too bad to give you so much
+trouble."
+
+"None whatever, I assure you. My sense of propriety," he added demurely,
+"which might have been outraged had I been called upon to help three
+young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night, was deeply gratified
+at being able to assist them in again." The doorbell rang loudly, and
+Mr. Prince rose. "Take your own time, and think well before you make
+your decision." But Carry's ear and attention were given to the sound of
+voices in the hall. At the same moment, the door was thrown open, and a
+servant announced, "Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson."
+
+The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant protest at
+stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the outskirts of the
+town, and drove toward his hotel. He was wearied and cynical. A drive
+of a dozen miles through unpicturesque outlying villages, past small
+economic farmhouses, and hideous villas that violated his fastidious
+taste, had, I fear, left that gentleman in a captious state of mind.
+He would have even avoided his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the
+door; but that functionary waylaid him on the steps. "There's a lady
+in the sittin'-room, waitin' for ye." Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and
+entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew toward him.
+
+She had changed sadly in the last ten years. Her figure was wasted
+to half its size. The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders were
+broken or inverted. The once full, rounded arm was shrunken in its
+sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists almost
+slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed convulsively
+around Jack's. Her cheekbones were painted that afternoon with the
+hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of those cheeks were buried
+the dimples of long ago, but their graves were forgotten. Her lustrous
+eyes were still beautiful, though the orbits were deeper than before.
+Her mouth was still sweet, although the lips parted more easily over the
+little teeth, even in breathing, and showed more of them than she was
+wont to do before. The glory of her blond hair was still left: it was
+finer, more silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to
+cover the hollows of the blue-veined temples.
+
+"Clara!" said Jack reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, Jack!" she said, falling into a chair, but still
+clinging to his hand--"forgive me, dear; but I could not wait longer. I
+should have died, Jack--died before another night. Bear with me a little
+longer (it will not be long), but let me stay. I may not see her, I
+know; I shall not speak to her: but it's so sweet to feel that I am at
+last near her, that I breathe the same air with my darling. I am better
+already, Jack, I am indeed. And you have seen her today? How did
+she look? What did she say? Tell me all, everything, Jack. Was she
+beautiful? They say she is. Has she grown? Would you have known
+her again? Will she come, Jack? Perhaps she has been here already;
+perhaps"--she had risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at
+the door--"perhaps she is here now. Why don't you speak, Jack? Tell me
+all."
+
+The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an
+infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed them
+capable of. "Clara," he said gently and cheerily, "try and compose
+yourself. You are trembling now with the fatigue and excitement of your
+journey. I have seen Carry; she is well and beautiful. Let that suffice
+you now."
+
+His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often done
+before. Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, "Did Carry ever
+write to you?"
+
+"Twice, thanking me for some presents. They were only schoolgirl
+letters," she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his eyes.
+
+"Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
+sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes and
+jewels, of your--"
+
+"No, no!" interrupted the woman quickly: "no! How could she? I have no
+enemy cruel enough to tell her that."
+
+"But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it? If Carry thought
+you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might influence
+her decision. Young girls are fond of the position that wealth can give.
+She may have rich friends, maybe a lover."
+
+Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence. "But," she said eagerly,
+grasping Jack's hand, "when you found me sick and helpless at
+Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to help me to
+the East, you said you knew of something, you had some plan, that would
+make me and Carry independent."
+
+"Yes," said Jack hastily; "but I want you to get strong and well first.
+And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit to the
+school."
+
+It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the interview
+already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion that shames
+my own account of that proceeding. Without suppressing a single fact,
+without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to throw a poetic veil
+over that prosaic episode, to invest the heroine with a romantic roseate
+atmosphere, which, though not perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear,
+exhibited that genius which ten years ago had made the columns of THE
+FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive. It was not
+until he saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of
+his eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach. "God help her
+and forgive me!" he muttered between his clinched teeth; "but how can I
+tell her ALL now!"
+
+That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her pillow,
+she tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment sleeping
+peacefully in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it was a rare
+comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she was so
+near. But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of her bed,
+half-undressed, pouting her pretty lips and twisting her long, leonine
+locks between her fingers as Miss Kate Van Corlear--dramatically
+wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes sparkling, and her
+thoroughbred nose thrown high in air--stood over her like a wrathful and
+indignant ghost; for Carry had that evening imparted her woes and her
+history to Miss Kate, and that young lady had "proved herself no friend"
+by falling into a state of fiery indignation over Carry's "ingratitude,"
+and openly and shamelessly espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.
+"Why, if the half you tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons
+are making of you not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.
+Respectability, forsooth! Look you, my family are centuries before the
+Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and then
+asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them down the
+wind;" and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black brows, and
+glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van Corlear.
+
+"You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
+Prince," said Carry.
+
+In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way
+into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as she
+afterward expressed it, instantly "went for her."
+
+First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over one
+shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the other like
+a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a purposely exaggerated
+classic stride. "And what if I have, miss! What if I happen to know a
+gentleman when I see him! What if I happen to know that among a thousand
+such traditional, conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers
+as Mr. Harry Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent,
+individualized gentleman like your Prince! Go to bed, miss, and pray
+to Heaven that he may be YOUR Prince indeed. Ask to have a contrite and
+grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent you
+such a friend as Kate Van Corlear." Yet, after an imposing dramatic
+exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white flash, kissed
+Carry between the brows, and was gone.
+
+The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince. He was convinced in his
+mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness from
+Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal degree of
+apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task. He would have tried to
+divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but she was fearful that
+Carry might come during her absence; and her strength, he was obliged to
+admit, had failed greatly. As he looked into her large and awe-inspiring
+clear eyes, a something he tried to keep from his mind--to put off day
+by day from contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner
+consciousness. He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his
+management. He recalled every incident of his interview with Carry, and
+half-believed that its failure was due to himself. Yet Mrs. Starbottle
+was very patient and confident; her very confidence shook his faith in
+his own judgment. When her strength was equal to the exertion, she was
+propped up in her chair by the window, where she could see the school
+and the entrance to the hotel. In the intervals she would elaborate
+pleasant plans for the future, and would sketch a country home. She had
+taken a strange fancy, as it seemed to Prince, to the present location;
+but it was notable that the future, always thus outlined, was one of
+quiet and repose. She believed she would get well soon; in fact, she
+thought she was now much better than she had been, but it might be long
+before she should be quite strong again. She would whisper on in this
+way until Jack would dash madly down into the barroom, order liquors
+that he did not drink, light cigars that he did not smoke, talk with men
+that he did not listen to, and behave generally as our stronger sex is
+apt to do in periods of delicate trials and perplexity.
+
+The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind. With
+the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow. She was still content
+and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to the fire,
+she explained to him how that, as the school term was drawing near its
+close, Carry was probably kept closely at her lessons during the day,
+and could only leave the school at night. So she sat up the greater part
+of the evening, and combed her silken hair, and as far as her strength
+would allow, made an undress toilet to receive her guest. "We must not
+frighten the child, Jack," she said apologetically, and with something
+of her old coquetry.
+
+It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received a
+message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to see him
+for a moment downstairs. As Jack entered the grim, dimly lighted parlor,
+he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the fire. He was about to
+withdraw again when a voice that he remembered very pleasantly said:
+
+"Oh, it's all right! I'm the doctor."
+
+The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and
+black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.
+
+"Don't ask any questions. I'm the doctor, and there's my prescription,"
+and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing Carry in the
+corner--"to be taken at once."
+
+"Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?"
+
+"Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady," replied Kate saucily.
+
+"Then how did you get away?" asked Prince gravely.
+
+"BY THE WINDOW."
+
+When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he
+returned to the parlor.
+
+"Well?" demanded Kate.
+
+"She will stay--YOU will, I hope, also--tonight."
+
+"As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth, and
+as I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't."
+
+"Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through the
+window again?"
+
+When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a low
+stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet. Her head was in her stepmother's lap,
+and she had sobbed herself to sleep. Mrs. Starbottle put her finger
+to her lip. "I told you she would come. God bless you, Jack! and good
+night."
+
+The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,
+principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently
+respectable, called upon Mr. Prince. There was a stormy meeting, ending
+in a demand for Carry. "We certainly cannot admit of this interference,"
+said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed, indistinctive-looking
+woman. "It is several days before the expiration of our agreement; and
+we do not feel, under the circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs.
+Starbottle from its conditions." "Until the expiration of the school
+term, we must consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its
+rules and discipline," imposed Dr. Crammer. "The whole proceeding is
+calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of Miss
+Tretherick in society," suggested Mr. Robinson.
+
+In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle, her
+absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the pardonable
+and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance that they were
+willing to abide by her decision. And then, with a rising color in
+his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a singular calmness in his
+speech, he added:
+
+"One word more. It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance which
+would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr. Tretherick,
+in fully resisting your demands. A few months after Mr. Tretherick's
+death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his employment, it was
+discovered that he had made a will, which was subsequently found among
+his papers. The insignificant value of his bequest--mostly land, then
+quite valueless--prevented his executors from carrying out his wishes,
+or from even proving the will, or making it otherwise publicly known,
+until within the last two or three years, when the property had
+enormously increased in value. The provisions of that bequest are
+simple, but unmistakable. The property is divided between Carry and
+her stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall
+become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all details
+stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS."
+
+"What is the value of this bequest?" asked Mr. Robinson. "I cannot
+tell exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say," returned
+Prince. "Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of Miss Tretherick
+I must say that her conduct is as judicious as it is honorable to her,"
+responded Mr. Robinson. "I shall not presume to question the wishes,
+or throw any obstacles in the way of carrying out the intentions, of my
+dead husband," added Mrs. Tretherick; and the interview was closed.
+
+When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised Jack's
+hand to her feverish lips. "It cannot add to MY happiness now, Jack; but
+tell me, why did you keep it from her?" Jack smiled, but did not reply.
+
+Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were concluded, and
+Carry was restored to her stepmother. At Mrs. Starbottle's request, a
+small house in the outskirts of the town was procured; and thither they
+removed to wait the spring, and Mrs. Starbottle's convalescence. Both
+came tardily that year.
+
+Yet she was happy and patient. She was fond of watching the budding
+of the trees beyond her window--a novel sight to her Californian
+experience--and of asking Carry their names and seasons. Even at this
+time she projected for that summer, which seemed to her so mysteriously
+withheld, long walks with Carry through the leafy woods, whose gray,
+misty ranks she could see along the hilltop. She even thought she
+could write poetry about them, and recalled the fact as evidence of her
+gaining strength; and there is, I believe, still treasured by one of the
+members of this little household a little carol so joyous, so simple,
+and so innocent that it might have been an echo of the robin that called
+to her from the window, as perhaps it was.
+
+And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so tender, so
+mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and alive with the
+fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and bounteously overflowing
+with an awakening and joyous resurrection not taught by man or limited
+by creed, that they thought it fit to bring her out and lay her in that
+glorious sunshine that sprinkled like the droppings of a bridal torch
+the happy lintels and doors. And there she lay beatified and calm.
+
+Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.
+Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head. Presently
+she called Jack to her side.
+
+"Who was that," she whispered, "who just came in?"
+
+"Miss Van Corlear," said Jack, answering the look in her great hollow
+eyes.
+
+"Jack," she said, after a moment's silence, "sit by me a moment; dear
+Jack: I've something I must say. If I ever seemed hard, or cold, or
+coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved you, Jack, too
+well to mar your future by linking it with my own. I always loved you,
+dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of you. That is gone now. But
+I had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish woman's dream--that you might find
+what I lacked in HER," and she glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl at
+her side; "that you might love her as you have loved me. But even that
+is not to be, Jack, is it?" and she glanced wistfully in his face. Jack
+pressed her hand, but did not speak. After a few moments' silence, she
+again said: "Perhaps you are right in your choice. She is a goodhearted
+girl, Jack--but a little bold."
+
+And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her struggling
+spirit, she spoke no more. When they came to her a moment later, a tiny
+bird that had lit upon her breast flew away; and the hand that they
+lifted from Carry's head fell lifeless at her side.
+
+
+
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+
+A bird twittered! The morning sun shining through the open window was
+apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had only caused
+the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his blankets. Barker's eyes
+opened instantly upon the light and the bird on the window ledge. Like
+all healthy young animals he would have tried to sleep again, but with
+his momentary consciousness came the recollection that it was his turn
+to cook the breakfast that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of
+his bunk to the floor. Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and
+stepped outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by
+the Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold
+water that stood by the door. Then he began to clothe himself, partly in
+the cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse between the putting
+on of his trousers and coat which he employed in bringing in wood.
+Raking together the few embers on the adobe hearth, not without a
+prudent regard to the rattlesnake which had once been detected in
+haunting the warm ashes, he began to prepare breakfast. By this time the
+other sleepers, his partners Stacy and Demorest, young men of about his
+own age, were awake, alert, and lazily critical of his progress.
+
+"I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for breakfast,"
+said Stacy, with a yawn; "and you needn't serve with red wine. I'm not
+feeling very peckish this morning."
+
+"And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish
+mackerel for ME," said Demorest gravely. "The fact is, that last bottle
+of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am this morning."
+
+Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no direct
+reply. Presently, looking up from the fire, he said, "There's no more
+saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit is extra heavy. I told
+you we had none when you went to the grocery yesterday."
+
+"And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with," said Stacy, who
+was also treasurer. "Put these two negatives together and you make the
+affirmative--saleratus. Mix freely and bake in a hot oven."
+
+Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down to
+what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the mountain
+air and the regretful fastidiousness born of the recollection of better
+things. Jerked beef, frizzled with salt pork in a frying-pan, boiled
+potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed the repast. The biscuits,
+however, proving remarkably heavy after the first mouthful, were used
+as missiles, thrown through the open door at an empty bottle which had
+previously served as a mark for revolver practice, and a few moments
+later pipes were lit to counteract the effects of the meal and take
+the taste out of their mouths. Suddenly they heard the sound of horses'
+hoofs, saw the quick passage of a rider in the open space before the
+cabin, and felt the smart impact upon the table of some small object
+thrown by him. It was the regular morning delivery of the county
+newspaper!
+
+"He's getting to be a mighty sure shot," said Demorest approvingly,
+looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper, rolled
+into a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began to
+straighten it out. This was no easy matter, as the sheet had evidently
+been rolled while yet damp from the press; but Demorest eventually
+opened it and ensconced himself behind it.
+
+"Nary news?" asked Stacy.
+
+"No. There never is any," said Demorest scornfully. "We ought to stop
+the paper."
+
+"You mean the paper man ought to. WE don't pay him," said Barker gently.
+
+"Well, that's the same thing, smarty. No news, no pay. Hallo!" he
+continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper. Then, after the
+fashion of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the interesting
+item to himself. When he had finished he brought his fist and the paper,
+together, violently down upon the table. "Now look at this! Talk of
+luck, will you? Just think of it. Here are WE--hard-working men with
+lots of sabe, too--grubbin' away on this hillside like niggers, glad
+to get enough at the end of the day to pay for our soggy biscuits and
+horse-bean coffee, and just look what falls into the lap of some lazy
+sneakin' greenhorn who never did a stoke of work in his life! Here are
+WE, with no foolishness, no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do
+credit to twice that amount of luck--and seem born to it, too--and we're
+set aside for some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to
+sit down on his office stool and hold on to a bit of paper."
+
+"What's up now?" asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of
+familiarity with his partner's extravagance.
+
+"Listen," said Demorest, reading. "Another unprecedented rise has taken
+place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension Mine' since
+the sinking of the new shaft. It was quoted yesterday at ten thousand
+dollars a foot. When it is remembered that scarcely two years ago the
+original shares, issued at fifty dollars per share, had dropped to only
+fifty cents a share, it will be seen that those who were able to hold on
+have got a good thing."
+
+"What mine did you say?" asked Barker, looking up meditatively from the
+dishes he was already washing.
+
+"The Yellow Hammer First Extension," returned Demorest shortly.
+
+"I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them still,"
+said Barker musingly.
+
+"Yes," said Demorest promptly; "the paper speaks of it here. 'We
+understand,'" he continued, reading aloud, "'that our eminent fellow
+citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as "Get Left Barker" and
+"Chucklehead," is one of these fortunate individuals.'"
+
+"No," said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, "it can't
+say that. How could it know?"
+
+Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: "You didn't hear all.
+Listen! 'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his apparently
+useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for corn plasters,
+at a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'"
+
+"You may laugh, boys," said Barker, with simple seriousness; "but I
+really believe I have got 'em yet. Just wait. I'll see!" He rose and
+began to drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk. "You see," he
+continued, "they were given to me by an old chap in return--"
+
+"For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward blew
+up," returned Demorest briefly. "We know it all! His hair was white, and
+his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares in yours, saying, and
+you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young man--and'--"
+
+"For lending him two thousand dollars, then," continued Barker with
+a simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out the
+valise.
+
+"TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!" repeated Stacy. "When did YOU have two thousand
+dollars?"
+
+"When I first left Sacramento--three years ago," said Barker,
+unstrapping the valise.
+
+"How long did you have it?" said Demorest incredulously.
+
+"At least two days, I think," returned Barker quietly. "Then I met that
+man. He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those shares. He
+died afterward."
+
+"Of course he did," said Demorest severely. "They always do. Nothing
+kills a man more quickly than an action of that kind." Nevertheless
+the two partners regarded Barker rummaging among some loose clothes
+and papers with a kind of paternal toleration. "If you can't find them,
+bring out your government bonds," suggested Stacy. But the next moment,
+flushed and triumphant, Barker rose from his knees, and came toward them
+carrying some papers in his hands. Demorest seized them from him, opened
+them, spread them on the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures,
+and transfers, glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked
+wildly at Stacy and then at Barker, and gasped:
+
+"By the living hookey! it is SO!"
+
+"B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!" echoed Stacy.
+
+"Twenty shares," continued Demorest breathlessly, "at ten thousand
+dollars a share--even if it's only a foot--is two hundred thousand
+dollars! Jerusalem!"
+
+"Tell me, fair sir," said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, "hast still left
+in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links of fine
+gold? Peradventure a pearl or two may have been overlooked!"
+
+"No--that's all," returned Barker simply.
+
+"You hear him! Rothschild says 'that's all.' Prince Esterhazy says he
+hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"What ought I to do, boys?" asked Barker, timidly glancing from one to
+the other. Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for many
+a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish joy and
+affection at that supreme moment.
+
+"Do?" said Demorest promptly. "Stand on your head and yell! No! stop!
+Come here!" He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand, and ran out
+into the open air. Here they danced violently with clasped hands around
+a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then returned to the cabin,
+grave but perspiring.
+
+"Of course," said Barker, wiping his forehead, "we'll just get some
+money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which belongs to
+old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the indication."
+
+"We'll do nothing of the kind," said Demorest decidedly. "WE ain't in
+it. That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property acquired
+before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is to be damned
+before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this Godforsaken hole. No!"
+
+"But we're partners," gasped Barker.
+
+"Not in THIS! The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it ill
+becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with Dives--is
+perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass of Malvoisie, at
+some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got things fixed, in honor of
+your return to affluence. But more would ill become us!"
+
+"But what are YOU going to do?" said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
+half-frightened smile.
+
+"We have not yet looked through our luggage," said Demorest with
+invincible gravity, "and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to my
+portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been disturbed
+since I left my ancestral home in Faginia. There may be a few First
+Debentures of Erie or what not still there."
+
+"I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the other
+day, but belike they are but poker chips," said Stacy thoughtfully.
+
+An uneasy feeling crept over Barker. The color which had left his fresh
+cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away. Yet he had
+seen nothing in his companions' eyes but affection--with even a certain
+kind of tender commiseration that deepened his uneasiness. "I suppose,"
+he said desperately, after a pause, "I ought to go over to Boomville and
+make some inquiries."
+
+"At the bank, old chap; at the bank!" said Demorest emphatically. "Take
+my advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE. Don't breathe a word of your luck
+to anybody. And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to sell just now; you
+don't know how high that stock's going to jump yet."
+
+"I thought," stammered Barker, "that you boys might like to go over with
+me."
+
+"We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're only
+two to work today," said Demorest, with a slight increase of color and
+the faintest tremor in his voice. "And it won't do, old chap, for us to
+be seen bumming round with you on the heels of your good fortune. For
+everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later everybody'll know you
+WERE rich even when you first came to us."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Barker indignantly.
+
+"Gospel, my boy!" said Demorest shortly.
+
+"The frozen truth, old man!" said Stacy.
+
+Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the door.
+Here he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to communicate
+itself to his partners. There was a moment's awkward silence. Then
+Demorest suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a grip that was
+half a caress, and walked him rapidly to the door. "And now don't stand
+foolin' with us, Barker boy; but just trot off like a little man, and
+get your grip on that fortune; and when you've got your hooks in it hang
+on like grim death. You'll"--he hesitated for an instant only, possibly
+to find the laugh that should have accompanied his speech--"you're sure
+to find US here when you get back."
+
+Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his hat
+on his head and walked quickly away. The two partners stood watching him
+in silence until his figure was lost in the underbrush. Then they spoke.
+
+"Like him--wasn't it?" said Demorest.
+
+"Just him all over," said Stacy.
+
+"Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and never
+even bothering his dear old head about it!"
+
+"And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten
+hillside with us!"
+
+"And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again. That's
+Barker."
+
+"Dear old man!"
+
+"Good old chap!"
+
+"I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him? He's
+just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens for it,"
+said Stacy.
+
+"The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent him,"
+said Demorest almost fiercely. "There will be knaves and fools enough
+who will try and put the idea of our using him into his simple heart
+without that. No! Let him do as he likes with it--but let him be
+himself. I'd rather have him come back to us even after he's lost the
+money--his old self and empty-handed--than try to change the stuff God
+put into him and make him more like others."
+
+The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity that
+Stacy was silent. After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss him on the
+hillside--won't we?"
+
+Demorest did not reply. Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he wrenched
+off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly to pull the
+leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he switched it in
+the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said roughly: "Come, let's
+get to work!" and strode away.
+
+Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
+manner. He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had lost
+sight of the cabin. But, being of a simple nature, his emotions were
+less complex. If he had not seen the undoubted look of affection in the
+eyes of his partners he would have imagined that they were jealous of
+his good fortune. Yet why had they refused his offer to share it with
+him? Why had they so strangely assumed that their partnership with him
+had closed? Why had they declined to go with him? Why had this
+money--of which he had thought so little, and for which he had cared
+so little--changed them toward him? It had not changed HIM--HE was
+the same! He remembered how they had often talked and laughed over
+a prospective "strike" in mining and speculated what THEY would do
+together with the money! And now that "luck" had occurred to one of
+them, individually, the effect was only to alienate them! He could not
+make it out. He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was conscious now
+of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in retribution. He was
+rich: he would let them see HE could do without them. He was quite free
+now to think only of himself and Kitty.
+
+For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's simplicity
+and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his partners, his
+FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of his wealth was of
+a young lady. It was Kitty Carter, the daughter of the hotelkeeper at
+Boomville, who owned the claim that the partners had mutually coveted.
+That a pretty girl's face should flash upon him with his conviction that
+he was now a rich man meant perhaps no disloyalty to his partners,
+whom he would still have helped. But it occurred to him now, in his
+half-hurt, half-vengeful state, that they had often joked him about
+Kitty, and perhaps further confidence with them was debarred. And it was
+only due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.
+
+This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and the
+economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited upon the
+hotel table. Half the town was always actively in love with her; the
+other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but hopeless in defeat.
+For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty girls occasionally met
+with in Southwestern frontier civilization whose distinct and original
+refinement of face and figure were so remarkable and original as to cast
+a doubt on the sagacity and prescience of one parent and the morality of
+the other, yet no doubt with equal injustice. But the fact remained
+that she was slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her
+stumpy, commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
+dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien. The
+three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education and
+refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty. And for some
+occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had no obvious
+or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker was particularly
+favored.
+
+He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel rose
+before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether he had not
+better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get a small advance
+on them to buy a new necktie or a "boiled shirt" in which to present
+himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he had partly given his
+word to Demorest that he would keep his shares intact for the present,
+he abandoned this project, probably from the fact that his projected
+confidence with Kitty was already a violation of Demorest's injunctions
+of secrecy, and his conscience was sufficiently burdened with that
+breach of faith.
+
+But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him. The
+dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of breakfast and
+before the flow of the preparation for the midday meal. He could not
+have his interview with Kitty in that dreary waste of reversed chairs
+and bare trestlelike tables, and she was possibly engaged in her
+household duties. But Miss Kitty had already seen him cross the road,
+and had lounged into the dining-room with an artfully simulated air of
+casually examining it. At the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in
+the sweetest and freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.
+Then, partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through
+the working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with
+a simple inquiry for her father. Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip, smiled
+slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the office. Opening
+the door, without raising her lashes to either her father or the
+visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of the professional
+manner, "Mr. Barker to see you on business," and tripped sweetly away.
+
+And this slight incident precipitated the crisis. For Barker instantly
+made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for his partners
+of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to confide to him the
+details of his good fortune, and as a proof of his sincerity and his
+ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly. Carter was a shrewd business
+man, and the well-known simplicity of Barker was a proof of his
+truthfulness, to say nothing of the shares that were shown to him. His
+selling price for his claim had been two hundred dollars, but here was
+a rich customer who, from a mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt
+willing to pay more. He hesitated with a bland but superior smile. "Ah,
+that was my price at my last offer, Mr. Barker," he said suavely; "but,
+you see, things are going up since then."
+
+The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity. Barker,
+thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened at his own
+presumption--not for the amount of the money involved, but from the
+possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--quickly took
+advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE. "No matter, then," he said
+hurriedly; "perhaps I had better consult my partners first; in fact,"
+he added, with a gratuitous truthfulness all his own, "I hardly know
+whether they will take it of me, so I think I'll wait."
+
+Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do! He recovered himself
+with an insinuating smile. "You pulled me up too short, Mr. Barker;
+I'm a business man, but hang it all! what's that among friends? If you
+reckoned I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred--why, I'm there! Say no more
+about it--the claim's yours. I'll make you out a bill of sale at once."
+
+"But," hesitated Barker, "you see I haven't got the money yet, and--"
+
+"Money!" echoed Carter bluntly, "what's that among friends? Gimme your
+note at thirty days--that's good enough for ME. An' we'll settle the
+whole thing now--nothing like finishing a job while you're about it."
+And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor could protest, he had
+filled up a promissory note for Barker's signature and himself signed a
+bill of sale for the property. "And I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like
+to take your partners by surprise about this little gift of yours," he
+added smilingly. "Well, my messenger is starting for the Gulch in five
+minutes; he's going by your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o'
+sale, as a kind o' settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything,
+see! There's nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things.
+And don't you hurry 'bout them either! You see, you sorter owe us
+a friendly call--havin' always dropped inter the hotel only as a
+customer--so ye'll stop here over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old
+woman is busy, why Kitty will try to make the time pass till then by
+playin' for you on her new pianner."
+
+Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and opportunity,
+Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as mechanically
+addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to Demorest, which Carter
+gave to the messenger. Then he followed his host across the hall to the
+apartment known as "Miss Kitty's parlor." He had often heard of it as a
+sanctum impervious to the ordinary guest. Whatever functions the young
+girl assumed at the hotel and among her father's boarders, it was
+vaguely understood that she dropped them on crossing that sacred
+threshold, and became "MISS Carter." The county judge had been
+entertained there, and the wife of the bank manager. Barker's admission
+there was consequently an unprecedented honor.
+
+He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in
+various charming little ways of the young girl's presence. There was
+the cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the backs of
+mules from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon head of Minerva
+done by the fair occupant at the age of twelve; there was a profile
+of herself done by a traveling artist; there were pretty little china
+ornaments and many flowers, notably a faded but still scented woodland
+shrub which Barker had presented to her two weeks ago, and over which
+Miss Kitty had discreetly thrown her white handkerchief as he entered. A
+wave of hope passed over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr.
+Carter's roughly playful voice introduced him:
+
+"Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch, Kitty.
+You kin let him see what you're doing in that line. But you'll have to
+sit up now, for this young man's come inter some property, and will
+be sasheying round in 'Frisco afore long with a biled shirt and a
+stovepipe, and be givin' the go-by to Boomville. Well! you young folks
+will excuse me for a while, as I reckon I'll just toddle over and get
+the recorder to put that bill o' sale on record. Nothin' like squaring
+things to onct, Mr. Barker."
+
+As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink. Carter had not only
+bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his excuse for a
+confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious construction on his
+visit. What could she think of him now? He stood ashamed and embarrassed
+before her.
+
+But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden concern
+regarding the "horrid" untidiness of the room, which made her cheeks
+quite pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and set down in
+exactly the same place several articles, was exceedingly delighted. In
+fact, she did not remember ever having been so pleased before in her
+life! These things were always so unexpected! Just like the weather, for
+instance. It was quite cool last night--and now it was just stifling.
+And so dusty! Had Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch? Or
+perhaps, being a rich man, he--with a dazzling smile--was above walking
+now. It was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.
+
+"I really wanted to tell only--YOU, Miss Carter," stammered Barker. "You
+see--" he hesitated. But Miss Kitty saw perfectly. He wanted to tell
+HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER! Not that it made the
+slightest difference to her, for her father would have been sure to
+have told her. It was also kind of her father to invite him to luncheon.
+Otherwise she might not have seen him before he left Boomville.
+
+But this was more than Barker could stand. With the same desperate
+directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father, he
+now blurted out his whole heart to her. He told her how he had loved
+her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken together at the
+church picnic. Did she remember it? How he had sat and worshiped her,
+and nothing else, at church! How her voice in the church choir had
+sounded like an angel's; how his poverty and his uncertain future had
+kept him from seeing her often, lest he should be tempted to betray his
+hopeless passion. How as soon as he realized that he had a position,
+that his love for her need not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes,
+he came to tell her ALL. He did not even dare to hope! But she would
+HEAR him at least, would she not?
+
+Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple, outspoken
+declaration. In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at her pink cheeks
+in the glass, and stopped to look out of the window. The room was filled
+with his love--it was encompassing her--and, despite his shy attitude,
+seemed to be almost embracing her. But she managed at last to turn upon
+him a face that was now as white and grave as his own was eager and
+glowing.
+
+"Sit down," she said gently.
+
+He did so obediently, but wonderingly. She then opened the piano and
+took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose sheets
+of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. Thus
+intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and for the first
+time raised her eyes to his.
+
+"Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt! There!--not so near; you
+can hear what I have to say well enough where you are. That will do."
+
+Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat
+down.
+
+"Now," said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight before
+her, "I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--or at least
+SAY it--but I do. There! But because I do believe you--it seems to me
+all wrong! For the very reasons that you give for not having spoken to
+me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say you did, are the same reasons
+why you should not speak to me now. You see, all this time you have let
+nobody but yourself know how you felt toward me. In everybody's eyes
+YOU and your partners have been only the three stuck-up, exclusive,
+college-bred men who mined a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally
+came here to this hotel as customers. In everybody's eyes I have been
+only the rich hotel-keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon
+you--but nothing more. But at least we were then pretty much alike,
+and as good as each other. And now, as soon as you have become suddenly
+rich, and, of course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to
+acknowledge it by accepting you!"
+
+"You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty," burst out Barker vehemently,
+but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the young lady's
+fingers on the keys. He sank back in his chair.
+
+"Of course you never MEANT it," she said with an odd laugh; "but
+everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to everybody
+in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have just made to me.
+Everybody will say I accepted you for your money; everybody will say
+it was a put-up job of my father's. Everybody will say that you threw
+yourself away on me. And I don't know but that they would be right. Sit
+down, please! or I shall play again.
+
+"You see," she went on, without looking at him, "just now you like to
+remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter girl,
+but if I became your wife it's just what you would like to FORGET. And
+I shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the time when you came
+here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes when you couldn't, just
+to see me; and how we used to make excuses to speak with each other over
+the dishes. You don't know what these things mean to a woman who"--she
+hesitated a moment, and then added abruptly, "but what does that matter?
+You would not care to be reminded of it. So," she said, rising up with a
+grave smile and grasping her hands tightly behind her, "it's a good deal
+better that you should begin to forget it now. Be a good boy and take my
+advice. Go to San Francisco. You will meet some girl there in a way
+you will not afterward regret. You are young, and your riches, to say
+nothing," she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat inconsistent
+with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips, "of your kind
+and simple heart, will secure that which the world would call unselfish
+affection from one more equal to you, but would always believe was only
+BOUGHT if it came from me."
+
+"I suppose you are right," he said simply.
+
+She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened. He had risen,
+his face white and his gray eyes widely opened. "I suppose you are
+right," he went on, "because you are saying to me what my partners said
+to me this morning, when I offered to share my wealth with them, God
+knows as honestly as I offered to share my heart with you. I suppose
+that you are both right; that there must be some curse of pride or
+selfishness upon the money that I have got; but I have not felt it yet,
+and the fault does not lie with me."
+
+She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently toward the
+window. When she turned back again he was gone. The room around her was
+empty; this room, which a moment before had seemed to be pulsating with
+his boyish passion, was now empty, and empty of HIM. She bit her lips,
+rose, and ran eagerly to the window. She saw his straw hat and brown
+curls as he crossed the road. She drew her handkerchief sharply away
+from the withered shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once
+treasured remains in the hearth. Then, possibly because she had it
+ready in her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking
+sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its back,
+and buried her face in her hands.
+
+It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to make
+no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them! So it
+seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal directness.
+It was the possession of this wealth that had in some way hopelessly
+changed his relations with the world. He did not love Kitty any the
+less; he did not even think she had wronged him; they, his partners and
+his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there must be some occult quality
+in this wealth that he would understand when he possessed it, and
+perhaps it might even make him ashamed of his generosity; not in the way
+they had said, but in his tempting them so audaciously to assume a wrong
+position. It behoved him to take possession of it at once, and to take
+also upon himself alone the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities
+it would incur. His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to
+tempt an innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not
+seen in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'
+refusal. He resolved to wait no longer, but sell his dreadful stock at
+once. He walked directly to the bank.
+
+The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known already,
+received him graciously in recognition of his well-known simple honesty,
+and respectfully as a representative of the equally well-known poor but
+"superior" partnership of the Gulch. He listened with marked attention
+to Barker's hesitating but brief story, only remarking at its close:
+
+"You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?"
+
+"No," said Barker; "I mean the 'First'--and it said First in the
+Boomville paper."
+
+"Yes, yes!--I saw it--it was a printer's error. The stock of the 'First'
+was called in two years ago. No! You mean the 'Second,' for, of course,
+you've followed the quotations, and are likely to know what stock you're
+holding shares of. When you go back, take a look at them, and you'll see
+I am right."
+
+"But I brought them with me," said Barker, with a slight flushing as
+he felt in his pocket, "and I am quite sure they are the 'First'." He
+brought them out and laid them on the desk before the manager.
+
+The words "First Extension" were plainly visible. The manager glanced
+curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.
+
+"Did anybody put this up on you?" he said sternly. "Did your partners
+send you here with this stuff?"
+
+"No! no!" said Barker eagerly. "No one! It's all MY mistake. I see it
+now. I trusted to the newspaper."
+
+"And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the quotations, nor
+followed it in any way, since you had it?"
+
+"Never!" said Barker. "Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw the
+newspaper. So it's not worth anything?" And, to the infinite surprise of
+the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish face.
+
+"I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on," said the
+manager gently.
+
+The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which his
+wondering companion could not help joining. "Thank you," said Barker
+suddenly, and rushed away.
+
+"He beats everything!" said the manager, gazing after him. "Damned if he
+didn't seem even PLEASED."
+
+He WAS pleased. The burden of wealth had fallen from his shoulders; the
+dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and parted his friends from
+him was gone! And he had not got rid of it by spending it foolishly. It
+had not ruined anybody yet; it had not altered anybody in HIS eyes.
+It was gone; and he was a free and happy man once more. He would go
+directly back to his partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but
+they could not look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes.
+Perhaps even Kitty--but here a sudden chill struck him. He had forgotten
+the bill of sale! He had forgotten the dreadful promissory note given to
+her father in the rash presumption of his wealth! How could it ever be
+paid? And more than that, it had been given in a fraud. He had no money
+when he gave it, and no prospect of any but what he was to get from
+those worthless shares. Would anybody believe him that it was only a
+stupid blunder of his own? Yes, his partners might believe him; but,
+horrible thought, he had already implicated THEM in his fraud! Even now,
+while he was standing there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering
+upon the new claim he had NOT PAID FOR--COULD NOT PAY FOR--and in the
+guise of a benefactor he was dishonoring them. Yet it was Carter he
+must meet first; he must confess all to him. He must go back to the
+hotel--that hotel where he had indignantly left her, and tell the father
+he was a fraud. It was terrible to think of; perhaps it was part of that
+money curse that he could not get rid of, and was now realizing; but
+it MUST be done. He was simple, but his very simplicity had that
+unhesitating directness of conclusion which is the main factor of what
+men call "pluck."
+
+He turned back to the hotel and entered the office. But Mr. Carter had
+not yet returned. What was to be done? He could not wait there; there
+was no time to be lost; there was only one other person who knew his
+expectations, and to whom he could confide his failure--it was Kitty. It
+was to taste the dregs of his humiliation, but it must be done. He ran
+up the staircase and knocked timidly at the sitting-room door. There was
+a momentary pause, and a weak voice said "Come in." Barker opened the
+door; saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful
+eyes that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful but
+stiffening figure. But he was past all insult now.
+
+"I would not intrude," he said simply, "but I came only to see your
+father. I have made an awful blunder--more than a blunder, I think--a
+FRAUD. Believing that I was rich, I purchased your father's claim for my
+partners, and gave him my promissory note. I came here to give him back
+his claim--for that note can NEVER be paid! I have just been to the
+bank; I find I have made a stupid mistake in the name of the shares upon
+which I based my belief in my wealth. The ones I own are worthless--am
+as poor as ever--I am even poorer, for I owe your father money I can
+never pay!"
+
+To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her troubled
+eyes which he had never seen before. "This is a feeble trick," she said
+bitterly; "it is unlike you--it is unworthy of you!"
+
+"Good God! You must believe me. Listen! it was all a mistake--a
+printer's error. I read in the paper that the stock for the First
+Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second. I
+had some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and only
+thought of when I read the announcement in the paper this morning. I
+swear to you--"
+
+But it was unnecessary. There was no doubting the truth of that
+voice--that manner. The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give place
+to a stare, and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue wells of
+laughter. She went to the window and laughed. She sat down to the piano
+and laughed. She caught up the handkerchief, and hiding half her rosy
+face in it, laughed. She finally collapsed into an easy chair, and,
+burying her brown head in its cushions, laughed long and confidentially
+until she brought up suddenly against a sob. And then was still.
+
+Barker was dreadfully alarmed. He had heard of hysterics before. He felt
+he ought to do something. He moved toward her timidly, and gently drew
+away her handkerchief. Alas! the blue wells were running over now.
+He took her cold hands in his; he knelt beside her and passed his arm
+around her waist. He drew her head upon his shoulder. He was not sure
+that any of these things were effective until she suddenly lifted
+her eyes to his with the last ray of mirth in them vanishing in a big
+teardrop, put her arms round his neck, and sobbed:
+
+"Oh, George! You blessed innocent!"
+
+An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.
+
+"But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be
+time; perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's
+claim."
+
+"Yes, George dear," said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; "and tell
+them to do so AT ONCE!"
+
+"What?" gasped Barker.
+
+"At once--do you hear?--or it may be too late! Go quick."
+
+"But your father--Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all yourself,
+and spare me."
+
+"I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey. Nor shall you! Don't you see
+the note isn't due for a month? Stop! Have you told anybody but Paw and
+me?"
+
+"Only the bank manager."
+
+She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most
+enchanting of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin. "I'll run over and
+fix him," she said.
+
+"Fix him?" returned Barker, aghast.
+
+"Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical joke
+on you, and he mustn't give you away. He'll do anything for me."
+
+"But my partners didn't! On the contrary--"
+
+"Don't tell me, George," said Miss Kitty severely. "THEY ought never to
+have let you come here with that stuff. But come! You must go at once.
+You must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out everything to him; I know you!
+I'll tell him you could not stay to luncheon. Quick, now; go. What?
+Well--there!"
+
+Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so protracted
+that Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the front landing
+before she could disappear by the back stairs. But once in the street,
+Barker no longer lingered. It was a good three miles back to the Gulch;
+he might still reach it by the time his partners were taking their
+noonday rest, and he resolved that although the messenger had preceded
+him, they would not enter upon the new claim until the afternoon. For
+Barker, in spite of his mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking
+what he couldn't pay for; he would keep the claim intact until something
+could be settled. For the rest, he walked on air! Kitty loved him!
+The accursed wealth no longer stood between them. They were both poor
+now--everything was possible.
+
+The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he
+reached the Gulch. Here a new trepidation seized him. How would his
+partners receive the news of his utter failure? HE was happy, for he had
+gained Kitty through it. But they? For a moment it seemed to him that he
+had purchased his happiness through their loss. He stopped, took off his
+hat, and ran his fingers remorsefully through his damp curls.
+
+Another thing troubled him. He had reached the crest of the Gulch, where
+their old working ground was spread before him like a map. They were not
+there; neither were they lying under the four pines on the ridge where
+they were wont to rest at midday. He turned with some alarm to the new
+claim adjoining theirs, but there was no sign of them there either. A
+sudden fear that they had, after parting from him, given up the claim
+in a fit of disgust and depression, and departed, now overcame him. He
+clapped his hand on his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.
+
+He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of "Who's there?" from
+the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the trail.
+But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he was wearing
+vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of "All right, it's
+only Barker! Hooray!" he ran toward him. In an instant he was joined by
+Stacy from the cabin, and the two men, catching hold of their returning
+partner, waltzed him joyfully and breathlessly into the cabin. But the
+quick-eyed Demorest suddenly let go his hold and stared at Barker's
+face. "Why, Barker, old boy, what's up?"
+
+"Everything's up," gasped the breathless Barker. "It's all up about
+these stocks. It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of that newspaper.
+I never had the right kind of shares. The ones I have are worthless
+rags"; and the next instant he had blurted out his whole interview with
+the bank manager.
+
+The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's infinite
+perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had seized Miss Kitty
+fell upon them. They laughed, holding on each other's shoulders; they
+laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling figure; they went out and
+laughed with their backs against a tree. They laughed separately and in
+different corners. And then they came up to Barker with tears in their
+eyes, dropped their heads on his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:
+
+"You blessed ass!"
+
+"But," said Stacy suddenly, "how did you manage to buy the claim?"
+
+"Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys. I've NEVER PAID FOR IT," groaned
+Barker.
+
+"But Carter sent us the bill of sale," persisted Demorest, "or we
+shouldn't have taken it."
+
+"I gave my promissory note at thirty days," said Barker desperately,
+"and where's the money to come from now? But," he added wildly, as the
+men glanced at each other--"you said 'taken it.' Good heavens! you don't
+mean to say that I'm TOO late--that you've--you've touched it?"
+
+"I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing," drawled Demorest.
+
+"It looks uncommonly like it," drawled Stacy.
+
+Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other. "Shall we pass our
+young friend in to see the show?" said Demorest to Stacy.
+
+"Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,"
+returned Stacy.
+
+They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the
+corner of the cabin. There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large tin
+prospecting pan, in which the partners also occasionally used to knead
+their bread. A dirty towel covered it. Demorest whisked it dexterously
+aside, and disclosed three large fragments of decomposed gold and
+quartz. Barker started back.
+
+"Heft it!" said Demorest grimly.
+
+Barker could scarcely lift the pan!
+
+"Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!" said Stacy, in short
+staccato sentences. "In a pocket! Brought it out the second stroke of
+the pick! We'd been awfully blue after you left. Awfully blue, too, when
+that bill of sale came, for we thought you'd been wasting your money on
+US. Reckoned we oughtn't to take it, but send it straight back to you.
+Messenger gone! Then Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be
+undone, and we ought to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and
+strike a single stroke for you. And there it is. And there's more on the
+hillside."
+
+"But it isn't MINE! It isn't YOURS! It's Carter's. I never had the money
+to pay for it--and I haven't got it now."
+
+"But you gave the note--and it is not due for thirty days."
+
+A recollection flashed upon Barker. "Yes," he said with thoughtful
+simplicity, "that's what Kitty said."
+
+"Oh, Kitty said so," said both partners, gravely.
+
+"Yes," stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, "and, as I
+didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting it ready."
+He picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as his two partners
+stepped beyond the door.
+
+"Wasn't it exactly like him?" said Demorest.
+
+"Him all over," said Stacy.
+
+"And his worry over that note?" said Demorest.
+
+"And 'what Kitty said,'" said Stacy.
+
+"Look here! I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"What luck!"
+
+
+
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+
+I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog should be
+proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation and incompetency,
+nor why the possession of one should seriously affect the social
+standing of its possessor. But the fact being established, I think we
+accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without question. The matter of ownership
+was more difficult to settle; and although the dog I have in my mind at
+the present writing attached himself impartially and equally to everyone
+in camp, no one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the
+perpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with
+indecent haste.
+
+"Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks," or the
+retort, "He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin," expressed
+the eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any
+responsibility. Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an
+unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest critics
+vied with each other in narrating instances of his sagacity, insight,
+and agility which they themselves had witnessed.
+
+He had been seen crossing the "flume" that spanned Grizzly Canyon at a
+height of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide. He had tumbled
+down the "shoot" to the South Fork, a thousand feet below, and was found
+sitting on the riverbank "without a scratch, 'cept that he was lazily
+givin' himself with his off hind paw." He had been forgotten in a
+snowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come home in the early spring with
+the conceited complacency of an Alpine traveler and a plumpness alleged
+to have been the result of an exclusive diet of buried mail bags and
+their contents. He was generally believed to read the advance election
+posters, and disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brass
+band--which he hated--came to the Ridge. He was suspected of having
+overlooked Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed to
+the Colonel's adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of betting
+against four kings.
+
+While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported witnesses, it
+was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the responsibility of
+corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and HE was looked upon as a
+consummate liar.
+
+"Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye! Scoot,
+you yaller pizin!" was a common adjuration whenever the unfortunate
+animal intruded upon a card party. "Ef thar was a spark, an ATOM of
+truth in THAT DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I saw him sittin' up and
+trying to magnetize a jay bird off a tree. But wot are ye goin' to do
+with a yaller equivocator like that?"
+
+I have said that he was yellow--or, to use the ordinary expression,
+"yaller." Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the ignominy
+attached to the epithet lay in this favorite pronunciation. Men who
+habitually spoke of a "YELLOW bird," a "YELLOW-hammer," a "YELLOW leaf,"
+always alluded to him as a "YALLER dog."
+
+He certainly WAS yellow. After a bath--usually compulsory--he presented
+a decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of his forehead to
+the stump of his tail, fading in his sides and flank to a delicate straw
+color. His breast, legs, and feet--when not reddened by "slumgullion,"
+in which he was fond of wading--were white. A few attempts at ornamental
+decoration from the India-ink pot of the storekeeper failed, partly
+through the yellow dog's excessive agility, which would never give the
+paint time to dry on him, and partly through his success in transferring
+his markings to the trousers and blankets of the camp.
+
+The size and shape of his tail--which had been cut off before his
+introduction to Rattlers Ridge--were favorite sources of speculation to
+the miners, as determining both his breed and his moral responsibility
+in coming into camp in that defective condition. There was a general
+opinion that he couldn't have looked worse with a tail, and its removal
+was therefore a gratuitous effrontery.
+
+His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown, and
+sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from evolution
+through environment, and their original trustful openness was marred by
+the experience of watching for flying stones, sods, and passing kicks
+from the rear, so that the pupils were continually reverting to the
+outer angle of the eyelid.
+
+Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed question
+of his BREED. His speed and scent pointed to a "hound," and it is
+related that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of a wildcat with
+such success that he followed it apparently out of the State, returning
+at the end of two weeks footsore, but blandly contented.
+
+Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the same
+belief, "into the brush" to drive off a bear, who was supposed to be
+haunting the campfire. He returned in a few minutes WITH the bear,
+DRIVING IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole party. After
+this the theory of his being a hunting dog was abandoned. Yet it was
+said--on the usual uncorroborated evidence--that he had "put up" a
+quail; and his qualities as a retriever were for a long time accepted,
+until, during a shooting expedition for wild ducks, it was discovered
+that the one he had brought back had never been shot, and the party were
+obliged to compound damages with an adjacent settler.
+
+His fondness for paddling in the ditches and "slumgullion" at one time
+suggested a water spaniel. He could swim, and would occasionally bring
+out of the river sticks and pieces of bark that had been thrown in; but
+as HE always had to be thrown in with them, and was a good-sized dog,
+his aquatic reputation faded also. He remained simply "a yaller dog."
+What more could be said? His actual name was "Bones"--given to him, no
+doubt, through the provincial custom of confounding the occupation of
+the individual with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedent
+could be found in some old English family names.
+
+But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particular
+individual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of drunkards.
+Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought him out from
+under a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction. He would accompany
+them through the long straggling street of the settlement, barking his
+delight at every step or misstep of the revelers, and exhibiting none of
+that mistrust of eye which marked his attendance upon the sane and the
+respectable. He accepted even their uncouth play without a snarl or a
+yelp, hypocritically pretending even to like it; and I conscientiously
+believe would have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if the
+hand that tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him
+"lie still" were husky with liquor. He would "see" the party cheerfully
+into a saloon, wait outside the door--his tongue fairly lolling from his
+mouth in enjoyment--until they reappeared, permit them even to tumble
+over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before them, heedless of
+awkwardly projected stones and epithets. He would afterward accompany
+them separately home, or lie with them at crossroads until they were
+assisted to their cabins. Then he would trot rakishly to his own haunt
+by the saloon stove, with the slightly conscious air of having been a
+bad dog, yet of having had a good time.
+
+We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from some
+merely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the physically
+and mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with active
+wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such
+moments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a
+"yaller dog" with all that was disreputable. And this was supported by
+another very singular canine manifestation--the "sincere flattery" of
+simulation or imitation.
+
+"Uncle Billy" Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being
+the camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatest
+solicitude. He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his feet
+or head according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment, but, it was
+noticed, began presently to undergo a singular alteration in his own
+habits and appearance. From being an active, tireless scout and forager,
+a bold and unovertakable marauder, he became lazy and apathetic;
+allowed gophers to burrow under him without endeavoring to undermine the
+settlement in his frantic endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels
+to flash their tails at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual
+caches, and left his favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.
+His eyes grew dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion
+became blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness
+began to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together,
+zigzagging up the hill. Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could be
+predetermined by Bones' appearance at times when his temporary master
+was invisible. "The old man must have an awful jag on today," was
+casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and imbecility was noticeable
+in the passing Bones. At first it was believed that he drank also, but
+when careful investigation proved this hypothesis untenable, he was
+freely called a "derned time-servin', yaller hypocrite." Not a few
+advanced the opinion that if Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy
+astray, he at least "slavered him over and coddled him until the old man
+got conceited in his wickedness." This undoubtedly led to a compulsory
+divorce between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to a
+neighboring town and a doctor.
+
+Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was
+supposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his convalescence,
+and to have been "cut" by Uncle Billy in his reformed character; and
+he returned to his old active life again, and buried his past with his
+forgotten bones. It was said that he was afterward detected in trying
+to lead an intoxicated tramp into camp after the methods employed by
+a blind man's dog, but was discovered in time by the--of
+course--uncorroborated narrator.
+
+I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and picturesque
+sin, but the same veracity which compelled me to transcribe his
+faults and iniquities obliges me to describe his ultimate and somewhat
+monotonous reformation, which came from no fault of his own.
+
+It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent of
+his change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been induced to
+diverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our settlement. Flags
+were flying from the post office and Polka saloon, and Bones was flying
+before the brass band that he detested, when the sweetest girl in the
+county--Pinkey Preston--daughter of the county judge and hopelessly
+beloved by all Rattlers Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had
+glorified by occupying as an invited guest.
+
+"What makes him run away?" she asked quickly, opening her lovely eyes in
+a possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to run away from
+her.
+
+"He don't like the brass band," we explained eagerly.
+
+"How funny," murmured the girl; "is it as out of tune as all that?"
+
+This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy
+us--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--but we
+were positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather her dainty
+skirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust toward Bones, who,
+with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had halted in the road,
+and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at the spectacle of the
+descending trombone. We held our breath as she approached him. Would
+Bones evade her as he did us at such moments, or would he save our
+reputation, and consent, for the moment, to accept her as a new kind of
+inebriate? She came nearer; he saw her; he began to slowly quiver with
+excitement--his stump of a tail vibrating with such rapidity that
+the loss of the missing portion was scarcely noticeable. Suddenly she
+stopped before him, took his yellow head between her little hands,
+lifted it, and looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her two
+lovely blue ones. What passed between them in that magnetic glance no
+one ever knew. She returned with him; said to him casually: "We're not
+afraid of brass bands, are we?" to which he apparently acquiesced, at
+least stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which was
+nearly all the time.
+
+During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were always
+near together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public checking of Yuba
+Bill's "waybill" on behalf of the township, with a gold pencil presented
+to her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far from knowing no bounds,
+seemed to know nothing but them, and he witnessed it apparently in the
+air. No one dared to interfere. For the first time a local pride in
+Bones sprang up in our hearts--and we lied to each other in his praises
+openly and shamelessly.
+
+Then the time came for parting. We were standing by the door of the
+coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it; Bones
+was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the interior, and
+apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge Preston in the
+corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of admonitory fingers.
+Then, taking his head between her two hands, she again looked into
+his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD dog," with the gentlest of
+emphasis on the adjective, and popped into the coach.
+
+The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold vehicle
+bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow dog danced
+in and out of it to the very outskirts of the settlement. And then he
+soberly returned.
+
+A day or two later he was missed--but the fact was afterward known that
+he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston lived, and
+he was forgiven. A week afterward he was missed again, but this time for
+a longer period, and then a pathetic letter arrived from Sacramento for
+the storekeeper's wife.
+
+"Would you mind," wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, "asking some of your boys
+to come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones? I don't mind
+having the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where everyone
+knows me; but here he DOES make one so noticeable, on account of HIS
+COLOR. I've got scarcely a frock that he agrees with. He don't go with
+my pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint he makes three shades lighter.
+You know yellow is SO trying."
+
+A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a
+deputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl. We
+were all quite indignant with Bones--but, oddly enough, I think it was
+greatly tempered with our new pride in him. While he was with us alone,
+his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the recurrent
+phrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers" gave us a
+mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had secured a
+"mascot" in some zoological curiosity.
+
+This was further indicated by a singular occurrence. A new church had
+been built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come from San
+Francisco to preach the opening sermon. After a careful examination of
+the camp's wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of apparel, a few of
+us were deputed to represent "Rattlers" at the Sunday service. In our
+white ducks, straw hats, and flannel blouses, we were sufficiently
+picturesque and distinctive as "honest miners" to be shown off in one of
+the front pews.
+
+Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books--in the
+cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and blown over
+by the spices of our own woods through the open windows, a deep sense
+of the abiding peace of Christian communion settled upon us. At this
+supreme moment someone murmured in an awe-stricken whisper:
+
+"WILL you look at Bones?"
+
+We looked. Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallery
+through a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his mistake,
+was now calmly walking along the gallery rail before the astounded
+worshipers. Reaching the end, he paused for a moment, and carelessly
+looked down. It was about fifteen feet to the floor below--the simplest
+jump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones. Daintily, gingerly,
+lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of manner, as if, humanly
+speaking, he had one leg in his pocket and were doing it on three, he
+cleared the distance, dropping just in front of the chancel, without a
+sound, turned himself around three times, and then lay comfortably down.
+
+Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the eminent
+divine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile. We heard the hurried
+whispers: "Belongs to them." "Quite a local institution here, you know."
+"Don't like to offend sensibilities;" and the minister's prompt "By no
+means," as he went on with his service.
+
+A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat there
+in slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that any affront
+offered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and followed by our
+instantaneous withdrawal in a body.
+
+All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Bible
+from the communion table and holding it in both hands before him, walked
+toward a reading stand by the altar rails. Bones uttered a distinct
+growl. The minister stopped.
+
+We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole situation. The Bible
+was nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of sod which we
+were in the playful habit of launching at Bones when he lay half-asleep
+in the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade it.
+
+We held our breath. What was to be done? But the opportunity belonged
+to our leader, Jeff Briggs--a confoundedly good-looking fellow, with the
+golden mustache of a northern viking and the curls of an Apollo. Secure
+in his beauty and bland in his self-conceit, he rose from the pew, and
+stepped before the chancel rails.
+
+"I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir," he said, respectfully, "and
+you will see that he will go out quietly."
+
+"What is wrong?" whispered the minister in some concern.
+
+"He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without giving
+him a fair show, as we do."
+
+The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the book in
+his hands. Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and vanished like
+a yellow flash!
+
+With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a week.
+At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge Preston,
+saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their house, and
+begged that the camp, without yielding up their valuable PROPERTY in
+him, would allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an indefinite time;
+that both the judge and his daughter--with whom Bones was already an old
+friend--would be glad if the members of the camp would visit their old
+favorite whenever they desired, to assure themselves that he was well
+cared for.
+
+I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good deal to
+do with our ultimate yielding. However, the reports of those who visited
+Bones were wonderful and marvelous. He was residing there in state,
+lying on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled up under the judicial desk in
+the judge's study, sleeping regularly on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's
+bedroom door, or lazily snapping at flies on the judge's lawn.
+
+"He's as yaller as ever," said one of our informants, "but it don't
+somehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over in the
+old time, just to see him scoot out of the dust."
+
+And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs will
+indignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by every faithful
+hound since the days of Ulysses. Bones not only FORGOT, but absolutely
+CUT US! Those who called upon the judge in "store clothes" he would
+perhaps casually notice, but he would sniff at them as if detecting and
+resenting them under their superficial exterior. The rest he simply paid
+no attention to. The more familiar term of "Bonesy"--formerly applied
+to him, as in our rare moments of endearment--produced no response.
+This pained, I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through some
+strange human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.
+Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very moment
+he ignored us. I am afraid that we also took some pains to point
+out that he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his elasticity,
+implying covertly that his choice was a mistake and his life a failure.
+
+A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability, being
+found one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's
+door. When the news was conveyed to us, we asked permission, the camp
+being in a prosperous condition, to erect a stone over his grave. But
+when it came to the inscription we could only think of the two words
+murmured to him by Miss Pinkey, which we always believe effected his
+conversion:
+
+"GOOD Dog!"
+
+
+
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+
+She was a mother--and a rather exemplary one--of five children, although
+her own age was barely nine. Two of these children were twins, and she
+generally alluded to them as "Mr. Amplach's children," referring to an
+exceedingly respectable gentleman in the next settlement who, I have
+reason to believe, had never set eyes on her or them. The twins were
+quite naturally alike--having been in a previous state of existence two
+ninepins--and were still somewhat vague and inchoate below their low
+shoulders in their long clothes, but were also firm and globular about
+the head, and there were not wanting those who professed to see in this
+an unmistakable resemblance to their reputed father. The other children
+were dolls of different ages, sex, and condition, but the twins may
+be said to have been distinctly her own conception. Yet such was her
+admirable and impartial maternity that she never made any difference
+between them. "The Amplach's children" was a description rather than a
+distinction.
+
+She was herself the motherless child of Robert Foulkes, a hardworking
+but somewhat improvident teamster on the Express Route between Big Bend
+and Reno. His daily avocation, when she was not actually with him in the
+wagon, led to an occasional dispersion of herself and her progeny along
+the road and at wayside stations between those places. But the family
+was generally collected together by rough but kindly hands already
+familiar with the handling of her children. I have a very vivid
+recollection of Jim Carter trampling into a saloon, after a five-mile
+walk through a snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket. "Suthin'
+ought to be done," he growled, "to make Meary a little more careful o'
+them Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big
+Bend." "God bless my soul!" said a casual passenger, looking up hastily;
+"I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married." Jim winked diabolically at us
+over his glass. "No more did I," he responded gloomily, "but you can't
+tell anything about the ways o' them respectable, psalm-singing jay
+birds." Having thus disposed of Amplach's character, later on, when
+he was alone with Mary, or "Meary," as she chose to pronounce it, the
+rascal worked upon her feelings with an account of the infant Amplach's
+sufferings in the snowdrift and its agonized whisperings for "Meary!
+Meary!" until real tears stood in Mary's blue eyes. "Let this be a
+lesson to you," he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his
+pocket, "for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to bring
+that child to." Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but for weeks
+afterwards "Julian Amplach"--this unhappy twin--was kept in a somnolent
+attitude in the cart, and was believed to have contracted dissipated
+habits from the effects of his heroic treatment.
+
+Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded her
+first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable expense
+by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh birthday. This,
+by one of those rare inventions known only to a child's vocabulary,
+she at once called "Misery"--probably a combination of "Missy," as she
+herself was formerly termed by strangers, and "Missouri," her native
+State. It was an excessively large doll at first--Mr. Dodd wishing to
+get the worth of his money--but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal
+care, remedied the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed
+parts of its limbs very rapidly. It was further reduced in bulk by
+falling under the wagon and having the whole train pass over it,
+but singularly enough its greatest attenuation was in the head and
+shoulders--the complexion peeling off as a solid layer, followed by the
+disappearance of distinct strata of its extraordinary composition. This
+continued until the head and shoulders were much too small for even
+its reduced frame, and all the devices of childish millinery--a shawl
+secured with tacks and well hammered in, and a hat which tilted backward
+and forward and never appeared at the same angle--failed to restore
+symmetry. Until one dreadful morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole
+upper structure disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing
+erect from the spinal column. Even an imaginative child like Mary could
+not accept this sort of thing as a head. Later in the day Jack Roper,
+the blacksmith at the "Crossing," was concerned at the plaintive
+appearance before his forge of a little girl clad in a bright-blue
+pinafore of the same color as her eyes, carrying her monstrous offspring
+in her arms. Jack recognized her and instantly divined the situation.
+"You haven't," he suggested kindly, "got another head at home--suthin'
+left over," Mary shook her head sadly; even her prolific maternity was
+not equal to the creation of children in detail. "Nor anythin' like
+a head?" he persisted sympathetically. Mary's loving eyes filled with
+tears. "No, nuffen!" "You couldn't," he continued thoughtfully, "use her
+the other side up?--we might get a fine pair o' legs outer them irons,"
+he added, touching the two prongs with artistic suggestion. "Now look
+here"--he was about to tilt the doll over when a small cry of feminine
+distress and a swift movement of a matronly little arm arrested the
+evident indiscretion. "I see," he said gravely. "Well, you come here
+tomorrow, and we'll fix up suthin' to work her." Jack was thoughtful the
+rest of the day, more than usually impatient with certain stubborn mules
+to be shod, and even knocked off work an hour earlier to walk to Big
+Bend and a rival shop. But the next morning when the trustful and
+anxious mother appeared at the forge she uttered a scream of delight.
+Jack had neatly joined a hollow iron globe, taken from the newel post of
+some old iron staircase railing, to the two prongs, and covered it
+with a coat of red fireproof paint. It was true that its complexion was
+rather high, that it was inclined to be top-heavy, and that in the long
+run the other dolls suffered considerably by enforced association with
+this unyielding and implacable head and shoulders, but this did not
+diminish Mary's joy over her restored first-born. Even its utter absence
+of features was no defect in a family where features were as evanescent
+as in hers, and the most ordinary student of evolution could see
+that the "Amplach" ninepins were in legitimate succession to the
+globular-headed "Misery." For a time I think that Mary even preferred
+her to the others. Howbeit it was a pretty sight to see her on a summer
+afternoon sitting upon a wayside stump, her other children dutifully
+ranged around her, and the hard, unfeeling head of Misery pressed deep
+down into her loving little heart as she swayed from side to side,
+crooning her plaintive lullaby. Small wonder that the bees took up the
+song and droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head
+the enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran
+air--or Heaven knows what--let slip flickering lights and shadows to
+play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down upon it
+with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it smiled.
+
+The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive.
+"Gloriana"--pronounced as two words: "Glory Anna"--being the work of
+her father, who also named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of canvas
+wagon-covering, girt so as to define a neck and waist, with a rudely
+inked face--altogether a weak, pitiable, manlike invention; and "Johnny
+Dear," alleged to be the representative of John Doremus, a young
+storekeeper who occasionally supplied Mary with gratuitous sweets. Mary
+never admitted this, and as we were all gentlemen along that road,
+we were blind to the suggestion. "Johnny Dear" was originally a small
+plaster phrenological cast of a head and bust, begged from some shop
+window in the county town, with a body clearly constructed by Mary
+herself. It was an ominous fact that it was always dressed as a BOY,
+and was distinctly the most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny. Indeed,
+in spite of the faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth,
+white, hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike. Left sometimes by
+Mary astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to
+dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified smile, and
+it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the Pioneer Coach
+at the request of curious and imploring passengers, and then grimly
+installed "Johnny Dear" beside him on the box seat, publicly delivering
+him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed confusion and the first blush
+we had ever seen on her round, chubby, sunburnt cheeks. It may seem
+strange that with her great popularity and her well-known maternal
+instincts, she had not been kept fully supplied with proper and more
+conventional dolls; but it was soon recognized that she did not care
+for them--left their waxen faces, rolling eyes, and abundant hair in
+ditches, or stripped them to help clothe the more extravagant creatures
+of her fancy. So it came that "Johnny Dear's" strictly classical profile
+looked out from under a girl's fashionable straw sailor hat, to the
+utter obliteration of his prominent intellectual faculties; the Amplach
+twins wore bonnets on their ninepins heads, and even an attempt was
+made to fit a flaxen scalp on the iron-headed Misery. But her dolls were
+always a creation of her own--her affection for them increasing with the
+demand upon her imagination. This may seem somewhat inconsistent
+with her habit of occasionally abandoning them in the woods or in the
+ditches. But she had an unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of
+Nature, and trusted her children to the breast of the Great Mother as
+freely as she did herself in her own motherlessness. And this confidence
+was rarely betrayed. Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear
+never touched her lost waifs. Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach
+twin buried under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared smilingly
+in the spring in all its wooden and painted integrity. We were all
+Pantheists then--and believed this implicitly. It was only when exposed
+to the milder forces of civilization that Mary had anything to fear.
+Yet even then, when Patsy O'Connor's domestic goat had once tried to
+"sample" the lost Misery, he had retreated with the loss of three
+front teeth, and Thompson's mule came out of an encounter with that
+iron-headed prodigy with a sprained hind leg and a cut and swollen
+pastern.
+
+But these were the simple Arcadian days of the road between Big Bend and
+Reno, and progress and prosperity, alas! brought changes in their wake.
+It was already whispered that Mary ought to be going to school, and
+Mr. Amplach--still happily oblivious of the liberties taken with his
+name--as trustee of the public school at Duckville, had intimated that
+Mary's bohemian wanderings were a scandal to the county. She was growing
+up in ignorance, a dreadful ignorance of everything but the chivalry,
+the deep tenderness, the delicacy and unselfishness of the rude men
+around her, and obliviousness of faith in anything but the immeasurable
+bounty of Nature toward her and her children. Of course there was a
+fierce discussion between "the boys" of the road and the few married
+families of the settlement on this point, but, of course, progress and
+"snivelization"--as the boys chose to call it--triumphed. The projection
+of a railroad settled it; Robert Foulkes, promoted to a foremanship of
+a division of the line, was made to understand that his daughter must be
+educated. But the terrible question of Mary's family remained. No school
+would open its doors to that heterogeneous collection, and Mary's little
+heart would have broken over the rude dispersal or heroic burning of her
+children. The ingenuity of Jack Roper suggested a compromise. She
+was allowed to select one to take to school with her; the others were
+ADOPTED by certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit
+them every Saturday afternoon. The selection was a cruel trial, so cruel
+that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn, Misery, we
+would not have interfered for worlds, but in her unexpected choice
+of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew that it was the first
+glimmering of feminine tact--her first submission to the world of
+propriety that she was now entering. "Johnny Dear" was undoubtedly the
+most presentable; even more, there was an educational suggestion in its
+prominent, mapped-out phrenological organs. The adopted fathers were
+loyal to their trust. Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept
+the iron-headed Misery on a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk;
+nobody but himself and Mary ever knew the secret, stolen, and thrilling
+interviews that took place during the first days of their separation.
+Certain facts, however, transpired concerning Mary's equal faithfulness
+to another of her children. It is said that one Saturday afternoon, when
+the road manager of the new line was seated in his office at Reno in
+private business discussion with two directors, a gentle tap was heard
+at the door. It was opened to an eager little face, a pair of blue eyes,
+and a blue pinafore. To the astonishment of the directors, a change came
+over the face of the manager. Taking the child gently by the hand, he
+walked to his desk, on which the papers of the new line were
+scattered, and drew open a drawer from which he took a large ninepin
+extraordinarily dressed as a doll. The astonishment of the two gentlemen
+was increased at the following quaint colloquy between the manager and
+the child.
+
+"She's doing remarkably well in spite of the trying weather, but I have
+had to keep her very quiet," said the manager, regarding the ninepin
+critically.
+
+"Ess," said Mary quickly, "It's just the same with Johnny Dear; his
+cough is f'ightful at nights. But Misery's all right. I've just been to
+see her."
+
+"There's a good deal of scarlet fever around," continued the manager
+with quiet concern, "and we can't be too careful. But I shall take her
+for a little run down the line tomorrow."
+
+The eyes of Mary sparkled and overflowed like blue water. Then there was
+a kiss, a little laugh, a shy glance at the two curious strangers, the
+blue pinafore fluttered away, and the colloquy ended. She was equally
+attentive in her care of the others, but the rag baby "Gloriana," who
+had found a home in Jim Carter's cabin at the Ridge, living too far for
+daily visits, was brought down regularly on Saturday afternoon to Mary's
+house by Jim, tucked in asleep in his saddle bags or riding gallantly
+before him on the horn of his saddle. On Sunday there was a dress
+parade of all the dolls, which kept Mary in heart for the next week's
+desolation.
+
+But there came one Saturday and Sunday when Mary did not appear, and it
+was known along the road that she had been called to San Francisco to
+meet an aunt who had just arrived from "the States." It was a vacant
+Sunday to "the boys," a very hollow, unsanctified Sunday, somehow,
+without that little figure. But the next, Sunday, and the next, were
+still worse, and then it was known that the dreadful aunt was making
+much of Mary, and was sending her to a grand school--a convent at Santa
+Clara--where it was rumored girls were turned out so accomplished that
+their own parents did not know them. But WE knew that was impossible to
+our Mary; and a letter which came from her at the end of the month, and
+before the convent had closed upon the blue pinafore, satisfied us, and
+was balm to our anxious hearts. It was characteristic of Mary; it was
+addressed to nobody in particular, and would--but for the prudence of
+the aunt--have been entrusted to the post office open and undirected. It
+was a single sheet, handed to us without a word by her father; but as
+we passed it from hand to hand, we understood it as if we had heard our
+lost playfellow's voice.
+
+"Ther's more houses in 'Frisco than you kin shake a stick at and
+wimmens till you kant rest, but mules and jakasses ain't got no sho, nor
+blacksmiffs shops, wich is not to be seen no wear. Rapits and Skwirls
+also bares and panfers is on-noun and unforgotten on account of the
+streets and Sunday skoles. Jim Roper you orter be very good to Mizzery
+on a kount of my not bein' here, and not harten your hart to her bekos
+she is top heavy--which is ontroo and simply an imptient lie--like
+you allus make. I have a kinary bird wot sings deliteful--but isn't a
+yellerhamer sutch as I know, as you'd think. Dear Mister Montgommery,
+don't keep Gulan Amplak to mutch shet up in office drors; it isn't good
+for his lungs and chest. And don't you ink his head--nother! youre as
+bad as the rest. Johnny Dear, you must be very kind to your attopted
+father, and you, Glory Anna, must lov your kind Jimmy Carter verry
+mutch for taking you hossback so offen. I has been buggy ridin' with
+an orficer who has killed injuns real! I am comin' back soon with grate
+affeckshun, so luke out and mind."
+
+But it was three years before she returned, and this was her last
+and only letter. The "adopted fathers" of her children were faithful,
+however, and when the new line was opened, and it was understood that
+she was to be present with her father at the ceremony, they came, with
+a common understanding, to the station to meet their old playmate. They
+were ranged along the platform--poor Jack Roper a little overweighted
+with a bundle he was carrying on his left arm. And then a young girl
+in the freshness of her teens and the spotless purity of a muslin frock
+that although brief in skirt was perfect in fit, faultlessly booted and
+gloved, tripped from the train, and offered a delicate hand in turn to
+each of her old friends. Nothing could be prettier than the smile on the
+cheeks that were no longer sunburnt; nothing could be clearer than the
+blue eyes lifted frankly to theirs. And yet, as she gracefully turned
+away with her father, the faces of the four adopted parents were found
+to be as red and embarrassed as her own on the day that Yuba Bill drove
+up publicly with "Johnny Dear" on the box seat.
+
+"You weren't such a fool," said Jack Montgomery to Roper, "as to bring
+Misery here with you?"
+
+"I was," said Roper with a constrained laugh--"and you?" He had just
+caught sight of the head of a ninepin peeping from the manager's pocket.
+The man laughed, and then the four turned silently away.
+
+"Mary" had indeed come back to them; but not "The Mother of Five!"
+
+
+
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+
+We all remembered very distinctly Bulger's advent in Rattlesnake Camp.
+It was during the rainy season--a season singularly inducive to settled
+reflective impressions as we sat and smoked around the stove in Mosby's
+grocery. Like older and more civilized communities, we had our periodic
+waves of sentiment and opinion, with the exception that they were more
+evanescent with us, and as we had just passed through a fortnight of
+dissipation and extravagance, owing to a visit from some gamblers and
+speculators, we were now undergoing a severe moral revulsion, partly
+induced by reduced finances and partly by the arrival of two families
+with grownup daughters on the hill. It was raining, with occasional warm
+breaths, through the open window, of the southwest trades, redolent of
+the saturated spices of the woods and springing grasses, which perhaps
+were slightly inconsistent with the hot stove around which we had
+congregated. But the stove was only an excuse for our listless,
+gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness went well together, and it was
+currently accepted that we had caught from the particular reptile which
+gave its name to our camp much of its pathetic, lifelong search for
+warmth, and its habit of indolently basking in it.
+
+A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry our
+damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against it; but
+as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive in upon them
+through the open window without moving, and seemed to take infinite
+delight in the amount of steam they generated, even that pretense
+dropped. Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy ditch, and the sun
+striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he basked his head on a warm
+stone beside it, could not have typified us better.
+
+Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
+reflective severity:
+
+"Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if
+we're going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at least
+straighten up the camp, and not have it look like a cross between a
+tenement alley and a broken-down circus. I declare, I was just sick
+when these two Baker girls started to make a short cut through the camp.
+Darned if they didn't turn round and take to the woods and the rattlers
+again afore they got halfway. And that benighted idiot, Tom Rollins,
+standin' there in the ditch, spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he
+looked like a spotted tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards
+and forrards and sayin', 'This way, ladies; this way!'"
+
+"I didn't," returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking up
+from his steaming boots; "I didn't start in night afore last to dance
+'The Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my hair and
+a red blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new potato patch,
+in order that it might 'increase and multiply.' I didn't sing 'Sabbath
+Morning Bells' with an anvil accompaniment until twelve o'clock at
+night over at the Crossing, so that they might dream of their Happy
+Childhood's Home. It seems to me that it wasn't me did it. I might be
+mistaken--it was late--but I have the impression that it wasn't me."
+
+From the silence that followed, this would seem to have been clearly
+a recent performance of the previous speaker, who, however, responded
+quite cheerfully:
+
+"An evenin' o' simple, childish gaiety don't count. We've got to start
+in again FAIR. What we want here is to clear up and encourage decent
+immigration, and get rid o' gamblers and blatherskites that are makin'
+this yer camp their happy hunting-ground. We don't want any more
+permiskus shootin'. We don't want any more paintin' the town red. We
+don't want any more swaggerin' galoots ridin' up to this grocery and
+emptyin' their six-shooters in the air afore they 'light. We want to put
+a stop to it peacefully and without a row--and we kin. We ain't got no
+bullies of our own to fight back, and they know it, so they know they
+won't get no credit bullyin' us; they'll leave, if we're only firm. It's
+all along of our cussed fool good-nature; they see it amuses us, and
+they'll keep it up as long as the whisky's free. What we want to do is,
+when the next man comes waltzin' along--"
+
+A distant clatter from the rocky hillside here mingled with the puff of
+damp air through the window.
+
+"Looks as ef we might hev a show even now," said Tom Rollins, removing
+his feet from the stove as we all instinctively faced toward the window.
+
+"I reckon you're in with us in this, Mosby?" said Briggs, turning toward
+the proprietor of the grocery, who had been leaning listlessly against
+the wall behind his bar.
+
+"Arter the man's had a fair show," said Mosby, cautiously. He deprecated
+the prevailing condition of things, but it was still an open question
+whether the families would prove as valuable customers as his present
+clients. "Everything in moderation, gentlemen."
+
+The sound of galloping hoofs came nearer, now swishing in the soft mud
+of the highway, until the unseen rider pulled up before the door. There
+was no shouting, however, nor did he announce himself with the usual
+salvo of firearms. But when, after a singularly heavy tread and the
+jingle of spurs on the platform, the door flew open to the newcomer,
+he seemed a realization of our worst expectations. Tall, broad, and
+muscular, he carried in one hand a shotgun, while from his hip dangled
+a heavy navy revolver. His long hair, unkempt but oiled, swept a greasy
+circle around his shoulders; his enormous mustache, dripping with wet,
+completely concealed his mouth. His costume of fringed buckskin was wild
+and outre even for our frontier camp. But what was more confirmative
+of our suspicions was that he was evidently in the habit of making an
+impression, and after a distinct pause at the doorway, with only a side
+glance at us, he strode toward the bar.
+
+"As there don't seem to be no hotel hereabouts, I reckon I kin put up
+my mustang here and have a shakedown somewhere behind that counter," he
+said. His voice seemed to have added to its natural depth the hoarseness
+of frequent overstraining.
+
+"Ye ain't got no bunk to spare, you boys, hev ye?" asked Mosby,
+evasively, glancing at Percy Briggs without looking at the stranger.
+We all looked at Briggs also; it was HIS affair after all--HE had
+originated this opposition. To our surprise he said nothing.
+
+The stranger leaned heavily on the counter.
+
+"I was speaking to YOU," he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and slightly
+accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on the bar. "Ye
+don't seem to catch on."
+
+Mosby smiled feebly, and again cast an imploring glance at Briggs. To
+our greater astonishment, Briggs said, quietly: "Why don't you answer
+the stranger, Mosby?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mosby, suavely, to the newcomer, while an angry flush
+crossed his check as he recognized the position in which Briggs had
+placed him. "Of course, you're welcome to what doings I hev here, but I
+reckoned these gentlemen over there," with a vicious glance at Briggs,
+"might fix ye up suthin' better; they're so pow'ful kind to your sort."
+
+The stranger threw down a gold piece on the counter and said: "Fork out
+your whisky, then," waited until his glass was filled, took it in his
+hand, and then, drawing an empty chair to the stove, sat down beside
+Briggs. "Seein' as you're that kind," he said, placing his heavy hand
+on Briggs's knee, "mebbe ye kin tell me ef thar's a shanty or a cabin at
+Rattlesnake that I kin get for a couple o' weeks. I saw an empty one at
+the head o' the hill. You see, gennelmen," he added confidentially as
+he swept the drops of whisky from his long mustache with his fingers and
+glanced around our group, "I've got some business over at Bigwood," our
+nearest town, "but ez a place to stay AT it ain't my style."
+
+"What's the matter with Bigwood?" said Briggs, abruptly.
+
+"It's too howlin', too festive, too rough; thar's too much yellin'
+and shootin' goin' day and night. Thar's too many card sharps and gay
+gamboliers cavortin' about the town to please me. Too much permiskus
+soakin' at the bar and free jimjams. What I want is a quiet place what
+a man kin give his mind and elbow a rest from betwixt grippin' his
+shootin' irons and crookin' in his whisky. A sort o' slow, quiet, easy
+place LIKE THIS."
+
+We all stared at him, Percy Briggs as fixedly as any. But there was not
+the slightest trace of irony, sarcasm, or peculiar significance in his
+manner. He went on slowly:
+
+"When I struck this yer camp a minit ago; when I seed that thar ditch
+meanderin' peaceful like through the street, without a hotel or free
+saloon or express office on either side; with the smoke just a curlin'
+over the chimbley of that log shanty, and the bresh just set fire to and
+a smolderin' in that potato patch with a kind o' old-time stingin' in
+your eyes and nose, and a few women's duds just a flutterin' on a line
+by the fence, I says to myself: 'Bulger--this is peace! This is wot
+you're lookin' for, Bulger--this is wot you're wantin'--this is wot
+YOU'LL HEV!'"
+
+"You say you've business over at Bigwood. What business?" said Briggs.
+
+"It's a peculiar business, young fellow," returned the stranger,
+gravely. "Thar's different men ez has different opinions about it. Some
+allows it's an easy business, some allows it's a rough business; some
+says it's a sad business, others says it's gay and festive. Some wonders
+ez how I've got into it, and others wonder how I'll ever get out of it.
+It's a payin' business--it's a peaceful sort o' business when left to
+itself. It's a peculiar business--a business that sort o' b'longs to
+me, though I ain't got no patent from Washington for it. It's MY OWN
+business." He paused, rose, and saying, "Let's meander over and take a
+look at that empty cabin, and ef she suits me, why, I'll plank down
+a slug for her on the spot, and move in tomorrow," walked towards the
+door. "I'll pick up suthin' in the way o' boxes and blankets from the
+grocery," he added, looking at Mosby, "and ef thar's a corner whar I kin
+stand my gun and a nail to hang up my revolver--why, I'm all thar!"
+
+By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also, and not
+only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty cabin, but
+assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a fortnight's occupancy.
+Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on his return for some
+explanation of this singular change in his attitude toward the stranger.
+He coolly reminded us, however, that while his intention of excluding
+ruffianly adventurers from the camp remained the same, he had no right
+to go back on the stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord
+with our own, and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with
+them, that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a
+mild firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might
+attend his abrupt dismissal. We were all satisfied except Mosby, who had
+not yet recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he was pleased
+to call "craw-fishing." "Seemed to me his account of his business was
+extraordinary satisfactory! Sorter filled the bill all round--no mistake
+thar," he suggested, with a malicious irony. "I like a man that's
+outspoken."
+
+"I understood him very well," said Briggs, quietly.
+
+"In course you did. Only when you've settled in your MIND whether he
+was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe you'll let ME
+know."
+
+It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the stranger
+again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to leave matters
+in Briggs's hands. Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into the empty cabin the
+next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes from the grocery, which
+he quickly extemporized into tables and chairs, and the purchase of some
+necessary cooking utensils, soon made himself at home. The rest of the
+camp, now thoroughly aroused, made a point of leaving their work in
+the ditches, whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's
+tenement in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
+tormenting. But they could not find that he was doing anything of a
+suspicious character--except, perhaps, from the fact that it was
+not OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them to
+security. He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking in his
+doorway. On the second day he checked this itinerant curiosity by taking
+the initiative himself, and quietly walking from claim to claim and from
+cabin to cabin with a pacific but by no means a satisfying interest. The
+shadow of his tall figure carrying his inseparable gun, which had not
+yet apparently "stood in the corner," falling upon an excavated bank
+beside the delving miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could
+not explain; a few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from
+their noontide gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr.
+Bulger was seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before
+a poker party in the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless
+gamblers to weakly recede from "a bluff" and allow his adversary to
+sweep the board. After this it was felt that matters were becoming
+serious. There was no subsequent patrolling of the camp before the
+stranger's cabin. Their curiosity was singularly abated. A general
+feeling of repulsion, kept within bounds partly by the absence of any
+overt act from Bulger, and partly by an inconsistent over-consciousness
+of his shotgun, took its place. But an unexpected occurrence revived it.
+
+One evening, as the usual social circle were drawn around Mosby's stove,
+the lazy silence was broken by the familiar sounds of pistol shots and a
+series of more familiar shrieks and yells from the rocky hill road. The
+circle quickly recognized the voices of their old friends the roisterers
+and gamblers from Sawyer's Dam; they as quickly recognized the returning
+shouts here and there from a few companions who were welcoming them. I
+grieve to say that in spite of their previous attitude of reformation a
+smile of gratified expectancy lit up the faces of the younger members,
+and even the older ones glanced dubiously at Briggs. Mosby made no
+attempt to conceal a sigh of relief as he carefully laid out an extra
+supply of glasses in his bar. Suddenly the oncoming yells ceased, the
+wild gallop of hoofs slackened into a trot, and finally halted, and even
+the responsive shouts of the camp stopped also. We all looked vacantly
+at each other; Mosby leaped over his counter and went to the door;
+Briggs followed with the rest of us. The night was dark, and it was a
+few minutes before we could distinguish a straggling, vague, but silent
+procession moving through the moist, heavy air on the hill. But, to our
+surprise, it was moving away from us--absolutely LEAVING the camp! We
+were still staring in expectancy when out of the darkness slowly emerged
+a figure which we recognized at once as Captain Jim, one of the most
+reckless members of our camp. Pushing us back into the grocery he
+entered without a word, closed the door behind him, and threw himself
+vacantly into a chair. We at once pressed around him. He looked up at us
+dazedly, drew a long breath, and said slowly:
+
+"It's no use, gentlemen! Suthin's GOT to be done with that Bulger; and
+mighty quick."
+
+"What's the matter?" we asked eagerly.
+
+"Matter!" he repeated, passing his hand across his forehead. "Matter!
+Look yere! Ye all of you heard them boys from Sawyer's Dam coming over
+the hill? Ye heard their music--mebbe ye heard US join in the chorus?
+Well, on they came waltzing down the hill, like old times, and we
+waitin' for 'em. Then, jest as they passed the old cabin, who do you
+think they ran right into--shooting iron, long hair and mustache, and
+all that--standing there plump in the road? why, Bulger!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well!--Whatever it was--don't ask ME--but, dern my skin, ef after a
+word or two from HIM--them boys just stopped yellin', turned round like
+lambs, and rode away, peaceful-like, along with him. We ran after them
+a spell, still yellin', when that thar Bulger faced around, said to us
+that he'd 'come down here for quiet,' and ef he couldn't hev it he'd
+have to leave with those gentlemen WHO WANTED IT too! And I'm gosh
+darned ef those GENTLEMEN--you know 'em all--Patsey Carpenter, Snapshot
+Harry, and the others--ever said a darned word, but kinder nodded 'So
+long' and went away!"
+
+Our astonishment and mystification were complete; and I regret to say,
+the indignation of Captain Jim and Mosby equally so. "If we're going to
+be bossed by the first newcomer," said the former, gloomily, "I reckon
+we might as well take our chances with the Sawyer's Dam boys, whom we
+know."
+
+"Ef we are going to hev the legitimate trade of Rattlesnake interfered
+with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired road agent,"
+said Mosby, "we might as well invite the hull of Joaquin Murietta's
+gang here at once! But I suppose this is part o' Bulger's particular
+'business,'" he added, with a withering glance at Briggs.
+
+"I understand it all," said Briggs, quietly. "You know I told you
+that bullies couldn't live in the same camp together. That's human
+nature--and that's how plain men like you and me manage to scud along
+without getting plugged. You see, Bulger wasn't going to hev any of his
+own kind jumpin' his claim here. And I reckon he was pow'ful enough to
+back down Sawyer's Dam. Anyhow, the bluff told--and here we are in peace
+and quietness."
+
+"Until he lets us know what is his little game," sneered Mosby.
+
+Nevertheless, such is the force of mysterious power that although it was
+exercised against what we firmly believed was the independence of the
+camp, it extorted a certain respect from us. A few thought it was not a
+bad thing to have a professional bully, and even took care to relate the
+discomfiture of the wicked youth of Sawyer's Dam for the benefit of
+a certain adjacent and powerful camp who had looked down upon us.
+He himself, returning the same evening from his self-imposed escort,
+vouchsafed no other reason than the one he had already given.
+Preposterous as it seemed, we were obliged to accept it, and the still
+more preposterous inference that he had sought Rattlesnake Camp solely
+for the purpose of acquiring and securing its peace and quietness.
+Certainly he had no other occupation; the little work he did upon the
+tailings of the abandoned claim which went with his little cabin was
+scarcely a pretense. He rode over on certain days to Bigwood on account
+of his business, but no one had ever seen him there, nor could the
+description of his manner and appearance evoke any information from the
+Bigwoodians. It remained a mystery.
+
+It had also been feared that the advent of Bulger would intensify that
+fear and dislike of riotous Rattlesnake which the two families
+had shown, and which was the origin of Briggs's futile attempt at
+reformation. But it was discovered that since his arrival the young
+girls had shown less timidity in entering the camp, and had even
+exchanged some polite conversation and good-humoured badinage with its
+younger and more impressible members. Perhaps this tended to make these
+youths more observant, for a few days later, when the vexed question
+of Bulger's business was again under discussion, one of them remarked,
+gloomily:
+
+"I reckon there ain't no doubt WHAT he's here for!"
+
+The youthful prophet was instantly sat upon after the fashion of
+all elderly critics since Job's. Nevertheless, after a pause he was
+permitted to explain.
+
+"Only this morning, when Lance Forester and me were chirping with them
+gals out on the hill, who should we see hanging around in the bush but
+that cussed Bulger! We allowed at first that it might be only a new
+style of his interferin', so we took no notice, except to pass a few
+remarks about listeners and that sort o' thing, and perhaps to bedevil
+the girls a little more than we'd hev done if we'd been alone. Well,
+they laughed, and we laughed--and that was the end of it. But this
+afternoon, as Lance and me were meandering down by their cabin, we
+sorter turned into the woods to wait till they'd come out. Then all of
+a suddent Lance stopped as rigid as a pointer that's flushed somethin',
+and says, 'B'gosh!' And thar, under a big redwood, sat that slimy
+hypocrite Bulger, twisting his long mustaches and smiling like clockwork
+alongside o' little Meely Baker--you know her, the pootiest of the
+two sisters--and she smilin' back on him. Think of it! that unknown,
+unwashed, longhaired tramp and bully, who must be forty if a day, and
+that innocent gal of sixteen. It was simply disgustin'!"
+
+I need not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to at
+once improved the occasion. 'What more could be expected? Women,
+the world over, were noted for this sort of thing! This long-haired,
+swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had captivated them, as he
+always had done since the days of Homer. Simple merit, which sat lowly
+in barrooms, and conceived projects for the public good around the
+humble, unostentatious stove, was nowhere! Youth could not too soon
+learn this bitter lesson. And in this case youth too, perhaps, was
+right in its conjectures, for this WAS, no doubt, the little game of the
+perfidious Bulger. We recalled the fact that his unhallowed appearance
+in camp was almost coincident with the arrival of the two families.
+We glanced at Briggs; to our amazement, for the first time he looked
+seriously concerned. But Mosby in the meantime leaned his elbows lazily
+over the counter and, in a slow voice, added fuel to the flame.
+
+"I wouldn't hev spoken of it before," he said, with a sidelong glance
+at Briggs, "for it might be all in the line o' Bulger's 'business,'
+but suthin' happened the other night that, for a minit, got me! I was
+passin' the Bakers' shanty, and I heard one of them gals a singing a
+camp-meeting hymn. I don't calkilate to run agin you young fellers in
+any sparkin' or canoodlin' that's goin' on, but her voice sounded so
+pow'ful soothin' and pretty thet I jest stood there and listened. Then
+the old woman--old Mother Baker--SHE joined in, and I listened too. And
+then--dern my skin!--but a man's voice joined in--jest belching outer
+that cabin!--and I sorter lifted myself up and kem away.
+
+"That voice, gentlemen," said Mosby, lingering artistically as he took
+up a glass and professionally eyed it before wiping it with his towel,
+"that voice, cumf'bly fixed thar in thet cabin among them wimen folks,
+was Bulger's!"
+
+Briggs got up, with his eyes looking the darker for his flushed face.
+"Gentlemen," he said huskily, "thar's only one thing to be done. A lot
+of us have got to ride over to Sawyer's Dam tomorrow morning and pick up
+as many square men as we can muster; there's a big camp meeting goin'
+on there, and there won't be no difficulty in that. When we've got a big
+enough crowd to show we mean business, we must march back here and ride
+Bulger out of this camp! I don't hanker arter Vigilance Committees, as
+a rule--it's a rough remedy--it's like drinkin' a quart o' whisky agin
+rattlesnake poison but it's got to be done! We don't mind being sold
+ourselves but when it comes to our standin' by and seein' the only
+innocent people in Rattlesnake given away--we kick! Bulger's got to be
+fired outer this camp! And he will be!"
+
+But he was not.
+
+For when, the next morning, a determined and thoughtful procession of
+the best and most characteristic citizens of Rattlesnake Camp filed into
+Sawyer's Dam, they found that their mysterious friends had disappeared,
+although they met with a fraternal but subdued welcome from the general
+camp. But any approach to the subject of their visit, however,
+was received with a chilling dissapproval. Did they not know that
+lawlessness of any kind, even under the rude mantle of frontier justice,
+was to be deprecated and scouted when a "means of salvation, a power of
+regeneration," such as was now sweeping over Sawyer's Dam, was at hand?
+Could they not induce this man who was to be violently deported to
+accompany them willingly to Sawyer's Dam and subject himself to the
+powerful influence of the "revival" then in full swing?
+
+The Rattlesnake boys laughed bitterly, and described the man of whom
+they talked so lightly; but in vain. "It's no use, gentlemen," said
+a more worldly bystander, in a lower voice, "the camp meetin's got a
+strong grip here, and betwixt you and me there ain't no wonder. For the
+man that runs it--the big preacher--has got new ways and methods that
+fetches the boys every time. He don't preach no cut-and-dried gospel; he
+don't carry around no slop-shop robes and clap 'em on you whether they
+fit or not; but he samples and measures the camp afore he wades into
+it. He scouts and examines; he ain't no mere Sunday preacher with a
+comfortable house and once-a-week church, but he gives up his days and
+nights to it, and makes his family work with him, and even sends 'em
+forward to explore the field. And he ain't no white-choker shadbelly
+either, but fits himself, like his gospel, to the men he works among. Ye
+ought to hear him afore you go. His tent is just out your way. I'll go
+with you."
+
+Too dejected to offer any opposition, and perhaps a little curious to
+see this man who had unwittingly frustrated their design of lynching
+Bulger, they halted at the outer fringe of worshipers who packed the
+huge inclosure. They had not time to indulge their cynicisms over this
+swaying mass of emotional, half-thinking, and almost irresponsible
+beings, nor to detect any similarity between THEIR extreme methods and
+the scheme of redemption they themselves were seeking, for in a
+few moments, apparently lifted to his feet on a wave of religious
+exultation, the famous preacher arose. The men of Rattlesnake gasped for
+breath.
+
+It was Bulger!
+
+But Briggs quickly recovered himself. "By what name," said he, turning
+passionately towards his guide, "does this man--this impostor--call
+himself here?"
+
+"Baker."
+
+"Baker?" echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.
+
+"Baker?" repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.
+
+"Yes," returned their guide. "You oughter know it too! For he sent his
+wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample your camp, a
+week ago! Come, now, what are you givin' us?"
+
+
+
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+
+He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one of the
+Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only known the
+"dugout" or canoe as a means of conveyance across the scant streams
+whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long,
+narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as
+a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed across the plains to
+California in '53, did not help his conception by that nautical figure.
+And when at last he dropped upon the land of promise through one of the
+Southern mountain passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks
+of a great yellow river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like
+grasses that were unknown to him. The river, broadening as it debouched
+through many channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE
+of his journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
+meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the
+great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to his
+lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a
+temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and "settle."
+
+There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings he had
+passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery
+and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him
+independent of neighbors. He took his first meal in his new solitude
+under a spreading willow, but so near his natural boundary that the
+waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The
+sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the
+stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was
+not even a gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the
+frontiersman in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it
+was his; he was alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with
+less concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation
+than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. When the
+sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and went
+quietly to sleep.
+
+But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
+not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a deep
+throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that seemed even
+to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As it came nearer
+it separated itself into a labored, monotonous panting, continuous, but
+distinct from an equally monotonous but fainter beating of the waters,
+as if the whole track of the river were being coursed and trodden by a
+multitude of swiftly trampling feet. A strange feeling took possession
+of him--half of fear, half of curious expectation. It was coming nearer.
+He rose, leaped hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night
+was dark; at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky
+pierced with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed
+to be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
+constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
+three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him and
+apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he involuntarily
+drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and
+resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by
+enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light
+that he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit
+windows.
+
+Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the
+meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all this was
+nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and
+open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and
+wonderful spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women moved through
+brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one a banquet seemed
+to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants; in another were men
+playing cards around marble-topped tables; in another the light flashed
+back again from the mirrors and glistening glasses and decanters of
+a gorgeous refreshment saloon; in smaller openings there was the shy
+disclosure of dainty white curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate
+apartments.
+
+Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified. It was as if some invisible
+Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world of which he
+had never dreamed. It was THE world--a world of which he knew nothing
+in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western isolation--sweeping by
+him with the rush of an unknown planet. In another moment it was gone; a
+shower of sparks shot up from one of the towers and fell all around him,
+and then vanished, even as he remembered the set piece of "Fourth of
+July" fireworks had vanished in his own rural town when he was a boy.
+The darkness fell with it too. But such was his utter absorption and
+breathless preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself,
+and he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the low
+banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!
+
+He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later from
+the opposite direction on its return trip. He watched it the next night
+and the next. Hereafter he never missed it, coming or going--whatever
+the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and lonely life. He felt he
+could not have slept without seeing it go by. Oddly enough, his interest
+and desire did not go further. Even had he the time and money to spend
+in a passage on the boat, and thus actively realize the great world of
+which he had only these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness
+kept him from it. It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs
+that his ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was
+dimly conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling
+with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien criticism. For
+there was much that he did not understand, and some things that grated
+upon his lonely independence.
+
+One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little
+longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the
+retreating boat. Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain
+irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,
+diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank. Looking
+at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the water like
+a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a black arm in an
+unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It was a struggling man. But it
+was quickly evident that the current was too strong and the turbulence
+of the shallow water too great for his efforts. Without a moment's
+hesitation, clad as he was in only his shirt and trousers, Morse
+strode into the reeds, and the next moment, with a call of warning, was
+swimming toward the now wildly struggling figure. But, from some unknown
+reason, as Morse approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent
+protest and desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's extended arm.
+
+Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man, Morse,
+a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and propelled him at
+arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as much reluctance as
+incapacity, toward the bank. As their feet touched the reeds and slimy
+bottom the man's resistance ceased, and he lapsed quite listlessly in
+Morse's arms. Half lifting, half dragging his burden, he succeeded at
+last in gaining the strip of meadow, and deposited the unconscious man
+beneath the willow tree. Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.
+
+But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up and
+wringing the water from his clothes. He then saw for the first time,
+by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly dressed and
+of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that bright and
+fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in his solitude. He
+eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the whisky. Then he rose
+to his feet, staggered a few steps forward, and glanced curiously around
+him at the still motionless wagon, the few felled trees and evidence of
+"clearing," and even at the rude cabin of logs and canvas just beginning
+to rise from the ground a few paces distant, and said, impatiently:
+
+"Where the devil am I?"
+
+Morse hesitated. He was unable to name the locality of his
+dwelling-place. He answered briefly:
+
+"On the right bank of the Sacramento."
+
+The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
+resentment. "Oh!" he said, with ironical gravity, "and I suppose that
+this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River. Thank you!"
+
+Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only settled
+there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.
+
+"What's your nearest town, then?"
+
+"Thar ain't any. Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the
+crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've heard
+on."
+
+The stranger's look of suspicion passed. "Well," he said, in an imperative
+fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of habit as the
+occasion, "I want a horse, and mighty quick, too."
+
+"H'ain't got any."
+
+"No horse? How did you get to this place?"
+
+Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.
+
+The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said, with
+a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: "Pike--aren't you?"
+
+Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California slang
+for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt, he replied
+simply:
+
+"I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, "you must beg
+or steal a horse from your neighbors."
+
+"Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles."
+
+"Then send fifteen miles! Stop." He opened his still clinging shirt
+and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. "There! there's two
+hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a horse. Sabe?"
+
+"Thar ain't anyone to send," said Morse, quietly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you are all alone here?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"And you fished me out--all by yourself?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly stretched
+out his hand and grasped his companion's.
+
+"All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over there
+tomorrow."
+
+"I was goin' on to say," said Morse, simply, "that if you'll lie by
+tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and fetch
+you back a horse afore noon."
+
+"That's enough." He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse. "Did
+you never hear," he said, with a singular smile, "that it was about the
+meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a drowning man?"
+
+"No," said Morse, simply. "I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
+DIDN'T."
+
+"That depends upon the man you save," said the stranger, with the same
+ambiguous smile, "and whether the SAVING him is only putting things off.
+Look here," he added, with an abrupt return to his imperative style,
+"can't you give me some dry clothes?"
+
+Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a "hickory shirt," well worn,
+but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The stranger
+put them on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of
+sticks and dry leaves.
+
+"What's that for?" said the stranger, suddenly.
+
+"A fire to dry your clothes."
+
+The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.
+
+"Not any fire tonight if I know it," he said, brusquely. Before Morse
+could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone,
+dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, "Now, tell me
+all about yourself, and what you are doing here."
+
+Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
+had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a
+"location." He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom
+and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon
+to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting
+position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean
+his nails in the bright moonlight--an occupation which made the simple
+Morse wander vaguely in his narration.
+
+"And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever till
+you'll shake yourself out of your boots?"
+
+Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.
+
+"And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and
+walk over you and your cabin and your stock?"
+
+"No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back."
+
+The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.
+
+"If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in. I
+suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?"
+
+Morse pointed to the wagon. "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you
+kin lie there." Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence
+and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.
+
+"I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful
+kempany o' nights. I never seed one afore I kem here," and then, with
+the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further
+preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late
+experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a
+quietly searching eye.
+
+"Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me.
+What else did you see? Anything before that--before you saw me in the
+water?"
+
+"No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all."
+
+"Ah," said the stranger. "Well, I'm going to turn in." He walked to the
+wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it with his
+wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A moment later he
+seemed to be in a profound slumber.
+
+It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy, that
+he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination of this
+man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature independent
+and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question his right or
+to resent his rudeness. He had accepted his guest's careless or
+premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his accident as a
+matter of course, and had never dreamed of questioning him. That it was
+a natural accident of that great world so apart from his own experiences
+he did not doubt, and thought no more about it. The advent of the man
+himself was greater to him than the causes which brought him there. He
+was as yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious
+stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with even the
+slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his hand felt yet
+warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive grasp, as if it
+had been a woman's. There is a simple intuition of friendship in some
+lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly akin to love at first
+sight. Even the audacities and insolence of this stranger affected
+Morse as he might have been touched and captivated by the coquetries
+or imperiousness of some bucolic virgin. And this reserved and shy
+frontiersman found himself that night sleepless, and hovering with an
+abashed timidity and consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his
+guest, as if he had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of
+some slumbering Amaryllis.
+
+He was off by daylight--after having placed a rude breakfast by the side
+of the still sleeping guest--and before midday he had returned with a
+horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the amount he had
+paid for the horse, the man said curtly:
+
+"What's that for?"
+
+"Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse."
+
+The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing the
+pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the horse.
+
+"So your name's Martin Morse! Well--goodby, Morsey!"
+
+Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. "You didn't tell me
+your name," he said. "In case--"
+
+"In case I'm WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack." He smiled,
+and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.
+
+Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and
+living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he
+could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow strip of meadow was
+haunted by him. There was the tree under which he had first placed
+him, and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but
+well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments he had worn and returned
+lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong
+alkali flavor of his own. He was early by the river side, having a vague
+hope, he knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him
+among the passengers. He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint
+light of the rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first
+seen the stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in
+the water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but
+had been dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint
+resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night. But a second
+glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him
+that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far different from his
+former companion. There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an
+enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen.
+An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for
+he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond
+recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened
+and deepened with the far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely
+knowing why, he dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the
+reeds, as if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then,
+to his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat
+and the beat of its paddles were "slowing" as the vague bulk came in
+sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a
+surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through the sedge that half
+submerged him. The flashing of three or four lanterns on deck and the
+motionless line of lights abreast of him dazzled his eyes, but he knew
+that the low fringe of willows hid his house and wagon completely from
+view. A vague murmur of voices from the deck was suddenly overridden by
+a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent
+a pulsation through the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.
+A sense of relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious
+that for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.
+
+When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its
+clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of formality
+and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some law papers from
+their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and electors' notices
+which he had seen in the papers. He then buried the corpse in a shallow
+trench, which he dug by the light of the moon. He had no question of
+responsibility; his pioneer training had not included coroners' inquests
+in its experience; in giving the body a speedy and secure burial
+from predatory animals he did what one frontiersman would do for
+another--what he hoped might be done for him. If his previous
+unaccountable feelings returned occasionally, it was not from that;
+but rather from some uneasiness in regard to his late guest's possible
+feelings, and a regret that he had not been here at the finding of the
+body. That it would in some way have explained his own accident he did
+not doubt.
+
+The boat did not "slow up" the next night, but passed as usual; yet
+three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its coming
+with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity--which was his
+nearest approach to imagination. He was then able to examine it more
+closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he now began to call
+"his friend" in his verbal communings with himself--but whom he did not
+seem destined to again discover; until one day, to his astonishment, a
+couple of fine horses were brought to his clearing by a stock-drover.
+They had been "ordered" to be left there. In vain Morse expostulated and
+questioned.
+
+"Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?" said the drover, with business
+brusqueness; "and I reckon there ain't no other man o' that name around
+here?"
+
+"No," said Morse.
+
+"Well, then, they're YOURS."
+
+"But who sent them?" insisted Morse. "What was his name, and where does
+he live?"
+
+"I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o' buyers,"
+said the drover dryly; "but the horses is 'Morgan,' you can bet your
+life." He grinned as he rode away.
+
+That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to his
+again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he lived
+in that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals were of great
+service to him in "rounding up" the stock he now easily took in for
+pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having a partner or a hired
+man. The idea that this superior gentleman in fine clothes might ever
+appear to him in the former capacity had even flitted through his brain,
+but he had rejected it with a sigh. But the thought that, with luck and
+industry, he himself might, in course of time, approximate to Captain
+Jack's evident station, DID occur to him, and was an incentive to
+energy. Yet it was quite distinct from the ordinary working man's
+ambition of wealth and state. It was only that it might make him more
+worthy of his friend. The great world was still as it had appeared
+to him in the passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to
+criticize.
+
+For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke with
+listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his daily
+labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and a
+feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river, as if
+his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in its yellow
+stream. But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange dreams assailed
+him of dead bodies arising with swollen and distorted lips to touch his
+own as he strove to drink, or of his mysterious guest battling with him
+in its current, and driving him ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe
+his parched and crackling limbs in its flood, he would be confronted
+with the dazzling lights of the motionless steamboat and the glare of
+stony eyes--until he fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he
+knew not, until one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man
+sitting by his bed and a Negress in the doorway.
+
+"You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'" said the stranger, dropping
+Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes, "but you're
+all right now, and will pull through."
+
+"Who are you?" stammered Morse feebly.
+
+"Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento."
+
+"How did you come here?"
+
+"I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
+There she is." He pointed to the smiling Negress.
+
+"WHO ordered you?"
+
+The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. "One of your friends, of
+course."
+
+"But what was his name?"
+
+"Really, I don't remember. But don't distress yourself. He has settled
+for everything right royally. You have only to get strong now. My duty
+is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse. Only when you are
+strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back farther from the river."
+
+And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him through
+the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him nothing more.
+He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for a new and strange
+phase of his simple, childish affection for his benefactor, partly
+superinduced by his illness, was affecting him. He was beginning to
+feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was dimly conscious that his
+mysterious guest was only coldly returning his hospitality and benefits,
+while holding aloof from any association with him--and indicating the
+immeasurable distance that separated their future intercourse. He had
+withheld any kind message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even
+his NAME. The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled
+beneath the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach
+or resentment. He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
+childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
+reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the
+nurse.
+
+He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river, with a
+faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might mysteriously
+be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out his location and
+abandoning it, that he might escape the cold surveillance of his
+heartless friend. All this was undoubtedly childish--but there is an
+irrepressible simplicity of youth in all deep feeling, and the worldly
+inexperience of the frontiersman left him as innocent as a child. In
+this phase of his unrequited affection he even went so far as to seek
+some news of Captain Jack at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish
+quest, even to take the steamboat from thence to Stockton.
+
+What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
+natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained
+for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and--had
+he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary--VULGAR.
+Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and
+action of those who frequented it--and for whom it was built--were of a
+lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, this gave him none of
+his former sense of critical superiority, but only of his own utter and
+complete isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
+deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,
+unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had
+so often done in his dreams.
+
+His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;
+to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did
+not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and
+excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of
+slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in
+his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man
+to man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
+tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
+the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this
+continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of
+passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish
+haste of speed and exertion.
+
+The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
+ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and
+news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the
+reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the staterooms, were all
+dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the perpetual throb of the demon
+of hurry and unrest. And when at last a horrible fascination dragged him
+into the engine room, and he saw the cruel relentless machinery at work,
+he seemed to recognize and understand some intelligent but pitiless
+Moloch, who was dragging this feverish world at its heels.
+
+Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could
+view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs
+unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality.
+He knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the
+fringe of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points
+where a few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage
+beyond them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware
+that two men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat,
+and were standing before him looking upon the bank.
+
+"It was about here, I reckon," said one, listlessly, as if continuing a
+previous lagging conversation, "that it must have happened. For it was
+after we were making for the bend we've just passed that the deputy,
+goin' to the stateroom below us, found the door locked and the window
+open. But both men--Jack Despard and Seth Hall, the sheriff--weren't
+to be found. Not a trace of 'em. The boat was searched, but all for
+nothing. The idea is that the sheriff, arter getting his prisoner
+comf'ble in the stateroom, took off Jack's handcuffs and locked the
+door; that Jack, who was mighty desp'rate, bolted through the window
+into the river, and the sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him.
+Others allow--for the chairs and things was all tossed about in the
+stateroom--that the two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and
+chucked him out, and then slipped cl'ar into the water himself, for the
+stateroom window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap'n allows
+that no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live. Anyhow, that
+was all they ever knew of it."
+
+"And there wasn't no trace of them found?" said the second man, after a
+long pause.
+
+"No. Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and slung 'em
+round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of the river bed,
+with all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and they mightn't come up
+for ages; or else the wheels might have waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento
+until there wasn't enough left of 'em to float, and dropped 'em when the
+boat stopped."
+
+"It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take," resumed the
+second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.
+
+"Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him sure!
+And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them gamblers, and
+allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or a pistol wasn't to
+be washed out of life by water."
+
+The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and motionless.
+Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly out of this awful
+revelation--the thought that his friend was still true to him--and that
+his strange absence and mysterious silence were fully accounted for and
+explained. And with it came the more thrilling fancy that this man was
+alive now to HIM alone.
+
+HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the question,
+while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in reference to its effect
+upon the chances of Captain Jack and the power it gave his enemies than
+his own conscience. He would rather that his friend should have proven
+the proscribed outlaw who retained an unselfish interest in him than the
+superior gentleman who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought
+he understood now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying
+moods--even his bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable
+curse entailed upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he
+recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern in
+his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of his
+protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.
+
+There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his farm,
+where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he did so,
+returning on the same boat. He was now fully recovered from his illness,
+and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to put himself in a position
+to help the mysterious fugitive when the time should come. The remote
+farm should always be a haven of refuge for him, and in this hope he
+forbore to take any outside help, remaining solitary and alone, that
+Captain Jack's retreat should be inviolate. And so the long, dry season
+passed, the hay was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the
+first rains, dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river,
+were all that broke his unending solitude. In this enforced attitude of
+waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new idea. He
+was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the exhortations of some
+camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the idea that he might have
+been selected to work out the regeneration of Captain Jack. What might
+not come of this meeting and communing together in this lonely spot?
+That anything was due to the memory of the murdered sheriff, whose bones
+were rotting in the trench that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did
+not occur to him. Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double
+consideration. Friendship and love--and, for the matter of that,
+religion--are eminently one-ideaed.
+
+But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out
+of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring
+to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door
+fell out as from that inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed
+like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over
+his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against
+it, and thence out into what might have been another world! For the
+rain had ceased, and the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable
+expanse of water! It was not an overflow, but the whole rushing river
+magnified and repeated a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for
+breath and clung to the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither.
+But it was bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift
+glance toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping
+torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the wooded
+foothills. It was the great flood of '54. In its awe-inspiring
+completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval Deluge.
+
+As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
+overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at
+last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree. Here he was for
+the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from this height was only
+the more appalling. Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past
+year's industry, had disappeared. He was now conscious for the first
+time of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together
+on a slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the
+flood. The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
+The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the
+burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which
+they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough.
+The habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by
+drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown
+and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling
+of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered
+house. When day broke he was cold and hungry.
+
+Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of
+the waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread
+before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence impressed him. In
+the afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse,
+until the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor. He had but one idea
+now--the coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength
+to swim to it. He did not know until later that it could no longer
+follow the old channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and
+hearing. With his disappointment and exposure that night came a return
+of his old fever. His limbs were alternately racked with pain or
+benumbed and lifeless. He could scarcely retain his position--at times
+he scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
+quick plunge downward. In other moments of lucid misery he was conscious
+of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead face of the
+murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by the flood, staring
+at him from the water; to this was added the hallucination of noises. He
+heard voices, his own name called by a voice he knew--Captain Jack's!
+
+Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and
+plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had
+a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--of the black
+hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--the sensation of
+a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand upon his
+collar, and--unconsciousness!
+
+When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and rowed
+through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was taken in
+through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel and cared
+for. But all his questions yielded only the information that the
+tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public Relief
+Association--had been dispatched for him with special directions, by a
+man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the one who had plunged in
+for him at the last moment. The man had left the boat at Stockton.
+There was nothing more? Yes!--he had left a letter. Morse seized it
+feverishly. It contained only a few lines:
+
+
+We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from drowning, and
+shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.
+
+CAPTAIN JACK.
+
+
+The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but fell
+back, unconscious.
+
+Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as an
+impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to restock
+the farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-packer offered
+him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to the mountains--for
+he knew tracks and passes and could ride. The mountains gave him back
+a little of the vigor he had lost in the river valley, but none of its
+dreams and ambitions. One day, while tracking a lost mule, he stopped
+to slake his thirst in a waterhole--all that the summer had left of a
+lonely mountain torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast
+also, he was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some
+bits of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
+attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with
+him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody
+wondered. To the Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural.
+It was "nigger luck"--the luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the
+inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony of the gods!
+
+But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
+temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed
+to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of
+excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on
+the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had
+already assembled there--a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his
+way through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the
+changed and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of
+a cart, which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around
+his neck, was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end
+of the rope drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the
+doomed man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
+lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an easy
+gesture of farewell.
+
+And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,
+and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized
+another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished
+crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,
+the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse
+staggered forward FREE--with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did
+not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with
+his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.
+
+There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act
+of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled
+aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed
+man himself would have set him free. But they say--and it is credibly
+recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless
+sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a
+curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran
+cold, and then leaped furiously to their cheeks.
+
+"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a
+jerk of his head--"Go on, and be damned to you! I'm ready."
+
+They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
+Despard were buried in the same grave.
+
+
+
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+
+The largest tent of the Tasajara camp meeting was crowded to its utmost
+extent. The excitement of that dense mass was at its highest pitch. The
+Reverend Stephen Masterton, the single erect, passionate figure of that
+confused medley of kneeling worshipers, had reached the culminating
+pitch of his irresistible exhortatory power. Sighs and groans were
+beginning to respond to his appeals, when the reverend brother was seen
+to lurch heavily forward and fall to the ground.
+
+At first the effect was that of a part of his performance; the groans
+redoubled, and twenty or thirty brethren threw themselves prostrate in
+humble imitation of the preacher. But Sister Deborah Stokes, perhaps
+through some special revelation of feminine intuition, grasped the
+fallen man, tore loose his black silk necktie, and dragged him free
+of the struggling, frantic crowd whose paroxysms he had just evoked.
+Howbeit he was pale and unconscious, and unable to continue the service.
+Even the next day, when he had slightly recovered, it was found that any
+attempt to renew his fervid exhortations produced the same disastrous
+result.
+
+A council was hurriedly held by the elders. In spite of the energetic
+protests of Sister Stokes, it was held that the Lord "was wrestlin' with
+his sperrit," and he was subjected to the same extraordinary treatment
+from the whole congregation that he himself had applied to THEM. Propped
+up pale and trembling in the "Mourners' Bench" by two brethren, he
+was "striven with," exhorted, prayed over, and admonished, until
+insensibility mercifully succeeded convulsions. Spiritual therapeutics
+having failed, he was turned over to the weak and carnal nursing of
+"womenfolk." But after a month of incapacity he was obliged to yield to
+"the flesh," and, in the local dialect, "to use a doctor."
+
+It so chanced that the medical practitioner of the district was a man
+of large experience, of military training, and plain speech. When,
+therefore, he one day found in his surgery a man of rude Western type,
+strong-limbed and sunburned, but trembling, hesitating and neurotic in
+movement, after listening to his symptoms gravely, he asked, abruptly:
+"And how much are you drinking now?"
+
+"I am a lifelong abstainer," stammered his patient in quivering
+indignation. But this was followed by another question so frankly
+appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.
+
+"I'm Stephen Masterton--known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
+Northern California district," he thundered--"and an enemy of the flesh
+in all its forms."
+
+"I beg your pardon," responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, "but as you are
+suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous system,
+and the depression following prolonged artificial exaltation--it makes
+little difference whether the cause be spiritual, as long as there is a
+certain physical effect upon your BODY--which I believe you have brought
+to me to cure. Now--as to diet? you look all wrong there.
+
+"My food is of the simplest--I have no hankering for fleshpots,"
+responded the patient.
+
+"I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks SIMPLE?"
+said the doctor, coolly; "they are COMMON enough, and if you were
+working with your muscles instead of your nerves in that frame of yours
+they might not hurt you; but you are suffering as much from eating more
+than you can digest as the veriest gourmand. You must stop all that. Go
+down to a quiet watering-place for two months." . . .
+
+"I go to a watering-place?" interrupted Masterton; "to the haunt of the
+idle, the frivolous and wanton--never!"
+
+"Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'" said the doctor,
+with a shrug, "although a little idleness and frivolity with different
+food wouldn't hurt you--but you must go somewhere and change your habits
+and mode of life COMPLETELY. I will find you some sleepy old Spanish
+town in the southern country where you can rest and diet. If this is
+distasteful to you," he continued, grimly, "you can always call it 'a
+trial.'"
+
+Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he found
+himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved, hilly
+street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the mountain road
+itself. It broadened suddenly into a square or plaza, flanked on each
+side by an irregular row of yellowing adobe houses, with the inevitable
+verandaed tienda in each corner, and the solitary, galleried fonda, with
+a half-Moorish archway leading into an inner patio or courtyard in the
+center.
+
+The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission
+church, a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the two
+belfry towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the ultima
+thule of every traveler. But all that the eye rested on was ruined,
+worn, and crumbling. The adobe houses were cracked by the incessant
+sunshine of the half-year-long summer, or the more intermittent
+earthquake shock; the paved courtyard of the fonda was so uneven and
+sunken in the center that the lumbering wagon and faded diligencia stood
+on an incline, and the mules with difficulty kept their footing while
+being unladen; the whitened plaster had fallen from the feet of the two
+pillars that flanked the Mission doorway, like bandages from a gouty
+limb, leaving the reddish core of adobe visible; there were apparently
+as many broken tiles in the streets and alleys as there were on the
+heavy red roofs that everywhere asserted themselves--and even seemed to
+slide down the crumbling walls to the ground. There were hopeless gaps
+in grille and grating of doorways and windows, where the iron bars had
+dropped helplessly out, or were bent at different angles. The walls of
+the peaceful Mission garden and the warlike presidio were alike lost in
+the escalading vines or leveled by the pushing boughs of gnarled
+pear and olive trees that now surmounted them. The dust lay thick and
+impalpable in hollow and gutter, and rose in little vapory clouds with a
+soft detonation at every stroke of his horse's hoofs. Over all this dust
+and ruin, idleness seemed to reign supreme. From the velvet-jacketed
+figures lounging motionless in the shadows of the open doorways--so
+motionless that only the lazy drift of cigarette smoke betokened their
+breathing--to the reclining peons in the shade of a catalpa, or the
+squatting Indians in the arroyo--all was sloth and dirt.
+
+The Rev. Stephen Masterton felt his throat swell with his old
+exhortative indignation. A gaudy yellow fan waved languidly in front of
+a black rose-crested head at a white-curtained window. He knew he was
+stifling with righteous wrath, and clapped his spurs to his horse.
+
+Nevertheless, in a few days, by the aid of a letter to the innkeeper,
+he was installed in a dilapidated adobe house, not unlike those he had
+seen, but situated in the outskirts and overlooking the garden and part
+of the refectory of the old Mission. It had even a small garden of its
+own--if a strip of hot wall, overburdened with yellow and white roses, a
+dozen straggling callas, a bank of heliotrope, and an almond tree could
+be called a garden. It had an open doorway, but so heavily recessed
+in the thick walls that it preserved seclusion, a sitting-room, and an
+alcoved bedroom with deep embrasured windows that however excluded the
+unwinking sunlight and kept an even monotone of shade.
+
+Strange to say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the dust,
+absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope, entirely
+inodorous. The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious emanations and
+decay--the very dust itself in its fine impalpability was volatile with
+a spicelike piquancy, and left no stain.
+
+A wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf,
+ministered to his simple wants. But these wants had also been regulated
+by Dr. Duchesne. He found himself, with some grave doubts of his
+effeminacy, breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate instead of his
+usual bowl of molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a crisp tortilla
+instead of the heavy saleratus bread, greasy flapjack, or the lard-fried
+steak, and, more wonderful still, completing his repast with purple
+grapes from the Mission wall. He could not deny that it was simple--that
+it was even refreshing and consistent with the climate and his
+surroundings. On the other hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest
+peasant--and were not those peons slothful idolaters?
+
+At the end of the week--his correspondence being also restricted by his
+doctor to a few lines to himself regarding his progress--he wrote to
+that adviser:
+
+"The trembling and unquiet has almost ceased; I have less nightly
+turmoil and visions; my carnal appetite seems to be amply mollified and
+soothed by these viands, whatever may be their ultimate effect upon the
+weakness of our common sinful nature. But I should not be truthful to
+you if I did not warn you that I am viewing with the deepest spiritual
+concern a decided tendency toward sloth, and a folding of the hands over
+matters that often, I fear, are spiritual as well as temporal. I would
+ask you to consider, in a spirit of love, if it be not wise to rouse my
+apathetic flesh, so as to strive, even with the feeblest exhortations,
+against this sloth in others--if only to keep one's self from falling
+into the pit of easy indulgence."
+
+What answer he received is not known, but it is to be presumed that he
+kept loyal faith with his physician, and gave himself up to simple walks
+and rides and occasional meditation. His solitude was not broken in
+upon; curiosity was too active a vice, and induced too much exertion for
+his indolent neighbors, and the Americano's basking seclusion, though
+unlike the habits of his countrymen, did not affect them. The shopkeeper
+and innkeeper saluted him always with a profound courtesy which awakened
+his slight resentment, partly because he was conscious that it was
+grateful to him, and partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in
+them a less satisfied condition.
+
+Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own garden,
+through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-coated shadow
+slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and gentle that he was
+startled at first into an awkward imitation of it himself, and then into
+an angry self-examination. He knew that he loathed that long-skirted,
+womanlike garment, that dangling, ostentatious symbol, that air of
+secrecy and mystery, and he inflated his chest above his loosely tied
+cravat and unbuttoned waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom. But
+he was conscious the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this
+meeting, and in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined
+observance of his doctor's orders. But when he was strong again, and
+fitted for his Master's work, how strenuously he should improve the
+occasion this gave him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her slaves
+and worshipers!
+
+His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book--the
+Bible--were regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or three
+strokes from the cracked bell that hung in the open belfry which reared
+itself beyond the gnarled pear tees. He could not say that it was
+aggressive or persistent, like his own church bells, nor that it
+even expressed to him any religious sentiment. Moreover, it was not a
+"Sabbath" bell, but a DAILY one, and even then seemed to be only a signal
+to ears easily responsive, rather than a stern reminder. And the hour
+was always a singularly witching one.
+
+It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
+yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild oats
+on the hillside were all of the one color of old gold. It was when the
+quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza was blending
+with the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through the clefts of the
+coast range, until a refreshing balm seemed to fall like a benediction
+on all nature. It was when the trade-wind-swept and irritated surfaces
+of the rocky gorge beyond were soothed with clinging vapors; when the
+pines above no longer rocked monotonously, and the great undulating sea
+of the wild-oat plains had gone down and was at rest. It was at this
+hour, one afternoon, that, with the released scents of the garden, there
+came to him a strange and subtle perfume that was new to his senses. He
+laid aside his book, went into the garden, and, half-unconscious of his
+trespass, passed through the Mission orchard and thence into the little
+churchyard beside the church.
+
+Looking at the strange inscriptions in an unfamiliar tongue, he
+was singularly touched with the few cheap memorials lying upon the
+graves--like childish toys--and for the moment overlooked the papistic
+emblems that accompanied them. It struck him vaguely that Death, the
+common leveler, had made even the symbols of a faith eternal inferior to
+those simple records of undying memory and affection, and he was for a
+moment startled into doubt.
+
+He walked to the door of the church; to his surprise it was open.
+Standing upon the threshold, he glanced inside, and stood for a moment
+utterly bewildered. In a man of refined taste and education that bizarre
+and highly colored interior would have only provoked a smile or
+shrug; to Stephen Masterton's highly emotional nature, but artistic
+inexperience, strangely enough it was profoundly impressive. The heavily
+timbered, roughly hewn roof, barred with alternate bands of blue and
+Indian red, the crimson hangings, the gold and black draperies, affected
+this religious backwoodsman exactly as they were designed to affect the
+heathen and acolytes for whose conversion the temple had been reared. He
+could scarcely take his eyes from the tinsel-crowned Mother of Heaven,
+resplendent in white and gold and glittering with jewels; the radiant
+shield before the Host, illuminated by tall spectral candles in the
+mysterious obscurity of the altar, dazzled him like the rayed disk of
+the setting sun.
+
+A gentle murmur, as of the distant sea, came from the altar. In his
+naive bewilderment he had not seen the few kneeling figures in the
+shadow of column and aisle; it was not until a man, whom he recognized
+as a muleteer he had seen that afternoon gambling and drinking in the
+fonda, slipped by him like a shadow and sank upon his knees in the
+center of the aisle that he realized the overpowering truth.
+
+HE, Stephen Masterton, was looking upon some rite of Popish idolatry! He
+was turning quickly away when the keeper of the tienda--a man of sloth
+and sin--gently approached him from the shadow of a column with a mute
+gesture, which he took to be one of invitation. A fierce protest of
+scorn and indignation swelled to his throat, but died upon his lips. Yet
+he had strength enough to erect his gaunt emaciated figure, throwing out
+his long arms and extended palms in the attitude of defiant exorcism,
+and then rush swiftly from the church. As he did so he thought he saw
+a faint smile cross the shopkeeper's face, and a whispered exchange of
+words with a neighboring worshiper of more exalted appearance came to
+his ears. But it was not intelligible to his comprehension.
+
+The next day he wrote to his doctor in that quaint grandiloquence of
+written speech with which the half-educated man balances the slips of
+his colloquial phrasing:
+
+
+Do not let the purgation of my flesh be unduly protracted. What with the
+sloth and idolatries of Baal and Ashteroth, which I see daily around
+me, I feel that without a protest not only the flesh but the spirit is
+mortified. But my bodily strength is mercifully returning, and I found
+myself yesterday able to take a long ride at that hour which they here
+keep sacred for an idolatrous rite, under the beautiful name of "The
+Angelus." Thus do they bear false witness to Him! Can you tell me the
+meaning of the Spanish words "Don Keyhotter"? I am ignorant of these
+sensuous Southern languages, and am aware that this is not the correct
+spelling, but I have striven to give the phonetic equivalent. It was
+used, I am inclined to think, in reference to MYSELF, by an idolater.
+
+P.S.--You need not trouble yourself. I have just ascertained that
+the words in question were simply the title of an idle novel, and, of
+course, could not possibly refer to ME.
+
+
+Howbeit it was as "Don Quixote"--that is, the common Spaniard's
+conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic and
+madman--that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all unconsciously
+through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-pitying, half-smiling
+glances of the people.
+
+In spite of his meditations, his single volume, and his habit of
+retiring early, he found his evenings were growing lonely and tedious.
+He missed the prayer meeting, and, above all, the hymns. He had a fine
+baritone voice, sympathetic, as may be imagined, but not cultivated. One
+night, in the seclusion of his garden, and secure in his distance from
+other dwellings, he raised his voice in a familiar camp-meeting hymn
+with a strong Covenanter's ring in the chorus. Growing bolder as he went
+on, he at last filled the quiet night with the strenuous sweep of his
+chant. Surprised at his own fervor, he paused for a moment, listening,
+half frightened, half ashamed of his outbreak. But there was only the
+trilling of the night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a
+coyote.
+
+For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
+instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
+contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance. But he was relieved,
+nevertheless. His pent-up emotion had found vent, and without the
+nervous excitement that had followed his old exaltation. That night he
+slept better. He had found the Lord again--with Psalmody!
+
+The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same simplicity,
+but with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations, which his more
+hopeful mood gently rendered. At the conclusion of the first verse
+he was, however, distinctly conscious of being followed by the same
+twanging sound he had heard on the previous night, and which even his
+untutored ear could recognize as an attempt to accompany him. But before
+he had finished the second verse the unknown player, after an ingenious
+but ineffectual essay to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with
+an impatient and almost pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the
+sounding-board of the unseen instrument. Masterton finished it alone.
+
+With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the locality
+of the hidden player. The sound evidently came from the Mission garden;
+but in his ignorance of the language he could not even interrogate
+his Indian housekeeper. On the third night, however, his hymn was
+uninterrupted by any sound from the former musician. A sense of
+disappointment, he knew not why, came over him. The kindly overture of
+the unseen player had been a relief to his loneliness. Yet he had barely
+concluded the hymn when the familiar sound again struck his ears. But
+this time the musician played boldly, confidently, and with a singular
+skill on the instrument.
+
+The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some confusion,
+a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint and fascinating,
+was mischievously uplifted. But alas! even to his ears, ignorant of
+the language, it was very clearly a song of levity and wantonness,
+of freedom and license, of coquetry and incitement! Yet such was its
+fascination that he fancied it was reclaimed by the delightful childlike
+and innocent expression of the singer.
+
+Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and, overcome
+by a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the garden and glided
+with an Indian softness of tread toward the voice. The moon shone full
+upon the ruined Mission wall tipped with clusters of dark foliage.
+Half hiding, half mingling with one of them--an indistinct bulk of
+light-colored huddled fleeces like an extravagant bird's nest--hung
+the unknown musician. So intent was the performer's preoccupation that
+Masterton actually reached the base of the wall immediately below the
+figure without attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the
+crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little
+cry from above. He had barely time to recover his position before the
+singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and fell
+outward. But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed, and threw
+out his long arms. The next moment they were full of soft flounces,
+a struggling figure was against his breast, and a woman's frightened
+little hands around his neck. But he had broken her fall, and almost
+instantly, yet with infinite gentleness, he released her unharmed, with
+hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in an upright position against
+the wall. Even her guitar, still hanging from her shoulder by a yellow
+ribbon, had bounded elastic and resounding against the wall, but lay
+intact at her satin-slippered feet. She caught it up with another quick
+little cry, but this time more of sauciness than fear, and drew her
+little hand across its strings, half defiantly.
+
+"I hope you are not hurt?" said the circuit preacher, gravely.
+
+She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no extravagance
+to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made audible. She was
+lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow and small-waisted like
+a pretty wasp. Her complexion in that light was a sheen of pearl satin
+that made her eyes blacker and her little mouth redder than any other
+color could. She was small, but, remembering the fourteen-year-old
+wife of the shopkeeper, he felt that, for all her childish voice and
+features, she was a grown woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.
+
+But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before her,
+and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily against the wall
+and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It was the fault of you," she said, in a broken English that seemed as
+much infantine as foreign. "What for you not remain to yourself in your
+own CASA? So it come. You creep so--in the dark--and shake my wall, and
+I fall. And she," pointing to the guitar, "is a'most broke! And for all
+thees I have only make to you a serenade. Ingrate!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Masterton quickly, "but I was curious. I
+thought I might help you, and--"
+
+"Make yourself another cat on the wall, eh? No; one is enough, thank
+you!"
+
+A frown lowered on Masterton's brow. "You don't understand me," he said,
+bluntly. "I did not know WHO was here."
+
+"Ah, BUENO! Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see," she said, tapping her
+bodice with one little finger, "all the same; the niece from Manuel
+Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there. And you?"
+
+"My name is Masterton."
+
+"How mooch?"
+
+"Masterton," he repeated.
+
+She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook her
+little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her ear fell
+to the ground. But she did not heed it, nor the fact that Masterton had
+picked it up.
+
+"Ah, I cannot!" she said, poutingly. "It is as deefeecult to make go as
+my guitar with your serenade."
+
+"Can you not say 'Stephen Masterton'?" he asked, more gently, with a
+returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.
+
+"Es-stefen? Ah, ESTEBAN! Yes; Don Esteban! BUENO! Then, Don Esteban,
+what for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night so fierce? The
+melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce--ah! he is weeked! Ess it
+how the Americano make always his serenade?"
+
+Masterton's brow again darkened. And his hymn of exultation had been
+mistaken by these people--by this--this wanton child!
+
+"It was no serenade," he replied, curtly; "it was in the praise of the
+Lord!"
+
+"Of how mooch?"
+
+"Of the Lord of Hosts--of the Almighty in Heaven." He lifted his long
+arms reverently on high.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from the
+wall. At a secure distance she stopped. "Then you are a soldier, Don
+Esteban?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will make
+die 'in His army'? Oh, yes; you have said." She gathered up her guitar
+tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him gravely, and said,
+"You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night," and began to glide
+away.
+
+"One moment, Miss--Miss Ramirez," called Masterton. "I--that is you--you
+have--forgotten your rose," he added, feebly, holding up the flower. She
+halted.
+
+"Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours. I have drop,
+you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours. Good a' night, COMANDANTE Don
+Esteban!"
+
+With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little distance,
+suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest gaps in
+its ruined and helpless structure. Stephen Masterton gazed after her
+stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand. Then he threw it away and
+re-entered his home.
+
+Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently--so
+fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was wiped
+from his mind, and went to bed. He slept well and dreamlessly. The next
+morning, when his thoughts recurred to the previous night, this seemed
+to him a token that he had not deviated from his spiritual integrity; it
+did not occur to him that the thought itself was a tacit suspicion.
+
+So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early sunshine,
+even to the wall where she had stood. But he had not taken into account
+the vivifying freshness of the morning, the renewed promise of life and
+resurrection in the pulsing air and potent sunlight, and as he stood
+there he seemed to see the figure of the young girl again leaning
+against the wall in all the charm of her irrepressible and innocent
+youth. More than that, he found the whole scene re-enacting itself
+before him; the nebulous drapery half hidden in the foliage, the cry and
+the fall; the momentary soft contact of the girl's figure against his
+own, the clinging arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her
+flounces--all this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when
+it occurred.
+
+He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow rose
+still lying in the debris where he had thrown it--but still pure, fresh,
+and unfaded. He picked it up again, with a singular fancy that it was
+the girl herself, and carried it into the house.
+
+As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful thought
+occurred to him. Was not the episode of last night a special providence?
+Was not that young girl, wayward and childlike, a mere neophyte in her
+idolatrous religion, as yet unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented
+to him as a brand to be snatched from the burning? Was not this
+the opportunity of conversion he had longed for--this the chance of
+exercising his gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the
+napkin of solitude and seclusion? Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?
+His illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this
+contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely ordered
+plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and ordained for
+that service? Nay, more, was not the girl herself a mere unconscious
+instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not her voluntary attempt
+to accompany him in his devotional exercise a vague stirring of that
+predestined force within her? Was not even that wantonness and
+frivolity contrasted with her childishness--which he had at first
+misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and the spirit, and was he to
+abandon her in that struggle of good and evil?
+
+He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before the
+little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a flash of
+resolve in his blue eyes. The wrinkled Concepcion coming to her duties
+in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily abstracted master in
+this transfigured man. He looked ten years younger.
+
+She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new resolve
+enabled him to make more freely, with some information--which a later
+talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English vocabulary, confirmed
+in detail.
+
+"YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived with
+her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio. She had taken her first
+communion four years ago. Ah, yes, she was a great musician, and could
+play on the organ. And the guitar, ah, yes--of a certainty. She was gay,
+and flirted with the caballeros, young and old, but she cared not for
+any."
+
+Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he believed
+it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly affection would
+make her an easier convert.
+
+But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her conversion?
+For the first time Masterton realized the value of expediency; while his
+whole nature impelled him to seek her society frankly and publicly and
+exhort her openly, he knew that this was impossible; still more, he
+remembered her unmistakable fright at his first expression of faith;
+he must "be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove." He must work
+upon her soul alone, and secretly. He, who would have shrunk from any
+clandestine association with a girl from mere human affection, saw
+no wrong in a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation.
+Ignorant as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the
+usages of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with
+all the intrigue of a gallant. The perspicacity as well as the intuition
+of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of mere spiritual
+conquest.
+
+Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the
+yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to
+be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez. To his great relief and some
+surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her withered
+hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the epistle and the
+accompanying gratuity. To a man less naively one-ideaed it might
+have awakened some suspicion; but to the more sanguine hopefulness of
+Masterton it only suggested the fancy that Concepcion herself might
+prove to be open to conversion, and that he should in due season attempt
+HER salvation also. But that would be later. For Concepcion was always
+with him and accessible; the girl was not.
+
+The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and
+almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:
+
+"I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself. Will
+you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission tonight at
+early candlelight? It would avert worldly suspicion if you brought also
+your guitar."
+
+The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with
+great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she had,
+however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait for an
+answer.
+
+In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer
+would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the girl's
+opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given her a
+choice of time.
+
+Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her
+willingness, and doubt the potency of his note. He was accustomed
+to exhort ORALLY--perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of
+SPEAKING to her directly without writing.
+
+When the moon rose he was already in the garden. Lingering at first in
+the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams fell on
+the wall and its crests of foliage. But nothing moved among that ebony
+tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar tinkle of the guitar--all
+was silent. As the moon rose higher he at last boldly walked to the
+wall, and listened for any movement on the other side of it. But nothing
+stirred. She was evidently NOT coming--his note had failed.
+
+He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard a
+light laugh beside him. He stopped. A black shadow stepped out from
+beneath his own almond tree. He started when, with a gesture that seemed
+familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to fall away with a
+long black mantilla and the face of the young girl was revealed.
+
+He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot. She
+looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before. A sudden
+doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization of all the
+difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time perhaps, a dim
+perception of the incongruity of the situation came over him.
+
+"I was looking for you on the wall," he stammered.
+
+"MADRE DE DIOS!" she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity, "you
+would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a pear when
+you shake the tree? No!"
+
+"You haven't brought your guitar," he continued, still more awkwardly,
+as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her hand.
+
+"For why? You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where
+go Pepita? She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her
+tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.' And then--it
+ess finish!"
+
+Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable. There was something
+in this situation that he had not dreamed of. But with the persistency
+of an awkward man he went on.
+
+"But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany me."
+
+"But that was lass night and on the wall. I had not speak to you, you
+had not speak to me. You had not sent me the leetle note by your peon."
+She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her face, so that only
+her mischievous eyes were visible, added: "You had not asked me then to
+come to hear you make lof to me, Don Esteban. That is the difference."
+
+The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face. Anger, shame,
+mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with him, but
+above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp, exquisite
+pleasure--that frightened him still more. Yet he managed to exclaim:
+
+"No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?"
+
+The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his utterance
+than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only imperfectly
+caught.
+
+"A treek? A treek?" she slowly and wonderingly repeated. Then suddenly,
+as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes full upon him
+and dropped her fan from her face.
+
+"And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?"
+
+"I wanted to talk with you," he began, "on far more serious matters.
+I wished to--" but he stopped. He could not address this quaint
+child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either the measured
+or the impetuous terms with which he would have exhorted a maturer
+responsible being. He made a step toward her; she drew back, striking at
+his extended hand half impatiently, half mischievously with her fan.
+
+He flushed--and then burst out bluntly, "I want to talk with you about
+your soul."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"Your immortal soul, unhappy girl."
+
+"What have you to make with that? Are you a devil?" Her eyes grew
+rounder, though she faced him boldly.
+
+"I am a Minister of the Gospel," he said, in hurried entreaty. "You must
+hear me for a moment. I would save your soul."
+
+"My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission--you moost seek her
+there! My mortal BODY," she added, with a mischievous smile, "say to
+you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'" She dropped him a little curtsy
+and--ran away.
+
+"One moment, Miss Ramirez," said Masterton, eagerly; but she had already
+slipped beyond his reach. He saw her little black figure passing swiftly
+beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into a shadowy fissure,
+and vanish.
+
+In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house he
+had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily in the
+garden. His discomfiture was the more complete since he felt that
+his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and not the
+incorrigibility of his subject.
+
+Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply the
+girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her? He should have
+borne it as Christians had even before now borne slander and false
+testimony for their faith! He might even have ACCEPTED it, and let the
+triumph of her conversion in the end prove his innocence. Or was his
+purpose incompatible with that sisterly affection he had so often
+preached to the women of his flock? He might have taken her hand, and
+called her "Sister Pepita," even as he had called Deborah "Sister." He
+recalled the fact that he had for an instant held her struggling in his
+arms: he remembered the thrill that the recollection had caused him,
+and somehow it now sent a burning blush across his face. He hurried back
+into the house.
+
+The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former settled
+resolution. He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the young girl's
+soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech him to give him
+an equal access to her spirit! He would seek the uncle of the girl, and
+work upon his feelings.
+
+Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from his
+mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special revelation
+from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct. This revelation
+presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when wanted.
+
+One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's guitar in
+the distance. Whatever his ultimate intention now, he hurriedly ran
+into the garden. The sound came from the former direction, but as he
+unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he could see that she was
+not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar were struck again, he knew
+that they came from the other side. But the chords were a prelude to one
+of his own hymns, and he stood entranced as her sweet, childlike voice
+rose with the very words that he had sung. The few defects were those of
+purely oral imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the
+"s," were Pepita's own:
+
+     Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
+     As ye journey essweetly ssing;
+     Essing your great Redeemer's praise,
+     Glorioos in Hees works and ways.
+
+He was astounded. Her recollection of the air and words was the more
+wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that particular
+hymn once. But to his still greater delight and surprise, her voice rose
+again in the second verse, with a touch of plaintiveness that swelled
+his throat:
+
+     We are traveling home to God,
+     In the way our farzers trod,
+     They are happy now, and we
+     Soon their happiness shall see.
+
+The simple, almost childish words--so childish that they might have been
+the fitting creation of her own childish lips--here died away with a
+sweep and crash of the whole strings. Breathless silence followed, in
+which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his own heart.
+
+"Miss Ramirez," he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own.
+There was no reply. "Pepita!" he repeated; it was strangely like the
+accent of a lover, but he no longer cared. Still the singer's voice was
+silent.
+
+Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until he
+came to the fissure. It was overgrown with vines and brambles almost
+as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in her delicate
+crape dress, so could he! He brushed roughly through, and found himself
+in a glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the white wall of the
+Mission church.
+
+For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by
+the rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into the
+orchard had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a figure in a
+parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and running from
+the wall, began to course through the trees until it became apparently
+a part of that involved pattern. Nothing daunted, however, Stephen
+Masterton pursued, his speed increased as he recognized the flounces of
+Pepita's barred dress, but the young girl had the advantage of knowing
+the locality, and could evade her pursuer by unsuspected turns and
+doubles.
+
+For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect
+silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering
+shepherd. Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a tiled
+roof that was now visible as projecting over the presidio wall, and
+was evidently her goal of refuge. He redoubled his speed; with skillful
+audacity and sheer strength of his broad shoulders he broke through a
+dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was swiftly skirting, and suddenly
+appeared between her and her house.
+
+With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself in
+the hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her side,
+and caught her panting figure in his arms.
+
+While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should
+do and what he should say to her. To his simple appeal for her
+companionship and willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness, that
+should invite her trustfulness in him; he would confess his wrong and
+ask her forgiveness of his abrupt solicitations; he would propose to
+teach her more hymns, they would practice psalmody together; even this
+priest, the custodian of her soul, could not object to that; but chiefly
+he would thank her: he would tell her how she had pleased him, and this
+would lead to more serious and thoughtful converse. All this was in his
+mind while he ran, was upon his lips as he caught her and for an instant
+she lapsed, exhausted, in his arms. But, alas! even in that moment he
+suddenly drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!
+
+
+The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with the
+dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned to
+Tasajara. He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who, having for
+the twelfth time added to the population of the settlement, was not
+"doing as well" as everybody--except, possibly, Dr. Duchesne--expected.
+After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-burdened, undernourished woman
+as comfortable as he could in her rude, neglected surroundings, to
+change the dreary chronicle of suffering, he turned to the husband,
+and said, "And what has become of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in
+your--vocation?" A long groan came from the deacon.
+
+"Hallo! I hope he has not had a relapse," said the doctor, earnestly. "I
+thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I beg your pardon--I
+mean," he added, hurriedly, "he wrote to me only a few weeks ago that he
+was picking up his strength again and doing well!"
+
+"In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt," returned the Deacon,
+scornfully, "and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for those who value
+the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all time, and lost
+to eternal life forever. Not," he continued in sanctimonious
+vindictiveness, "but that I often had my doubts of Brother Masterton's
+steadfastness. He was too much given to imagery and song."
+
+"But what has he done?" persisted Dr. Duchesne.
+
+"Done! He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!"
+
+"Dear me!" said the doctor, "so soon? Is it anybody you knew here?--not
+anybody's wife? Eh?"
+
+"He has entered the Church of Rome," said the Deacon, indignantly, "he
+has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the idolaters; he
+is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!"
+
+"But are you SURE?" said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern than
+before.
+
+"Sure," returned the Deacon angrily, "didn't Brother Bulkley, on account
+of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking teamster, make
+a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to inquire and spy out its
+wickedness? Didn't he find Stephen Masterton steeped in the iniquity of
+practicing on an organ--he that scorned even a violin or harmonium in
+the tents of the Lord--in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female
+Papist for a teacher? Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a
+Jesuit priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young
+Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown tongues?
+Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch who called him
+'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish? Didn't he find him, who left here
+a man mortified in flesh and spirit and pale with striving with sinners,
+fat and rosy from native wines and fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy
+in colored apparel? And last of all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a
+rumor was spread far and wide that this miserable backslider was to take
+to himself a wife--in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who
+seduced him? What do you call that?"
+
+"It looks a good deal like human nature," said the doctor, musingly,
+"but I call it a cure!"
+
+
+
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+
+The American paused. He had evidently lost his way. For the last half
+hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound medieval
+dream. Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the steamship that
+carried him hither; and the accents of his own tongue, the idioms of
+his own people, and the sympathetic community of New World tastes and
+expressions still filled his mind until he woke up, or rather, as it
+seemed to him, was falling asleep in the past of this Old World town
+which had once held his ancestors. Although a republican, he had liked
+to think of them in quaint distinctive garb, representing state and
+importance--perhaps even aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the
+responsibility of such "bad eminence" rest with them entirely, but a
+habit of conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led
+him also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
+quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in a
+doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of his
+progenitors. For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in Europe, he
+was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that it was,
+perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved than as having
+degenerated. In these ingenuous meditations he had passed the long rows
+of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs and unpatched dilapidations
+were yet far removed from squalor, until he had reached the road
+bordered by poplars, all so unlike his own country's waysides--and knew
+that he had wandered far from his hotel.
+
+He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the way
+he had come. There was, he reasoned, some other street or turning that
+would eventually bring him to the market place and his hotel, and yet
+extend his experience of the town. He turned at right angles into a
+narrow grass lane, which was, however, as neatly kept and apparently as
+public as the highway. A few moments' walking convinced him that it was
+not a thoroughfare and that it led to the open gates of a park. This had
+something of a public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be
+at least a pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on
+the exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance. The park lay in the
+direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a park
+of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable urban
+space. Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he wandered on,
+until he became conscious that he must have again lost his way, and he
+diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset hedge to the right,
+whose line he had been following.
+
+As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side, speaking
+in German, with which he was unfamiliar. Having, as yet, met no one, and
+being now impressed with the fact that for a public place the park was
+singularly deserted, he was conscious that his position was getting
+serious, and he determined to take this only chance of inquiring his
+way. The hedge was thinner in some places than in others, and at times
+he could see not only the light through it but even the moving figures
+of the speakers, and the occasional white flash of a summer gown. At
+last he determined to penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged
+on the other side. But here he paused motionless. He found himself
+behind a somewhat formal and symmetrical group of figures with their
+backs toward him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his
+own, and all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
+handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but which
+now seemed to arise suddenly before him. Some of the figures were in
+uniform. Immediately before him, but so slightly separated from
+the others that he was enabled to see the house between her and her
+companions, he was confronted by the pretty back, shoulders, and blond
+braids of a young girl of twenty. Convinced that he had unwittingly
+intruded upon some august ceremonial, he instantly slipped back into
+the hedge, but so silently that his momentary presence was evidently
+undetected. When he regained the park side he glanced back through
+the interstices; there was no movement of the figures nor break in the
+silence to indicate that his intrusion had been observed. With a long
+breath of relief he hurried from the park.
+
+It was late when he finally got back to his hotel. But his little modern
+adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval reflections,
+and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained porter in the
+courtyard was in regard to the park. There was no public park in
+Alstadt! The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof Gardens--the Schloss,
+which was in the direction he indicated. The Schloss was the residency
+of the hereditary Grand Duke. JA WOHL! He was stopping there with
+several Hoheiten. There was naturally a party there--a family reunion.
+But it was a private enclosure. At times, when the Grand Duke was "not in
+residence," it was open to the public. In point of fact, at such times
+tickets of admission were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige
+each. There was not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and
+dairy--the pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.
+
+But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the modern
+life of Alstadt. On entering the hotel, wearied by his long walk, he
+passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on the landing
+near his room. As he entered his apartment he had a vague impression,
+without exactly knowing why, that the landlord and the military
+stranger had just left it. This feeling was deepened by the evident
+disarrangement of certain articles in his unlocked portmanteau and the
+disorganization of his writing case. A wave of indignation passed over
+him. It was followed by a knock at the door, and the landlord blandly
+appeared with the stranger.
+
+"A thousand pardons," said the former, smilingly, "but Herr Sanderman,
+the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you. I hope we are
+not intruding?"
+
+"Not NOW," said the American, dryly.
+
+The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.
+
+"I have to ask only a few formal questions," said the Ober-Inspector in
+excellent but somewhat precise English, "to supplement the report which,
+as a stranger, you may not know is required by the police from the
+landlord in regard to the names and quality of his guests who are
+foreign to the town. You have a passport?"
+
+"I have," said the American still more dryly. "But I do not keep it in
+an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case."
+
+"An admirable precaution," said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
+"May I see it? Thanks," he added, glancing over the document which the
+American produced from his pocket. "I see that you are a born American
+citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have prevented
+this little contretemps. You are aware, Mr. Hoffman, that your name is
+German?"
+
+"It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two centuries
+ago," said Hoffman, curtly.
+
+"We are indeed honored by your return to it," returned Sanderman
+suavely, "but it was the circumstance of your name being a local one,
+and the possibility of your still being a German citizen liable to
+unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble." His manner was
+clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that all the time his own
+face and features were undergoing a profound scrutiny from the speaker.
+
+"And you are making sure that you will know me again?" said Hoffman,
+with a smile.
+
+"I trust, indeed, both," returned Sanderman, with a bow, "although
+you will permit me to say that your description here," pointing to the
+passport, "scarcely does you justice. ACH GOTT! it is the same in all
+countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN."
+
+Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without
+knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in the
+remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.
+
+The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the door. "I
+hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by doing anything I
+can to render your visit here a pleasant one. Perhaps," he added, "it is
+not for long."
+
+But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he imagined
+was a possible sneer.
+
+"I have not yet determined my movements," he said.
+
+The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
+military salute and departed.
+
+Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile urbanity
+of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the official visit to
+his guest. He was profuse in his attentions, and even introduced him to
+a singularly artistic-looking man of middle age, wearing an order in his
+buttonhole, whom he met casually in the hall.
+
+"Our Court photographer," explained the landlord with some fervor,
+"at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten and
+Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses."
+
+"I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would give
+me a visit," said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman with an
+intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the Police Inspector,
+"and I would be charmed if he would avail himself of my poor skill to
+transmit his picturesque features to my unique collection."
+
+Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he was
+conscious of being struck with this second examination of his face, and
+the allusion to his personality.
+
+The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air. The Herr
+would still like to see the Schloss? Hoffman, who had quite forgotten
+his adventure in the park, looked vacant. JA WOHL--the Hof authorities
+had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated to the hotel
+proprietor that he might have permission to visit the model farm and
+dairy. As the American still looked indifferent the porter pointed out
+with some importance that it was a Ducal courtesy not to be lightly
+treated; that few, indeed, of the burghers themselves had ever been
+admitted to this eccentric whim of the late Grand Duchess. He would, of
+course, be silent about it; the Court would not like it known that they
+had made an exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would
+enter quickly and boldly alone. There would be a housekeeper or a
+dairymaid to show him over the place.
+
+More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American, was
+inclined to classify as a "free pass" to a somewhat heavy "side show,"
+he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning after breakfast
+set out to visit the model farm and dairy. Dismissing his driver, as
+he had been instructed, Hoffman entered the gateway with a mingling of
+expectancy and a certain amusement over the "boldness" which the
+porter had suggested should characterize his entrance. Before him was
+a beautifully kept lane bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which
+seemed to sink into the distance. He was instinctively following it when
+he became aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the
+livery of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast
+of him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory
+military salute preserving a ceremonious silence. There was something
+so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful, rural industry
+that by the time they had reached the bottom of the lane the American
+had quite recovered his good humor. But here a new astonishment awaited
+him. Nestling before him in a green amphitheater lay a little wooden
+farm-yard and outbuildings, which irresistibly suggested that it had
+been recently unpacked and set up from a box of Nuremberg toys. The
+symmetrical trees, the galleried houses with preternaturally glazed
+windows, even the spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the
+white-fenced barnyards were all unreal, wooden and toylike.
+
+Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was
+quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,
+he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion. The
+mysterious chasseur had disappeared. But under the arch of an arbor,
+which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass, and pink
+tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.
+
+At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for another.
+For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden china--so
+daintily delicate and unique it was in color and arrangement. It was
+that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten medieval peasant garb
+of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage, lace sleeves, and helmeted
+metallic comb. But, after the Dresden method, the pale yellow of her
+hair was repeated in her bodice, the pink of her cheeks was in the
+roses of her chintz overskirt. The blue of her eyes was the blue of her
+petticoat; the dazzling whiteness of her neck shone again in the
+sleeves and stockings. Nevertheless she was real and human, for the
+pink deepened in her cheeks as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she
+recognized the civility with a grave little curtsy.
+
+"You have come to see the dairy," she said in quaintly accurate English;
+"I will show you the way."
+
+"If you please," said Hoffman, gaily, "but--"
+
+"But what?" she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely astonished
+eyes.
+
+Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
+contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment. Nothing
+daunted, however, he went on:
+
+"Couldn't we shake all that?"
+
+The look of wonder returned. "Shake all that?" she repeated. "I do not
+understand."
+
+"Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick of
+showing them. I think, too, I've about sized the whole show. Wouldn't
+it be better if we sat down in that arbor--supposing it won't fall
+down--and you told me all about the lot? It would save you a heap of
+trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than trapesing round. Of
+course," he said, with a quick transition to the gentlest courtesy, "if
+you're conscientious about this thing we'll go on and not spare a cow.
+Consider me in it with you for the whole morning."
+
+She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming laugh.
+It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a certain barbaric
+trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had not entirely
+overlaid.
+
+"I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock," he
+said to himself as he laughed too.
+
+But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle but
+singular significance she said:
+
+"I think you must see the dairy."
+
+Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the brown
+curls on his forehead. "By all means," he said instantly, and began
+walking by her side in modest but easy silence. Now that he thought her
+a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.
+
+Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
+entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:
+
+"But you Americans--in your rich and prosperous country, with your large
+lands and your great harvests--you must know all about farming."
+
+"Never was in a dairy in my life," said Hoffman gravely. "I'm from
+the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept in
+cellars."
+
+Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand. Then she
+apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of mischief in her
+eyes:
+
+"Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the Grand
+Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?"
+
+"No. The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em--standing like wax
+figures--the other side of the park lodge, the other day--and got away
+as soon as I could. I think I prefer the cows."
+
+Her head was slightly turned away. He had to content himself with
+looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly
+buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside him.
+
+"Of course," he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, "if it's
+part of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that, too. I dare
+say you could make them interesting."
+
+"But why," she said with her head still slightly turned away toward
+a figure--a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time, Hoffman
+perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur had done--"why
+did you come here at all?"
+
+"The first time was a fool accident," he returned frankly. "I was making
+a short cut through what I thought was a public park. The second time
+was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom I found going
+through my things, but who apologized--as I suppose--by getting me an
+invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I thought it only the
+square thing to both of 'em to accept it. But I'm mighty glad I came;
+I wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand dollars. You see I haven't
+struck anyone I cared to talk to since." Here he suddenly remarked that
+she hadn't looked at him, and that the delicate whiteness of her neck
+was quite suffused with pink, and stopped instantly. Presently he said
+quite easily:
+
+"Who's the chorus?"
+
+"The lady?"
+
+"Yes. She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know--just
+as if she didn't catch on."
+
+"She's the head housekeeper of the farm. Perhaps you would prefer to
+have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?"
+
+The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
+petticoats.
+
+"Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on me.
+But here's the dairy. Don't let her come inside among those pans of
+fresh milk with that smile, or there'll be trouble."
+
+The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and the
+figure passed on as they entered the dairy. It was beautifully clean and
+fresh. With a persistence that he quickly recognized as mischievous and
+ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability accepted with even
+greater gravity and assumption of interest, she showed him all the
+details. From thence they passed to the farmyard, where he hung with
+breathless attention over the names of the cows and made her repeat
+them. Although she was evidently familiar with the subject, he could see
+that her zeal was fitful and impatient.
+
+"Suppose we sit down," he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic seat
+in the center of the green.
+
+"Sir down?" she repeated wonderingly. "What for?"
+
+"To talk. We'll knock off and call it half a day."
+
+"But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going," she
+said quickly.
+
+"Am I? I don't think these particulars were in my invitation."
+
+She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a
+bright eye around the field.
+
+"Come," he said gently, "there are no other sightseers waiting, and your
+conscience is clear," and he moved toward the rustic seat.
+
+"Certainly not--there," she added in a low voice.
+
+They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung the
+miniature stream.
+
+"You are not staying long in Alstadt?" she said.
+
+"No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from."
+
+They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his trousers,
+but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him fixedly in the eye
+said:
+
+"Ah, you have relations here?"
+
+"Yes, but they are dead two hundred years."
+
+She laughed again with a slight expression of relief. They had entered
+the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she suddenly stopped and
+sat down upon a rustic bench. To his surprise he found that they were
+quite alone.
+
+"Tell me about these relatives," she said, slightly drawing aside her
+skirt to make room for him on the seat.
+
+He did not require a second invitation. He not only told her all about
+his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more recent and
+more nearly related to him; about his own life, his vocation--he was a
+clever newspaper correspondent with a roving commission--his ambitions,
+his beliefs and his romance.
+
+"And then, perhaps, of this visit--you will also make 'copy'?"
+
+He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but shook
+his head.
+
+"No," he said gravely. "No--this is YOU. The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER is big
+pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you from me."
+
+He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly
+around it. She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even then--as
+if in forgetfulness or indifference--permitted her hand to rest
+unresponsively in his. It was scarcely an encouragement to gallantry,
+neither was it a rejection of an unconscious familiarity.
+
+"But you haven't told me about yourself," he said.
+
+"Oh, I," she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a laugh
+and a sidelong glance, "of what importance is that to you? It is the
+Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you Americans seek to
+know. I am--what I am--as you see."
+
+"You bet," said Hoffman with charming decision.
+
+"I WHAT?"
+
+"You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even know
+your name."
+
+She laughed again, and after a pause, said: "Elsbeth."
+
+"But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting, you
+know."
+
+"Then you Americans are really so very formal--eh?" she said slyly,
+looking at her imprisoned hand.
+
+"Well, yes," returned Hoffman, disengaging it. "I suppose we are
+respectful, or mean to be. But whom am I to inquire for? To write to?"
+
+"You are neither to write nor inquire."
+
+"What?" She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes in
+which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated, but for
+the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented her words with
+a slight pressure.
+
+"You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your landlord:
+'Pack up my luggage. I have finished with this old town and my
+ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see, and I shall
+leave Alstadt tomorrow!'"
+
+"Thank you! I don't catch on."
+
+"Of what necessity should you? I have said it. That should be enough for
+a chivalrous American like you." She again significantly looked down at
+her hand.
+
+"If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I can
+say no more," he said seriously; "but give me some reason for it."
+
+"Ah so!" she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "Then I must
+tell you. You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess. Well! THEY
+KNOW YOU. The day before yesterday you were wandering in the park, as
+you admit. You say, also, you got through the hedge and interrupted
+some ceremony. That ceremony was not a Court function, Mr. Hoffman, but
+something equally sacred--the photographing of the Ducal family
+before the Schloss. You say that you instantly withdrew. But after the
+photograph was taken the plate revealed a stranger standing actually
+by the side of the Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the
+Grand Duke himself. That stranger was you!"
+
+"And the picture was spoiled," said the American, with a quiet laugh.
+
+"I should not say that," returned the lady, with a demure glance at her
+companion's handsome face, "and I do not believe that the Princess--who
+first saw the photograph--thought so either. But she is very young
+and willful, and has the reputation of being very indiscreet, and
+unfortunately she begged the photographer not to destroy the plate, but
+to give it to her, and to say nothing about it, except that the plate
+was defective, and to take another. Still it would have ended there if
+her curiosity had not led her to confide a description of the stranger
+to the Police Inspector, with the result you know."
+
+"Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled into a
+family group that was being photographed?"
+
+"Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her curiosity
+about you," corrected the fair stranger.
+
+"But look here! I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay for the
+plate."
+
+"Then you do want to see the Princess?" said the young girl smiling;
+"you are like the others."
+
+"Bother the Princess! I want to see YOU. And I don't see how they can
+prevent it if I choose to remain."
+
+"Very easily. You will find that there is something wrong with your
+passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for examination. You
+will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of the town and be ordered
+to leave it. You will be shadowed by the police until you quarrel with
+them--like a free American--and you are conducted to the frontier.
+Perhaps you will strike an officer who has insulted you, and then you
+are finished on the spot."
+
+The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat over
+his curls.
+
+"Suppose I am content to risk it--having first laid the whole matter and
+its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that he could make it
+hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they happened to 'down me.'
+By Jove! I shouldn't mind being the martyr of an international episode
+if they'd spare me long enough to let me get the first 'copy' over to
+the other side." His eyes sparkled.
+
+"You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story, and
+you have no evidence. They would demand to know your informant, and I
+should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is already talked about,
+made a subject of scandal. But no matter! It is right that an American's
+independence shall not be interfered with."
+
+She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and slightly
+turned her head aside. Hoffman gently drew the handkerchief away, and in
+so doing possessed himself of her other hand.
+
+"Look here, Miss--Miss--Elsbeth. You know I wouldn't give you away,
+whatever happened. But couldn't I get hold of that photographer--I saw
+him, he wanted me to sit to him--and make him tell me?"
+
+"He wanted you to sit to him," she said hurriedly, "and did you?"
+
+"No," he replied. "He was a little too fresh and previous, though I
+thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else."
+
+"Ah!" She said something to herself in German which he did not
+understand, and then added aloud:
+
+"You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer. Promise me you shall
+not sit for him."
+
+"How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?" He added ruefully,
+"But I'd like to make him give himself away to me somehow."
+
+"He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward. Do not go near
+him nor see him. Be careful that he does not photograph you with his
+instantaneous instrument when you are passing. Now you must go. I must
+see the Princess."
+
+"Let me go, too. I will explain it to her," said Hoffman.
+
+She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her
+hands. "Ah, then it IS so. It is the Princess you wish to see. You are
+curious--you, too; you wish to see this lady who is interested in you. I
+ought to have known it. You are all alike."
+
+He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as a
+charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry--but retained
+her hands.
+
+"Nonsense," he said. "I wish to see her that I may have the right to see
+you--that you shall not lose your place here through me; that I may come
+again."
+
+"You must never come here again."
+
+"Then you must come where I am. We will meet somewhere when you have
+an afternoon off. You shall show me the town--the houses of my
+ancestors--their tombs; possibly--if the Grand Duke rampages--the
+probable site of my own."
+
+She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
+questioning blue ones. "Do not you Americans know that it is not the
+fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women to walk
+together--unless they are VERLOBT?"
+
+"VER--which?"
+
+"Engaged." She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
+mischievously.
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"ACH GOTT!" She made a gesture of hopelessness at his incorrigibility,
+and again attempted to withdraw her hands.
+
+"I must go now."
+
+"Well then, good-by."
+
+It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive
+hands. Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and instantly
+released her. She as instantly vanished.
+
+"Elsbeth," he called quickly. "Elsbeth!"
+
+Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color from
+the dense foliage--quite to his astonishment.
+
+"Hush," she said, with her finger on her lips. "Are you mad?"
+
+"I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess," he laughed
+as her head disappeared.
+
+He strolled back toward the gate. Scarcely had he quitted the shrubbery
+before the same chasseur made his appearance with precisely the same
+salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance, accompanied him to the
+gate. At the corner of the street he hailed a droshky and was driven to
+his hotel.
+
+The landlord came up smiling. He trusted that the Herr had greatly
+enjoyed himself at the Schloss. It was a distinguished honor--in fact,
+quite unprecedented. Hoffman, while he determined not to commit himself,
+nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless anxious to learn something
+more of her relations to the Schloss. So pretty, so characteristic, and
+marked a figure must be well known to sightseers. Indeed, once or twice
+the idea had crossed his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left
+him more conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had
+deemed possible. He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown
+by the same attendants.
+
+"ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue when he
+was in residence."
+
+"And were these attendants in costume?"
+
+"There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants."
+
+Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet--he knew not
+why. But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it was not
+entrusted to everyday menials--and he briefly described it.
+
+His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious and
+arch intelligence.
+
+"ACH GOTT! yes!" He remembered now (with his finger on his nose) that
+when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were filled with
+shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of the Grand Duke's
+own theatrical company, who assumed the characters with great vivacity.
+Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke had treated the Herr to this
+special courtesy. Yes--there was one pretty, blonde young lady--the
+Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most popular soubrette, who would play it to
+the life! And the description fitted her to a hair! Ah, there was no
+doubt of it; many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.
+
+But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
+corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight. Ah, it would be
+a great joke--quite colossal! if he took a front seat where she could
+see him. And the good man rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation.
+
+Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only equal
+to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true one, and
+that he himself had been ridiculously deceived. The mystery of his fair
+companion's costume, which he had accepted as part of the "show"; the
+inconsistency of her manner and her evident occupation; her undeniable
+wish to terminate the whole episode with that single interview;
+her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic innocence; her perfect
+self-control and experienced acceptance of his gallantry under the
+simulated attitude of simplicity--all now struck him as perfectly
+comprehensible. He recalled the actress's inimitable touch in certain
+picturesque realistic details in the dairy--which she had not spared
+him; he recognized it now even in their bowered confidences (how like a
+pretty ballet scene their whole interview on the rustic bench was!),
+and it breathed through their entire conversation--to their theatrical
+parting at the close! And the whole story of the photograph was, no
+doubt, as pure a dramatic invention as the rest! The Princess's romantic
+interest in him--that Princess who had never appeared (why had he not
+detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)--was all a
+part of it. The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by the police
+was a necessary culmination to the little farce. Thank Heaven! he had
+not "risen" at the Princess, even if he had given himself away to the
+clever actress in her own humble role. Then the humor of the whole
+situation predominated and he laughed until the tears came to his eyes,
+and his forgotten ancestors might have turned over in their graves
+without his heeding them. And with this humanizing influence upon him he
+went to the theater.
+
+It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance was a
+special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to himself. He
+tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close to the next box,
+where there was a solitary occupant--an officer--apparently as lonely as
+himself. He had made up his mind that when his fair deceiver appeared
+he would let her see by his significant applause that he recognized her,
+but bore no malice for the trick she had played on him. After all, he
+had kissed her--he had no right to complain. If she should recognize
+him, and this recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and
+their better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant
+artifice. Her vocation was certainly a more independent and original
+one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and inequality he
+cared nothing. He found himself longing for the glance of her calm blue
+eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the seriousness of her sweetly
+restrained lips. There was no doubt that he should know her even as the
+heroine of DER CZAR UND DER ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him. He was
+becoming impatient. And the performance evidently was waiting. A stir
+in the outer gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms
+into the royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
+cause. As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged from
+the background of uniforms and took their places in the front of the
+box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic Princess.
+Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of diamonds that
+startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.
+
+He leaned over to his neighbor. "Who is the young lady in the box?"
+
+"The Princess Alexandrine."
+
+"I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes."
+
+"It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the daughter of
+the Grand Duke--there is none other there."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage. Then he
+rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box. When he
+reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at the royal
+box. Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a moment motionless
+in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful smile, and she waved her
+fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture of farewell.
+
+The next morning he left Alstadt. There was some little delay at the
+Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk it was
+accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to him by the
+Customhouse Inspector. Hoffman did not open it until he was alone.
+
+
+There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a narrow,
+irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself standing side
+by side with a young German girl, who, in the estimation of his
+compatriots, is by no means stylish and only passably good-looking.
+When he is joked by his friends about the post of honor given to this
+production, and questioned as to the lady, he remains silent. The
+Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt,
+among her other royal qualities, knew whom to trust.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of "Chu Chu,"
+a Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of
+Enriquez Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was also
+brother to Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had freely given
+both the mustang and my youthful affections. I consider it a proof of
+the superiority of masculine friendship that neither the subsequent
+desertion of the mustang nor that of the young lady ever made the
+slightest difference to Enriquez or me in our exalted amity. To a
+wondering doubt as to what I ever could possibly have seen in his sister
+to admire he joined a tolerant skepticism of the whole sex. This he was
+wont to express in that marvelous combination of Spanish precision and
+California slang for which he was justly famous. "As to thees women and
+their little game," he would say, "believe me, my friend, your old
+Oncle 'Enry is not in it. No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is
+around. For why? Regard me here! If she is a horse, you shall say, 'She
+will buck-jump,' 'She will ess-shy,' 'She will not arrive,' or 'She will
+arrive too quick.' But if it is thees women, where are you? For when you
+shall say, 'She will ess-shy,' look you, she will walk straight; or
+she will remain tranquil when you think she buck-jump; or else she will
+arrive and, look you, you will not. You shall get left. It is ever so.
+My father and the brother of my father have both make court to my mother
+when she was but a senorita. My father think she have lofe his brother
+more. So he say to her: 'It is enofe; tranquillize yourself. I will go.
+I will efface myself. Adios! Shake hands! Ta-ta! So long! See you
+again in the fall.' And what make my mother? Regard me! She marry my
+father--on the instant! Of thees women, believe me, Pancho, you shall
+know nothing. Not even if they shall make you the son of your father or
+his nephew."
+
+I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general tendency
+of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little story. It is
+only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude toward the sex he so
+cheerfully maligned exhibited little apprehension or caution in dealing
+with them. Among the frivolous and light-minded intermixture of his race
+he moved with great freedom and popularity. He danced well; when we went
+to fandangos together his agility and the audacity of his figures
+always procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments,
+I presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings,
+or envy. I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of the
+SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the invention
+of the performers, and very little to the imagination of the spectator.
+In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved more or less
+gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled eyes of each other,
+acted as love's signal, and was used to express alternate admiration
+and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear and transport, coyness
+and coquetry, as the dance proceeded. I need not say that Enriquez'
+pantomimic illustration of these emotions was peculiarly extravagant;
+but it was always performed and accepted with a gravity that was an
+essential feature of the dance. At such times sighs would escape him
+which were supposed to portray the incipient stages of passion;
+snorts of jealousy burst from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was
+overtaken by a sort of St. Vitus's dance that expressed his timidity in
+making the first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck
+him with something like a dumb ague; and a single gesture of invitation
+from her produced marked delirium. All this was very like Enriquez; but
+on the particular occasion to which I refer, I think no one was prepared
+to see him begin the figure with the waving of FOUR handkerchiefs! Yet
+this he did, pirouetting, capering, brandishing his silken signals like
+a ballerina's scarf in the languishment or fire of passion, until, in a
+final figure, where the conquered and submitting fair one usually
+sinks into the arms of her partner, need it be said that the ingenious
+Enriquez was found in the center of the floor supporting four of the
+dancers! Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits of
+the crowd or by his evident success with the fair. "Ah, believe me, it
+is nothing," he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he leaned
+against the doorway. "Possibly, I shall have to offer the chocolate or
+the wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade in the moonlight
+on the veranda. It is ever so. Unless, my friend," he said, suddenly
+turning toward me in an excess of chivalrous self-abnegation, "unless
+you shall yourself take my place. Behold, I gif them to you! I vamos!
+I vanish! I make track! I skedaddle!" I think he would have carried
+his extravagance to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of
+partners, and committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at
+that moment parted before the remaining dancers, and left one of
+the onlookers, a tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them through
+gold-rimmed eyeglasses in complete critical absorption. I stared in
+amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair stranger Miss
+Urania Mannersley, the Congregational minister's niece!
+
+Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth of
+the Encinal. She was at once the envy and the goad of the daughters of
+those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had settled in the valley.
+She was correct, she was critical, she was faultless and observant. She
+was proper, yet independent; she was highly educated; she was suspected
+of knowing Latin and Greek; she even spelled correctly! She could wither
+the plainest field nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the
+flowers their botanical names. She never said "Ain't you?" but "Aren't
+you?" She looked upon "Did I which?" as an incomplete and imperfect
+form of "What did I do?" She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was
+believed to have read them. She was from Boston. What could she possibly
+be doing at a free-and-easy fandango?
+
+Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there, her
+outward appearance would have attracted attention. Contrasted with
+the gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her
+plain, tightly fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were
+sufficiently notable in themselves, even had they not seemed, like the
+girl herself, a kind of quiet protest to the glaring flounces before
+her. Her small, straight waist and flat back brought into greater relief
+the corsetless, waistless, swaying figures of the Mexican girls, and her
+long, slim, well-booted feet, peeping from the stiff, white edges of her
+short skirt, made their broad, low-quartered slippers, held on by the
+big toe, appear more preposterous than ever. Suddenly she seemed
+to realize that she was standing there alone, but without fear or
+embarrassment. She drew back a little, glancing carelessly behind her
+as if missing some previous companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine.
+She smiled an easy recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested
+more curiously upon Enriquez, who was still by my side. I disengaged
+myself and instantly joined her, particularly as I noticed that a few of
+the other bystanders were beginning to stare at her with little reserve.
+
+"Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?" she said quietly.
+Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my face, she went
+on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:
+
+"I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and was
+going home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I heard
+the music, and dropped in. I don't know what has become of her," she
+added, glancing round the room again; "she seemed perfectly wild when
+she saw that creature over there bounding about with his handkerchiefs.
+You were speaking to him just now. Do tell me--is he real?"
+
+"I should think there was little doubt of that," I said with a vague
+laugh.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said simply. "Is he quite sane? Does he do
+that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?"
+
+This was too much. I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a scion
+of one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance was a
+national gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and a patron,
+and that he was my dearest friend. At the same time I was conscious that
+I wished she hadn't seen his last performance.
+
+"You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?" she said.
+"I don't believe it. It was only like him." As I hesitated over this
+palpable truth, she went on: "I do wish he'd do it again. Don't you
+think you could make him?"
+
+"Perhaps he might if YOU asked him," I said a little maliciously.
+
+"Of course I shouldn't do that," she returned quietly. "All the same, I
+do believe he is really going to do it--or something else. Do look!"
+
+I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by the
+delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested himself of
+his coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied together,
+picturesquely around his waist, preparatory to some new performance. I
+tried furtively to give him a warning look, but in vain.
+
+"Isn't he really too absurd for anything?" said Miss Mannersley, yet
+with a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice. "You know, I never
+saw anything like this before. I wouldn't have believed such a creature
+could have existed."
+
+Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been of
+any avail. For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he struck a
+few chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center of the floor,
+swaying his body languishingly from side to side in time with the
+music and the pitch of a thin Spanish tenor. It was a gypsy love song.
+Possibly Miss Mannersley's lingual accomplishments did not include a
+knowledge of Castilian, but she could not fail to see that the gestures
+and illustrative pantomime were addressed to her. Passionately assuring
+her that she was the most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes
+were like votive tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of
+being a "brigand" and "assassin" in her attitude toward "his heart," he
+balanced with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary cloak
+in front of her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on, and with a
+final astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of his guitar, sank
+on one knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her feet.
+
+If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque
+extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's absolute
+unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness. The applause
+of dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and hearty; her only
+contribution to it was a slight parting of her thin red lips in a
+half-incredulous smile. In the silence that followed the applause, as
+Enriquez walked pantingly away, I heard her saying, half to herself,
+"Certainly a most extraordinary creature!" In my indignation I could not
+help turning suddenly upon her and looking straight into her eyes. They
+were brown, with that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of
+nearsighted persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny. She only
+repeated carelessly, "Isn't he?" and added: "Please see if you can find
+Jocasta. I suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he won't be
+doing it again. Ah! there she is. Good gracious, child! what have you
+got there?"
+
+It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly
+holding out toward her mistress.
+
+"Heavens! I don't want it. Keep it yourself."
+
+I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain glitter in
+the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who were watching
+her curiously. But I think she was as oblivious of this as she was of
+Enriquez' particular attentions. As we reached the street I felt that I
+ought to say something more.
+
+"You know," I began casually, "that although those poor people meet here
+in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely pastoral
+and a national custom; and these girls are all honest, hardworking peons
+or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old idyllic fashion."
+
+"Certainly," said the young girl, half-abstractedly. "Of course it's
+a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those old
+Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago. It's quite Arabic in its
+suggestions. I have got something like it in an old CANCIONERO I picked
+up at a bookstall in Boston. But," she added, with a gasp of reminiscent
+satisfaction, "that's not like HIM! Oh, no! HE is decidedly original.
+Heavens! yes."
+
+I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly
+awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala. Yet he
+looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated in what
+I thought was a necessary warning. He, however, quickly precipitated it.
+Glancing after the retreating figures of the two women, he said: "Thees
+mees from Boston is return to her house. You do not accompany her? I
+shall. Behold me--I am there." But I linked my arm firmly in his. Then
+I pointed out, first, that she was already accompanied by a servant;
+secondly, that if I, who knew her, had hesitated to offer myself as an
+escort, it was hardly proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that
+liberty; that Miss Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which
+he, as a Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.
+
+"But will she not regard lofe--the admiration excessif?" he said,
+twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.
+
+"No; she will not," I returned sharply; "and you ought to understand
+that she is on a different level from your Manuelas and Carmens."
+
+"Pardon, my friend," he said gravely; "thees women are ever the same.
+There is a proverb in my language. Listen: 'Whether the sharp blade of
+the Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it shall find behind it
+ever the same heart to wound.' I am that Toledo blade--possibly it is
+you, my friend. Wherefore, let us together pursue this girl of Boston on
+the instant."
+
+But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining his
+mercurial impulses for the moment. He halted, and puffed vigorously at
+his cigarette; but the next instant he started forward again. "Let us,
+however, follow with discretion in the rear; we shall pass her house; we
+shall gaze at it; it shall touch her heart."
+
+Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just
+parted from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of
+attempting it alone, and I thought it better to humor him by consenting
+to walk with him in that direction; but I felt it necessary to say:
+
+"I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your
+performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I were
+you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression."
+
+"You are saying she ees shock?" said Enriquez, gravely.
+
+I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he saw
+my hesitation. "Then she have jealousy of the senoritas," he observed,
+with insufferable complacency. "You observe! I have already said. It is
+ever so."
+
+I could stand it no longer. "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you must
+know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat--a paid performer."
+
+"Ah!"--his black eyes sparkled--"the torero, the man who fights the
+bull, he is also an acrobat."
+
+"Yes; but she thinks you a clown!--a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO--there!"
+
+"Then I have make her laugh?" he said coolly.
+
+I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"BUENO!" he said cheerfully. "Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make
+feenish with a sigh."
+
+I turned to look at him in the moonlight. His face presented its
+habitual Spanish gravity--a gravity that was almost ironical. His
+small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity--the
+irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be
+possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of
+Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss
+Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly
+rebounded. As we walked on slowly I continued more persuasively: "Of
+course this is only your nonsense; but don't you see, Miss Mannersley
+thinks it all in earnest and really your nature?" I hesitated, for
+it suddenly struck me that it WAS really his nature. "And--hang it
+all!--you don't want her to believe you a common buffoon., or some
+intoxicated muchacho."
+
+"Intoxicated?" repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment. "Yes;
+that is the word that shall express itself. My friend, you have made
+a shot in the center--you have ring the bell every time! It is
+intoxication--but not of aguardiente. Look! I have long time an ancestor
+of whom is a pretty story. One day in church he have seen a young
+girl--a mere peasant girl--pass to the confessional. He look her in
+her eye, he stagger"--here Enriquez wobbled pantomimically into the
+road--"he fall!"--he would have suited the action to the word if I had
+not firmly held him up. "They have taken him home, where he have remain
+without his clothes, and have dance and sing. But it was the drunkenness
+of lofe. And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not even
+pretty. The name of my ancestor was--"
+
+"Don Quixote de La Mancha," I suggested maliciously. "I suspected as
+much. Come along. That will do."
+
+"My ancestor's name," continued Enriquez, gravely, "was Antonio
+Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same. Thees Don Quixote of
+whom you speak exist not at all."
+
+"Never mind. Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house, don't
+make a fool of yourself again."
+
+It was a wonderful moonlight night. The deep redwood porch of the
+Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak--the largest in
+the Encinal--was diapered in black and silver. As the women stepped
+upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the door. Miss
+Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a last look at the
+beauty of the night as Jocasta entered. Her glance fell upon us as
+we passed. She nodded carelessly and unaffectedly to me, but as she
+recognized Enriquez she looked a little longer at him with her previous
+cold and invincible curiosity. To my horror Enriquez began instantly to
+affect a slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but
+I gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as the
+door closed finally on the young lady.
+
+"You do not comprehend, friend Pancho," he said gravely, "but those eyes
+in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror. They burn,
+they consume me here like paper. Let us affix to ourselves thees tree.
+She will, without doubt, appear at her window. We shall salute her for
+good night."
+
+"We will do nothing of the kind," I said sharply. Finding that I was
+determined, he permitted me to lead him away. I was delighted to
+notice, however, that he had indicated the window which I knew was
+the minister's study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear of the
+house, this later incident was probably not overseen by the young lady
+or the servant. But I did not part from Enriquez until I saw him
+safely back to the sala, where I left him sipping chocolate, his
+arm alternating around the waists of his two previous partners in a
+delightful Arcadian and childlike simplicity, and an apparent utter
+forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.
+
+The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next day,
+being Sunday, I missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout Catholic I
+remembered that he was at mass in the morning, and possibly at the
+bullfight at San Antonio in the afternoon. But I was somewhat surprised
+on the Monday morning following, as I was crossing the plaza, to have
+my arm taken by the Rev. Mr. Mannersley in the nearest approach to
+familiarity that was consistent with the reserve of this eminent divine.
+I looked at him inquiringly. Although scrupulously correct in attire,
+his features always had a singular resemblance to the national
+caricature known as "Uncle Sam," but with the humorous expression
+left out. Softly stroking his goatee with three fingers, he began
+condescendingly: "You are, I think, more or less familiar with the
+characteristics and customs of the Spanish as exhibited by the settlers
+here." A thrill of apprehension went through me. Had he heard of
+Enriquez' proceedings? Had Miss Mannersley cruelly betrayed him to her
+uncle? "I have not given that attention myself to their language and
+social peculiarities," he continued, with a large wave of the hand,
+"being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs and
+superstitions"--it struck me that this was apt to be a common fault of
+people of the Mannersley type--"but I have refrained from a personal
+discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held somewhat broad views
+on the subject of their remarkable missionary work, and have suggested
+a scheme of co-operation with them, quite independent of doctrinal
+teaching, to my brethren of other Protestant Christian sects. These
+views I first incorporated in a sermon last Sunday week, which I am told
+has created considerable attention." He stopped and coughed slightly. "I
+have not yet heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to believe
+that my remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally."
+
+I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address me
+on this topic. I had a vague remembrance of having heard that he had
+said something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of his
+flock, but nothing more. He continued: "I have just said that I was
+unacquainted with the characteristics of the Spanish-American race. I
+presume, however, they have the impulsiveness of their Latin origin.
+They gesticulate--eh? They express their gratitude, their joy, their
+affection, their emotions generally, by spasmodic movements? They
+naturally dance--sing--eh?" A horrible suspicion crossed my mind;
+I could only stare helplessly at him. "I see," he said graciously;
+"perhaps it is a somewhat general question. I will explain myself.
+A rather singular occurrence happened to me the other night. I had
+returned from visiting a parishioner, and was alone in my study
+reviewing my sermon for the next day. It must have been quite late
+before I concluded, for I distinctly remember my niece had returned
+with her servant fully an hour before. Presently I heard the sounds of
+a musical instrument in the road, with the accents of someone singing or
+rehearsing some metrical composition in words that, although couched
+in a language foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me the
+impression of being distinctly adulatory. For some little time, in
+the greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the
+performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle
+curiosity to the window. From thence, standing in my dressing-gown,
+and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large oak in the
+roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect light, appeared
+to be of Spanish extraction. But I evidently miscalculated my own
+invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as I came to the window, and
+in a series of the most extraordinary pantomimic gestures saluted me.
+Beyond my experience of a few Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I
+am not an adept in the understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me
+that the various phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation
+were successively portrayed. He placed his hands upon his head,
+his heart, and even clasped them together in this manner." To my
+consternation the reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most
+extravagant pantomime. "I am willing to confess," he continued, "that
+I was singularly moved by them, as well as by the highly creditable and
+Christian interest that evidently produced them. At last I opened the
+window. Leaning out, I told him that I regretted that the lateness of
+the hour prevented any further response from me than a grateful though
+hurried acknowledgment of his praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be
+glad to see him for a few moments in the vestry before service the next
+day, or at early candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class. I
+told him that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical
+brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing could
+be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited testimony
+to my motives. He appeared for an instant to be deeply affected, and,
+indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then gracefully retired, with
+some agility and a slight saltatory movement."
+
+He paused. A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me, and
+I looked impulsively into his face. Was it possible that for once
+Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and vanquished
+by a master hand? But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-satisfied face
+betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor. He was evidently in earnest; he
+had complacently accepted for himself the abandoned Enriquez' serenade
+to his niece. I felt a hysterical desire to laugh, but it was checked by
+my companion's next words.
+
+"I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast. She
+had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she agreed with
+me as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition of my liberal
+efforts toward his coreligionists. It was she, in fact, who suggested
+that your knowledge of these people might corroborate my impressions."
+
+I was dumfounded. Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized
+Enriquez' hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield him?
+But this was so inconsistent with her utter indifference to him, except
+as a grotesque study, that she would have been more likely to tell
+her uncle all about his previous performance. Nor could it be that she
+wished to conceal her visit to the fandango. She was far too independent
+for that, and it was even possible that the reverend gentleman, in his
+desire to know more of Enriquez' compatriots, would not have objected.
+In my confusion I meekly added my conviction to hers, congratulated him
+upon his evident success, and slipped away. But I was burning with
+a desire to see Enriquez and know all. He was imaginative but not
+untruthful. Unfortunately, I learned that he was just then following one
+of his erratic impulses, and had gone to a rodeo at his cousin's, in
+the foothills, where he was alternately exercising his horsemanship in
+catching and breaking wild cattle and delighting his relatives with his
+incomparable grasp of the American language and customs, and of the airs
+of a young man of fashion. Then my thoughts recurred to Miss Mannersley.
+Had she really been oblivious that night to Enriquez' serenade? I
+resolved to find out, if I could, without betraying Enriquez. Indeed, it
+was possible, after all, that it might not have been he.
+
+Chance favored me. The next evening I was at a party where
+Miss Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a
+distinguished--I had almost written a popular--guest. But, as I
+have formerly stated, although the youthful fair of the Encinal were
+flattered by her casual attentions, and secretly admired her superior
+style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy under the
+dominance of her intelligence and education, and were afraid to attempt
+either confidence or familiarity. They were also singularly jealous
+of her, for although the average young man was equally afraid of her
+cleverness and her candor, he was not above paying a tremulous and timid
+court to her for its effect upon her humbler sisters. This evening she
+was surrounded by her usual satellites, including, of course, the local
+notables and special guests of distinction. She had been discussing,
+I think, the existence of glaciers on Mount Shasta with a spectacled
+geologist, and had participated with charming frankness in a
+conversation on anatomy with the local doctor and a learned professor,
+when she was asked to take a seat at the piano. She played with
+remarkable skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and brilliantly.
+As she sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening dress,
+her regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her high
+shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and provocative
+intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez' extravagant attentions
+if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if not, seemed to me plainer
+than ever. What had this well-poised, coldly observant spinster to do
+with that quaintly ironic ruffler, that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don
+Quixote, that impossible Enriquez? Presently she ceased playing. Her
+slim, narrow slipper, revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the
+pedal; her delicate fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was
+slightly thrown back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the
+ceiling in an effort of memory.
+
+"Something of Chopin's," suggested the geologist, ardently.
+
+"That exquisite sonata!" pleaded the doctor.
+
+"Suthin' of Rubinstein. Heard him once," said a gentleman of Siskiyou.
+"He just made that pianner get up and howl. Play Rube."
+
+She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish
+coquetry in her manner. Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the keys
+with a glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords, down went
+the low pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she presently began to
+hum to herself. I started--as well I might--for I recognized one of
+Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar solos. It was audacious;
+it was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar. As I remembered it--as he
+sang it--it recounted the adventures of one Don Francisco, a provincial
+gallant and roisterer of the most objectionable type. It had one hundred
+and four verses, which Enriquez never spared me. I shuddered as in a
+pleasant, quiet voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical
+praise of the PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came
+caressingly from her thin red lips. But the company was far differently
+affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were evidently
+catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody whistled the air from
+a distant corner; even the faces of the geologist and doctor brightened.
+
+"A tarantella, I presume?" blandly suggested the doctor.
+
+Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano. "It is a
+Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century," she said dryly.
+
+"It seemed sorter familiar, too," hesitated one of the young men,
+timidly, "like as if--don't you know?--you had without knowing it, don't
+you know?"--he blushed slightly--"sorter picked it up somewhere."
+
+"I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval
+manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it," returned Miss
+Mannersley coldly as she turned away.
+
+But I was not inclined to let her off so easily. I presently made my way
+to her side. "Your uncle was complimentary enough to consult me as to
+the meaning of the appearance of a certain exuberant Spanish visitor
+at his house the other night." I looked into her brown eyes, but my
+own slipped off her velvety pupils without retaining anything. Then she
+reinforced her gaze with a pince-nez, and said carelessly:
+
+"Oh, it's you? How are you? Well, could you give him any information?"
+
+"Only generally," I returned, still looking into her eyes. "These people
+are impulsive. The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and quicksilver."
+
+She smiled slightly. "That reminds me of your volatile friend. He was
+mercurial enough, certainly. Is he still dancing?"
+
+"And singing sometimes," I responded pointedly. But she only added
+casually, "A singular creature," without exhibiting the least
+consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser. I felt that
+Enriquez alone could enlighten me. I must see him.
+
+I did, but not in the way I expected. There was a bullfight at San
+Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance being
+changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the Americans. An
+additional attraction was offered in the shape of a bull-and-bear fight,
+also a concession to American taste, which had voted the bullfight
+"slow," and had averred that the bull "did not get a fair show." I am
+glad that I am able to spare the reader the usual realistic horrors, for
+in the Californian performances there was very little of the brutality
+that distinguished this function in the mother country. The horses were
+not miserable, worn-out hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the
+display of horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but
+secured an almost absolute safety to horse and rider. I never saw
+a horse gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in
+wheeling quickly to avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained
+their animals without injury.
+
+The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn
+outskirts of an old Spanish village. It was a rudely built oval
+amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed only
+over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial "notables," but
+now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives, with a sprinkling of
+American travelers and ranchmen. The impalpable adobe dust of the arena
+was being whirled into the air by the strong onset of the afternoon
+trade winds, which happily, however, helped also to dissipate a reek
+of garlic, and the acrid fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk
+cigarettes. I was leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the
+meager and circuslike procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen,
+when my attention was attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery.
+A lady and gentleman of a quality that was evidently unfamiliar to the
+rest of the audience were picking their way along the rickety benches
+to a front seat. I recognized the geologist with some surprise, and the
+lady he was leading with still greater astonishment. For it was Miss
+Mannersley, in her precise, well-fitting walking-costume--a monotone of
+sober color among the parti-colored audience.
+
+However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was not
+only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I had been
+to Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that her uncle
+might have given her permission to come, as a recognition of the Sunday
+concession of the management, as well as to conciliate his supposed
+Catholic friends. I watched her sitting there until the first bull
+had entered, and, after a rather brief play with the picadors and
+banderilleros, was dispatched. At the moment when the matador approached
+the bull with his lethal weapon I was not sorry for an excuse to glance
+at Miss Mannersley. Her hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent
+forward over her knees. I fancied that she, too, had dropped her
+eyes before the brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a
+drawing-book in her hand and was actually sketching it. I turned my eyes
+in preference to the dying bull.
+
+The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was, however,
+more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers. He accepted
+the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and he declined
+the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors. He bristled with
+banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his haunches backed
+against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the fine dust raised by
+the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing hoof--his one dull, heavy
+protest. A vague uneasiness had infected his adversaries; the picadors
+held aloof, the banderilleros skirmished at a safe distance. The
+audience resented only the indecision of the bull. Galling epithets
+were flung at him, followed by cries of "ESPADA!" and, curving his elbow
+under his short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand,
+advanced and--stopped. The bull remained motionless.
+
+For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down upon
+the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it around the
+tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment seemed to stop the
+performance. I heard an exclamation from the geologist, who had risen to
+his feet. I fancied I heard even a faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but
+the next moment, as the dust was slowly settling, we saw a sheet
+of paper in the air, that had been caught up in this brief cyclone,
+dropping, dipping from side to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly
+descended in the very middle of the arena. It was a leaf from Miss
+Mannersley's sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.
+
+In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at last
+excited the bull's growing but tardy ire. He glanced at it with murky,
+distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet troubled fury. Whether
+he detected his own presentment in Miss Mannersley's sketch, or
+whether he recognized it as an unknown and unfamiliar treachery in his
+surroundings, I could not conjecture; for the next moment the matador,
+taking advantage of the bull's concentration, with a complacent leer at
+the audience, advanced toward the paper. But at that instant a young
+man cleared the barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the
+matador to one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony
+and Miss Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the
+bull, knelt down before him with an exaggerated humility, and held up
+the drawing as if for his inspection. A roar of applause broke from the
+audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the attendants, as the
+goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger. But he sprang to one side
+with great dexterity, made a courteous gesture to the matador as if
+passing the bull over to him, and still holding the paper in his hand,
+re-leaped the barrier, and rejoined the audience in safety. I did not
+wait to see the deadly, dominant thrust with which the matador received
+the charging bull; my eyes were following the figure now bounding up the
+steps to the balcony, where with an exaggerated salutation he laid the
+drawing in Miss Mannersley's lap and vanished. There was no mistaking
+that thin lithe form, the narrow black mustache, and gravely dancing
+eyes. The audacity of conception, the extravagance of execution, the
+quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to no one but Enriquez.
+
+I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of the
+bull away. She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved focus of
+a hundred eager and curious eyes. She smiled slightly as she saw me. "I
+was just telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary creature it was, and
+how you knew him. He must have had great experience to do that sort of
+thing so cleverly and safely. Does he do it often? Of course, not just
+that. But does he pick up cigars and things that I see they throw to the
+matador? Does he belong to the management? Mr. Briggs thinks the whole
+thing was a feint to distract the bull," she added, with a wicked glance
+at the geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.
+
+"I am afraid," I said dryly, "that his act was as unpremeditated and
+genuine as it was unusual."
+
+"Why afraid?"
+
+It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake. What
+right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more genuine
+than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that they were, was
+it fair in me to give my friend away to this heartless coquette?
+"You are not very gallant," she said, with a slight laugh, as I was
+hesitating, and turned away with her escort before I could frame a
+reply. But at least Enriquez was now accessible, and I should gain some
+information from him. I knew where to find him, unless he were still
+lounging about the building, intent upon more extravagance; but I
+waited until I saw Miss Mannersley and Briggs depart without further
+interruption.
+
+The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the outskirts
+of the village. When I arrived there I found Enriquez' pinto mustang
+steaming in the corral, and although I was momentarily delayed by the
+servants at the gateway, I was surprised to find Enriquez himself lying
+languidly on his back in a hammock in the patio. His arms were hanging
+down listlessly on each side as if in the greatest prostration, yet I
+could not resist the impression that the rascal had only just got into
+the hammock when he heard of my arrival.
+
+"You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time," he said, in accents of
+exaggerated weakness. "I am absolutely exhaust. I am bursted, caved in,
+kerflummoxed. I have behold you, my friend, at the barrier. I speak not,
+I make no sign at the first, because I was on fire; I speak not at the
+feenish--for I am exhaust."
+
+"I see; the bull made it lively for you."
+
+He instantly bounded up in the hammock. "The bull! Caramba! Not a
+thousand bulls! And thees one, look you, was a craven. I snap my fingers
+over his horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose."
+
+"Well, then--what was it?"
+
+He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.
+Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones to
+the sky. "He asks me--thees friend of my soul, thees brother of my life,
+thees Pancho that I lofe--what it was? He would that I should tell him
+why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand, crack in the voice,
+and am generally wipe out! And yet he, my pardner--thees Francisco--know
+that I have seen the mees from Boston! That I have gaze into the eye,
+touch the hand, and for the instant possess the picture that hand have
+drawn! It was a sublime picture, Pancho," he said, sitting up again
+suddenly, "and have kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword have
+touch even the bone of hees back and make feenish of him."
+
+"Look here, Enriquez," I said bluntly, "have you been serenading that
+girl?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and said:
+"Ah, yes. What would you? It is of a necessity."
+
+"Well," I retorted, "then you ought to know that her uncle took it all to
+himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his religious
+tolerance."
+
+He did not even smile. "BUENO," he said gravely. "That make something,
+too. In thees affair it is well to begin with the duenna. He is the
+duenna."
+
+"And," I went on relentlessly, "her escort told her just now that your
+exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull, suggested
+by the management."
+
+"Bah! her escort is a geologian. Naturally, she is to him as a stone."
+
+I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment with a
+sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock, bidding me wait
+his return from a messenger in the gateway.
+
+Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock that
+Enriquez had quitted. A scrap of paper was lying in its meshes, which
+at first appeared to be of the kind from which Enriquez rolled his
+cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it away, I found it was of
+much firmer and stouter material. Looking at it more closely, I was
+surprised to recognize it as a piece of the tinted drawing-paper torn
+off the "block" that Miss Mannersley had used. It had been deeply
+creased at right angles as if it had been folded; it looked as if it
+might have been the outer half of a sheet used for a note.
+
+It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited my
+curiosity. I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss Mannersley,
+for I had seen it in her hand. Had she given him another? And if so, why
+had it been folded to the destruction of the drawing? Or was it part
+of a note which he had destroyed? In the first impulse of discovery
+I walked quickly with it toward the gateway where Enriquez had
+disappeared, intending to restore it to him. He was just outside talking
+with a young girl. I started, for it was Jocasta--Miss Mannersley's
+maid.
+
+With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and indignation
+with which we illogically are apt to resent the withholding of a
+friend's confidence, even in matters concerning only himself. It was no
+use for me to reason that it was no business of mine, that he was right
+in keeping a secret that concerned another--and a lady; but I was afraid
+I was even more meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my
+theory of his conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him. I
+continued to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried
+good-by, alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but
+without appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to
+my further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,
+threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, "Ah! you
+see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!" and returned
+to Jocasta. But whether this meant that he had received a message from
+Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her maid to carry one,
+was still uncertain. He was capable of either. During the next two
+or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I had resolved to try the
+effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our conversation, I gathered
+little further of their relations, and, to my surprise, after one or two
+characteristic extravagances of allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject,
+too. Only one afternoon, as we were parting, he said carelessly: "My
+friend, you are going to the casa of Mannersley tonight. I too have the
+honor of the invitation. But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you
+will take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,
+desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for I
+have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-in-law,
+who has a quinsy to the death. It is sad."
+
+This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
+advances. I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.
+
+"Nonsense!" I said bluntly. "Nothing keeps you from going."
+
+"My friend," returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languishment
+that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything that
+shall restrain me. I am not strong. I shall become weak of the knee and
+tremble under the eye of Mees Boston. I shall precipitate myself to the
+geologian by the throat. Ask me another conundrum that shall be easy."
+
+He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go. But I did. I found
+Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly animated and
+pretty. The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as she turned toward me
+might have been flattering but for my uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.
+I delivered his excuses as naturally as I could. She stiffened for an
+instant, and seemed an inch higher. "I am so sorry," she said at last in
+a level voice. "I thought he would have been so amusing. Indeed, I had
+hoped we might try an old Moorish dance together which I have found and
+was practicing."
+
+"He would have been delighted, I know. It's a great pity he didn't come
+with me," I said quickly; "but," I could not help adding, with emphasis
+on her words, "he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you know."
+
+"I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,"
+returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, "except that it
+justifies my respect for his character."
+
+I do not know why I did not relate this to him. Possibly I had given up
+trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have an idea that
+he could take care of himself. But I was somewhat surprised a few days
+later when, after asking me to go with him to a rodeo at his uncle's he
+added composedly, "You will meet Mees Boston."
+
+I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
+extravagance. For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
+purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,
+and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a property
+stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and strangers,
+particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain access to its
+mysteries and the fiesta that followed.
+
+"But how did she get an invitation?" I asked. "You did not dare to
+ask--" I began.
+
+"My friend," said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, "the great and
+respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable oncle, and other
+Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the inexpressible honor to
+solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle that she shall come--that she
+shall of her own superior eye behold the barbaric customs of our race."
+
+His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before him,
+laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face. But the
+actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes went out
+of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected languishment in his
+chair. "I shall be there, friend Pancho," he said, with a preposterous
+gasp. "I shall nerve my arm to lasso the bull, and tumble him before her
+at her feet. I shall throw the 'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred
+spot. I shall pluck for her the buried chicken at full speed from the
+ground, and present it to her. You shall see it, friend Pancho. I shall
+be there."
+
+He was as good as his word. When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle, installed
+Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised platform in the long
+valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant Enriquez selected a bull
+from the frightened and galloping herd, and, cleverly isolating him
+from the band, lassoed his hind legs, and threw him exactly before the
+platform where Miss Mannersley was seated. It was Enriquez who caught
+the unbroken mustang, sprang from his own saddle to the bare back of his
+captive, and with the lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches
+at Miss Mannersley's feet. It was Enriquez who, in the sports that
+followed, leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the chicken
+buried to its head in the sand, without wringing its neck, and tossed
+it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress. As for her, she wore
+the same look of animation that I had seen in her face at our previous
+meeting. Although she did not bring her sketchbook with her, as at the
+bullfight, she did not shrink from the branding of the cattle, which
+took place under her very eyes.
+
+Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to my
+actual knowledge, even exchanged words. And now, although she was the
+guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the field, and
+apart from her. Nor, as far as I could detect, did either apparently
+make any effort to have it otherwise. The peculiar circumstance seemed
+to attract no attention from anyone else. But for what I alone knew--or
+thought I knew--of their actual relations, I should have thought them
+strangers.
+
+But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad patio
+of Don Pedro's casa would bring them together. And later in the evening,
+as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the dancing of the
+Mexican women, whose white-flounced sayas were monotonously rising and
+falling to the strains of two melancholy harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined
+us from the house. She seemed to be utterly absorbed and abstracted in
+the barbaric dances, and scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing
+with her cheek resting on her hand. Suddenly she arose with a little
+cry.
+
+"What is it?" asked two or three.
+
+"Nothing--only I have lost my fan." She had risen, and was looking
+abstractedly on the floor.
+
+Half a dozen men jumped to their feet. "Let me fetch it," they said.
+
+"No, thank you. I think I know where it is, and will go for it myself."
+She was moving away.
+
+But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity. Such a thing was not to
+be heard of in his casa. If the senorita would not permit HIM--an old
+man--to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her cavalier of the
+day.
+
+But Enriquez was not to be found. I glanced at Miss Mannersley's
+somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it. I thought I
+saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she said, in a lower
+voice, "On the stone seat in the garden."
+
+I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting. I knew the gardens,
+and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen yards from
+the casa. The moon shone full upon it. There, indeed, lay the little
+gray-feathered fan. But beside it, also, lay the crumpled black
+gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had worn at the rodeo.
+
+I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back. As I passed through
+the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me. The man stared. Did I
+not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two minutes ago?
+
+When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley without
+a word. "BUENO," said Don Pedro, gravely; "it is as well. There shall be
+no bones broken over the getting of it, for Enriquez, I hear, has had to
+return to the Encinal this very evening."
+
+Miss Mannersley retired early. I did not inform her of my discovery, nor
+did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret. There was no doubt that
+she and Enriquez had been together, perhaps not for the first time; but
+what was the result of their interview? From the young girl's demeanor
+and Enriquez' hurried departure, I could only fear the worst for him.
+Had he been tempted into some further extravagance and been angrily
+rebuked, or had he avowed a real passion concealed under his exaggerated
+mask and been deliberately rejected? I tossed uneasily half the night,
+following in my dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever
+starting from my sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping
+hoofs.
+
+I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there before
+me, and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly discussing
+something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and consciously as
+I approached. There was an air of indefinite uneasiness everywhere. A
+strange fear came over me with the chill of the early morning air. Had
+anything happened to Enriquez? I had always looked upon his extravagance
+as part of his playful humor. Could it be possible that under the sting
+of rejection he had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement
+real? Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were
+the case.
+
+I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had
+risen. The woman started, and looked covertly round before she replied.
+Did not Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid had not slept
+in their beds that night, but had gone, none knew where?
+
+For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility in
+this suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the retreating
+family group. But as I entered the corridor a vaquero touched me on the
+shoulder. He had evidently just dismounted, and was covered with the
+dust of the road. He handed me a note written in pencil on a leaf
+from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook. It was in Enriquez' hand, and his
+signature was followed by his most extravagant rubric.
+
+
+Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility think
+I am no more. That is where you shall slip up, my little brother! I am
+much more--I am two times as much, for I have marry Miss Boston. At the
+Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp! No cards shall be left! I
+kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-law. You shall say to him that
+we fly to the South wilderness as the combined evangelical missionary to
+the heathen! Miss Boston herself say this. Ta-ta! How are you now?
+
+Your own Enriquez.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTED STORIES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 1312.txt or 1312.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/1/1312/
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/1312.zip b/old/1312.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe33ad2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/1312.zip
diff --git a/old/old/harte10.txt b/old/old/harte10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71e1707
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/harte10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13454 @@
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte*
+#1 in our series by Bret Harte
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Selected Stories
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+May, 1998  [Etext #1312]
+
+
+*The Project Gutenberg Etext of Selected Stories, by Bret Harte*
+******This file should be named harte10.txt or harte10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, harte11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, harte10a.txt.
+
+
+This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month, or 384 more Etexts in 1997 for a total of 1000+
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach over 100 billion Etexts given away.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law.  (CMU = Carnegie-
+Mellon University).
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Carnegie-Mellon University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+MIGGLES
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+MLISS
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious
+forcing, into four quite distinct parts.  First, we have the
+precocious boyhood, with its eager response to the intellectual
+stimulation of cultured parents; young Bret Harte assimilated Greek
+with amazing facility; devoured voraciously the works of
+Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving, Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and,
+with creditable success, attempted various forms of composition.
+Then, compelled by economic necessity, he left school at thirteen,
+and for three years worked first in a lawyer's office, and then in
+a merchant's counting house.
+
+The second period, that of his migration to California, includes
+all that is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output.
+Arriving in California in 1854, he was, successively, a school-
+teacher, drug-store clerk, express messenger, typesetter, and
+itinerant journalist.  He worked for a while on the NORTHERN
+CALIFORNIA (from which he was dismissed for objecting editorially
+to the contemporary California sport of murdering Indians), then on
+the GOLDEN ERA, 1857, where he achieved his first moderate acclaim.
+In this latter year he married Anne Griswold of New York.  In 1864
+he was given the secretaryship of the California mint, a virtual
+sinecure, and he was enabled do a great deal of writing.  The first
+volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES, CONDENSED
+NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE BOHEMIAN PAPERS were
+published in 1867.  One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, which had
+aspirations of becoming "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," was
+established, and Harte was appointed its first editor.  For it, he
+wrote most of what still remains valid as literature--THE LUCK OF
+ROARING CAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT, PLAIN LANGUAGE FROM
+TRUTHFUL JAMES, among others.  The combination of Irvingesque
+romantic glamor and Dickensian bitter-sweet humor, applied to
+picturesquely novel material, with the addition of a trick ending,
+was fantastically popular.  Editors began to clamor for his
+stories; the University of California appointed him Professor of
+recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered him the
+practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to
+one year's literary output.  Harte's star was, briefly, in the
+ascendant.
+
+However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorial
+policies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed,
+were the cause of a series of arguments with the publisher of the
+OVERLAND MONTHLY.  Fairly assured of profitable pickings in the
+East, he left California (permanently, as it proved).  The East,
+however, was financially unappreciative.  Harte wrote an
+unsuccessful novel and collaborated with Mark Twain on an
+unremunerative play.  His attempts to increase his income by
+lecturing were even less rewarding.  From his departure from
+California in 1872 to his death thirty years later, Harte's
+struggles to regain financial stability were unremitting: and to
+these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "a
+peculiarly characteristic Western American literature."  Henceforth
+Harte accepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer,
+and as an entertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an
+artist."
+
+The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to get himself
+appointed consul to Crefeld in Germany, to 1902, when he died of a
+throat cancer.  He left for Crefeld without his wife or son--
+perhaps intending, as his letters indicate, to call them to him
+when circumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his
+death, the separation, for whatever complex of reasons, remained
+permanent.  Harte, however, continued to provide for them as
+liberally as he was able.  In Crefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF
+SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION, and UNSER KARL.  In 1880
+he transferred to the more lucrative consulship of Glasgow, and
+ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product of his stay
+there.  In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probably for
+political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.
+He removed to London where he remained, for most part, until his
+death.
+
+Bret Harte never really knew the life of the mining camp.  His
+mining experiences were too fragmentary, and consequently his
+portraits of mining life are wholly impressionistic.  "No one,"
+Mark Twain wrote, "can talk the quartz dialect correctly without
+learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse."  Yet, Twain
+added elsewhere, "Bret Harte got his California and his
+Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of them into
+his tales alive."  That is, perhaps, the final comment.  Much could
+be urged against Harte's stories: the glamor they throw over the
+life they depict is largely fictitious; their pathetic endings are
+obviously stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.
+Nevertheless, so excellent a critic as Chesterton maintained that
+"There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons
+which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte."  The
+figure is perhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for
+admiration.  First, Harte originated a new and incalculably
+influential type of story: the romantically picturesque "human-
+interest" story.  "He created the local color story," Prof.
+Blankenship remarks, "or at least popularized it, and he gave new
+form and intent to the short story."  Character motivating action
+is central to this type of story, rather than mood dominating
+incident.  Again Harte's style is really an eminently skilful one,
+admirably suited to his subjects.  He can manage the humorous or
+the pathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more
+remarkable than his excesses.  His sentences have both force and
+flow; his backgrounds are crisply but carefully sketched; his
+characters and caricatures have their own logical consistency.
+Finally, granted the desirability of the theatric finale, it is
+necessary to admit that Harte always rings down his curtain
+dramatically and effectively.
+
+ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.
+
+
+
+THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP
+
+
+There was commotion in Roaring Camp.  It could not have been a
+fight, for in 1850 that was not novel enough to have called
+together the entire settlement.  The ditches and claims were not
+only deserted, but "Tuttle's grocery" had contributed its gamblers,
+who, it will be remembered, calmly continued their game the day
+that French Pete and Kanaka Joe shot each other to death over the
+bar in the front room.  The whole camp was collected before a rude
+cabin on the outer edge of the clearing.  Conversation was carried
+on in a low tone, but the name of a woman was frequently repeated.
+It was a name familiar enough in the camp,--"Cherokee Sal."
+
+Perhaps the less said of her the better.  She was a coarse and,
+it is to be feared, a very sinful woman.  But at that time she was
+the only woman in Roaring Camp, and was just then lying in sore
+extremity, when she most needed the ministration of her own sex.
+Dissolute, abandoned, and irreclaimable, she was yet suffering a
+martyrdom hard enough to bear even when veiled by sympathizing
+womanhood, but now terrible in her loneliness.  The primal curse
+had come to her in that original isolation which must have made
+the punishment of the first transgression so dreadful.  It was,
+perhaps, part of the expiation of her sin that, at a moment when
+she most lacked her sex's intuitive tenderness and care, she met
+only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates.
+Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings.
+Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation
+of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he
+had an ace and two bowers in his sleeve.
+
+It will be seen also that the situation was novel.  Deaths were by
+no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing.
+People had been dismissed the camp effectively, finally, and with
+no possibility of return; but this was the first time that anybody
+had been introduced AB INITIO.  Hence the excitement.
+
+"You go in there, Stumpy," said a prominent citizen known as
+"Kentuck," addressing one of the loungers.  "Go in there, and see
+what you kin do.  You've had experience in them things."
+
+Perhaps there was a fitness in the selection.  Stumpy, in other
+climes, had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was
+owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring
+Camp--a city of refuge--was indebted to his company.  The crowd
+approved the choice, and Stumpy was wise enough to bow to the
+majority.  The door closed on the extempore surgeon and midwife,
+and Roaring Camp sat down outside, smoked its pipe, and awaited the
+issue.
+
+The assemblage numbered about a hundred men.  One or two of these
+were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all
+were reckless.  Physically they exhibited no indication of their
+past lives and character.  The greatest scamp had a Raphael face,
+with a profusion of blonde hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the
+melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the
+coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over five feet in
+height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner.  The
+term "roughs" applied to them was a distinction rather than a
+definition.  Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears,
+etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions
+did not detract from their aggregate force.  The strongest man had
+but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye.
+
+Such was the physical aspect of the men that were dispersed around
+the cabin.  The camp lay in a triangular valley between two hills
+and a river.  The only outlet was a steep trail over the summit of
+a hill that faced the cabin, now illuminated by the rising moon.
+The suffering woman might have seen it from the rude bunk whereon
+she lay,--seen it winding like a silver thread until it was lost in
+the stars above.
+
+A fire of withered pine boughs added sociability to the gathering.
+By degrees the natural levity of Roaring Camp returned.  Bets were
+freely offered and taken regarding the result.  Three to five that
+"Sal would get through with it;" even that the child would survive;
+side bets as to the sex and complexion of the coming stranger.  In
+the midst of an excited discussion an exclamation came from those
+nearest the door, and the camp stopped to listen.  Above the
+swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and
+the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,--a cry
+unlike anything heard before in the camp.  The pines stopped
+moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle.  It
+seemed as if Nature had stopped to listen too.
+
+The camp rose to its feet as one man!  It was proposed to explode a
+barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the
+mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were
+discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or
+some other reason, Cherokee Sal was sinking fast.  Within an hour
+she had climbed, as it were, that rugged road that led to the
+stars, and so passed out of Roaring Camp, its sin and shame,
+forever.  I do not think that the announcement disturbed them much,
+except in speculation as to the fate of the child.  "Can he live
+now?" was asked of Stumpy.  The answer was doubtful.  The only
+other being of Cherokee Sal's sex and maternal condition in the
+settlement was an ass.  There was some conjecture as to fitness,
+but the experiment was tried.  It was less problematical than the
+ancient treatment of Romulus and Remus, and apparently as
+successful.
+
+When these details were completed, which exhausted another hour,
+the door was opened, and the anxious crowd of men, who had already
+formed themselves into a queue, entered in single file.  Beside the
+low bunk or shelf, on which the figure of the mother was starkly
+outlined below the blankets, stood a pine table.  On this a candle-
+box was placed, and within it, swathed in staring red flannel, lay
+the last arrival at Roaring Camp.  Beside the candle-box was placed
+a hat.  Its use was soon indicated.  "Gentlemen," said Stumpy, with
+a singular mixture of authority and EX OFFICIO complacency,--
+"gentlemen will please pass in at the front door, round the table,
+and out at the back door.  Them as wishes to contribute anything
+toward the orphan will find a hat handy."  The first man entered
+with his hat on; he uncovered, however, as he looked about him, and
+so unconsciously set an example to the next.  In such communities
+good and bad actions are catching.  As the procession filed in
+comments were audible,--criticisms addressed perhaps rather to
+Stumpy in the character of showman; "Is that him?" "Mighty small
+specimen;" "Has n't more 'n got the color;" "Ain't bigger nor a
+derringer."  The contributions were as characteristic: A silver
+tobacco box; a doubloon; a navy revolver, silver mounted; a gold
+specimen; a very beautifully embroidered lady's handkerchief (from
+Oakhurst the gambler); a diamond breastpin; a diamond ring
+(suggested by the pin, with the remark from the giver that he "saw
+that pin and went two diamonds better"); a slung-shot; a Bible
+(contributor not detected); a golden spur; a silver teaspoon (the
+initials, I regret to say, were not the giver's); a pair of
+surgeon's shears; a lancet; a Bank of England note for 5 pounds;
+and about $200 in loose gold and silver coin.  During these
+proceedings Stumpy maintained a silence as impassive as the dead on
+his left, a gravity as inscrutable as that of the newly born on his
+right.  Only one incident occurred to break the monotony of the
+curious procession.  As Kentuck bent over the candle-box half
+curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his
+groping finger, and held it fast for a moment.  Kentuck looked
+foolish and embarrassed.  Something like a blush tried to assert
+itself in his weather-beaten cheek.  "The damned little cuss!" he
+said, as he extricated his finger, with perhaps more tenderness and
+care than he might have been deemed capable of showing.  He held
+that finger a little apart from its fellows as he went out, and
+examined it curiously.  The examination provoked the same original
+remark in regard to the child.  In fact, he seemed to enjoy
+repeating it.  "He rastled with my finger," he remarked to Tipton,
+holding up the member, "the damned little cuss!"
+
+It was four o'clock before the camp sought repose.  A light burnt
+in the cabin where the watchers sat, for Stumpy did not go to bed
+that night.  Nor did Kentuck.  He drank quite freely, and related
+with great gusto his experience, invariably ending with his
+characteristic condemnation of the newcomer.  It seemed to relieve
+him of any unjust implication of sentiment, and Kentuck had the
+weaknesses of the nobler sex.  When everybody else had gone to bed,
+he walked down to the river and whistled reflectingly.  Then he
+walked up the gulch past the cabin, still whistling with
+demonstrative unconcern.  At a large redwood-tree he paused and
+retraced his steps, and again passed the cabin.  Halfway down to
+the river's bank he again paused, and then returned and knocked at
+the door.  It was opened by Stumpy.  "How goes it?" said Kentuck,
+looking past Stumpy toward the candle-box.  "All serene!" replied
+Stumpy.  "Anything up?"  "Nothing."  There was a pause--an
+embarrassing one--Stumpy still holding the door.  Then Kentuck had
+recourse to his finger, which he held up to Stumpy.  "Rastled with
+it,--the damned little cuss," he said, and retired.
+
+The next day Cherokee Sal had such rude sepulture as Roaring Camp
+afforded.  After her body had been committed to the hillside, there
+was a formal meeting of the camp to discuss what should be done
+with her infant.  A resolution to adopt it was unanimous and
+enthusiastic.  But an animated discussion in regard to the manner
+and feasibility of providing for its wants at once sprang up.  It
+was remarkable that the argument partook of none of those fierce
+personalities with which discussions were usually conducted at
+Roaring Camp.  Tipton proposed that they should send the child to
+Red Dog,--a distance of forty miles,--where female attention could
+be procured.  But the unlucky suggestion met with fierce and
+unanimous opposition.  It was evident that no plan which entailed
+parting from their new acquisition would for a moment be
+entertained.  "Besides," said Tom Ryder, "them fellows at Red Dog
+would swap it, and ring in somebody else on us."  A disbelief in
+the honesty of other camps prevailed at Roaring Camp, as in other
+places.
+
+The introduction of a female nurse in the camp also met with
+objection.  It was argued that no decent woman could be prevailed
+to accept Roaring Camp as her home, and the speaker urged that
+"they didn't want any more of the other kind."  This unkind
+allusion to the defunct mother, harsh as it may seem, was the first
+spasm of propriety,--the first symptom of the camp's regeneration.
+Stumpy advanced nothing.  Perhaps he felt a certain delicacy in
+interfering with the selection of a possible successor in office.
+But when questioned, he averred stoutly that he and "Jinny"--the
+mammal before alluded to--could manage to rear the child.  There
+was something original, independent, and heroic about the plan that
+pleased the camp.  Stumpy was retained.  Certain articles were sent
+for to Sacramento.  "Mind," said the treasurer, as he pressed a bag
+of gold-dust into the expressman's hand, "the best that can be
+got,--lace, you know, and filigree-work and frills,--damn the
+cost!"
+
+Strange to say, the child thrived.  Perhaps the invigorating
+climate of the mountain camp was compensation for material
+deficiencies.  Nature took the foundling to her broader breast.  In
+that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foothills,--that air pungent
+with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and
+exhilarating,--he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle
+chemistry that transmuted ass's milk to lime and phosphorus.
+Stumpy inclined to the belief that it was the latter and good
+nursing.  "Me and that ass," he would say, "has been father and
+mother to him!  Don't you," he would add, apostrophizing the
+helpless bundle before him, "never go back on us."
+
+By the time he was a month old the necessity of giving him a name
+became apparent.  He had generally been known as "The Kid,"
+"Stumpy's Boy," "The Coyote" (an allusion to his vocal powers), and
+even by Kentuck's endearing diminutive of "The damned little cuss."
+But these were felt to be vague and unsatisfactory, and were at
+last dismissed under another influence.  Gamblers and adventurers
+are generally superstitious, and Oakhurst one day declared that the
+baby had brought "the luck" to Roaring Camp.  It was certain that
+of late they had been successful.  "Luck" was the name agreed upon,
+with the prefix of Tommy for greater convenience.  No allusion was
+made to the mother, and the father was unknown.  "It's better,"
+said the philosophical Oakhurst, "to take a fresh deal all round.
+Call him Luck, and start him fair."  A day was accordingly set
+apart for the christening.  What was meant by this ceremony the
+reader may imagine who has already gathered some idea of the
+reckless irreverence of Roaring Camp.  The master of ceremonies was
+one "Boston," a noted wag, and the occasion seemed to promise the
+greatest facetiousness.  This ingenious satirist had spent two days
+in preparing a burlesque of the Church service, with pointed local
+allusions.  The choir was properly trained, and Sandy Tipton was to
+stand godfather.  But after the procession had marched to the grove
+with music and banners, and the child had been deposited before a
+mock altar, Stumpy stepped before the expectant crowd.  "It ain't
+my style to spoil fun, boys," said the little man, stoutly eyeing
+the faces around him," but it strikes me that this thing ain't
+exactly on the squar.  It's playing it pretty low down on this yer
+baby to ring in fun on him that he ain't goin' to understand.  And
+ef there's goin' to be any godfathers round, I'd like to see who's
+got any better rights than me."  A silence followed Stumpy's
+speech.  To the credit of all humorists be it said that the first
+man to acknowledge its justice was the satirist thus stopped of his
+fun.  "But," said Stumpy, quickly following up his advantage,
+"we're here for a christening, and we'll have it.  I proclaim you
+Thomas Luck, according to the laws of the United States and the
+State of California, so help me God."  It was the first time that
+the name of the Deity had been otherwise uttered than profanely in
+the camp.  The form of christening was perhaps even more ludicrous
+than the satirist had conceived; but strangely enough, nobody saw
+it and nobody laughed.  "Tommy" was christened as seriously as he
+would have been under a Christian roof and cried and was comforted
+in as orthodox fashion.
+
+And so the work of regeneration began in Roaring Camp.  Almost
+imperceptibly a change came over the settlement.  The cabin
+assigned to "Tommy Luck"--or "The Luck," as he was more frequently
+called--first showed signs of improvement.  It was kept
+scrupulously clean and whitewashed.  Then it was boarded, clothed,
+and papered.  The rose wood cradle, packed eighty miles by mule,
+had, in Stumpy's way of putting it, "sorter killed the rest of the
+furniture."  So the rehabilitation of the cabin became a necessity.
+The men who were in the habit of lounging in at Stumpy's to see
+"how 'The Luck' got on" seemed to appreciate the change, and in
+self-defense the rival establishment of "Tuttle's grocery"
+bestirred itself and imported a carpet and mirrors.  The
+reflections of the latter on the appearance of Roaring Camp tended
+to produce stricter habits of personal cleanliness.  Again Stumpy
+imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor
+and privilege of holding The Luck.  It was a cruel mortification to
+Kentuck--who, in the carelessness of a large nature and the habits
+of frontier life, had begun to regard all garments as a second
+cuticle, which, like a snake's, only sloughed off through decay--to
+be debarred this privilege from certain prudential reasons.  Yet
+such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter
+appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt and face still
+shining from his ablutions.  Nor were moral and social sanitary
+laws neglected.  "Tommy," who was supposed to spend his whole
+existence in a persistent attempt to repose, must not be disturbed
+by noise.  The shouting and yelling, which had gained the camp its
+infelicitous title, were not permitted within hearing distance of
+Stumpy's.  The men conversed in whispers or smoked with Indian
+gravity.  Profanity was tacitly given up in these sacred precincts,
+and throughout the camp a popular form of expletive, known as "D--n
+the luck!" and "Curse the luck!" was abandoned, as having a new
+personal bearing.  Vocal music was not interdicted, being supposed
+to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality; and one song, sung by
+"Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian
+colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby.  It was a lugubrious
+recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a
+muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of
+each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa."  It was a fine sight
+to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with
+the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty.  Either
+through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,--it
+contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious
+deliberation to the bitter end,--the lullaby generally had the
+desired effect.  At such times the men would lie at full length
+under the trees in the soft summer twilight, smoking their pipes
+and drinking in the melodious utterances.  An indistinct idea that
+this was pastoral happiness pervaded the camp.  "This 'ere kind o'
+think," said the Cockney Simmons, meditatively reclining on his
+elbow, "is 'evingly."  It reminded him of Greenwich.
+
+On the long summer days The Luck was usually carried to the gulch
+from whence the golden store of Roaring Camp was taken.  There, on
+a blanket spread over pine boughs, he would lie while the men were
+working in the ditches below.  Latterly there was a rude attempt to
+decorate this bower with flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs, and
+generally some one would bring him a cluster of wild honeysuckles,
+azaleas, or the painted blossoms of Las Mariposas.  The men had
+suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and
+significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden
+carelessly beneath their feet.  A flake of glittering mica, a
+fragment of variegated quartz, a bright pebble from the bed of the
+creek, became beautiful to eyes thus cleared and strengthened, and
+were invariably pat aside for The Luck.  It was wonderful how many
+treasures the woods and hillsides yielded that "would do for
+Tommy."  Surrounded by playthings such as never child out of
+fairyland had before, it is to he hoped that Tommy was content.  He
+appeared to be serenely happy, albeit there was an infantine
+gravity about him, a contemplative light in his round gray eyes,
+that sometimes worried Stumpy.  He was always tractable and quiet,
+and it is recorded that once, having crept beyond his "corral,"--a
+hedge of tessellated pine boughs, which surrounded his bed,--he
+dropped over the bank on his head in the soft earth, and remained
+with his mottled legs in the air in that position for at least five
+minutes with unflinching gravity.  He was extricated without a
+murmur.  I hesitate to record the many other instances of his
+sagacity, which rest, unfortunately, upon the statements of
+prejudiced friends.  Some of them were not without a tinge of
+superstition.  "I crep' up the bank just now," said Kentuck one
+day, in a breathless state of excitement "and dern my skin if he
+was a-talking to a jay bird as was a-sittin' on his lap.  There
+they was, just as free and sociable as anything you please, a-
+jawin' at each other just like two cherrybums."  Howbeit, whether
+creeping over the pine boughs or lying lazily on his back blinking
+at the leaves above him, to him the birds sang, the squirrels
+chattered, and the flowers bloomed.  Nature was his nurse and
+playfellow.  For him she would let slip between the leaves golden
+shafts of sunlight that fell just within his grasp; she would send
+wandering breezes to visit him with the balm of bay and resinous
+gum; to him the tall redwoods nodded familiarly and sleepily, the
+bumblebees buzzed, and the rooks cawed a slumbrous accompaniment.
+
+Such was the golden summer of Roaring Camp.  They were "flush
+times," and the luck was with them.  The claims had yielded
+enormously.  The camp was jealous of its privileges and looked
+suspiciously on strangers.  No encouragement was given to
+immigration, and, to make their seclusion more perfect, the land on
+either side of the mountain wall that surrounded the camp they duly
+preempted.  This, and a reputation for singular proficiency with
+the revolver, kept the reserve of Roaring Camp inviolate.  The
+expressman--their only connecting link with the surrounding world--
+sometimes told wonderful stories of the camp.  He would say,
+"They've a street up there in 'Roaring' that would lay over any
+street in Red Dog.  They've got vines and flowers round their
+houses, and they wash themselves twice a day.  But they're mighty
+rough on strangers, and they worship an Ingin baby."
+
+With the prosperity of the camp came a desire for further
+improvement.  It was proposed to build a hotel in the following
+spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there
+for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female
+companionship.  The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost
+these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general
+virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection
+for Tommy.  A few still held out.  But the resolve could not be
+carried into effect for three months, and the minority meekly
+yielded in the hope that something might turn up to prevent it.
+And it did.
+
+The winter of 1851 will long be remembered in the foothills.  The
+snow lay deep on the Sierras, and every mountain creek became a
+river, and every river a lake.  Each gorge and gulch was
+transformed into a tumultuous watercourse that descended the
+hillsides, tearing down giant trees and scattering its drift and
+debris along the plain.  Red Dog had been twice under water, and
+Roaring Camp had been forewarned.  "Water put the gold into them
+gulches," said Stumpy.  "It been here once and will be here again!"
+And that night the North Fork suddenly leaped over its banks and
+swept up the triangular valley of Roaring Camp.
+
+In the confusion of rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling
+timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and
+blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the
+scattered camp.  When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy,
+nearest the river-bank, was gone.  Higher up the gulch they found
+the body of its unlucky owner; but the pride, the hope, the joy,
+The Luck, of Roaring Camp had disappeared.  They were returning
+with sad hearts when a shout from the bank recalled them.
+
+It was a relief-boat from down the river.  They had picked up, they
+said, a man and an infant, nearly exhausted, about two miles below.
+Did anybody know them, and did they belong here?
+
+It needed but a glance to show them Kentuck lying there, cruelly
+crushed and bruised, but still holding The Luck of Roaring Camp in
+his arms.  As they bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw
+that the child was cold and pulseless.  "He is dead," said one.
+Kentuck opened his eyes.  "Dead?" he repeated feebly.  "Yes, my
+man, and you are dying too."  A smile lit the eyes of the expiring
+Kentuck.  "Dying!" he repeated; "he's a-taking me with him.  Tell
+the boys I've got The Luck with me now;" and the strong man,
+clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a
+straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to
+the unknown sea.
+
+
+
+THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
+
+
+As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of
+Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he
+was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the
+preceding night.  Two or three men, conversing earnestly together,
+ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances.  There
+was a Sabbath lull in the air which, in a settlement unused to
+Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst's calm, handsome face betrayed small concern in these
+indications.  Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause
+was another question.  "I reckon they're after somebody," he
+reflected; "likely it's me."  He returned to his pocket the
+handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of
+Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of
+any further conjecture.
+
+In point of fact, Poker Flat was "after somebody."  It had lately
+suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses,
+and a prominent citizen.  It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous
+reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that
+had provoked it.  A secret committee had determined to rid the town
+of all improper persons.  This was done permanently in regard of
+two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the
+gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other
+objectionable characters.  I regret to say that some of these were
+ladies.  It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their
+impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily
+established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in
+judgment.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this
+category.  A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a
+possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from
+his pockets of the sums he had won from them.  "It's agin justice,"
+said Jim Wheeler, "to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an
+entire stranger--carry away our money."  But a crude sentiment of
+equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate
+enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local
+prejudice.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none
+the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges.
+He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate.  With him life was
+at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage
+in favor of the dealer.
+
+A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker
+Flat to the outskirts of the settlement.  Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who
+was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation
+the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a
+young woman familiarly known as the "Duchess"; another, who had won
+the title of "Mother Shipton"; and "Uncle Billy," a suspected
+sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard.  The cavalcade provoked no
+comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the
+escort.  Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of
+Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point.
+The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.
+
+As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a
+few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from
+Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle
+Billy.  The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent.  He
+listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart
+out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die
+in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out
+of Uncle Billy as he rode forward.  With the easy good humor
+characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own
+riding horse, "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess
+rode.  But even this act did not draw the party into any closer
+sympathy.  The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes
+with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of
+"Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole
+party in one sweeping anathema.
+
+The road to Sandy Bar--a camp that, not having as yet experienced
+the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to
+offer some invitation to the emigrants--lay over a steep mountain
+range.  It was distant a day's severe travel.  In that advanced
+season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions
+of the foothills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras.
+The trail was narrow and difficult.  At noon the Duchess, rolling
+out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going
+no farther, and the party halted.
+
+The spot was singularly wild and impressive.  A wooded
+amphitheater, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of
+naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice
+that overlooked the valley.  It was, undoubtedly, the most suitable
+spot for a camp, had camping been advisable.  But Mr. Oakhurst knew
+that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and
+the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay.  This fact he
+pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary
+on the folly of "throwing up their hand before the game was played
+out."  But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency
+stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience.  In spite
+of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less
+under its influence.  Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose
+state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother
+Shipton snored.  Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against
+a rock, calmly surveying them.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst did not drink.  It interfered with a profession which
+required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his
+own language, he "couldn't afford it."  As he gazed at his
+recumbent fellow exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah
+trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time
+seriously oppressed him.  He bestirred himself in dusting his black
+clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic
+of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his
+annoyance.  The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable
+companions never perhaps occurred to him.  Yet he could not help
+feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was
+most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious.
+He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above
+the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at
+the valley below, already deepening into shadow.  And, doing so,
+suddenly he heard his own name called.
+
+A horseman slowly ascended the trail.  In the fresh, open face of
+the newcomer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as
+the "Innocent" of Sandy Bar.  He had met him some months before
+over a "little game," and had, with perfect equanimity, won the
+entire fortune--amounting to some forty dollars--of that guileless
+youth.  After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful
+speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: "Tommy, you're a
+good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent.  Don't try it
+over again."  He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently
+from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.
+
+There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic
+greeting of Mr. Oakhurst.  He had started, he said, to go to Poker
+Flat to seek his fortune.  "Alone?"  No, not exactly alone; in fact
+(a giggle), he had run away with Piney Woods.  Didn't Mr. Oakhurst
+remember Piney?  She that used to wait on the table at the
+Temperance House?  They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake
+Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to
+Poker Flat to be married, and here they were.  And they were tired
+out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and
+company.  All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney, a
+stout, comely damsel of fifteen, emerged from behind the pine tree,
+where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her
+lover.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less
+with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not
+fortunate.  He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently
+to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle
+Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst's kick a
+superior power that would not bear trifling.  He then endeavored to
+dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain.  He even
+pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of
+making a camp.  But, unluckily, the Innocent met this objection by
+assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded
+with provisions and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log
+house near the trail.  "Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst," said
+the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, "and I can shift for
+myself."
+
+Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from
+bursting into a roar of laughter.  As it was, he felt compelled to
+retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity.  There he
+confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his
+leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity.  But when he
+returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire--for the air
+had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast--in apparently
+amicable conversation.  Piney was actually talking in an impulsive,
+girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest
+and animation she had not shown for many days.  The Innocent was
+holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and
+Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability.  "Is
+this yer a damned picnic?" said Uncle Billy with inward scorn as he
+surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing firelight, and the tethered
+animals in the foreground.  Suddenly an idea mingled with the
+alcoholic fumes that disturbed his brain.  It was apparently of a
+jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram
+his fist into his mouth.
+
+As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked
+the tops of the pine trees, and moaned through their long and
+gloomy aisles.  The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine
+boughs, was set apart for the ladies.  As the lovers parted, they
+unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might
+have been heard above the swaying pines.  The frail Duchess and the
+malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon
+this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to
+the hut.  The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the
+door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
+
+Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper.  Toward morning he awoke benumbed
+and cold.  As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now
+blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood
+to leave it--snow!
+
+He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the
+sleepers, for there was no time to lose.  But turning to where
+Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone.  A suspicion leaped
+to his brain and a curse to his lips.  He ran to the spot where the
+mules had been tethered; they were no longer there.  The tracks
+were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
+
+The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with
+his usual calm.  He did not waken the sleepers.  The Innocent
+slumbered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled
+face; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly
+as though attended by celestial guardians; and Mr. Oakhurst,
+drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustaches and
+waited for the dawn.  It came slowly in a whirling mist of
+snowflakes that dazzled and confused the eye.  What could be seen
+of the landscape appeared magically changed.  He looked over the
+valley, and summed up the present and future in two words--"snowed
+in!"
+
+A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the
+party, had been stored within the hut and so escaped the felonious
+fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and
+prudence they might last ten days longer.  "That is," said Mr.
+Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, "if you're willing to board
+us.  If you ain't--and perhaps you'd better not--you can wait till
+Uncle Billy gets back with provisions."  For some occult reason,
+Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy's
+rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from
+the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals.  He dropped a
+warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the
+facts of their associate's defection.  "They'll find out the truth
+about us all when they find out anything," he added, significantly,
+"and there's no good frightening them now."
+
+Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of
+Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced
+seclusion.  "We'll have a good camp for a week, and then the
+snow'll melt, and we'll all go back together."  The cheerful gaiety
+of the young man, and Mr. Oakhurst's calm, infected the others.
+The Innocent with the aid of pine boughs extemporized a thatch for
+the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the
+rearrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the
+blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent.  "I
+reckon now you're used to fine things at Poker Flat," said Piney.
+The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened
+her cheeks through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton
+requested Piney not to "chatter."  But when Mr. Oakhurst returned
+from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy
+laughter echoed from the rocks.  He stopped in some alarm, and his
+thoughts first naturally reverted to the whisky, which he had
+prudently cached.  "And yet it don't somehow sound like whisky,"
+said the gambler.  It was not until he caught sight of the blazing
+fire through the still-blinding storm and the group around it that
+he settled to the conviction that it was "square fun."
+
+Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cached his cards with the whisky as
+something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say.
+It was certain that, in Mother Shipton's words, he "didn't say
+cards once" during that evening.  Haply the time was beguiled by an
+accordion, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson from his
+pack.  Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation
+of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant
+melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a
+pair of bone castanets.  But the crowning festivity of the evening
+was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining
+hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation.  I fear that a
+certain defiant tone and Covenanter's swing to its chorus, rather
+than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the
+others, who at last joined in the refrain:
+
+     "I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+      And I'm bound to die in His army."
+
+The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable
+group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward as if in
+token of the vow.
+
+At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the
+stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp.  Mr. Oakhurst,
+whose professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest
+possible amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson
+somehow managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty.
+He excused himself to the Innocent by saying that he had "often
+been a week without sleep."  "Doing what?" asked Tom.  "Poker!"
+replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of
+luck,--nigger luck--he don't get tired.  The luck gives in first.
+Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer
+thing.  All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to
+change.  And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes
+you.  We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat--you
+come along, and slap you get into it, too.  If you can hold your
+cards right along you're all right.  For," added the gambler, with
+cheerful irrelevance,
+
+     "'I'm proud to live in the service of the Lord,
+       And I'm bound to die in His army.'"
+
+The third day came, and the sun, looking through the white-
+curtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing
+store of provisions for the morning meal.  It was one of the
+peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a
+kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful
+commiseration of the past.  But it revealed drift on drift of snow
+piled high around the hut--a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of
+white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still
+clung.  Through the marvelously clear air the smoke of the pastoral
+village of Poker Flat rose miles away.  Mother Shipton saw it, and
+from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness hurled in that
+direction a final malediction.  It was her last vituperative
+attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain
+degree of sublimity.  It did her good, she privately informed the
+Duchess.  "Just you go out there and cuss, and see."  She then set
+herself to the task of amusing "the child," as she and the Duchess
+were pleased to call Piney.  Piney was no chicken, but it was a
+soothing and original theory of the pair thus to account for the
+fact that she didn't swear and wasn't improper.
+
+When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of
+the accordion rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps
+by the flickering campfire.  But music failed to fill entirely the
+aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was
+proposed by Piney--storytelling.  Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his
+female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this
+plan would have failed too but for the Innocent.  Some months
+before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope's ingenious
+translation of the ILIAD.  He now proposed to narrate the principal
+incidents of that poem--having thoroughly mastered the argument and
+fairly forgotten the words--in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar.
+And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked
+the earth.  Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and
+the great pines in the canyon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son
+of Peleus.  Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction.  Most
+especially was he interested in the fate of "Ash-heels," as the
+Innocent persisted in denominating the "swift-footed Achilles."
+
+So with small food and much of Homer and the accordion, a week
+passed over the heads of the outcasts.  The sun again forsook them,
+and again from leaden skies the snowflakes were sifted over the
+land.  Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until
+at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of
+dazzling white that towered twenty feet above their heads.  It
+became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from
+the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts.  And
+yet no one complained.  The lovers turned from the dreary prospect
+and looked into each other's eyes, and were happy.  Mr. Oakhurst
+settled himself coolly to the losing game before him.  The Duchess,
+more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney.  Only
+Mother Shipton--once the strongest of the party--seemed to sicken
+and fade.  At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her
+side.  "I'm going," she said, in a voice of querulous weakness,
+"but don't say anything about it.  Don't waken the kids.  Take the
+bundle from under my head and open it."  Mr. Oakhurst did so.  It
+contained Mother Shipton's rations for the last week, untouched.
+"Give 'em to the child," she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney.
+"You've starved yourself," said the gambler.  "That's what they
+call it," said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again and,
+turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
+
+The accordion and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was
+forgotten.  When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to
+the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took the Innocent aside, and showed him a
+pair of snowshoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack saddle.
+"There's one chance in a hundred to save her yet," he said,
+pointing to Piney; "but it's there," he added, pointing toward
+Poker Flat.  "If you can reach there in two days she's safe."  "And
+you?" asked Tom Simson.  "I'll stay here," was the curt reply.
+
+The lovers parted with a long embrace.  "You are not going, too?"
+said the Duchess as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to
+accompany him.  "As far as the canyon," he replied.  He turned
+suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame
+and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement.
+
+Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst.  It brought the storm again and
+the whirling snow.  Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that
+someone had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few
+days longer.  The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from
+Piney.
+
+The women slept but little.  In the morning, looking into each
+other's faces, they read their fate.  Neither spoke; but Piney,
+accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her
+arm around the Duchess's waist.  They kept this attitude for the
+rest of the day.  That night the storm reached its greatest fury,
+and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
+
+Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which
+gradually died away.  As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess
+crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: "Piney,
+can you pray?"  "No, dear," said Piney, simply.  The Duchess,
+without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head
+upon Piney's shoulder, spoke no more.  And so reclining, the
+younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her
+virgin breast, they fell asleep.
+
+The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them.  Feathery drifts of
+snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged
+birds, and settled about them as they slept.  The moon through the
+rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp.  But all
+human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the
+spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
+
+They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when
+voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp.  And when
+pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could
+scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them which
+was she that had sinned.  Even the law of Poker Flat recognized
+this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other's
+arms.
+
+But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees,
+they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie
+knife.  It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
+
+
+         BENEATH THIS TREE
+          LIES THE BODY
+                OF
+          JOHN OAKHURST,
+    WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK
+     ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850,
+               AND
+        HANDED IN HIS CHECKS
+     ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
+
+
+And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet
+in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he
+who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts
+of Poker Flat.
+
+
+
+MIGGLES
+
+
+We were eight, including the driver.  We had not spoken during the
+passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy
+vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last
+poetical quotation.  The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his
+arm passed through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it--
+altogether a limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged
+himself and been cut down too late.  The French lady on the back
+seat was asleep, too, yet in a half-conscious propriety of
+attitude, shown even in the disposition of the handkerchief which
+she held to her forehead and which partially veiled her face.  The
+lady from Virginia City, traveling with her husband, had long since
+lost all individuality in a wild confusion of ribbons, veils, furs,
+and shawls.  There was no sound but the rattling of wheels and the
+dash of rain upon the roof.  Suddenly the stage stopped and we
+became dimly aware of voices.  The driver was evidently in the
+midst of an exciting colloquy with someone in the road--a colloquy
+of which such fragments as "bridge gone," "twenty feet of water,"
+"can't pass," were occasionally distinguishable above the storm.
+Then came a lull, and a mysterious voice from the road shouted the
+parting adjuration:
+
+"Try Miggles's."
+
+We caught a glimpse of our leaders as the vehicle slowly turned, of
+a horseman vanishing through the rain, and we were evidently on our
+way to Miggles's.
+
+Who and where was Miggles?  The Judge, our authority, did not
+remember the name, and he knew the country thoroughly.  The Washoe
+traveler thought Miggles must keep a hotel.  We only knew that we
+were stopped by high water in front and rear, and that Miggles was
+our rock of refuge.  A ten minutes splashing through a tangled by-
+road, scarcely wide enough for the stage, and we drew up before a
+barred and boarded gate in a wide stone wall or fence about eight
+feet high.  Evidently Miggles's, and evidently Miggles did not keep
+a hotel.
+
+The driver got down and tried the gate.  It was securely locked.
+Miggles!  O Miggles!"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Migg-ells!  You Miggles!" continued the driver, with rising wrath.
+
+"Migglesy!" joined the expressman, persuasively.  "O Miggy!  Mig!"
+
+But no reply came from the apparently insensate Miggles.  The
+Judge, who had finally got the window down, put his head out and
+propounded a series of questions, which if answered categorically
+would have undoubtedly elucidated the whole mystery, but which the
+driver evaded by replying that "if we didn't want to sit in the
+coach all night, we had better rise up and sing out for Miggles."
+
+So we rose up and called on Miggles in chorus; then separately.
+And when we had finished, a Hibernian fellow-passenger from the
+roof called for "Maygells!" whereat we all laughed.  While we were
+laughing, the driver cried "Shoo!"
+
+We listened.  To our infinite amazement the chorus of "Miggles" was
+repeated from the other side of the wall, even to the final and
+supplemental "Maygells."
+
+"Extraordinary echo," said the Judge.
+
+"Extraordinary damned skunk!" roared the driver, contemptuously.
+"Come out of that, Miggles, and show yourself!  Be a man, Miggles!
+Don't hide in the dark; I wouldn't if I were you, Miggles,"
+continued Yuba Bill, now dancing about in an excess of fury.
+
+"Miggles!" continued the voice.  "O Miggles!"
+
+"My good man!  Mr. Myghail!" said the Judge, softening the
+asperities of the name as much as possible.  "Consider the
+inhospitality of refusing shelter from the inclemency of the
+weather to helpless females.  Really, my dear sir--"  But a
+succession of "Miggles," ending in a burst of laughter, drowned his
+voice.
+
+Yuba Bill hesitated no longer.  Taking a heavy stone from the road,
+he battered down the gate, and with the expressman entered the
+enclosure.  We followed.  Nobody was to be seen.  In the gathering
+darkness all that we could distinguish was that we were in a
+garden--from the rosebushes that scattered over us a minute spray
+from their dripping leaves--and before a long, rambling wooden
+building.
+
+"Do you know this Miggles?" asked the Judge of Yuba Bill.
+
+"No, nor, don't want to," said Bill, shortly, who felt the Pioneer
+Stage Company insulted in his person by the contumacious Miggles.
+
+"But, my dear sir," expostulated the Judge as he thought of the
+barred gate.
+
+"Lookee here," said Yuba Bill, with fine irony, "hadn't you better
+go back and sit in the coach till yer introduced?  I'm going in,"
+and he pushed open the door of the building.
+
+A long room lighted only by the embers of a fire that was dying on
+the large hearth at its farther extremity; the walls curiously
+papered, and the flickering firelight bringing out its grotesque
+pattern; somebody sitting in a large armchair by the fireplace.
+All this we saw as we crowded together into the room, after the
+driver and expressman.
+
+"Hello, be you Miggles?" said Yuba Bill to the solitary occupant.
+
+The figure neither spoke nor stirred.  Yuba Bill walked wrathfully
+toward it, and turned the eye of his coach lantern upon its face.
+It was a man's face, prematurely old and wrinkled, with very large
+eyes, in which there was that expression of perfectly gratuitous
+solemnity which I had sometimes seen in an owl's.  The large eyes
+wandered from Bill's face to the lantern, and finally fixed their
+gaze on that luminous object, without further recognition.
+
+Bill restrained himself with an effort.
+
+"Miggles!  Be you deaf?  You ain't dumb anyhow, you know"; and Yuba
+Bill shook the insensate figure by the shoulder.
+
+To our great dismay, as Bill removed his hand, the venerable
+stranger apparently collapsed--sinking into half his size and an
+undistinguishable heap of clothing.
+
+"Well, dern my skin," said Bill, looking appealingly at us, and
+hopelessly retiring from the contest.
+
+The Judge now stepped forward, and we lifted the mysterious
+invertebrate back into his original position.  Bill was dismissed
+with the lantern to reconnoiter outside, for it was evident that
+from the helplessness of this solitary man there must be attendants
+near at hand, and we all drew around the fire.  The Judge, who had
+regained his authority, and had never lost his conversational
+amiability--standing before us with his back to the hearth--charged
+us, as an imaginary jury, as follows:
+
+"It is evident that either our distinguished friend here has
+reached that condition described by Shakespeare as 'the sere and
+yellow leaf,' or has suffered some premature abatement of his
+mental and physical faculties.  Whether he is really the Miggles--"
+
+Here he was interrupted by "Miggles! O Miggles! Migglesy! Mig!"
+and, in fact, the whole chorus of Miggles in very much the same key
+as it had once before been delivered unto us.
+
+We gazed at each other for a moment in some alarm.  The Judge, in
+particular, vacated his position quickly, as the voice seemed to
+come directly over his shoulder.  The cause, however, was soon
+discovered in a large magpie who was perched upon a shelf over the
+fireplace, and who immediately relapsed into a sepulchral silence
+which contrasted singularly with his previous volubility.  It was,
+undoubtedly, his voice which we had heard in the road, and our
+friend in the chair was not responsible for the discourtesy.  Yuba
+Bill, who re-entered the room after an unsuccessful search, was
+loath to accept the explanation, and still eyed the helpless sitter
+with suspicion.  He had found a shed in which he had put up his
+horses, but he came back dripping and skeptical.  "Thar ain't
+nobody but him within ten mile of the shanty, and that 'ar damned
+old skeesicks knows it.
+
+But the faith of the majority proved to be securely based.  Bill
+had scarcely ceased growling before we heard a quick step upon the
+porch, the trailing of a wet skirt, the door was flung open, and
+with flash of white teeth, a sparkle of dark eyes, and an utter
+absence of ceremony or diffidence, a young woman entered, shut the
+door, and, panting, leaned back against it.
+
+"Oh, if you please, I'm Miggles!"
+
+And this was Miggles! this bright-eyed, full-throated young woman,
+whose wet gown of coarse blue stuff could not hide the beauty of
+the feminine curves to which it clung; from the chestnut crown of
+whose head, topped by a man's oilskin sou'wester, to the little
+feet and ankles, hidden somewhere in the recesses of her boy's
+brogans, all was grace--this was Miggles, laughing at us, too, in
+the most airy, frank, offhand manner imaginable.
+
+"You see, boys," said she, quite out of breath, and holding one
+little hand against her side, quite unheeding the speechless
+discomfiture of our party, or the complete demoralization of Yuba
+Bill, whose features had relaxed into an expression of gratuitous
+and imbecile cheerfulness--"you see, boys, I was mor'n two miles
+away when you passed down the road.  I thought you might pull up
+here, and so I ran the whole way, knowing nobody was home but Jim,--
+and--and--I'm out of breath--and--that lets me out."
+
+And here Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head,
+with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over
+us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the
+attempt; laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands
+crossed lightly on her lap.
+
+The Judge recovered himself first, and essayed an extravagant
+compliment.
+
+"I'll trouble you for that thar harpin," said Miggles, gravely.
+Half a dozen hands were eagerly stretched forward; the missing
+hairpin was restored to its fair owner; and Miggles, crossing the
+room, looked keenly in the face of the invalid.  The solemn eyes
+looked back at hers with an expression we had never seen before.
+Life and intelligence seemed to struggle back into the rugged face.
+Miggles laughed again--it was a singularly eloquent laugh--and
+turned her black eyes and white teeth once more toward us.
+
+"This afflicted person is--" hesitated the Judge.
+
+"Jim," said Miggles.
+
+"Your father?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Brother?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Husband?"
+
+Miggles darted a quick, half-defiant glance at the two lady
+passengers who I had noticed did not participate in the general
+masculine admiration of Miggles, and said gravely, "No; it's Jim."
+
+There was an awkward pause.  The lady passengers moved closer to
+each other; the Washoe husband looked abstractedly at the fire; and
+the tall man apparently turned his eyes inward for self-support at
+this emergency.  But Miggles's laugh, which was very infectious,
+broke the silence.  "Come," she said briskly, "you must be hungry.
+Who'll bear a hand to help me get tea?"
+
+She had no lack of volunteers.  In a few moments Yuba Bill was
+engaged like Caliban in bearing logs for this Miranda; the
+expressman was grinding coffee on the veranda; to myself the
+arduous duty of slicing bacon was assigned; and the Judge lent each
+man his good-humored and voluble counsel.  And when Miggles,
+assisted by the Judge and our Hibernian "deck passenger," set the
+table with all the available crockery, we had become quite joyous,
+in spite of the rain that beat against windows, the wind that
+whirled down the chimney, the two ladies who whispered together in
+the corner, or the magpie who uttered a satirical and croaking
+commentary on their conversation from his perch above.  In the now
+bright, blazing fire we could see that the walls were papered with
+illustrated journals, arranged with feminine taste and
+discrimination.  The furniture was extemporized, and adapted from
+candle boxes and packing-cases, and covered with gay calico, or the
+skin of some animal.  The armchair of the helpless Jim was an
+ingenious variation of a flour barrel.  There was neatness, and
+even a taste for the picturesque, to be seen in the few details of
+the long low room.
+
+The meal was a culinary success.  But more, it was a social
+triumph--chiefly, I think, owing to the rare tact of Miggles in
+guiding the conversation, asking all the questions herself, yet
+bearing throughout a frankness that rejected the idea of any
+concealment on her own part, so that we talked of ourselves, of our
+prospects, of the journey, of the weather, of each other--of
+everything but our host and hostess.  It must be confessed that
+Miggles's conversation was never elegant, rarely grammatical, and
+that at times she employed expletives the use of which had
+generally been yielded to our sex.  But they were delivered with
+such a lighting-up of teeth and eyes, and were usually followed by
+a laugh--a laugh peculiar to Miggles--so frank and honest that it
+seemed to clear the moral atmosphere.
+
+Once during the meal we heard a noise like the rubbing of a heavy
+body against the outer walls of the house.  This was shortly
+followed by a scratching and sniffling at the door.  "That's
+Joaquin," said Miggles, in reply to our questioning glances; "would
+you like to see him?"  Before we could answer she had opened the
+door, and disclosed a half-grown grizzly, who instantly raised
+himself on his haunches, with his forepaws hanging down in the
+popular attitude of mendicancy, and looked admiringly at Miggles,
+with a very singular resemblance in his manner to Yuba Bill.
+"That's my watch dog," said Miggles, in explanation.  "Oh, he don't
+bite," she added, as the two lady passengers fluttered into a
+corner.  "Does he, old Toppy?" (the latter remark being addressed
+directly to the sagacious Joaquin).  "I tell you what, boys,"
+continued Miggles after she had fed and closed the door on URSA
+MINOR, "you were in big luck that Joaquin wasn't hanging round when
+you dropped in tonight."  "Where was he?" asked the Judge.  "With
+me," said Miggles.  "Lord love you; he trots round with me nights
+like as if he was a man."
+
+We were silent for a few moments, and listened to the wind.
+Perhaps we all had the same picture before us--of Miggles walking
+through the rainy woods, with her savage guardian at her side.  The
+Judge, I remember, said something about Una and her lion; but
+Miggles received it as she did other compliments, with quiet
+gravity.  Whether she was altogether unconscious of the admiration
+she excited--she could hardly have been oblivious of Yuba Bill's
+adoration--I know not; but her very frankness suggested a perfect
+sexual equality that was cruelly humiliating to the younger members
+of our party.
+
+The incident of the bear did not add anything in Miggles's favor to
+the opinions of those of her own sex who were present.  In fact,
+the repast over, a chillness radiated from the two lady passengers
+that no pine boughs brought in by Yuba Bill and cast as a sacrifice
+upon the hearth could wholly overcome.  Miggles felt it; and,
+suddenly declaring that it was time to "turn in," offered to show
+the ladies to their bed in an adjoining room.  "You boys will have
+to camp out here by the fire as well as you can," she added, "for
+thar ain't but the one room."
+
+Our sex--by which, my dear sir, I allude of course to the stronger
+portion of humanity--has been generally relieved from the
+imputation of curiosity, or a fondness for gossip.  Yet I am
+constrained to say that hardly had the door closed on Miggles than
+we crowded together, whispering, snickering, smiling, and
+exchanging suspicions, surmises, and a thousand speculations in
+regard to our pretty hostess and her singular companion.  I fear
+that we even hustled that imbecile paralytic, who sat like a
+voiceless Memnon in our midst, gazing with the serene indifference
+of the Past in his passionate eyes upon our wordy counsels.  In the
+midst of an exciting discussion the door opened again, and Miggles
+re-entered.
+
+But not, apparently, the same Miggles who a few hours before had
+flashed upon us.  Her eyes were downcast, and as she hesitated for
+a moment on the threshold, with a blanket on her arm, she seemed to
+have left behind her the frank fearlessness which had charmed us a
+moment before.  Coming into the room, she drew a low stool beside
+the paralytic's chair, sat down, drew the blanket over her
+shoulders, and saying, "If it's all the same to you, boys, as we're
+rather crowded, I'll stop here tonight," took the invalid's
+withered hand in her own, and turned her eyes upon the dying fire.
+An instinctive feeling that this was only premonitory to more
+confidential relations, and perhaps some shame at our previous
+curiosity, kept us silent.  The rain still beat upon the roof,
+wandering gusts of wind stirred the embers into momentary
+brightness, until, in a lull of the elements, Miggles suddenly
+lifted up her head, and, throwing her hair over her shoulder,
+turned her face upon the group and asked:
+
+"Is there any of you that knows me?"
+
+There was no reply.
+
+"Think again! I lived at Marysville in '53.  Everybody knew me
+there, and everybody had the right to know me.  I kept the Polka
+saloon until I came to live with Jim.  That's six years ago.
+Perhaps I've changed some."
+
+The absence of recognition may have disconcerted her.  She turned
+her head to the fire again, and it was some seconds before she
+again spoke, and then more rapidly:
+
+"Well, you see I thought some of you must have known me.  There's
+no great harm done, anyway.  What I was going to say was this: Jim
+here"--she took his hand in both of hers as she spoke--"used to
+know me, if you didn't, and spent a heap of money upon me.  I
+reckon he spent all he had.  And one day--it's six years ago this
+winter--Jim came into my back room, sat down on my sofy, like as
+you see him in that chair, and never moved again without help.  He
+was struck all of a heap, and never seemed to know what ailed him.
+The doctors came and said as how it was caused all along of his way
+of life--for Jim was mighty free and wild-like--and that he would
+never get better, and couldn't last long anyway.  They advised me
+to send him to Frisco to the hospital, for he was no good to anyone
+and would be a baby all his life.  Perhaps it was something in
+Jim's eye, perhaps it was that I never had a baby, but I said 'No.'
+I was rich then, for I was popular with everybody--gentlemen like
+yourself, sir, came to see me--and I sold out my business and
+bought this yer place, because it was sort of out of the way of
+travel, you see, and I brought my baby here."
+
+With a woman's intuitive tact and poetry, she had, as she spoke,
+slowly shifted her position so as to bring the mute figure of the
+ruined man between her and her audience, hiding in the shadow
+behind it, as if she offered it as a tacit apology for her actions.
+Silent and expressionless, it yet spoke for her; helpless, crushed,
+and smitten with the Divine thunderbolt, it still stretched an
+invisible arm around her.
+
+Hidden in the darkness, but still holding his hand, she went on:
+
+"It was a long time before I could get the hang of things about
+yer, for I was used to company and excitement.  I couldn't get any
+woman to help me, and a man I dursen't trust; but what with the
+Indians hereabout, who'd do odd jobs for me, and having everything
+sent from the North Fork, Jim and I managed to worry through.  The
+Doctor would run up from Sacramento once in a while.  He'd ask to
+see 'Miggles's baby,' as he called Jim, and when he'd go away, he'd
+say, 'Miggles; you're a trump--God bless you'; and it didn't seem
+so lonely after that.  But the last time he was here he said, as he
+opened the door to go, 'Do you know, Miggles, your baby will grow
+up to be a man yet and an honor to his mother; but not here,
+Miggles, not here!'  And I thought he went away sad--and--and--"
+and here Miggles's voice and head were somehow both lost completely
+in the shadow.
+
+"The folks about here are very kind," said Miggles, after a pause,
+coming a little into the light again.  "The men from the fork used
+to hang around here, until they found they wasn't wanted, and the
+women are kind--and don't call.  I was pretty lonely until I picked
+up Joaquin in the woods yonder one day, when he wasn't so high, and
+taught him to beg for his dinner; and then thar's Polly--that's the
+magpie--she knows no end of tricks, and makes it quite sociable of
+evenings with her talk, and so I don't feel like as I was the only
+living being about the ranch.  And Jim here," said Miggles, with
+her old laugh again, and coming out quite into the firelight, "Jim-
+-why, boys, you would admire to see how much he knows for a man
+like him.  Sometimes I bring him flowers, and he looks at 'em just
+as natural as if he knew 'em; and times, when we're sitting alone,
+I read him those things on the wall.  Why, Lord!" said Miggles,
+with her frank laugh, "I've read him that whole side of the house
+this winter.  There never was such a man for reading as Jim."
+
+"Why," asked the Judge, "do you not marry this man to whom you have
+devoted your youthful life?"
+
+"Well, you see," said Miggles, "it would be playing it rather low
+down on Jim, to take advantage of his being so helpless.  And then,
+too, if we were man and wife, now, we'd both know that I was bound
+to do what I do now of my own accord."
+
+"But you are young yet and attractive--"
+
+"It's getting late," said Miggles, gravely, "and you'd better all
+turn in.  Good night, boys"; and, throwing the blanket over her
+head, Miggles laid herself down beside Jim's chair, her head
+pillowed on the low stool that held his feet, and spoke no more.
+The fire slowly faded from the hearth; we each sought our blankets
+in silence; and presently there was no sound in the long room but
+the pattering of the rain upon the roof and the heavy breathing of
+the sleepers.
+
+It was nearly morning when I awoke from a troubled dream.  The
+storm had passed, the stars were shining, and through the
+shutterless window the full moon, lifting itself over the solemn
+pines without, looked into the room.  It touched the lonely figure
+in the chair with an infinite compassion, and seemed to baptize
+with a shining flood the lowly head of the woman whose hair, as in
+the sweet old story, bathed the feet of him she loved.  It even
+lent a kindly poetry to the rugged outline of Yuba Bill, half-
+reclining on his elbow between them and his passengers, with
+savagely patient eyes keeping watch and ward.  And then I fell
+asleep and only woke at broad day, with Yuba Bill standing over me,
+and "All aboard" ringing in my ears.
+
+Coffee was waiting for us on the table, but Miggles was gone.  We
+wandered about the house and lingered long after the horses were
+harnessed, but she did not return.  It was evident that she wished
+to avoid a formal leave-taking, and had so left us to depart as we
+had come.  After we had helped the ladies into the coach, we
+returned to the house and solemnly shook hands with the paralytic
+Jim, as solemnly settling him back into position after each
+handshake.  Then we looked for the last time around the long low
+room, at the stool where Miggles had sat, and slowly took our seats
+in the waiting coach.  The whip cracked, and we were off!
+
+But as we reached the highroad, Bill's dexterous hand laid the six
+horses back on their haunches, and the stage stopped with a jerk.
+For there, on a little eminence beside the road, stood Miggles, her
+hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her white handkerchief waving, and
+her white teeth flashing a last "good-by."  We waved our hats in
+return.  And then Yuba Bill, as if fearful of further fascination,
+madly lashed his horses forward, and we sank back in our seats.  We
+exchanged not a word until we reached the North Fork, and the stage
+drew up at the Independence House.  Then, the Judge leading, we
+walked into the barroom and took our places gravely at the bar.
+
+"Are your glasses charged, gentlemen?" said the Judge, solemnly
+taking off his white hat.
+
+They were.
+
+"Well, then, here's to MIGGLES.  GOD BLESS HER!"
+
+Perhaps He had.  Who knows?
+
+
+
+TENNESSEE'S PARTNER
+
+
+I do not think that we ever knew his real name.  Our ignorance of
+it certainly never gave us any social inconvenience, for at Sandy
+Bar in 1854 most men were christened anew.  Sometimes these
+appellatives were derived from some distinctiveness of dress, as in
+the case of "Dungaree Jack"; or from some peculiarity of habit, as
+shown in "Saleratus Bill," so called from an undue proportion of
+that chemical in his daily bread; or for some unlucky slip, as
+exhibited in "The Iron Pirate," a mild, inoffensive man, who earned
+that baleful title by his unfortunate mispronunciation of the term
+"iron pyrites."  Perhaps this may have been the beginning of a rude
+heraldry; but I am constrained to think that it was because a man's
+real name in that day rested solely upon his own unsupported
+statement.  "Call yourself Clifford, do you?" said Boston,
+addressing a timid newcomer with infinite scorn; "hell is full of
+such Cliffords!"  He then introduced the unfortunate man, whose
+name happened to be really Clifford, as "Jay-bird Charley"--an
+unhallowed inspiration of the moment that clung to him ever after.
+
+But to return to Tennessee's Partner, whom we never knew by any
+other than this relative title; that he had ever existed as a
+separate and distinct individuality we only learned later.  It
+seems that in 1853 he left Poker Flat to go to San Francisco,
+ostensibly to procure a wife.  He never got any farther than
+Stockton.  At that place he was attracted by a young person who
+waited upon the table at the hotel where he took his meals.  One
+morning he said something to her which caused her to smile not
+unkindly, to somewhat coquettishly break a plate of toast over his
+upturned, serious, simple face, and to retreat to the kitchen.  He
+followed her, and emerged a few moments later, covered with more
+toast and victory.  That day week they were married by a justice of
+the peace, and returned to Poker Flat.  I am aware that something
+more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it
+was current at Sandy Bar--in the gulches and barrooms--where all
+sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor.
+
+Of their married felicity but little is known, perhaps for the
+reason that Tennessee, then living with his Partner, one day took
+occasion to say something to the bride on his own account, at
+which, it is said, she smiled not unkindly and chastely retreated--
+this time as far as Marysville, where Tennessee followed her, and
+where they went to housekeeping without the aid of a justice of the
+peace.  Tennessee's Partner took the loss of his wife simply and
+seriously, as was his fashion.  But to everybody's surprise, when
+Tennessee one day returned from Marysville, without his Partner's
+wife--she having smiled and retreated with somebody else--
+Tennessee's Partner was the first man to shake his hand and greet
+him with affection.  The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see
+the shooting were naturally indignant.  Their indignation might
+have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's
+Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation.  In
+fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical
+detail which was unpleasant in a difficulty.
+
+Meanwhile a popular feeling against Tennessee had grown up on the
+Bar.  He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.
+In these suspicions Tennessee's Partner was equally compromised;
+his continued intimacy with Tennessee after the affair above quoted
+could only be accounted for on the hypothesis of a copartnership of
+crime.  At last Tennessee's guilt became flagrant.  One day he
+overtook a stranger on his way to Red Dog.  The stranger afterward
+related that Tennessee beguiled the time with interesting anecdote
+and reminiscence, but illogically concluded the interview in the
+following words: "And now, young man, I'll trouble you for your
+knife, your pistols, and your money.  You see your weppings might
+get you into trouble at Red Dog, and your money's a temptation to
+the evilly disposed.  I think you said your address was San
+Francisco.  I shall endeavor to call."  It may be stated here that
+Tennessee had a fine flow of humor, which no business preoccupation
+could wholly subdue.
+
+This exploit was his last.  Red Dog and Sandy Bar made common cause
+against the highwayman.  Tennessee was hunted in very much the same
+fashion as his prototype, the grizzly.  As the toils closed around
+him, he made a desperate dash through the Bar, emptying his
+revolver at the crowd before the Arcade Saloon, and so on up
+Grizzly Canyon; but at its farther extremity he was stopped by a
+small man on a gray horse.  The men looked at each other a moment
+in silence.  Both were fearless, both self-possessed and
+independent; and both types of a civilization that in the
+seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the
+nineteenth, simply "reckless."  "What have you got there?--I call,"
+said Tennessee, quietly.  "Two bowers and an ace," said the
+stranger, as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie knife.
+"That takes me," returned Tennessee; and with this gamblers'
+epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode back with his
+captor.
+
+
+It was a warm night.  The cool breeze which usually sprang up with
+the going down of the sun behind the chaparral-crested mountain was
+that evening withheld from Sandy Bar.  The little canyon was
+stifling with heated resinous odors, and the decaying driftwood on
+the Bar sent forth faint, sickening exhalations.  The feverishness
+of day, and its fierce passions, still filled the camp.  Lights
+moved restlessly along the bank of the river, striking no answering
+reflection from its tawny current.  Against the blackness of the
+pines the windows of the old loft above the express office stood
+out staringly bright; and through their curtainless panes the
+loungers below could see the forms of those who were even then
+deciding the fate of Tennessee.  And above all this, etched on the
+dark firmament, rose the Sierra, remote and passionless, crowned
+with remoter passionless stars.
+
+The trial of Tennessee was conducted as fairly as was consistent
+with a judge and jury who felt themselves to some extent obliged to
+justify, in their verdict, the previous irregularities of arrest
+and indictment.  The law of Sandy Bar was implacable, but not
+vengeful.  The excitement and personal feeling of the chase were
+over; with Tennessee safe in their hands they were ready to listen
+patiently to any defense, which they were already satisfied was
+insufficient.  There being no doubt in their own minds, they were
+willing to give the prisoner the benefit of any that might exist.
+Secure in the hypothesis that he ought to be hanged, on general
+principles, they indulged him with more latitude of defense than
+his reckless hardihood seemed to ask.  The Judge appeared to be
+more anxious than the prisoner, who, otherwise unconcerned,
+evidently took a grim pleasure in the responsibility he had
+created.  "I don't take any hand in this yer game," had been his
+invariable but good-humored reply to all questions.  The Judge--who
+was also his captor--for a moment vaguely regretted that he had not
+shot him "on sight" that morning, but presently dismissed this
+human weakness as unworthy of the judicial mind.  Nevertheless,
+when there was a tap at the door, and it was said that Tennessee's
+Partner was there on behalf of the prisoner, he was admitted at
+once without question.  Perhaps the younger members of the jury, to
+whom the proceedings were becoming irksomely thoughtful, hailed him
+as a relief.
+
+For he was not, certainly, an imposing figure.  Short and stout,
+with a square face sunburned into a preternatural redness, clad in
+a loose duck "jumper" and trousers streaked and splashed with red
+soil, his aspect under any circumstances would have been quaint,
+and was now even ridiculous.  As he stooped to deposit at his feet
+a heavy carpetbag he was carrying, it became obvious, from
+partially developed legends and inscriptions, that the material
+with which his trousers had been patched had been originally
+intended for a less ambitious covering.  Yet he advanced with great
+gravity, and after having shaken the hand of each person in the
+room with labored cordiality, he wiped his serious, perplexed face
+on a red bandanna handkerchief, a shade lighter than his
+complexion, laid his powerful hand upon the table to steady
+himself, and thus addressed the Judge:
+
+"I was passin' by," he began, by way of apology, "and I thought I'd
+just step in and see how things was gittin' on with Tennessee thar--
+my pardner.  It's a hot night.  I disremember any sich weather
+before on the Bar."
+
+He paused a moment, but nobody volunteering any other
+meteorological recollection, he again had recourse to his pocket
+handkerchief, and for some moments mopped his face diligently.
+
+"Have you anything to say in behalf of the prisoner?" said the
+Judge, finally.
+
+"Thet's it," said Tennessee's Partner, in a tone of relief.  "I
+come yar as Tennessee's pardner--knowing him nigh on four year, off
+and on, wet and dry, in luck and out o' luck.  His ways ain't
+allers my ways, but thar ain't any p'ints in that young man, thar
+ain't any liveliness as he's been up to, as I don't know.  And you
+sez to me, sez you--confidential-like, and between man and man--sez
+you, 'Do you know anything in his behalf?' and I sez to you, sez I--
+confidential-like, as between man and man--'What should a man
+know of his pardner?'"
+
+"Is this all you have to say?" asked the Judge impatiently,
+feeling, perhaps, that a dangerous sympathy of humor was beginning
+to humanize the Court.
+
+"Thet's so," continued Tennessee's Partner.  "It ain't for me to
+say anything agin' him.  And now, what's the case?  Here's
+Tennessee wants money, wants it bad, and doesn't like to ask it of
+his old pardner.  Well, what does Tennessee do?  He lays for a
+stranger, and he fetches that stranger.  And you lays for HIM, and
+you fetches HIM; and the honors is easy.  And I put it to you,
+bein' a far-minded man, and to you, gentlemen, all, as far-minded
+men, ef this isn't so."
+
+"Prisoner," said the Judge, interrupting, "have you any questions
+to ask this man?"
+
+"No! no!" continued Tennessee's Partner, hastily.  "I play this yer
+hand alone.  To come down to the bedrock, it's just this:
+Tennessee, thar, has played it pretty rough and expensive-like on a
+stranger, and on this yer camp.  And now, what's the fair thing?
+Some would say more; some would say less.  Here's seventeen hundred
+dollars in coarse gold and a watch--it's about all my pile--and
+call it square!"  And before a hand could be raised to prevent him,
+he had emptied the contents of the carpetbag upon the table.
+
+For a moment his life was in jeopardy.  One or two men sprang to
+their feet, several hands groped for hidden weapons, and a
+suggestion to "throw him from the window" was only overridden by a
+gesture from the Judge.  Tennessee laughed.  And apparently
+oblivious of the excitement, Tennessee's Partner improved the
+opportunity to mop his face again with his handkerchief.
+
+When order was restored, and the man was made to understand, by the
+use of forcible figures and rhetoric, that Tennessee's offense
+could not be condoned by money, his face took a more serious and
+sanguinary hue, and those who were nearest to him noticed that his
+rough hand trembled slightly on the table.  He hesitated a moment
+as he slowly returned the gold to the carpetbag, as if he had not
+yet entirely caught the elevated sense of justice which swayed the
+tribunal, and was perplexed with the belief that he had not offered
+enough.  Then he turned to the Judge, and saying, "This yer is a
+lone hand, played alone, and without my pardner," he bowed to the
+jury and was about to withdraw when the Judge called him back.  "If
+you have anything to say to Tennessee, you had better say it now."
+For the first time that evening the eyes of the prisoner and his
+strange advocate met.  Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth,
+and, saying, "Euchred, old man!" held out his hand.  Tennessee's
+Partner took it in his own, and saying, "I just dropped in as I was
+passin' to see how things was gettin' on," let the hand passively
+fall, and adding that it was a warm night, again mopped his face
+with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.
+
+The two men never again met each other alive.  For the unparalleled
+insult of a bribe offered to Judge Lynch--who, whether bigoted,
+weak, or narrow, was at least incorruptible--firmly fixed in the
+mind of that mythical personage any wavering determination of
+Tennessee's fate; and at the break of day he was marched, closely
+guarded, to meet it at the top of Marley's Hill.
+
+How he met it, how cool he was, how he refused to say anything, how
+perfect were the arrangements of the committee, were all duly
+reported, with the addition of a warning moral and example to all
+future evildoers, in the RED DOG CLARION, by its editor, who was
+present, and to whose vigorous English I cheerfully refer the
+reader.  But the beauty of that midsummer morning, the blessed
+amity of earth and air and sky, the awakened life of the free woods
+and hills, the joyous renewal and promise of Nature, and above all,
+the infinite Serenity that thrilled through each, was not reported,
+as not being a part of the social lesson.  And yet, when the weak
+and foolish deed was done, and a life, with its possibilities and
+responsibilities, had passed out of the misshapen thing that
+dangled between earth and sky, the birds sang, the flowers bloomed,
+the sun shone, as cheerily as before; and possibly the RED DOG
+CLARION was right.
+
+Tennessee's Partner was not in the group that surrounded the
+ominous tree.  But as they turned to disperse attention was drawn
+to the singular appearance of a motionless donkey cart halted at
+the side of the road.  As they approached, they at once recognized
+the venerable "Jenny" and the two-wheeled cart as the property of
+Tennessee's Partner--used by him in carrying dirt from his claim;
+and a few paces distant the owner of the equipage himself, sitting
+under a buckeye tree, wiping the perspiration from his glowing
+face.  In answer to an inquiry, he said he had come for the body of
+the "diseased," "if it was all the same to the committee."  He
+didn't wish to "hurry anything"; he could "wait."  He was not
+working that day; and when the gentlemen were done with the
+"diseased," he would take him.  "Ef thar is any present," he added,
+in his simple, serious way, "as would care to jine in the fun'l,
+they kin come."  Perhaps it was from a sense of humor, which I have
+already intimated was a feature of Sandy Bar--perhaps it was from
+something even better than that; but two-thirds of the loungers
+accepted the invitation at once.
+
+It was noon when the body of Tennessee was delivered into the hands
+of his Partner.  As the cart drew up to the fatal tree, we noticed
+that it contained a rough, oblong box--apparently made from a
+section of sluicing and half-filled with bark and the tassels of
+pine.  The cart was further decorated with slips of willow, and
+made fragrant with buckeye blossoms.  When the body was deposited
+in the box, Tennessee's Partner drew over it a piece of tarred
+canvas, and gravely mounting the narrow seat in front, with his
+feet upon the shafts, urged the little donkey forward.  The
+equipage moved slowly on, at that decorous pace which was habitual
+with "Jenny" even under less solemn circumstances.  The men--half
+curiously, half jestingly, but all good-humoredly--strolled along
+beside the cart; some in advance, some a little in the rear of the
+homely catafalque.  But, whether from the narrowing of the road or
+some present sense of decorum, as the cart passed on, the company
+fell to the rear in couples, keeping step, and otherwise assuming
+the external show of a formal procession.  Jack Folinsbee, who had
+at the outset played a funeral march in dumb show upon an imaginary
+trombone, desisted, from a lack of sympathy and appreciation--not
+having, perhaps, your true humorist's capacity to be content with
+the enjoyment of his own fun.
+
+The way led through Grizzly Canyon--by this time clothed in
+funereal drapery and shadows.  The redwoods, burying their
+moccasined feet in the red soil, stood in Indian file along the
+track, trailing an uncouth benediction from their bending boughs
+upon the passing bier.  A hare, surprised into helpless inactivity,
+sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside as the
+cortege went by.  Squirrels hastened to gain a secure outlook from
+higher boughs; and the bluejays, spreading their wings, fluttered
+before them like outriders, until the outskirts of Sandy Bar were
+reached, and the solitary cabin of Tennessee's Partner.
+
+Viewed under more favorable circumstances, it would not have been a
+cheerful place.  The unpicturesque site, the rude and unlovely
+outlines, the unsavory details, which distinguish the nest-building
+of the California miner, were all here, with the dreariness of
+decay superadded.  A few paces from the cabin there was a rough
+enclosure, which in the brief days of Tennessee's Partner's
+matrimonial felicity had been used as a garden, but was now
+overgrown with fern.  As we approached it we were surprised to find
+that what we had taken for a recent attempt at cultivation was the
+broken soil about an open grave.
+
+The cart was halted before the enclosure; and rejecting the offers
+of assistance with the same air of simple self-reliance he had
+displayed throughout, Tennessee's Partner lifted the rough coffin
+on his back and deposited it, unaided, within the shallow grave.
+He then nailed down the board which served as a lid; and mounting
+the little mound of earth beside it, took off his hat, and slowly
+mopped his face with his handkerchief.  This the crowd felt was a
+preliminary to speech; and they disposed themselves variously on
+stumps and boulders, and sat expectant.
+
+"When a man," began Tennessee's Partner, slowly, "has been running
+free all day, what's the natural thing for him to do?  Why, to come
+home.  And if he ain't in a condition to go home, what can his best
+friend do?  Why, bring him home!  And here's Tennessee has been
+running free, and we brings him home from his wandering."  He
+paused, and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully
+on his sleeve, and went on: "It ain't the first time that I've
+packed him on my back, as you see'd me now.  It ain't the first
+time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn't help
+himself; it ain't the first time that I and 'Jinny' have waited for
+him on yon hill, and picked him up and so fetched him home, when he
+couldn't speak, and didn't know me.  And now that it's the last
+time, why"--he paused and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve--
+"you see it's sort of rough on his pardner.  And now, gentlemen,"
+he added, abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, "the
+fun'l's over; and my thanks, and Tennessee's thanks, to you for
+your trouble."
+
+Resisting any proffers of assistance, he began to fill in the
+grave, turning his back upon the crowd that after a few moments'
+hesitation gradually withdrew.  As they crossed the little ridge
+that hid Sandy Bar from view, some, looking back, thought they
+could see Tennessee's Partner, his work done, sitting upon the
+grave, his shovel between his knees, and his face buried in his red
+bandanna handkerchief.  But it was argued by others that you
+couldn't tell his face from his handkerchief at that distance; and
+this point remained undecided.
+
+
+In the reaction that followed the feverish excitement of that day,
+Tennessee's Partner was not forgotten.  A secret investigation had
+cleared him of any complicity in Tennessee's guilt, and left only a
+suspicion of his general sanity.  Sandy Bar made a point of calling
+on him, and proffering various uncouth, but well-meant kindnesses.
+But from that day his rude health and great strength seemed visibly
+to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny
+grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above
+Tennessee's grave, he took to his bed.  One night, when the pines
+beside the cabin were swaying in the storm, and trailing their
+slender fingers over the roof, and the roar and rush of the swollen
+river were heard below, Tennessee's Partner lifted his head from
+the pillow, saying, "It is time to go for Tennessee; I must put
+'Jinny' in the cart"; and would have risen from his bed but for the
+restraint of his attendant.  Struggling, he still pursued his
+singular fancy: "There, now, steady, 'Jinny'--steady, old girl.
+How dark it is!  Look out for the ruts--and look out for him, too,
+old gal.  Sometimes, you know, when he's blind-drunk, he drops down
+right in the trail.  Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of
+the hill.  Thar--I told you so!--thar he is--coming this way, too--
+all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining.  Tennessee!
+Pardner!"
+
+And so they met.
+
+
+
+THE IDYL OF RED GULCH
+
+
+Sandy was very drunk.  He was lying under an azalea bush, in pretty
+much the same attitude in which he had fallen some hours before.
+How long he had been lying there he could not tell, and didn't
+care; how long he should lie there was a matter equally indefinite
+and unconsidered.  A tranquil philosophy, born of his physical
+condition, suffused and saturated his moral being.
+
+The spectacle of a drunken man, and of this drunken man in
+particular, was not, I grieve to say, of sufficient novelty in Red
+Gulch to attract attention.  Earlier in the day some local satirist
+had erected a temporary tombstone at Sandy's head, bearing the
+inscription, "Effects of McCorkle's whisky--kills at forty rods,"
+with a hand pointing to McCorkle's saloon.  But this, I imagine,
+was, like most local satire, personal; and was a reflection upon
+the unfairness of the process rather than a commentary upon the
+impropriety of the result.  With this facetious exception, Sandy
+had been undisturbed.  A wandering mule, released from his pack,
+had cropped the scant herbage beside him, and sniffed curiously at
+the prostrate man; a vagabond dog, with that deep sympathy which
+the species have for drunken men, had licked his dusty boots, and
+curled himself up at his feet, and lay there, blinking one eye in
+the sunlight, with a simulation of dissipation that was ingenious
+and doglike in its implied flattery of the unconscious man beside
+him.
+
+Meanwhile the shadows of the pine trees had slowly swung around
+until they crossed the road, and their trunks barred the open
+meadow with gigantic parallels of black and yellow.  Little puffs
+of red dust, lifted by the plunging hoofs of passing teams,
+dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man.  The sun sank
+lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not.  And then the repose
+of this philosopher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been,
+by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex.
+
+"Miss Mary," as she was known to the little flock that she had just
+dismissed from the log schoolhouse beyond the pines, was taking her
+afternoon walk.  Observing an unusually fine cluster of blossoms on
+the azalea bush opposite, she crossed the road to pluck it--picking
+her way through the red dust, not without certain fierce little
+shivers of disgust and some feline circumlocution.  And then she
+came suddenly upon Sandy!
+
+Of course she uttered the little staccato cry of her sex.  But when
+she had paid that tribute to her physical weakness she became
+overbold, and halted for a moment--at least six feet from this
+prostrate monster--with her white skirts gathered in her hand,
+ready for flight.  But neither sound nor motion came from the bush.
+With one little foot she then overturned the satirical headboard,
+and muttered "Beasts!"--an epithet which probably, at that moment,
+conveniently classified in her mind the entire male population of
+Red Gulch.  For Miss Mary, being possessed of certain rigid notions
+of her own, had not, perhaps, properly appreciated the
+demonstrative gallantry for which the Californian has been so
+justly celebrated by his brother Californians, and had, as a
+newcomer, perhaps fairly earned the reputation of being "stuck-up."
+
+As she stood there she noticed, also, that the slant sunbeams were
+heating Sandy's head to what she judged to be an unhealthy
+temperature, and that his hat was lying uselessly at his side.  To
+pick it up and to place it over his face was a work requiring some
+courage, particularly as his eyes were open.  Yet she did it, and
+made good her retreat.  But she was somewhat concerned, on looking
+back, to see that the hat was removed, and that Sandy was sitting
+up and saying something.
+
+The truth was, that in the calm depths of Sandy's mind he was
+satisfied that the rays of the sun were beneficial and healthful;
+that from childhood he had objected to lying down in a hat; that no
+people but condemned fools, past redemption, ever wore hats; and
+that his right to dispense with them when he pleased was
+inalienable.  This was the statement of his inner consciousness.
+Unfortunately, its outward expression was vague, being limited to a
+repetition of the following formula--"Su'shine all ri'!  Wasser
+maar, eh?  Wass up, su'shine?"
+
+Miss Mary stopped, and, taking fresh courage from her vantage of
+distance, asked him if there was anything that he wanted.
+
+"Wass up?  Wasser maar?" continued Sandy, in a very high key.
+
+"Get up, you horrid man!" said Miss Mary, now thoroughly incensed;
+"get up, and go home."
+
+Sandy staggered to his feet.  He was six feet high, and Miss Mary
+trembled.  He started forward a few paces and then stopped.
+
+"Wass I go home for?" he suddenly asked, with great gravity.
+
+"Go and take a bath," replied Miss Mary, eying his grimy person
+with great disfavor.
+
+To her infinite dismay, Sandy suddenly pulled off his coat and
+vest, threw them on the ground, kicked off his boots, and, plunging
+wildly forward, darted headlong over the hill, in the direction of
+the river.
+
+"Goodness heavens!--the man will be drowned!" said Miss Mary; and
+then, with feminine inconsistency, she ran back to the schoolhouse
+and locked herself in.
+
+That night, while seated at supper with her hostess, the
+blacksmith's wife, it came to Miss Mary to ask, demurely, if her
+husband ever got drunk.  "Abner," responded Mrs. Stidger,
+reflectively, "let's see: Abner hasn't been tight since last
+'lection."  Miss Mary would have liked to ask if he preferred lying
+in the sun on these occasions, and if a cold bath would have hurt
+him; but this would have involved an explanation, which she did not
+then care to give.  So she contented herself with opening her gray
+eyes widely at the red-cheeked Mrs.  Stidger--a fine specimen of
+Southwestern efflorescence--and then dismissed the subject
+altogether.  The next day she wrote to her dearest friend, in
+Boston: "I think I find the intoxicated portion of this community
+the least objectionable.  I refer, my dear, to the men, of course.
+I do not know anything that could make the women tolerable."
+
+In less than a week Miss Mary had forgotten this episode, except
+that her afternoon walks took thereafter, almost unconsciously,
+another direction.  She noticed, however, that every morning a
+fresh cluster of azalea blossoms appeared among the flowers on her
+desk.  This was not strange, as her little flock were aware of her
+fondness for flowers, and invariably kept her desk bright with
+anemones, syringas, and lupines; but, on questioning them, they one
+and all professed ignorance of the azaleas.  A few days later,
+Master Johnny Stidger, whose desk was nearest to the window, was
+suddenly taken with spasms of apparently gratuitous laughter that
+threatened the discipline of the school.  All that Miss Mary could
+get from him was, that someone had been "looking in the winder."
+Irate and indignant, she sallied from her hive to do battle with
+the intruder.  As she turned the corner of the schoolhouse she came
+plump upon the quondam drunkard--now perfectly sober, and
+inexpressibly sheepish and guilty-looking.
+
+These facts Miss Mary was not slow to take a feminine advantage of,
+in her present humor.  But it was somewhat confusing to observe,
+also, that the beast, despite some faint signs of past dissipation,
+was amiable-looking--in fact, a kind of blond Samson whose corn-
+colored, silken beard apparently had never yet known the touch of
+barber's razor or Delilah's shears.  So that the cutting speech
+which quivered on her ready tongue died upon her lips, and she
+contented herself with receiving his stammering apology with
+supercilious eyelids and the gathered skirts of uncontamination.
+When she re-entered the schoolroom, her eyes fell upon the azaleas
+with a new sense of revelation.  And then she laughed, and the
+little people all laughed, and they were all unconsciously very
+happy.
+
+It was on a hot day--and not long after this--that two short-legged
+boys came to grief on the threshold of the school with a pail of
+water, which they had laboriously brought from the spring, and that
+Miss Mary compassionately seized the pail and started for the
+spring herself.  At the foot of the hill a shadow crossed her path,
+and a blue-shirted arm dexterously but gently relieved her of her
+burden.  Miss Mary was both embarrassed and angry.  "If you carried
+more of that for yourself," she said, spitefully, to the blue arm,
+without deigning to raise her lashes to its owner, "you'd do
+better."  In the submissive silence that followed she regretted the
+speech, and thanked him so sweetly at the door that he stumbled.
+Which caused the children to laugh again--a laugh in which Miss
+Mary joined, until the color came faintly into her pale cheek.  The
+next day a barrel was mysteriously placed beside the door, and as
+mysteriously filled with fresh spring water every morning.
+
+Nor was this superior young person without other quiet attentions.
+"Profane Bill," driver of the Slumgullion Stage, widely known in
+the newspapers for his "gallantry" in invariably offering the box
+seat to the fair sex, had excepted Miss Mary from this attention,
+on the ground that he had a habit of "cussin' on upgrades," and
+gave her half the coach to herself.  Jack Hamlin, a gambler, having
+once silently ridden with her in the same coach, afterward threw a
+decanter at the head of a confederate for mentioning her name in a
+barroom.  The overdressed mother of a pupil whose paternity was
+doubtful had often lingered near this astute Vestal's temple, never
+daring to enter its sacred precincts, but content to worship the
+priestess from afar.
+
+With such unconscious intervals the monotonous procession of blue
+skies, glittering sunshine, brief twilights, and starlit nights
+passed over Red Gulch.  Miss Mary grew fond of walking in the
+sedate and proper woods.  Perhaps she believed, with Mrs. Stidger,
+that the balsamic odors of the firs "did her chest good," for
+certainly her slight cough was less frequent and her step was
+firmer; perhaps she had learned the unending lesson which the
+patient pines are never weary of repeating to heedful or listless
+ears.  And so, one day, she planned a picnic on Buckeye Hill, and
+took the children with her.  Away from the dusty road, the
+straggling shanties, the yellow ditches, the clamor of restless
+engines, the cheap finery of shop windows, the deeper glitter of
+paint and colored glass, and the thin veneering which barbarism
+takes upon itself in such localities--what infinite relief was
+theirs!  The last heap of ragged rock and clay passed, the last
+unsightly chasm crossed--how the waiting woods opened their long
+files to receive them!  How the children--perhaps because they had
+not yet grown quite away from the breast of the bounteous Mother--
+threw themselves face downward on her brown bosom with uncouth
+caresses, filling the air with their laughter; and how Miss Mary
+herself--felinely fastidious and intrenched as she was in the
+purity of spotless skirts, collar, and cuffs--forgot all, and ran
+like a crested quail at the head of her brood until, romping,
+laughing, and panting, with a loosened braid of brown hair, a hat
+hanging by a knotted ribbon from her throat, she came suddenly and
+violently, in the heart of the forest, upon--the luckless Sandy!
+
+The explanations, apologies, and not overwise conversation that
+ensued need not be indicated here.  It would seem, however, that
+Miss Mary had already established some acquaintance with this ex-
+drunkard.  Enough that he was soon accepted as one of the party;
+that the children, with that quick intelligence which Providence
+gives the helpless, recognized a friend, and played with his blond
+beard and long silken mustache, and took other liberties--as the
+helpless are apt to do.  And when he had built a fire against a
+tree, and had shown them other mysteries of woodcraft, their
+admiration knew no bounds.  At the close of two such foolish, idle,
+happy hours he found himself lying at the feet of the
+schoolmistress, gazing dreamily in her face, as she sat upon the
+sloping hillside weaving wreaths of laurel and syringa, in very
+much the same attitude as he had lain when first they met.  Nor was
+the similitude greatly forced.  The weakness of an easy, sensuous
+nature that had found a dreamy exaltation in liquor, it is to be
+feared was now finding an equal intoxication in love.
+
+I think that Sandy was dimly conscious of this himself.  I know
+that he longed to be doing something--slaying a grizzly, scalping a
+savage, or sacrificing himself in some way for the sake of this
+sallow-faced, gray-eyed schoolmistress.  As I should like to
+present him in a heroic attitude, I stay my hand with great
+difficulty at this moment, being only withheld from introducing
+such an episode by a strong conviction that it does not usually
+occur at such times.  And I trust that my fairest reader, who
+remembers that, in a real crisis, it is always some uninteresting
+stranger or unromantic policeman, and not Adolphus, who rescues,
+will forgive the omission.
+
+So they sat there, undisturbed--the woodpeckers chattering overhead
+and the voices of the children coming pleasantly from the hollow
+below.  What they said matters little.  What they thought--which
+might have been interesting--did not transpire.  The woodpeckers
+only learned how Miss Mary was an orphan; how she left her uncle's
+house, to come to California, for the sake of health and
+independence; how Sandy was an orphan, too; how he came to
+California for excitement; how he had lived a wild life, and how he
+was trying to reform; and other details, which, from a woodpecker's
+viewpoint, undoubtedly must have seemed stupid, and a waste of
+time.  But even in such trifles was the afternoon spent; and when
+the children were again gathered, and Sandy, with a delicacy which
+the schoolmistress well understood, took leave of them quietly at
+the outskirts of the settlement, it had seemed the shortest day of
+her weary life.
+
+As the long, dry summer withered to its roots, the school term of
+Red Gulch--to use a local euphuism--"dried up" also.  In another
+day Miss Mary would be free; and for a season, at least, Red Gulch
+would know her no more.  She was seated alone in the schoolhouse,
+her cheek resting on her hand, her eyes half-closed in one of those
+daydreams in which Miss Mary--I fear to the danger of school
+discipline --was lately in the habit of indulging.  Her lap was
+full of mosses, ferns, and other woodland memories.  She was so
+preoccupied with these and her own thoughts that a gentle tapping
+at the door passed unheard, or translated itself into the
+remembrance of far-off woodpeckers.  When at last it asserted
+itself more distinctly, she started up with a flushed cheek and
+opened the door.  On the threshold stood a woman the self-assertion
+and audacity of whose dress were in singular contrast to her timid,
+irresolute bearing.
+
+Miss Mary recognized at a glance the dubious mother of her
+anonymous pupil.  Perhaps she was disappointed, perhaps she was
+only fastidious; but as she coldly invited her to enter, she half-
+unconsciously settled her white cuffs and collar, and gathered
+closer her own chaste skirts.  It was, perhaps, for this reason
+that the embarrassed stranger, after a moment's hesitation, left
+her gorgeous parasol open and sticking in the dust beside the door,
+and then sat down at the farther end of a long bench.  Her voice
+was husky as she began:
+
+"I heerd tell that you were goin' down to the Bay tomorrow, and I
+couldn't let you go until I came to thank you for your kindness to
+my Tommy."
+
+Tommy, Miss Mary said, was a good boy, and deserved more than the
+poor attention she could give him.
+
+"Thank you, miss; thank ye!" cried the stranger, brightening even
+through the color which Red Gulch knew facetiously as her "war
+paint," and striving, in her embarrassment, to drag the long bench
+nearer the schoolmistress.  "I thank you, miss, for that! and if I
+am his mother, there ain't a sweeter, dearer, better boy lives than
+him.  And if I ain't much as says it, thar ain't a sweeter, dearer,
+angeler teacher lives than he's got."
+
+Miss Mary, sitting primly behind her desk, with a ruler over her
+shoulder, opened her gray eyes widely at this, but said nothing.
+
+"It ain't for you to be complimented by the like of me, I know,"
+she went on, hurriedly.  "It ain't for me to be comin' here, in
+broad day, to do it, either; but I come to ask a favor--not for me,
+miss--not for me, but for the darling boy."
+
+Encouraged by a look in the young schoolmistress's eye, and putting
+her lilac-gloved hands together, the fingers downward, between her
+knees, she went on, in a low voice:
+
+"You see, miss, there's no one the boy has any claim on but me, and
+I ain't the proper person to bring him up.  I thought some, last
+year, of sending him away to Frisco to school, but when they talked
+of bringing a schoolma'am here, I waited till I saw you, and then I
+knew it was all right, and I could keep my boy a little longer.
+And O, miss, he loves you so much; and if you could hear him talk
+about you, in his pretty way, and if he could ask you what I ask
+you now, you couldn't refuse him.
+
+"It is natural," she went on, rapidly, in a voice that trembled
+strangely between pride and humility--"it's natural that he should
+take to you, miss, for his father, when I first knew him, was a
+gentleman--and the boy must forget me, sooner or later--and so I
+ain't goin' to cry about that.  For I come to ask you to take my
+Tommy--God bless him for the bestest, sweetest boy that lives--to--
+to--take him with you."
+
+She had risen and caught the young girl's hand in her own, and had
+fallen on her knees beside her.
+
+"I've money plenty, and it's all yours and his.  Put him in some
+good school, where you can go and see him, and help him to--to--to
+forget his mother.  Do with him what you like.  The worst you can
+do will be kindness to what he will learn with me.  Only take him
+out of this wicked life, this cruel place, this home of shame and
+sorrow.  You will; I know you will--won't you?  You will--you must
+not, you cannot say no!  You will make him as pure, as gentle as
+yourself; and when he has grown up, you will tell him his father's
+name--the name that hasn't passed my lips for years--the name of
+Alexander Morton, whom they call here Sandy!  Miss Mary!--do not
+take your hand away!  Miss Mary, speak to me!  You will take my
+boy?  Do not put your face from me.  I know it ought not to look on
+such as me.  Miss Mary!--my God, be merciful!--she is leaving me!"
+
+Miss Mary had risen and, in the gathering twilight, had felt her
+way to the open window.  She stood there, leaning against the
+casement, her eyes fixed on the last rosy tints that were fading
+from the western sky.  There was still some of its light on her
+pure young forehead, on her white collar, on her clasped white
+hands, but all fading slowly away.  The suppliant had dragged
+herself, still on her knees, beside her.
+
+"I know it takes time to consider.  I will wait here all night; but
+I cannot go until you speak.  Do not deny me now.  You will!--I see
+it in your sweet face--such a face as I have seen in my dreams.  I
+see it in your eyes, Miss Mary!--you will take my boy!"
+
+The last red beam crept higher, suffused Miss Mary's eyes with
+something of its glory, flickered, and faded, and went out.  The
+sun had set on Red Gulch.  In the twilight and silence Miss Mary's
+voice sounded pleasantly.
+
+"I will take the boy.  Send him to me tonight."
+
+The happy mother raised the hem of Miss Mary's skirts to her lips.
+She would have buried her hot face in its virgin folds, but she
+dared not.  She rose to her feet.
+
+"Does--this man--know of your intention?" asked Miss Mary,
+suddenly.
+
+"No, nor cares.  He has never even seen the child to know it."
+
+"Go to him at once--tonight--now!  Tell him what you have done.
+Tell him I have taken his child, and tell him--he must never see--
+see--the child again.  Wherever it may be, he must not come;
+wherever I may take it, he must not follow!  There, go now, please--
+I'm weary, and--have much yet to do!"
+
+They walked together to the door.  On the threshold the woman
+turned.
+
+"Good night."
+
+She would have fallen at Miss Mary's feet.  But at the same moment
+the young girl reached out her arms, caught the sinful woman to her
+own pure breast for one brief moment, and then closed and locked
+the door.
+
+
+It was with a sudden sense of great responsibility that Profane
+Bill took the reins of the Slumgullion Stage the next morning, for
+the schoolmistress was one of his passengers.  As he entered the
+highroad, in obedience to a pleasant voice from the "inside," he
+suddenly reined up his horses and respectfully waited as Tommy
+hopped out at the command of Miss Mary.  "Not that bush, Tommy--the
+next."
+
+Tommy whipped out his new pocketknife, and, cutting a branch from a
+tall azalea bush, returned with it to Miss Mary.
+
+"All right now?"
+
+"All right."
+
+And the stage door closed on the Idyl of Red Gulch.
+
+
+
+BROWN OF CALAVERAS
+
+
+A subdued tone of conversation, and the absence of cigar smoke and
+boot heels at the windows of the Wingdam stagecoach, made it
+evident that one of the inside passengers was a woman.  A
+disposition on the part of loungers at the stations to congregate
+before the window, and some concern in regard to the appearance of
+coats, hats, and collars, further indicated that she was lovely.
+All of which Mr. Jack Hamlin, on the box seat, noted with the smile
+of cynical philosophy.  Not that he depreciated the sex, but that
+he recognized therein a deceitful element, the pursuit of which
+sometimes drew mankind away from the equally uncertain
+blandishments of poker--of which it may be remarked that Mr. Hamlin
+was a professional exponent.
+
+So that when he placed his narrow boot on the wheel and leaped
+down, he did not even glance at the window from which a green veil
+was fluttering, but lounged up and down with that listless and
+grave indifference of his class, which was, perhaps, the next thing
+to good breeding.  With his closely buttoned figure and self-
+contained air he was a marked contrast to the other passengers,
+with their feverish restlessness and boisterous emotion; and even
+Bill Masters, a graduate of Harvard, with his slovenly dress, his
+overflowing vitality, his intense appreciation of lawlessness and
+barbarism, and his mouth filled with crackers and cheese, I fear
+cut but an unromantic figure beside this lonely calculator of
+chances, with his pale Greek face and Homeric gravity.
+
+The driver called "All aboard!" and Mr. Hamlin returned to the
+coach.  His foot was upon the wheel, and his face raised to the
+level of the open window, when, at the same moment, what appeared
+to him to be the finest eyes in the world suddenly met his.  He
+quietly dropped down again, addressed a few words to one of the
+inside passengers, effected an exchange of seats, and as quietly
+took his place inside.  Mr. Hamlin never allowed his philosophy to
+interfere with decisive and prompt action.
+
+I fear that this irruption of Jack cast some restraint upon the
+other passengers--particularly those who were making themselves
+most agreeable to the lady.  One of them leaned forward, and
+apparently conveyed to her information regarding Mr. Hamlin's
+profession in a single epithet.  Whether Mr. Hamlin heard it, or
+whether he recognized in the informant a distinguished jurist from
+whom, but a few evenings before, he had won several thousand
+dollars, I cannot say.  His colorless face betrayed no sign; his
+black eyes, quietly observant, glanced indifferently past the legal
+gentleman, and rested on the much more pleasing features of his
+neighbor.  An Indian stoicism--said to be an inheritance from his
+maternal ancestor--stood him in good service, until the rolling
+wheels rattled upon the river gravel at Scott's Ferry, and the
+stage drew up at the International Hotel for dinner.  The legal
+gentleman and a member of Congress leaped out, and stood ready to
+assist the descending goddess, while Colonel Starbottle, of
+Siskiyou, took charge of her parasol and shawl.  In this
+multiplicity of attention there was a momentary confusion and
+delay.  Jack Hamlin quietly opened the OPPOSITE door of the coach,
+took the lady's hand--with that decision and positiveness which a
+hesitating and undecided sex know how to admire--and in an instant
+had dexterously and gracefully swung her to the ground, and again
+lifted her to the platform.  An audible chuckle on the box, I fear,
+came from that other cynic, "Yuba Bill," the driver.  "Look
+keerfully arter that baggage, Kernel," said the expressman, with
+affected concern, as he looked after Colonel Starbottle, gloomily
+bringing up the rear of the triumphant procession to the waiting-
+room.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not stay for dinner.  His horse was already saddled,
+and awaiting him.  He dashed over the ford, up the gravelly hill,
+and out into the dusty perspective of the Wingdam road, like one
+leaving pleasant fancy behind him.  The inmates of dusty cabins by
+the roadside shaded their eyes with their hands and looked after
+him, recognizing the man by his horse, and speculating what "was up
+with Comanche Jack."  Yet much of this interest centered in the
+horse, in a community where the time made by "French Pete's" mare
+in his run from the Sheriff of Calaveras eclipsed all concern in
+the ultimate fate of that worthy.
+
+The sweating flanks of his gray at length recalled him to himself.
+He checked his speed, and, turning into a by-road, sometimes used
+as a cutoff, trotted leisurely along, the reins hanging listlessly
+from his fingers.  As he rode on, the character of the landscape
+changed and became more pastoral.  Openings in groves of pine and
+sycamore disclosed some rude attempts at cultivation--a flowering
+vine trailed over the porch of one cabin, and a woman rocked her
+cradled babe under the roses of another.  A little farther on Mr.
+Hamlin came upon some barelegged children wading in the willowy
+creek, and so wrought upon them with a badinage peculiar to himself
+that they were emboldened to climb up his horse's legs and over his
+saddle, until he was fain to develop an exaggerated ferocity of
+demeanor, and to escape, leaving behind some kisses and coin.  And
+then, advancing deeper into the woods, where all signs of
+habitation failed, he began to sing--uplifting a tenor so
+singularly sweet, and shaded by a pathos so subduing and tender,
+that I wot the robins and linnets stopped to listen.  Mr. Hamlin's
+voice was not cultivated; the subject of his song was some
+sentimental lunacy borrowed from the Negro minstrels; but there
+thrilled through all some occult quality of tone and expression
+that was unspeakably touching.  Indeed, it was a wonderful sight to
+see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket
+and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through
+the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave" in a way that
+overflowed the eyes of the listener.  A sparrow hawk, fresh from
+his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred
+spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the
+superiority of man.  With a superior predatory capacity, HE
+couldn't sing.
+
+But Mr. Hamlin presently found himself again on the highroad, and
+at his former pace.  Ditches and banks of gravel, denuded
+hillsides, stumps, and decayed trunks of trees, took the place of
+woodland and ravine, and indicated his approach to civilization.
+Then a church steeple came in sight, and he knew that he had
+reached home.  In a few moments he was clattering down the single
+narrow street that lost itself in a chaotic ruin of races, ditches,
+and tailings at the foot of the hill, and dismounted before the
+gilded windows of the "Magnolia" saloon.  Passing through the long
+barroom, he pushed open a green-baize door, entered a dark passage,
+opened another door with a passkey, and found himself in a dimly
+lighted room whose furniture, though elegant and costly for the
+locality, showed signs of abuse.  The inlaid center table was
+overlaid with stained disks that were not contemplated in the
+original design.  The embroidered armchairs were discolored, and
+the green velvet lounge, on which Mr. Hamlin threw himself, was
+soiled at the foot with the red soil of Wingdam.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not sing in his cage.  He lay still, looking at a
+highly colored painting above him representing a young creature of
+opulent charms.  It occurred to him then, for the first time, that
+he had never seen exactly that kind of a woman, and that if he
+should, he would not, probably, fall in love with her.  Perhaps he
+was thinking of another style of beauty.  But just then someone
+knocked at the door.  Without rising, he pulled a cord that
+apparently shot back a bolt, for the door swung open, and a man
+entered.
+
+The newcomer was broad-shouldered and robust--a vigor not borne out
+in the face, which, though handsome, was singularly weak, and
+disfigured by dissipation.  He appeared to be also under the
+influence of liquor, for he started on seeing Mr. Hamlin, and said,
+"I thought Kate was here," stammered, and seemed confused and
+embarrassed.
+
+Mr. Hamlin smiled the smile which he had before worn on the Wingdam
+coach, and sat up, quite refreshed and ready for business.
+
+"You didn't come up on the stage," continued the newcomer, "did
+you?"
+
+"No," replied Hamlin; "I left it at Scott's Ferry.  It isn't due
+for half an hour yet.  But how's luck, Brown?"
+
+Damn bad," said Brown, his face suddenly assuming an expression of
+weak despair; "I'm cleaned out again, Jack," he continued, in a
+whining tone that formed a pitiable contrast to his bulky figure,
+"can't you help me with a hundred till tomorrow's cleanup?  You see
+I've got to send money home to the old woman, and--you've won
+twenty times that amount from me."
+
+The conclusion was, perhaps, not entirely logical, but Jack
+overlooked it, and handed the sum to his visitor.  "The old-woman
+business is about played out, Brown," he added, by way of
+commentary; "why don't you say you want to buck agin' faro?  You
+know you ain't married!"
+
+"Fact, sir," said Brown, with a sudden gravity, as if the mere
+contact of the gold with the palm of the hand had imparted some
+dignity to his frame.  "I've got a wife--a damned good one, too, if
+I do say it--in the States.  It's three year since I've seen her,
+and a year since I've writ to her.  When things is about straight,
+and we get down to the lead, I'm going to send for her."
+
+"And Kate?" queried Mr. Hamlin, with his previous smile.
+
+Mr. Brown of Calaveras essayed an archness of glance, to cover his
+confusion, which his weak face and whisky-muddled intellect but
+poorly carried out, and said:
+
+"Damn it, Jack, a man must have a little liberty, you know.  But
+come, what do you say to a little game?  Give us a show to double
+this hundred."
+
+Jack Hamlin looked curiously at his fatuous friend.  Perhaps he
+knew that the man was predestined to lose the money, and preferred
+that it should flow back into his own coffers rather than any
+other.  He nodded his head, and drew his chair toward the table.
+At the same moment there came a rap upon the door.
+
+"It's Kate," said Mr. Brown.
+
+Mr. Hamlin shot back the bolt, and the door opened.  But, for the
+first time in his life, he staggered to his feet, utterly unnerved
+and abashed, and for the first time in his life the hot blood
+crimsoned his colorless cheeks to his forehead.  For before him
+stood the lady he had lifted from the Wingdam coach, whom Brown--
+dropping his cards with a hysterical laugh--greeted as:
+
+"My old woman, by thunder!"
+
+They say that Mrs. Brown burst into tears, and reproaches of her
+husband.  I saw her, in 1857, at Marysville, and disbelieve the
+story.  And the WINGDAM CHRONICLE, of the next week, under the head
+of "Touching Reunion," said: "One of those beautiful and touching
+incidents, peculiar to California life, occurred last week in our
+city.  The wife of one of Wingdam's eminent pioneers, tired of the
+effete civilization of the East and its inhospitable climate,
+resolved to join her noble husband upon these golden shores.
+Without informing him of her intention, she undertook the long
+journey, and arrived last week.  The joy of the husband may be
+easier imagined than described.  The meeting is said to have been
+indescribably affecting.  We trust her example may be followed."
+
+
+Whether owing to Mrs. Brown's influence, or to some more successful
+speculations, Mr. Brown's financial fortune from that day steadily
+improved.  He bought out his partners in the "Nip and Tuck" lead,
+with money which was said to have been won at poker, a week or two
+after his wife's arrival, but which rumor, adopting Mrs. Brown's
+theory that Brown had forsworn the gaming-table, declared to have
+been furnished by Mr. Jack Hamlin.  He built and furnished the
+"Wingdam House," which pretty Mrs. Brown's great popularity kept
+overflowing with guests.  He was elected to the Assembly, and gave
+largess to churches.  A street in Wingdam was named in his honor.
+
+Yet it was noted that in proportion as he waxed wealthy and
+fortunate, he grew pale, thin, and anxious.  As his wife's
+popularity increased, he became fretful and impatient.  The most
+uxorious of husbands, he was absurdly jealous.  If he did not
+interfere with his wife's social liberty, it was because it was
+maliciously whispered that his first and only attempt was met by an
+outburst from Mrs. Brown that terrified him into silence.  Much of
+this kind of gossip came from those of her own sex whom she had
+supplanted in the chivalrous attentions of Wingdam, which, like
+most popular chivalry, was devoted to an admiration of power,
+whether of masculine force or feminine beauty.  It should be
+remembered, too, in her extenuation that since her arrival, she had
+been the unconscious priestess of a mythological worship, perhaps
+not more ennobling to her womanhood than that which distinguished
+an older Greek democracy.  I think that Brown was dimly conscious
+of this.  But his only confidant was Jack Hamlin, whose INFELIX
+reputation naturally precluded any open intimacy with the family,
+and whose visits were infrequent.
+
+It was midsummer, and a moonlit night; and Mrs. Brown, very rosy,
+large-eyed, and pretty, sat upon the piazza, enjoying the fresh
+incense of the mountain breeze, and, it is to be feared, another
+incense which was not so fresh, nor quite as innocent.  Beside her
+sat Colonel Starbottle and Judge Boompointer, and a later addition
+to her court in the shape of a foreign tourist.  She was in good
+spirits.
+
+"What do you see down the road?" inquired the gallant Colonel, who
+had been conscious, for the last few minutes, that Mrs. Brown's
+attention was diverted.
+
+"Dust," said Mrs. Brown, with a sigh.  "Only Sister Anne's 'flock
+of sheep.'"
+
+The Colonel, whose literary recollections did not extend farther
+back than last week's paper, took a more practical view.  "It ain't
+sheep," he continued; "it's a horseman.  Judge, ain't that Jack
+Hamlin's gray?"
+
+But the Judge didn't know; and as Mrs. Brown suggested the air was
+growing too cold for further investigations, they retired to the
+parlor.
+
+Mr. Brown was in the stable, where he generally retired after
+dinner.  Perhaps it was to show his contempt for his wife's
+companions; perhaps, like other weak natures, he found pleasure in
+the exercise of absolute power over inferior animals.  He had a
+certain gratification in the training of a chestnut mare, whom he
+could beat or caress as pleased him, which he couldn't do with Mrs.
+Brown.  It was here that he recognized a certain gray horse which
+had just come in, and, looking a little farther on, found his
+rider.  Brown's greeting was cordial and hearty, Mr. Hamlin's
+somewhat restrained.  But at Brown's urgent request, he followed
+him up the back stairs to a narrow corridor, and thence to a small
+room looking out upon the stable yard.  It was plainly furnished
+with a bed, a table, a few chairs, and a rack for guns and whips.
+
+"This yer's my home, Jack," said Brown, with a sigh, as he threw
+himself upon the bed, and motioned his companion to a chair.  "Her
+room's t'other end of the hall.  It's more'n six months since we've
+lived together, or met, except at meals.  It's mighty rough papers
+on the head of the house, ain't it?" he said, with a forced laugh.
+"But I'm glad to see you, Jack, damn glad," and he reached from the
+bed, and again shook the unresponsive hand of Jack Hamlin.
+
+"I brought ye up here, for I didn't want to talk in the stable;
+though, for the matter of that, it's all round town.  Don't strike
+a light.  We can talk here in the moonshine.  Put up your feet on
+that winder, and sit here beside me.  Thar's whisky in that jug."
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not avail himself of the information.  Brown of
+Calaveras turned his face to the wall and continued:
+
+"If I didn't love the woman, Jack, I wouldn't mind.  But it's
+loving her, and seeing her, day arter day, goin' on at this rate,
+and no one to put down the brake; that's what gits me!  But I'm
+glad to see ye, Jack, damn glad."
+
+In the darkness he groped about until he had found and wrung his
+companion's hand again.  He would have detained it, but Jack
+slipped it into the buttoned breast of his coat, and asked,
+listlessly, "How long has this been going on?"
+
+"Ever since she came here; ever since the day she walked into the
+Magnolia.  I was a fool then; Jack, I'm a fool now; but I didn't
+know how much I loved her till then.  And she hasn't been the same
+woman since.
+
+"But that ain't all, Jack; and it's what I wanted to see you about,
+and I'm glad you've come.  It ain't that she doesn't love me any
+more; it ain't that she fools with every chap that comes along,
+for, perhaps, I staked her love and lost it, as I did everything
+else at the Magnolia; and, perhaps, foolin' is nateral to some
+women, and thar ain't no great harm done, 'cept to the fools.  But,
+Jack, I think--I think she loves somebody else.  Don't move, Jack;
+don't move; if your pistol hurts ye, take it off.
+
+"It's been more'n six months now that she's seemed unhappy and
+lonesome, and kinder nervous and scared-like.  And sometimes I've
+ketched her lookin' at me sort of timid and pitying.  And she
+writes to somebody.  And for the last week she's been gathering her
+own things--trinkets, and furbelows, and jew'lry--and, Jack, I
+think she's goin' off.  I could stand all but that.  To have her
+steal away like a thief--"  He put his face downward to the pillow,
+and for a few moments there was no sound but the ticking of a clock
+on the mantel.  Mr. Hamlin lit a cigar, and moved to the open
+window.  The moon no longer shone into the room, and the bed and
+its occupant were in shadow.  "What shall I do, Jack?" said the
+voice from the darkness.
+
+The answer came promptly and clearly from the window-side: "Spot
+the man, and kill him on sight."
+
+"But, Jack?"
+
+"He's took the risk!"
+
+"But will that bring HER back?"
+
+Jack did not reply, but moved from the window toward the door.
+
+"Don't go yet, Jack; light the candle, and sit by the table.  It's
+a comfort to see ye, if nothin' else."
+
+Jack hesitated, and then complied.  He drew a pack of cards from
+his pocket and shuffled them, glancing at the bed.  But Brown's
+face was turned to the wall.  When Mr. Hamlin had shuffled the
+cards, he cut them, and dealt one card on the opposite side of the
+table and toward the bed, and another on his side of the table for
+himself.  The first was a deuce, his own card, a king.  He then
+shuffled and cut again.  This time "dummy" had a queen, and himself
+a four-spot.  Jack brightened up for the third deal.  It brought
+his adversary a deuce, and himself a king again.  "Two out of
+three," said Jack, audibly.
+
+"What's that, Jack?" said Brown.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+Then Jack tried his hand with dice; but he always threw sixes, and
+his imaginary opponent aces.  The force of habit is sometimes
+confusing.
+
+Meanwhile, some magnetic influence in Mr. Hamlin's presence, or the
+anodyne of liquor, or both, brought surcease of sorrow, and Brown
+slept.  Mr. Hamlin moved his chair to the window, and looked out on
+the town of Wingdam, now sleeping peacefully--its harsh outlines
+softened and subdued, its glaring colors mellowed and sobered in
+the moonlight that flowed over all.  In the hush he could hear the
+gurgling of water in the ditches, and the sighing of the pines
+beyond the hill.  Then he looked up at the firmament, and as he did
+so a star shot across the twinkling field.  Presently another, and
+then another.  The phenomenon suggested to Mr. Hamlin a fresh
+augury.  If in another fifteen minutes another star should fall--
+He sat there, watch in hand, for twice that time, but the
+phenomenon was not repeated.
+
+The clock struck two, and Brown still slept.  Mr. Hamlin approached
+the table and took from his pocket a letter, which he read by the
+flickering candlelight.  It contained only a single line, written
+in pencil, in a woman's hand:
+
+"Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three."
+
+The sleeper moved uneasily, and then awoke.  "Are you there Jack?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Don't go yet.  I dreamed just now, Jack--dreamed of old times.  I
+thought that Sue and me was being married agin, and that the
+parson, Jack, was--who do you think?--you!"
+
+The gambler laughed, and seated himself on the bed--the paper still
+in his hand.
+
+"It's a good sign, ain't it?" queried Brown.
+
+"I reckon.  Say, old man, hadn't you better get up?"
+
+The "old man," thus affectionately appealed to, rose, with the
+assistance of Hamlin's outstretched hand.
+
+"Smoke?"
+
+Brown mechanically took the proffered cigar.
+
+"Light?"
+
+Jack had twisted the letter into a spiral, lit it, and held it for
+his companion.  He continued to hold it until it was consumed, and
+dropped the fragment--a fiery star--from the open window.  He
+watched it as it fell, and then returned to his friend.
+
+"Old man," he said, placing his hands upon Brown's shoulders, "in
+ten minutes I'll be on the road, and gone like that spark.  We
+won't see each other agin; but, before I go, take a fool's advice:
+sell out all you've got, take your wife with you, and quit the
+country.  It ain't no place for you, nor her.  Tell her she must
+go; make her go, if she won't.  Don't whine because you can't be a
+saint, and she ain't an angel.  Be a man--and treat her like a
+woman.  Don't be a damn fool.  Good-by."
+
+He tore himself from Brown's grasp, and leaped down the stairs like
+a deer.  At the stable door he collared the half-sleeping hostler
+and backed him against the wall.  "Saddle my horse in two minutes,
+or I'll--"  The ellipsis was frightfully suggestive.
+
+"The missis said you was to have the buggy," stammered the man.
+
+"Damn the buggy!"
+
+The horse was saddled as fast as the nervous hands of the astounded
+hostler could manipulate buckle and strap.
+
+"Is anything up, Mr. Hamlin?" said the man, who, like all his
+class, admired the elan of his fiery patron, and was really
+concerned in his welfare.
+
+"Stand aside!"
+
+The man fell back.  With an oath, a bound, and clatter, Jack was
+into the road.  In another moment, to the man's half-awakened eyes,
+he was but a moving cloud of dust in the distance, toward which a
+star just loosed from its brethren was trailing a stream of fire.
+
+But early that morning the dwellers by the Wingdam turnpike, miles
+away, heard a voice, pure as a skylark�s, singing afield.  They who
+were asleep turned over on their rude couches to dream of youth and
+love and olden days.  Hard-faced men and anxious gold-seekers,
+already at work, ceased their labors and leaned upon their picks,
+to listen to a romantic vagabond ambling away against the rosy
+sunrise.
+
+
+
+HIGH-WATER MARK
+
+
+When the tide was out on the Dedlow Marsh, its extended dreariness
+was patent.  Its spongy, low-lying surface, sluggish, inky pools,
+and tortuous sloughs, twisting their slimy way, eel-like, toward
+the open bay, were all hard facts.  So were the few green tussocks,
+with their scant blades, their amphibious flavor and unpleasant
+dampness.  And if you choose to indulge your fancy--although the
+flat monotony of the Dedlow Marsh was not inspiring--the wavy line
+of scattered drift gave an unpleasant consciousness of the spent
+waters, and made the dead certainty of the returning tide a gloomy
+reflection which no present sunshine could dissipate.  The greener
+meadowland seemed oppressed with this idea, and made no positive
+attempt at vegetation until the work of reclamation should be
+complete.  In the bitter fruit of the low cranberry bushes one
+might fancy he detected a naturally sweet disposition curdled and
+soured by an injudicious course of too much regular cold water.
+
+The vocal expression of the Dedlow Marsh was also melancholy and
+depressing.  The sepulchral boom of the bittern, the shriek of the
+curlew, the scream of passing brent, the wrangling of quarrelsome
+teal, the sharp, querulous protest of the startled crane, and
+syllabled complaint of the "killdeer" plover, were beyond the power
+of written expression.  Nor was the aspect of these mournful fowls
+at all cheerful and inspiring.  Certainly not the blue heron
+standing mid-leg deep in the water, obviously catching cold in a
+reckless disregard of wet feet and consequences; nor the mournful
+curlew, the dejected plover, or the low-spirited snipe, who saw fit
+to join him in his suicidal contemplation; nor the impassive
+kingfisher--an ornithological Marius--reviewing the desolate
+expanse; nor the black raven that went to and fro over the face of
+the marsh continually, but evidently couldn�t make up his mind
+whether the waters had subsided, and felt low-spirited in the
+reflection that, after all this trouble, he wouldn't be able to
+give a definite answer.  On the contrary, it was evident at a
+glance that the dreary expanse of Dedlow Marsh told unpleasantly on
+the birds, and that the season of migration was looked forward to
+with a feeling of relief and satisfaction by the full-grown, and of
+extravagant anticipation by the callow, brood.  But if Dedlow Marsh
+was cheerless at the slack of the low tide, you should have seen it
+when the tide was strong and full.  When the damp air blew chilly
+over the cold, glittering expanse, and came to the faces of those
+who looked seaward like another tide; when a steel-like glint
+marked the low hollows and the sinuous line of slough; when the
+great shell-incrusted trunks of fallen trees arose again, and went
+forth on their dreary, purposeless wanderings, drifting hither and
+thither, but getting no farther toward any goal at the falling tide
+or the day's decline than the cursed Hebrew in the legend; when the
+glossy ducks swung silently, making neither ripple nor furrow on
+the shimmering surface; when the fog came in with the tide and shut
+out the blue above, even as the green below had been obliterated;
+when boatmen lost in that fog, paddling about in a hopeless way,
+started at what seemed the brushing of mermen's fingers on the
+boat's keel, or shrank from the tufts of grass spreading around
+like the floating hair of a corpse, and knew by these signs that
+they were lost upon Dedlow Marsh and must make a night of it, and a
+gloomy one at that--then you might know something of Dedlow Marsh
+at high water.
+
+Let me recall a story connected with this latter view which never
+failed to recur to my mind in my long gunning excursions upon
+Dedlow Marsh.  Although the event was briefly recorded in the
+counry paper, I had the story, in all its eloquent detail, from the
+lips of the principal actor.  I cannot hope to catch the varying
+emphasis and peculiar coloring of feminine delineation, for my
+narrator was a woman; but I'll try to give at least its substance.
+
+She lived midway of the great slough of Dedlow Marsh and a good-
+sized river, which debouched four miles beyond into an estuary
+formed by the Pacific Ocean, on the long sandy peninsula which
+constituted the southwestern boundary of a noble bay.  The house in
+which she lived was a small frame cabin raised from the marsh a few
+feet by stout piles, and was three miles distant from the
+settlements upon the river.  Her husband was a logger--a profitable
+business in a county where the principal occupation was the
+manufacture of lumber.
+
+It was the season of early spring when her husband left on the ebb
+of a high tide, with a raft of logs for the usual transportation to
+the lower end of the bay.  As she stood by the door of the little
+cabin when the voyagers departed she noticed a cold look in the
+southeastern sky, and she remembered hearing her husband say to his
+companions that they must endeavor to complete their voyage before
+the coming of the southwesterly gale which he saw brewing.  And
+that night it began to storm and blow harder than she had ever
+before experienced, and some great trees fell in the forest by the
+river, and the house rocked like her baby's cradle.
+
+But however the storm might roar about the little cabin, she knew
+that one she trusted had driven bolt and bar with his own strong
+hand, and that had he feared for her he would not have left her.
+This, and her domestic duties, and the care of her little sickly
+baby, helped to keep her mind from dwelling on the weather, except,
+of course, to hope that he was safely harbored with the logs at
+Utopia in the dreary distance.  But she noticed that day, when she
+went out to feed the chickens and look after the cow, that the tide
+was up to the little fence of their garden-patch, and the roar of
+the surf on the south beach, though miles away, she could hear
+distinctly.  And she began to think that she would like to have
+someone to talk with about matters, and she believed that if it had
+not been so far and so stormy, and the trail so impassable, she
+would have taken the baby and have gone over to Ryckman's, her
+nearest neighbor.  But then, you see, he might have returned in the
+storm, all wet, with no one to see to him; and it was a long
+exposure for baby, who was croupy and ailing.
+
+But that night, she never could tell why, she didn't feel like
+sleeping or even lying down.  The storm had somewhat abated, but
+she still "sat and sat," and even tried to read.  I don't know
+whether it was a Bible or some profane magazine that this poor
+woman read, but most probably the latter, for the words all ran
+together and made such sad nonsense that she was forced at last to
+put the book down and turn to that dearer volume which lay before
+her in the cradle, with its white initial leaf as yet unsoiled, and
+try to look forward to its mysterious future.  And, rocking the
+cradle, she thought of everything and everybody, but still was
+wide-awake as ever.
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when she at last lay down in her
+clothes.  How long she slept she could not remember, but she awoke
+with a dreadful choking in her throat, and found herself standing,
+trembling all over, in the middle of the room, with her baby
+clasped to her breast, and she was "saying something."  The baby
+cried and sobbed, and she walked up and down trying to hush it when
+she heard a scratching at the door.  She opened it fearfully, and
+was glad to see it was only old Pete, their dog, who crawled,
+dripping with water, into the room.  She would like to have looked
+out, not in the faint hope of her husband's coming, but to see how
+things looked; but the wind shook the door so savagely that she
+could hardly hold it.  Then she sat down a little while, and then
+walked up and down a little while, and then she lay down again a
+little while.  Lying close by the wall of the little cabin, she
+thought she heard once or twice something scrape slowly against the
+clapboards, like the scraping of branches.  Then there was a little
+gurgling sound, "like the baby made when it was swallowing"; then
+something went "click-click" and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up
+in bed.  When she did so she was attracted by something else that
+seemed creeping from the back door toward the center of the room.
+It wasn't much wider than her little finger, but soon it swelled to
+the width of her hand, and began spreading all over the floor.  It
+was water.
+
+She ran to the front door and threw it wide open, and saw nothing
+but water.  She ran to the back door and threw it open, and saw
+nothing but water.  She ran to the side window, and throwing that
+open, she saw nothing but water.  Then she remembered hearing her
+husband once say that there was no danger in the tide, for that
+fell regularly, and people could calculate on it, and that he would
+rather live near the bay than the river, whose banks might overflow
+at any time.  But was it the tide?  So she ran again to the back
+door, and threw out a stick of wood.  It drifted away toward the
+bay.  She scooped up some of the water and put it eagerly to her
+lips.  It was fresh and sweet.  It was the river, and not the tide!
+
+It was then--O God be praised for his goodness! she did neither
+faint nor fall; it was then--blessed be the Saviour, for it was his
+merciful hand that touched and strengthened her in this awful
+moment--that fear dropped from her like a garment, and her
+trembling ceased.  It was then and thereafter that she never lost
+her self-command, through all the trials of that gloomy night.
+
+She drew the bedstead toward the middle of the room, and placed a
+table upon it and on that she put the cradle.  The water on the
+floor was already over her ankles, and the house once or twice
+moved so perceptibly, and seemed to be racked so, that the closet
+doors all flew open.  Then she heard the same rasping and thumping
+against the wall, and, looking out, saw that a large uprooted tree,
+which had lain near the road at the upper end of the pasture, had
+floated down to the house.  Luckily its long roots dragged in the
+soil and kept it from moving as rapidly as the current, for had it
+struck the house in its full career, even the strong nails and
+bolts in the piles could not have withstood the shock.  The hound
+had leaped upon its knotty surface, and crouched near the roots
+shivering and whining.  A ray of hope flashed across her mind.  She
+drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe,
+waded in the deepening waters to the door.  As the tree swung
+again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she
+leaped on to its trunk.  By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining
+a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its
+roots, she held in the other her moaning child.  Then something
+cracked near the front porch, and the whole front of the house she
+had just quitted fell forward--just as cattle fall on their knees
+before they lie down--and at the same moment the great redwood tree
+swung round and drifted away with its living cargo into the black
+night.
+
+For all the excitement and danger, for all her soothing of her
+crying babe, for all the whistling of the wind, for all the
+uncertainty of her situation, she still turned to look at the
+deserted and water-swept cabin.  She remembered even then, and she
+wonders how foolish she was to think of it at that time, that she
+wished she had put on another dress and the baby's best clothes;
+and she kept praying that the house would be spared so that he,
+when he returned, would have something to come to, and it wouldn't
+be quite so desolate, and--how could he ever know what had become
+of her and baby?  And at the thought she grew sick and faint.  But
+she had something else to do besides worrying, for whenever the
+long roots of her ark struck an obstacle, the whole trunk made half
+a revolution, and twice dipped her in the black water.  The hound,
+who kept distracting her by running up and down the tree and
+howling, at last fell off at one of these collisions.  He swam for
+some time beside her, and she tried to get the poor beast up on the
+tree, but he "acted silly" and wild, and at last she lost sight of
+him forever.  Then she and her baby were left alone.  The light
+which had burned for a few minutes in the deserted cabin was
+quenched suddenly.  She could not then tell whither she was
+drifting.  The outline of the white dunes on the peninsula showed
+dimly ahead, and she judged the tree was moving in a line with the
+river.  It must be about slack water, and she had probably reached
+the eddy formed by the confluence of the tide and the overflowing
+waters of the river.  Unless the tide fell soon, there was present
+danger of her drifting to its channel, and being carried out to sea
+or crushed in the floating drift.  That peril averted, if she were
+carried out on the ebb toward the bay, she might hope to strike one
+of the wooded promontories of the peninsula, and rest till
+daylight.  Sometimes she thought she heard voices and shouts from
+the river, and the bellowing of cattle and bleating of sheep.  Then
+again it was only the ringing in her ears and throbbing of her
+heart.  She found at about this time that she was so chilled and
+stiffened in her cramped position that she could scarcely move, and
+the baby cried so when she put it to her breast that she noticed
+the milk refused to flow; and she was so frightened at that, that
+she put her head under her shawl, and for the first time cried
+bitterly.
+
+When she raised her head again, the boom of the surf was behind
+her, and she knew that her ark had again swung round.  She dipped
+up the water to cool her parched throat, and found that it was salt
+as her tears.  There was a relief, though, for by this sign she
+knew that she was drifting with the tide.  It was then the wind
+went down, and the great and awful silence oppressed her.  There
+was scarcely a ripple against the furrowed sides of the great trunk
+on which she rested, and around her all was black gloom and quiet.
+She spoke to the baby just to hear herself speak, and to know that
+she had not lost her voice.  She thought then--it was queer, but
+she could not help thinking it--how awful must have been the night
+when the great ship swung over the Asiatic peak, and the sounds of
+creation were blotted out from the world.  She thought, too, of
+mariners clinging to spars, and of poor women who were lashed to
+rafts, and beaten to death by the cruel sea.  She tried to thank
+God that she was thus spared, and lifted her eyes from the baby,
+who had fallen into a fretful sleep.  Suddenly, away to the
+southward, a great light lifted itself out of the gloom, and
+flashed and flickered, and flickered and flashed again.  Her heart
+fluttered quickly against the baby's cold cheek.  It was the
+lighthouse at the entrance of the bay.  As she was yet wondering,
+the tree suddenly rolled a little, dragged a little, and then
+seemed to lie quiet and still.  She put out her hand and the
+current gurgled against it.  The tree was aground, and, by the
+position of the light and the noise of the surf, aground upon the
+Dedlow Marsh.
+
+Had it not been for her baby, who was ailing and croupy, had it not
+been for the sudden drying up of that sensitive fountain, she would
+have felt safe and relieved.  Perhaps it was this which tended to
+make all her impressions mournful and gloomy.  As the tide rapidly
+fell, a great flock of black brent fluttered by her, screaming and
+crying.  Then the plover flew up and piped mournfully as they
+wheeled around the trunk, and at last fearlessly lit upon it like a
+gray cloud.  Then the heron flew over and around her, shrieking and
+protesting, and at last dropped its gaunt legs only a few yards
+from her.  But, strangest of all, a pretty white bird, larger than
+a dove--like a pelican, but not a pelican--circled around and
+around her.  At last it lit upon a rootlet of the tree, quite over
+her shoulder.  She put out her hand and stroked its beautiful white
+neck, and it never appeared to move.  It stayed there so long that
+she thought she would lift up the baby to see it, and try to
+attract her attention.  But when she did so, the child was so
+chilled and cold, and had such a blue look under the little lashes
+which it didn't raise at all, that she screamed aloud, and the bird
+flew away, and she fainted.
+
+Well, that was the worst of it, and perhaps it was not so much,
+after all, to any but herself.  For when she recovered her senses
+it was bright sunlight, and dead low water.  There was a confused
+noise of guttural voices about her, and an old squaw, singing an
+Indian "hushaby," and rocking herself from side to side before a
+fire built on the marsh, before which she, the recovered wife and
+mother, lay weak and weary.  Her first thought was for her baby,
+and she was about to speak, when a young squaw, who must have been
+a mother herself, fathomed her thought and brought her the
+"mowitch," pale but living, in such a queer little willow cradle
+all bound up, just like the squaw's own young one, that she laughed
+and cried together, and the young squaw and the old squaw showed
+their big white teeth and glinted their black eyes and said,
+"Plenty get well, skeena mowitch," "wagee man come plenty soon,"
+and she could have kissed their brown faces in her joy.  And then
+she found that they had been gathering berries on the marsh in
+their queer, comical baskets, and saw the skirt of her gown
+fluttering on the tree from afar, and the old squaw couldn't resist
+the temptation of procuring a new garment, and came down and
+discovered the "wagee" woman and child.  And of course she gave the
+garment to the old squaw, as you may imagine, and when HE came at
+last and rushed up to her, looking about ten years older in his
+anxiety, she felt so faint again that they had to carry her to the
+canoe.  For, you see, he knew nothing about the flood until he met
+the Indians at Utopia, and knew by the signs that the poor woman
+was his wife.  And at the next high tide he towed the tree away
+back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another
+house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called
+it after her, "Mary's Ark!"  But you may guess the next house was
+built above high-water mark.  And that's all.
+
+Not much, perhaps, considering the malevolent capacity of the
+Dedlow Marsh.  But you must tramp over it at low water, or paddle
+over it at high tide, or get lost upon it once or twice in the fog,
+as I have, to understand properly Mary's adventure, or to
+appreciate duly the blessings of living beyond High-Water Mark.
+
+
+
+A LONELY RIDE
+
+
+As I stepped into the Slumgullion stage I saw that it was a dark
+night, a lonely road, and that I was the only passenger.  Let me
+assure the reader that I have no ulterior design in making this
+assertion.  A long course of light reading has forewarned me what
+every experienced intelligence must confidently look for from such
+a statement.  The storyteller who willfully tempts Fate by such
+obvious beginnings; who is to the expectant reader in danger of
+being robbed or half-murdered, or frightened by an escaped lunatic,
+or introduced to his ladylove for the first time, deserves to be
+detected.  I am relieved to say that none of these things occurred
+to me.  The road from Wingdam to Slumgullion knew no other banditti
+than the regularly licensed hotelkeepers; lunatics had not yet
+reached such depth of imbecility as to ride of their own free will
+in California stages; and my Laura, amiable and long-suffering as
+she always is, could not, I fear, have borne up against these
+depressing circumstances long enough to have made the slightest
+impression on me.
+
+I stood with my shawl and carpetbag in hand, gazing doubtingly on
+the vehicle.  Even in the darkness the red dust of Wingdam was
+visible on its roof and sides, and the red slime of Slumgullion
+clung tenaciously to its wheels.  I opened the door; the stage
+creaked easily, and in the gloomy abyss the swaying straps beckoned
+me, like ghostly hands, to come in now and have my sufferings out
+at once.
+
+I must not omit to mention the occurrence of a circumstance which
+struck me as appalling and mysterious.  A lounger on the steps of
+the hotel, who I had reason to suppose was not in any way connected
+with the stage company, gravely descended, and walking toward the
+conveyance, tried the handle of the door, opened it, expectorated
+in the carriage, and returned to the hotel with a serious demeanor.
+Hardly had he resumed his position when another individual, equally
+disinterested, impassively walked down the steps, proceeded to the
+back of the stage, lifted it, expectorated carefully on the axle,
+and returned slowly and pensively to the hotel.  A third spectator
+wearily disengaged himself from one of the Ionic columns of the
+portico and walked to the box, remained for a moment in serious and
+expectorative contemplation of the boot, and then returned to his
+column.  There was something so weird in this baptism that I grew
+quite nervous.
+
+Perhaps I was out of spirits.  A number of infinitesimal
+annoyances, winding up with the resolute persistency of the clerk
+at the stage office to enter my name misspelt on the waybill, had
+not predisposed me to cheerfulness.  The inmates of the Eureka
+House, from a social viewpoint, were not attractive.  There was the
+prevailing opinion--so common to many honest people--that a serious
+style of deportment and conduct toward a stranger indicates high
+gentility and elevated station.  Obeying this principle, all
+hilarity ceased on my entrance to supper, and general remark merged
+into the safer and uncompromising chronicle of several bad cases of
+diphtheria, then epidemic at Wingdam.  When I left the dining-room,
+with an odd feeling that I had been supping exclusively on mustard
+and tea leaves, I stopped a moment at the parlor door.  A piano,
+harmoniously related to the dinner bell, tinkled responsive to a
+diffident and uncertain touch.  On the white wall the shadow of an
+old and sharp profile was bending over several symmetrical and
+shadowy curls.  "I sez to Mariar, Mariar, sez I, 'Praise to the
+face is open disgrace.'"  I heard no more.  Dreading some
+susceptibility to sincere expression on the subject of female
+loveliness, I walked away, checking the compliment that otherwise
+might have risen unbidden to my lips, and have brought shame and
+sorrow to the household.
+
+It was with the memory of these experiences resting heavily upon me
+that I stood hesitatingly before the stage door.  The driver, about
+to mount, was for a moment illuminated by the open door of the
+hotel.  He had the wearied look which was the distinguishing
+expression of Wingdam.  Satisfied that I was properly waybilled and
+receipted for, he took no further notice of me.  I looked longingly
+at the box seat, but he did not respond to the appeal.  I flung my
+carpetbag into the chasm, dived recklessly after it, and--before I
+was fairly seated--with a great sigh, a creaking of unwilling
+springs, complaining bolts, and harshly expostulating axle, we
+moved away.  Rather the hotel door slipped behind, the sound of the
+piano sank to rest, and the night and its shadows moved solemnly
+upon us.
+
+To say it was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that
+encompassed the vehicle.  The roadside trees were scarcely
+distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the
+peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at
+the open window as we rolled by.  We proceeded slowly; so leisurely
+that, leaning from the carriage, I more than once detected the
+fragrant sigh of some astonished cow, whose ruminating repose upon
+the highway we had ruthlessly disturbed.  But in the darkness our
+progress, more the guidance of some mysterious instinct than any
+apparent volition of our own, gave an indefinable charm of security
+to our journey that a moment's hesitation or indecision on the part
+of the driver would have destroyed.
+
+I had indulged a hope that in the empty vehicle I might obtain that
+rest so often denied me in its crowded condition.  It was a weak
+delusion.  When I stretched out my limbs it was only to find that
+the ordinary conveniences for making several people distinctly
+uncomfortable were distributed throughout my individual frame.  At
+last, resting my arms on the straps, by dint of much gymnastic
+effort I became sufficiently composed to be aware of a more refined
+species of torture.  The springs of the stage, rising and falling
+regularly, produced a rhythmical beat which began to absorb my
+attention painfully.  Slowly this thumping merged into a senseless
+echo of the mysterious female of the hotel parlor, and shaped
+itself into this awful and benumbing axiom--"Praise-to-the-face-is-
+open-disgrace.  Praise-to-the-face-is-open-disgrace."  Inequalities
+of the road only quickened its utterance or drawled it to an
+exasperating length.
+
+It was of no use to consider the statement seriously.  It was of no
+use to except to it indignantly.  It was of no use to recall the
+many instances where praise to the face had redounded to the
+everlasting honor of praiser and bepraised; of no use to dwell
+sentimentally on modest genius and courage lifted up and
+strengthened by open commendation; of no use to except to the
+mysterious female, to picture her as rearing a thin-blooded
+generation on selfish and mechanically repeated axioms--all this
+failed to counteract the monotonous repetition of this sentence.
+There was nothing to do but to give in--and I was about to accept
+it weakly, as we too often treat other illusions of darkness and
+necessity, for the time being, when I became aware of some other
+annoyance that had been forcing itself upon me for the last few
+moments.  How quiet the driver was!
+
+Was there any driver?  Had I any reason to suppose that he was not
+lying gagged and bound on the roadside, and the highwayman with
+blackened face who did the thing so quietly driving me--whither?
+The thing is perfectly feasible.  And what is this fancy now being
+jolted out of me?  A story?  It's of no use to keep it back--
+particularly in this abysmal vehicle, and here it comes: I am a
+Marquis--a French Marquis; French, because the peerage is not so
+well known, and the country is better adapted to romantic incident--
+a Marquis, because the democratic reader delights in the nobility.
+My name is something LIGNY.  I am coming from Paris to my country
+seat at St. Germain.  It is a dark night, and I fall asleep and
+tell my honest coachman, Andre, not to disturb me, and dream of an
+angel.  The carriage at last stops at the chateau.  It is so dark
+that when I alight I do not recognize the face of the footman who
+holds the carriage door.  But what of that?--PESTE!  I am heavy
+with sleep.  The same obscurity also hides the old familiar
+indecencies of the statues on the terrace; but there is a door, and
+it opens and shuts behind me smartly.  Then I find myself in a
+trap, in the presence of the brigand who has quietly gagged poor
+Andre and conducted the carriage thither.  There is nothing for me
+to do, as a gallant French Marquis, but to say, "PARBLEU!" draw my
+rapier, and die valorously!  I am found a week or two after outside
+a deserted cabaret near the barrier, with a hole through my ruffled
+linen and my pockets stripped.  No; on second thoughts, I am
+rescued--rescued by the angel I have been dreaming of, who is the
+assumed daughter of the brigand but the real daughter of an
+intimate friend.
+
+Looking from the window again, in the vain hope of distinguishing
+the driver, I found my eyes were growing accustomed to the
+darkness.  I could see the distant horizon, defined by India-inky
+woods, relieving a lighter sky.  A few stars widely spaced in this
+picture glimmered sadly.  I noticed again the infinite depth of
+patient sorrow in their serene faces; and I hope that the vandal
+who first applied the flippant "twinkle" to them may not be driven
+melancholy-mad by their reproachful eyes.  I noticed again the
+mystic charm of space that imparts a sense of individual solitude
+to each integer of the densest constellation, involving the
+smallest star with immeasurable loneliness.  Something of this calm
+and solitude crept over me, and I dozed in my gloomy cavern.  When
+I awoke the full moon was rising.  Seen from my window, it had an
+indescribably unreal and theatrical effect.  It was the full moon
+of NORMA--that remarkable celestial phenomenon which rises so
+palpably to a hushed audience and a sublime andante chorus, until
+the CASTA DIVA is sung--the "inconstant moon" that then and
+thereafter remains fixed in the heavens as though it were a part of
+the solar system inaugurated by Joshua.  Again the white-robed
+Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut
+from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back
+with the first strain of the recitative.  The thumping springs
+essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the
+vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view.  But it was a vast
+improvement upon my past experience, and I hugged the fond
+delusion.
+
+My fears for the driver were dissipated with the rising moon.  A
+familiar sound had assured me of his presence in the full
+possession of at least one of his most important functions.
+Frequent and full expectoration convinced me that his lips were as
+yet not sealed by the gag of highwaymen, and soothed my anxious
+ear.  With this load lifted from my mind, and assisted by the mild
+presence of Diana, who left, as when she visited Endymion, much of
+her splendor outside my cavern--I looked around the empty vehicle.
+On the forward seat lay a woman's hairpin.  I picked it up with an
+interest that, however, soon abated.  There was no scent of the
+roses to cling to it still, not even of hair oil.  No bend or twist
+in its rigid angles betrayed any trait of its wearer's character.
+I tried to think that it might have been "Mariar's."  I tried to
+imagine that, confining the symmetrical curls of that girl, it
+might have heard the soft compliments whispered in her ears which
+provoked the wrath of the aged female.  But in vain.  It was
+reticent and unswerving in its upright fidelity, and at last
+slipped listlessly through my fingers.
+
+I had dozed repeatedly--waked on the threshold of oblivion by
+contact with some of the angles of the coach, and feeling that I
+was unconsciously assuming, in imitation of a humble insect of my
+childish recollection, that spherical shape which could best resist
+those impressions, when I perceived that the moon, riding high in
+the heavens, had begun to separate the formless masses of the
+shadowy landscape.  Trees isolated, in clumps and assemblages,
+changed places before my window.  The sharp outlines of the distant
+hills came back, as in daylight, but little softened in the dry,
+cold, dewless air of a California summer night.  I was wondering
+how late it was, and thinking that if the horses of the night
+traveled as slowly as the team before us, Faustus might have been
+spared his agonizing prayer, when a sudden spasm of activity
+attacked my driver.  A succession of whip-snappings, like a pack of
+Chinese crackers, broke from the box before me.  The stage leaped
+forward, and when I could pick myself from under the seat, a long
+white building had in some mysterious way rolled before my window.
+It must be Slumgullion!  As I descended from the stage I addressed
+the driver:
+
+"I thought you changed horses on the road?"
+
+"So we did.  Two hours ago."
+
+"That's odd.  I didn't notice it."
+
+"Must have been asleep, sir.  Hope you had a pleasant nap.  Bully
+place for a nice quiet snooze--empty stage, sir!"
+
+
+
+THE MAN OF NO ACCOUNT
+
+
+His name was Fagg--David Fagg.  He came to California in '52 with
+us, in the SKYSCRAPER.  I don't think he did it in an adventurous
+way.  He probably had no other place to go to.  When a knot of us
+young fellows would recite what splendid opportunities we resigned
+to go, and how sorry our friends were to have us leave, and show
+daguerreotypes and locks of hair, and talk of Mary and Susan, the
+man of no account used to sit by and listen with a pained,
+mortified expression on his plain face, and say nothing.  I think
+he had nothing to say.  He had no associates except when we
+patronized him; and, in point of fact, he was a good deal of sport
+to us.  He was always seasick whenever we had a capful of wind.  He
+never got his sea legs on, either.  And I never shall forget how we
+all laughed when Rattler took him the piece of pork on a string,
+and--  But you know that time-honored joke.  And then we had such a
+splendid lark with him.  Miss Fanny Twinkler couldn't bear the
+sight of him, and we used to make Fagg think that she had taken a
+fancy to him, and send him little delicacies and books from the
+cabin.  You ought to have witnessed the rich scene that took place
+when he came up, stammering and very sick, to thank her!  Didn't
+she flash up grandly and beautifully and scornfully?  So like
+"Medora," Rattler said--Rattler knew Byron by heart--and wasn't old
+Fagg awfully cut up?  But he got over it, and when Rattler fell
+sick at Valparaiso, old Fagg used to nurse him.  You see he was a
+good sort of fellow, but he lacked manliness and spirit.
+
+He had absolutely no idea of poetry.  I've seen him sit stolidly
+by, mending his old clothes, when Rattler delivered that stirring
+apostrophe of Byron's to the ocean.  He asked Rattler once, quite
+seriously, if he thought Byron was ever seasick.  I don't remember
+Rattler's reply, but I know we all laughed very much, and I have no
+doubt it was something good for Rattler was smart.
+
+When the SKYSCRAPER arrived at San Francisco we had a grand "feed."
+We agreed to meet every year and perpetuate the occasion.  Of
+course we didn't invite Fagg.  Fagg was a steerage passenger, and
+it was necessary, you see, now we were ashore, to exercise a little
+discretion.  But Old Fagg, as we called him--he was only about
+twenty-five years old, by the way--was the source of immense
+amusement to us that day.  It appeared that he had conceived the
+idea that he could walk to Sacramento, and actually started off
+afoot.  We had a good time, and shook hands with one another all
+around, and so parted.  Ah me! only eight years ago, and yet some
+of those hands then clasped in amity have been clenched at each
+other, or have dipped furtively in one another's pockets.  I know
+that we didn't dine together the next year, because young Barker
+swore he wouldn't put his feet under the same mahogany with such a
+very contemptible scoundrel as that Mixer; and Nibbles, who
+borrowed money at Valparaiso of young Stubbs, who was then a waiter
+in a restaurant, didn't like to meet such people.
+
+When I bought a number of shares in the Coyote Tunnel at
+Mugginsville, in '54, I thought I'd take a run up there and see it.
+I stopped at the Empire Hotel, and after dinner I got a horse and
+rode round the town and out to the claim.  One of those individuals
+whom newspaper correspondents call "our intelligent informant," and
+to whom in all small communities the right of answering questions
+is tacitly yielded, was quietly pointed out to me.  Habit had
+enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he never
+pretermitted either.  He gave me a history of the claim, and added:
+"You see, stranger," (he addressed the bank before him) "gold is
+sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his
+pick) but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the
+point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the
+pick for a period).  He was green, and let the boys about here jump
+him"--and the rest of his sentence was confided to his hat, which
+he had removed to wipe his manly brow with his red bandanna.
+
+I asked him who was the original proprietor.
+
+"His name war Fagg."
+
+I went to see him.  He looked a little older and plainer.  He had
+worked hard, he said, and was getting on "so-so."  I took quite a
+liking to him and patronized him to some extent.  Whether I did so
+because I was beginning to have a distrust for such fellows as
+Rattler and Mixer is not necessary for me to state.
+
+You remember how the Coyote Tunnel went in, and how awfully we
+shareholders were done!  Well, the next thing I heard was that
+Rattler, who was one of the heaviest shareholders, was up at
+Mugginsville keeping bar for the proprietor of the Mugginsville
+Hotel, and that old Fagg had struck it rich, and didn't know what
+to do with his money.  All this was told me by Mixer, who had been
+there, settling up matters, and likewise that Fagg was sweet upon
+the daughter of the proprietor of the aforesaid hotel.  And so by
+hearsay and letter I eventually gathered that old Robins, the hotel
+man, was trying to get up a match between Nellie Robins and Fagg.
+Nellie was a pretty, plump, and foolish little thing, and would do
+just as her father wished.  I thought it would be a good thing for
+Fagg if he should marry and settle down; that as a married man he
+might be of some account.  So I ran up to Mugginsville one day to
+look after things.
+
+It did me an immense deal of good to make Rattler mix my drinks for
+me--Rattler! the gay, brilliant, and unconquerable Rattler, who had
+tried to snub me two years ago.  I talked to him about old Fagg and
+Nellie, particularly as I thought the subject was distasteful.  He
+never liked Fagg, and he was sure, he said, that Nellie didn't.
+Did Nellie like anybody else?  He turned around to the mirror
+behind the bar and brushed up his hair!  I understood the conceited
+wretch.  I thought I'd put Fagg on his guard and get him to hurry
+up matters.  I had a long talk with him.  You could see by the way
+the poor fellow acted that he was badly stuck.  He sighed, and
+promised to pluck up courage to hurry matters to a crisis.  Nellie
+was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet respect for old
+Fagg's unobtrusiveness.  But her fancy was already taken captive by
+Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and pleasing.
+I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I.  We are more apt
+to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic
+worth.  It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them,
+quite as convenient.  The difficulty with women is that their
+feelings are apt to get interested sooner than ours, and then, you
+know, reasoning is out of the question.  This is what old Fagg
+would have known had he been of any account.  But he wasn't.  So
+much the worse for him.
+
+It was a few months afterward and I was sitting in my office when
+in walked old Fagg.  I was surprised to see him down, but we talked
+over the current topics in that mechanical manner of people who
+know that they have something else to say, but are obliged to get
+at it in that formal way.  After an interval Fagg in his natural
+manner said:
+
+"I'm going home!"
+
+"Going home?"
+
+"Yes--that is, I think I'll take a trip to the Atlantic States.  I
+came to see you, as you know I have some little property, and I
+have executed a power of attorney for you to manage my affairs.  I
+have some papers I'd like to leave with you.  Will you take charge
+of them?"
+
+"Yes," I said.  "But what of Nellie?"
+
+His face fell.  He tried to smile, and the combination resulted in
+one of the most startling and grotesque effects I ever beheld.  At
+length he said:
+
+"I shall not marry Nellie--that is"--he seemed to apologize
+internally for the positive form of expression--"I think that I had
+better not."
+
+"David Fagg," I said with sudden severity, "you're of no account!"
+
+To my astonishment his face brightened.  "Yes," said he, "that's
+it!--I'm of no account!  But I always knew it.  You see I thought
+Rattler loved that girl as well as I did, and I knew she liked him
+better than she did me, and would be happier I dare say with him.
+But then I knew that old Robins would have preferred me to him, as
+I was better off--and the girl would do as he said--and, you see, I
+thought I was kinder in the way--and so I left.  But," he
+continued, as I was about to interrupt him, "for fear the old man
+might object to Rattler, I've lent him enough to set him up in
+business for himself in Dogtown.  A pushing, active, brilliant
+fellow, you know, like Rattler can get along, and will soon be in
+his old position again--and you needn't be hard on him, you know,
+if he doesn't.  Good-by."
+
+I was too much disgusted with his treatment of that Rattler to be
+at all amiable, but as his business was profitable, I promised to
+attend to it, and he left.  A few weeks passed.  The return steamer
+arrived, and a terrible incident occupied the papers for days
+afterward.  People in all parts of the State conned eagerly the
+details of an awful shipwreck, and those who had friends aboard
+went away by themselves, and read the long list of the lost under
+their breath.  I read of the gifted, the gallant, the noble, and
+loved ones who had perished, and among them I think I was the first
+to read the name of David Fagg.  For the "man of no account" had
+"gone home!"
+
+
+
+MLISS
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Just where the Sierra Nevada begins to subside in gentler
+undulations, and the rivers grow less rapid and yellow, on the side
+of a great red mountain, stands "Smith's Pocket."  Seen from the
+red road at sunset, in the red light and the red dust, its white
+houses look like the outcroppings of quartz on the mountainside.
+The red stage topped with red-shirted passengers is lost to view
+half a dozen times in the tortuous descent, turning up unexpectedly
+in out-of-the-way places, and vanishing altogether within a hundred
+yards of the town.  It is probably owing to this sudden twist in
+the road that the advent of a stranger at Smith's Pocket is usually
+attended with a peculiar circumstance.  Dismounting from the
+vehicle at the stage office, the too-confident traveler is apt to
+walk straight out of town under the impression that it lies in
+quite another direction.  It is related that one of the tunnel men,
+two miles from town, met one of these self-reliant passengers with
+a carpetbag, umbrella, Harper's Magazine, and other evidences of
+"Civilization and Refinement," plodding along over the road he had
+just ridden, vainly endeavoring to find the settlement of Smith's
+Pocket.
+
+An observant traveler might have found some compensation for his
+disappointment in the weird aspect of that vicinity.  There were
+huge fissures on the hillside, and displacements of the red soil,
+resembling more the chaos of some primary elemental upheaval than
+the work of man; while halfway down, a long flume straddled its
+narrow body and disproportionate legs over the chasm, like an
+enormous fossil of some forgotten antediluvian.  At every step
+smaller ditches crossed the road, hiding in their sallow depths
+unlovely streams that crept away to a clandestine union with the
+great yellow torrent below, and here and there were the ruins of
+some cabin with the chimney alone left intact and the hearthstone
+open to the skies.
+
+The settlement of Smith's Pocket owed its origin to the finding of
+a "pocket" on its site by a veritable Smith.  Five thousand dollars
+were taken out of it in one half-hour by Smith.  Three thousand
+dollars were expended by Smith and others in erecting a flume and
+in tunneling.  And then Smith's Pocket was found to be only a
+pocket, and subject like other pockets to depletion.  Although
+Smith pierced the bowels of the great red mountain, that five
+thousand dollars was the first and last return of his labor.  The
+mountain grew reticent of its golden secrets, and the flume
+steadily ebbed away the remainder of Smith's fortune.  Then Smith
+went into quartz-mining; then into quartz-milling; then into
+hydraulics and ditching, and then by easy degrees into
+saloonkeeping.  Presently it was whispered that Smith was drinking
+a great deal; then it was known that Smith was a habitual drunkard,
+and then people began to think, as they are apt to, that he had
+never been anything else.  But the settlement of Smith's Pocket,
+like that of most discoveries, was happily not dependent on the
+fortune of its pioneer, and other parties projected tunnels and
+found pockets.  So Smith's Pocket became a settlement, with its two
+fancy stores, its two hotels, its one express office, and its two
+first families.  Occasionally its one long straggling street was
+overawed by the assumption of the latest San Francisco fashions,
+imported per express, exclusively to the first families; making
+outraged Nature, in the ragged outline of her furrowed surface,
+look still more homely, and putting personal insult on that greater
+portion of the population to whom the Sabbath, with a change of
+linen, brought merely the necessity of cleanliness without the
+luxury of adornment.  Then there was a Methodist Church, and hard
+by a Monte Bank, and a little beyond, on the mountainside, a
+graveyard; and then a little schoolhouse.
+
+"The Master," as he was known to his little flock, sat alone one
+night in the schoolhouse, with some open copybooks before him,
+carefully making those bold and full characters which are supposed
+to combine the extremes of chirographical and moral excellence, and
+had got as far as "Riches are deceitful," and was elaborating the
+noun with an insincerity of flourish that was quite in the spirit
+of his text, when he heard a gentle tapping.  The woodpeckers had
+been busy about the roof during the day, and the noise did not
+disturb his work.  But the opening of the door, and the tapping
+continuing from the inside, caused him to look up.  He was slightly
+startled by the figure of a young girl, dirty and shabbily clad.
+Still, her great black eyes, her coarse, uncombed, lusterless black
+hair falling over her sunburned face, her red arms and feet
+streaked with the red soil, were all familiar to him.  It was
+Melissa Smith--Smith's motherless child.
+
+"What can she want here?" thought the master.  Everybody knew
+"Mliss," as she was called, throughout the length and height of Red
+Mountain.  Everybody knew her as an incorrigible girl.  Her fierce,
+ungovernable disposition, her mad freaks and lawless character,
+were in their way as proverbial as the story of her father's
+weaknesses, and as philosophically accepted by the townsfolk.  She
+wrangled with and fought the schoolboys with keener invective and
+quite as powerful arm.  She followed the trails with a woodman's
+craft, and the master had met her before, miles away, shoeless,
+stockingless, and bareheaded on the mountain road.  The miners'
+camps along the stream supplied her with subsistence during these
+voluntary pilgrimages, in freely offered alms.  Not but that a
+larger protection had been previously extended to Mliss.  The Rev.
+Joshua McSnagley, "stated" preacher, had placed her in the hotel as
+servant, by way of preliminary refinement, and had introduced her
+to his scholars at Sunday school.  But she threw plates
+occasionally at the landlord, and quickly retorted to the cheap
+witticisms of the guests, and created in the Sabbath school a
+sensation that was so inimical to the orthodox dullness and
+placidity of that institution that, with a decent regard for the
+starched frocks and unblemished morals of the two pink-and-white-
+faced children of the first families, the reverend gentleman had
+her ignominiously expelled.  Such were the antecedents, and such
+the character of Mliss as she stood before the master.  It was
+shown in the ragged dress, the unkempt hair, and bleeding feet, and
+asked his pity.  It flashed from her black, fearless eyes, and
+commanded his respect.
+
+"I come here tonight," she said rapidly and boldly, keeping her
+hard glance on his, "because I knew you was alone.  I wouldn't come
+here when them gals was here.  I hate 'em and they hates me.
+That's why.  You keep school, don't you?  I want to be teached!"
+
+If to the shabbiness of her apparel and uncomeliness of her tangled
+hair and dirty face she had added the humility of tears, the master
+would have extended to her the usual moiety of pity, and nothing
+more.  But with the natural, though illogical, instincts of his
+species, her boldness awakened in him something of that respect
+which all original natures pay unconsciously to one another in any
+grade.  And he gazed at her the more fixedly as she went on still
+rapidly, her hand on that door latch and her eyes on his:
+
+"My name's Mliss--Mliss Smith!  You can bet your life on that.  My
+father's Old Smith--Old Bummer Smith--that's what's the matter with
+him.  Mliss Smith--and I'm coming to school!"
+
+"Well?" said the master.
+
+Accustomed to be thwarted and opposed, often wantonly and cruelly,
+for no other purpose than to excite the violent impulses of her
+nature, the master's phlegm evidently took her by surprise.  She
+stopped; she began to twist a lock of her hair between her fingers;
+and the rigid line of upper lip, drawn over the wicked little
+teeth, relaxed and quivered slightly.  Then her eyes dropped, and
+something like a blush struggled up to her cheek and tried to
+assert itself through the splashes of redder soil, and the sunburn
+of years.  Suddenly she threw herself forward, calling on God to
+strike her dead, and fell quite weak and helpless, with her face on
+the master's desk, crying and sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+The master lifted her gently and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
+When, with face still averted, she was repeating between her sobs
+the MEA CULPA of childish penitence--that "she'd be good, she
+didn't mean to," etc., it came to him to ask her why she had left
+Sabbath school.
+
+Why had she left the Sabbath school?--why?  Oh, yes.  What did he
+(McSnagley) want to tell her she was wicked for?  What did he tell
+her that God hated her for?  If God hated her, what did she want to
+go to Sabbath school for?  SHE didn't want to be "beholden" to
+anybody who hated her.
+
+Had she told McSnagley this?
+
+Yes, she had.
+
+The master laughed.  It was a hearty laugh, and echoed so oddly in
+the little schoolhouse, and seemed so inconsistent and discordant
+with the sighing of the pines without, that he shortly corrected
+himself with a sigh.  The sigh was quite as sincere in its way,
+however, and after a moment of serious silence he asked about her
+father.
+
+Her father?  What father?  Whose father?  What had he ever done for
+her?  Why did the girls hate her?  Come now! what made the folks
+say, "Old Bummer Smith's Mliss!" when she passed?  Yes; oh yes.
+She wished he was dead--she was dead--everybody was dead; and her
+sobs broke forth anew.
+
+The master then, leaning over her, told her as well as he could
+what you or I might have said after hearing such unnatural theories
+from childish lips; only bearing in mind perhaps better than you or
+I the unnatural facts of her ragged dress, her bleeding feet, and
+the omnipresent shadow of her drunken father.  Then, raising her to
+her feet, he wrapped his shawl around her, and, bidding her come
+early in the morning, he walked with her down the road.  There he
+bade her "good night."  The moon shone brightly on the narrow path
+before them.  He stood and watched the bent little figure as it
+staggered down the road, and waited until it had passed the little
+graveyard and reached the curve of the hill, where it turned and
+stood for a moment, a mere atom of suffering outlined against the
+far-off patient stars.  Then he went back to his work.  But the
+lines of the copybook thereafter faded into long parallels of
+never-ending road, over which childish figures seemed to pass
+sobbing and crying into the night.  Then, the little schoolhouse
+seeming lonelier than before, he shut the door and went home.
+
+The next morning Mliss came to school.  Her face had been washed,
+and her coarse black hair bore evidence of recent struggles with
+the comb, in which both had evidently suffered.  The old defiant
+look shone occasionally in her eyes, but her manner was tamer and
+more subdued.  Then began a series of little trials and self-
+sacrifices, in which master and pupil bore an equal part, and which
+increased the confidence and sympathy between them.  Although
+obedient under the master's eye, at times during recess, if
+thwarted or stung by a fancied slight, Mliss would rage in
+ungovernable fury, and many a palpitating young savage, finding
+himself matched with his own weapons of torment, would seek the
+master with torn jacket and scratched face and complaints of the
+dreadful Mliss.  There was a serious division among the townspeople
+on the subject, some threatening to withdraw their children from
+such evil companionship, and others as warmly upholding the course
+of the master in his work of reclamation.  Meanwhile, with a steady
+persistence that seemed quite astonishing to him on looking back
+afterward, the master drew Mliss gradually out of the shadow of her
+past life, as though it were but her natural progress down the
+narrow path on which he had set her feet the moonlit night of their
+first meeting.  Remembering the experience of the evangelical
+McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that
+unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith.  But if, in the
+course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words
+which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the
+wiser, and the more prudent--if she learned something of a faith
+that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her
+eyes, it did not take the shape of a lesson.  A few of the plainer
+people had made up a little sum by which the ragged Mliss was
+enabled to assume the garments of respect and civilization; and
+often a rough shake of the hand, and words of homely commendation
+from a red-shirted and burly figure, sent a glow to the cheek of
+the young master, and set him to thinking if it was altogether
+deserved.
+
+Three months had passed from the time of their first meeting, and
+the master was sitting late one evening over the moral and
+sententious copies, when there came a tap at the door and again
+Mliss stood before him.  She was neatly clad and clean-faced, and
+there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black
+eyes to remind him of his former apparition.  "Are you busy?" she
+asked.  "Can you come with me?"--and on his signifying his
+readiness, in her old willful way she said, "Come, then, quick!"
+
+They passed out of the door together and into the dark road.  As
+they entered the town the master asked her whither she was going.
+She replied, "To see my father."
+
+It was the first time he had heard her call him by that filial
+title, or indeed anything more than "Old Smith" or the "Old Man."
+It was the first time in three months that she had spoken of him at
+all, and the master knew she had kept resolutely aloof from him
+since her great change.  Satisfied from her manner that it was
+fruitless to question her purpose, he passively followed.  In out-
+of-the-way places, low groggeries, restaurants, and saloons; in
+gambling hells and dance houses, the master, preceded by Mliss,
+came and went.  In the reeking smoke and blasphemous outcries of
+low dens, the child, holding the master's hand, stood and anxiously
+gazed, seemingly unconscious of all in the one absorbing nature of
+her pursuit.  Some of the revelers, recognizing Mliss, called to
+the child to sing and dance for them, and would have forced liquor
+upon her but for the interference of the master.  Others,
+recognizing him mutely, made way for them to pass.  So an hour
+slipped by.  Then the child whispered in his ear that there was a
+cabin on the other side of the creek crossed by the long flume,
+where she thought he still might be.  Thither they crossed--a
+toilsome half-hour's walk--but in vain.  They were returning by the
+ditch at the abutment of the flume, gazing at the lights of the
+town on the opposite bank, when, suddenly, sharply, a quick report
+rang out on the clear night air.  The echoes caught it, and carried
+it round and round Red Mountain, and set the dogs to barking all
+along the streams.  Lights seemed to dance and move quickly on the
+outskirts of the town for a few moments, the stream rippled quite
+audibly beside them, a few stones loosened themselves from the
+hillside and splashed into the stream, a heavy wind seemed to surge
+the branches of the funereal pines, and then the silence seemed to
+fall thicker, heavier, and deadlier.  The master turned toward
+Mliss with an unconscious gesture of protection, but the child had
+gone.  Oppressed by a strange fear, he ran quickly down the trail
+to the river's bed, and, jumping from boulder to boulder, reached
+the base of Red Mountain and the outskirts of the village.  Midway
+of the crossing he looked up and held his breath in awe.  For high
+above him on the narrow flume he saw the fluttering little figure
+of his late companion crossing swiftly in the darkness.
+
+He climbed the bank, and, guided by a few lights moving about a
+central point on the mountain, soon found himself breathless among
+a crowd of awe-stricken and sorrowful men.  Out from among them the
+child appeared, and, taking the master's hand, led him silently
+before what seemed a ragged hole in the mountain.  Her face was
+quite white, but her excited manner gone, and her look that of one
+to whom some long-expected event had at last happened--an
+expression that to the master in his bewilderment seemed almost
+like relief.  The walls of the cavern were partly propped by
+decaying timbers.  The child pointed to what appeared to be some
+ragged, castoff clothes left in the hole by the late occupant.  The
+master approached nearer with his flaming dip, and bent over them.
+It was Smith, already cold, with a pistol in his hand and a bullet
+in his heart, lying beside his empty pocket.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The opinion which McSnagley expressed in reference to a "change of
+heart" supposed to be experienced by Mliss was more forcibly
+described in the gulches and tunnels.  It was thought there that
+Mliss had "struck a good lead."  So when there was a new grave
+added to the little enclosure, and at the expense of the master a
+little board and inscription put above it, the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER
+came out quite handsomely, and did the fair thing to the memory of
+one of "our oldest Pioneers," alluding gracefully to that "bane of
+noble intellects," and otherwise genteelly shelving our dear
+brother with the past.  "He leaves an only child to mourn his
+loss," says the BANNER, "who is now an exemplary scholar, thanks to
+the efforts of the Rev. Mr. McSnagley."  The Rev. McSnagley, in
+fact, made a strong point of Mliss's conversion, and, indirectly
+attributing to the unfortunate child the suicide of her father,
+made affecting allusions in Sunday school to the beneficial effects
+of the "silent tomb," and in this cheerful contemplation drove most
+of the children into speechless horror, and caused the pink-and-
+white scions of the first families to howl dismally and refuse to
+be comforted.
+
+The long dry summer came.  As each fierce day burned itself out in
+little whiffs of pearl-gray smoke on the mountain summits, and the
+upspringing breeze scattered its red embers over the landscape, the
+green wave which in early spring upheaved above Smith's grave grew
+sere and dry and hard.  In those days the master, strolling in the
+little churchyard of a Sabbath afternoon, was sometimes surprised
+to find a few wild flowers plucked from the damp pine forests
+scattered there, and oftener rude wreaths hung upon the little pine
+cross.  Most of these wreaths were formed of a sweet-scented grass,
+which the children loved to keep in their desks, intertwined with
+the plumes of the buckeye, the syringa, and the wood anemone, and
+here and there the master noticed the dark-blue cowl of the
+monkshood, or deadly aconite.  There was something in the odd
+association of this noxious plant with these memorials which
+occasioned a painful sensation to the master deeper than his
+esthetic sense.  One day, during a long walk, in crossing a wooded
+ridge he came upon Mliss in the heart of the forest, perched upon a
+prostrate pine on a fantastic throne formed by the hanging plumes
+of lifeless branches, her lap full of grasses and pine burrs, and
+crooning to herself one of the Negro melodies of her younger life.
+Recognizing him at a distance, she made room for him on her
+elevated throne, and with a grave assumption of hospitality and
+patronage that would have been ridiculous had it not been so
+terribly earnest, she fed him with pine nuts and crab apples.  The
+master took that opportunity to point out to her the noxious and
+deadly qualities of the monkshood, whose dark blossoms he saw in
+her lap, and extorted from her a promise not to meddle with it as
+long as she remained his pupil.  This done--as the master had
+tested her integrity before--he rested satisfied, and the strange
+feeling which had overcome him on seeing them died away.
+
+Of the homes that were offered Mliss when her conversion became
+known, the master preferred that of Mrs. Morpher, a womanly and
+kindhearted specimen of Southwestern efflorescence, known in her
+maidenhood as the "Per-rairie Rose."  Being one of those who
+contend resolutely against their own natures, Mrs. Morpher, by a
+long series of self-sacrifices and struggles, had at last
+subjugated her naturally careless disposition to principles of
+"order," which she considered, in common with Mr. Pope, as
+"Heaven's first law."  But she could not entirely govern the orbits
+of her satellites, however regular her own movements, and even her
+own "Jeemes" sometimes collided with her.  Again her old nature
+asserted itself in her children.  Lycurgus dipped into the cupboard
+"between meals," and Aristides came home from school without shoes,
+leaving those important articles on the threshold, for the delight
+of a barefooted walk down the ditches.  Octavia and Cassandra were
+"keerless" of their clothes.  So with but one exception, however
+much the "Prairie Rose" might have trimmed and pruned and trained
+her own matured luxuriance, the little shoots came up defiantly
+wild and straggling.  That one exception was Clytemnestra Morpher,
+aged fifteen.  She was the realization of her mother's immaculate
+conception--neat, orderly, and dull.
+
+It was an amiable weakness of Mrs. Morpher to imagine that "Clytie"
+was a consolation and model for Mliss.  Following this fallacy,
+Mrs. Morpher threw Clytie at the head of Mliss when she was "bad,"
+and set her up before the child for adoration in her penitential
+moments.  It was not, therefore, surprising to the master to hear
+that Clytie was coming to school, obviously as a favor to the
+master and as an example for Mliss and others.  For "Clytie" was
+quite a young lady.  Inheriting her mother's physical
+peculiarities, and in obedience to the climatic laws of the Red
+Mountain region, she was an early bloomer.  The youth of Smith's
+Pocket, to whom this kind of flower was rare, sighed for her in
+April and languished in May.  Enamored swains haunted the
+schoolhouse at the hour of dismissal.  A few were jealous of the
+master.
+
+Perhaps it was this latter circumstance that opened the master's
+eyes to another.  He could not help noticing that Clytie was
+romantic; that in school she required a great deal of attention;
+that her pens were uniformly bad and wanted fixing; that she
+usually accompanied the request with a certain expectation in her
+eye that was somewhat disproportionate to the quality of service
+she verbally required; that she sometimes allowed the curves of a
+round, plump white arm to rest on his when he was writing her
+copies; that she always blushed and flung back her blond curls when
+she did so.  I don't remember whether I have stated that the master
+was a young man--it's of little consequence, however; he had been
+severely educated in the school in which Clytie was taking her
+first lesson, and, on the whole, withstood the flexible curves and
+factitious glance like the fine young Spartan that he was.  Perhaps
+an insufficient quality of food may have tended to this asceticism.
+He generally avoided Clytie; but one evening, when she returned to
+the schoolhouse after something she had forgotten, and did not find
+it until the master walked home with her, I hear that he endeavored
+to make himself particularly agreeable --partly from the fact, I
+imagine, that his conduct was adding gall and bitterness to the
+already overcharged hearts of Clytemnestra's admirers.
+
+The morning after this affecting episode Mliss did not come to
+school.  Noon came, but not Mliss.  Questioning Clytie on the
+subject, it appeared that they had left the school together, but
+the willful Mliss had taken another road.  The afternoon brought
+her not.  In the evening he called on Mrs. Morpher, whose motherly
+heart was really alarmed.  Mr. Morpher had spent all day in search
+of her, without discovering a trace that might lead to her
+discovery.  Aristides was summoned as a probable accomplice, but
+that equitable infant succeeded in impressing the household with
+his innocence.  Mrs. Morpher entertained a vivid impression that
+the child would yet be found drowned in a ditch, or, what was
+almost as terrible, muddied and soiled beyond the redemption of
+soap and water.  Sick at heart, the master returned to the
+schoolhouse.  As he lit his lamp and seated himself at his desk, he
+found a note lying before him addressed to himself, in Mliss's
+handwriting.  It seemed to be written on a leaf torn from some old
+memorandum book, and, to prevent sacrilegious trifling, had been
+sealed with six broken wafers.  Opening it almost tenderly, the
+master read as follows:
+
+
+RESPECTED SIR--When you read this, I am run away.  Never to come
+back.  NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.  You can give my beeds to Mary
+Jennings, and my Amerika's Pride [a highly colored lithograph from
+a tobacco-box] to Sally Flanders.  But don't you give anything to
+Clytie Morpher.  Don't you dare to.  Do you know what my opinion is
+of her, it is this, she is perfekly disgustin.  That is all and no
+more at present from
+
+Yours respectfully,
+
+MELISSA SMITH.
+
+
+The master sat pondering on this strange epistle till the moon
+lifted its bright face above the distant hills, and illuminated the
+trail that led to the schoolhouse, beaten quite hard with the
+coming and going of little feet.  Then, more satisfied in mind, he
+tore the missive into fragments and scattered them along the road.
+
+At sunrise the next morning he was picking his way through the
+palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the
+hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few
+dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and
+so came to the wooded ridge where he had once found Mliss.  There
+he found the prostrate pine and tasseled branches, but the throne
+was vacant.  As he drew nearer, what might have been some
+frightened animal started through the crackling limbs.  It ran up
+the tossed arms of the fallen monarch and sheltered itself in some
+friendly foliage.  The master, reaching the old seat, found the
+nest still warm; looking up in the intertwining branches, he met
+the black eyes of the errant Mliss.  They gazed at each other
+without speaking.  She was first to break the silence.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked curtly.
+
+The master had decided on a course of action.  "I want some crab
+apples," he said humbly.
+
+"Sha'n't have 'em! go away.  Why don't you get 'em of
+Clytemnerestera?"  (It seemed to be a relief to Mliss to express
+her contempt in additional syllables to that classical young
+woman's already long-drawn title.)  "O you wicked thing!"
+
+"I am hungry, Lissy.  I have eaten nothing since dinner yesterday.
+I am famished!" and the young man in a state of remarkable
+exhaustion leaned against the tree.
+
+Melissa's heart was touched.  In the bitter days of her gypsy life
+she had known the sensation he so artfully simulated.  Overcome by
+his heartbroken tone, but not entirely divested of suspicion, she
+said:
+
+"Dig under the tree near the roots, and you'll find lots; but mind
+you don't tell," for Mliss had HER hoards as well as the rats and
+squirrels.
+
+But the master, of course, was unable to find them; the effects of
+hunger probably blinding his senses.  Mliss grew uneasy.  At length
+she peered at him through the leaves in an elfish way, and
+questioned:
+
+"If I come down and give you some, you'll promise you won't touch
+me?"
+
+The master promised.
+
+"Hope you'll die if you do!"
+
+The master accepted instant dissolution as a forfeit.  Mliss slid
+down the tree.  For a few moments nothing transpired but the
+munching of the pine nuts.  "Do you feel better?" she asked, with
+some solicitude.  The master confessed to a recuperated feeling,
+and then, gravely thanking her, proceeded to retrace his steps.  As
+he expected, he had not gone far before she called him.  He turned.
+She was standing there quite white, with tears in her widely opened
+orbs.  The master felt that the right moment had come.  Going up to
+her, he took both her hands, and looking in her tearful eyes, said,
+gravely, "Lissy, do you remember the first evening you came to see
+me?"
+
+Lissy remembered.
+
+"You asked me if you might come to school, for you wanted to learn
+something and be better, and I said--"
+
+"Come," responded the child, promptly.
+
+"What would YOU say if the master now came to you and said that he
+was lonely without his little scholar, and that he wanted her to
+come and teach him to be better?"
+
+The child hung her head for a few moments in silence.  The master
+waited patiently.  Tempted by the quiet, a hare ran close to the
+couple, and raising her bright eyes and velvet forepaws, sat and
+gazed at them.  A squirrel ran halfway down the furrowed bark of
+the fallen tree, and there stopped.
+
+"We are waiting, Lissy," said the master, in a whisper, and the
+child smiled.  Stirred by a passing breeze, the treetops rocked,
+and a long pencil of light stole through their interlaced boughs
+full on the doubting face and irresolute little figure.  Suddenly
+she took the master's hand in her quick way.  What she said was
+scarcely audible, but the master, putting the black hair back from
+her forehead, kissed her; and so, hand in hand, they passed out of
+the damp aisles and forest odors into the open sunlit road.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with other scholars,
+Mliss still retained an offensive attitude in regard to
+Clytemnestra.  Perhaps the jealous element was not entirely lulled
+in her passionate little breast.  Perhaps it was only that the
+round curves and plump outline offered more extended pinching
+surface.  But while such ebullitions were under the master's
+control, her enmity occasionally took a new and irrepressible form.
+
+The master in his first estimate of the child's character could not
+conceive that she had ever possessed a doll.  But the master, like
+many other professed readers of character, was safer in a
+posteriori than a priori reasoning.  Mliss had a doll, but then it
+was emphatically Mliss's doll--a smaller copy of herself.  Its
+unhappy existence had been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs.
+Morpher.  It had been the old-time companion of Mliss's wanderings,
+and bore evident marks of suffering.  Its original complexion was
+long since washed away by the weather and anointed by the slime of
+ditches.  It looked very much as Mliss had in days past.  Its one
+gown of faded stuff was dirty and ragged, as hers had been.  Mliss
+had never been known to apply to it any childish term of
+endearment.  She never exhibited it in the presence of other
+children.  It was put severely to bed in a hollow tree near the
+schoolhouse, and only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles.
+Fulfilling a stern duty to her doll, as she would to herself, it
+knew no luxuries.
+
+Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable impulse, bought another
+doll and gave it to Mliss.  The child received it gravely and
+curiously.  The master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a
+slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and mild blue eyes to
+Clytemnestra.  It became evident before long that Mliss had also
+noticed the same resemblance.  Accordingly she hammered its waxen
+head on the rocks when she was alone, and sometimes dragged it with
+a string round its neck to and from school.  At other times,
+setting it up on her desk, she made a pincushion of its patient and
+inoffensive body.  Whether this was done in revenge of what she
+considered a second figurative obtrusion of Clytie's excellences
+upon her, or whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the rites
+of certain other heathens, and, indulging in that "fetish"
+ceremony, imagined that the original of her wax model would pine
+away and finally die, is a metaphysical question I shall not now
+consider.
+
+In spite of these moral vagaries, the master could not help
+noticing in her different tasks the working of a quick, restless,
+and vigorous perception.  She knew neither the hesitancy nor the
+doubts of childhood.  Her answers in class were always slightly
+dashed with audacity.  Of course she was not infallible.  But her
+courage and daring in passing beyond her own depth and that of the
+floundering little swimmers around her, in their minds outweighed
+all errors of judgment.  Children are not better than grown people
+in this respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand flashed
+above her desk, there was a wondering silence, and even the master
+was sometimes oppressed with a doubt of his own experience and
+judgment.
+
+Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first amused and
+entertained his fancy began to afflict him with grave doubts.  He
+could not but see that Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and
+willful.  That there was but one better quality which pertained to
+her semisavage disposition--the faculty of physical fortitude and
+self-sacrifice, and another, though not always an attribute of the
+noble savage--Truth.  Mliss was both fearless and sincere; perhaps
+in such a character the adjectives were synonymous.
+
+The master had been doing some hard thinking on this subject, and
+had arrived at that conclusion quite common to all who think
+sincerely, that he was generally the slave of his own prejudices,
+when he determined to call on the Rev.  McSnagley for advice.  This
+decision was somewhat humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley
+were not friends.  But he thought of Mliss, and the evening of
+their first meeting; and perhaps with a pardonable superstition
+that it was not chance alone that had guided her willful feet to
+the schoolhouse, and perhaps with a complacent consciousness of the
+rare magnanimity of the act, he choked back his dislike and went to
+McSnagley.
+
+The reverend gentleman was glad to see him.  Moreover, he observed
+that the master was looking "peartish," and hoped he had got over
+the "neuralgy" and "rheumatiz."  He himself had been troubled with
+a dumb "ager" since last conference.  But he had learned to "rastle
+and pray."
+
+Pausing a moment to enable the master to write his certain method
+of curing the dumb "ager" upon the book and volume of his brain,
+Mr. McSnagley proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher.  "She is
+an adornment to ChrisTEWanity, and has a likely growin' young
+family," added Mr. McSnagley; "and there's that mannerly young gal-
+-so well behaved--Miss Clytie."  In fact, Clytie's perfections
+seemed to affect him to such an extent that he dwelt for several
+minutes upon them.  The master was doubly embarrassed.  In the
+first place, there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss in all
+this praise of Clytie.  Secondly, there was something unpleasantly
+confidential in his tone of speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest
+born.  So that the master, after a few futile efforts to say
+something natural, found it convenient to recall another
+engagement, and left without asking the information required, but
+in his after reflections somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr.
+McSnagley the full benefit of having refused it.
+
+Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil once more in the
+close communion of old.  The child seemed to notice the change in
+the master's manner, which had of late been constrained, and in one
+of their long postprandial walks she stopped suddenly, and mounting
+a stump, looked full in his face with big, searching eyes.  "You
+ain't mad?" said she, with an interrogative shake of the black
+braids.  "No."  "Nor bothered?"  "No."  "Nor hungry?"  (Hunger was
+to Mliss a sickness that might attack a person at any moment.)
+"No."  "Nor thinking of her?"  "Of whom, Lissy?"  "That white
+girl."  (This was the latest epithet invented by Mliss, who was a
+very dark brunette, to express Clytemnestra.)  "No."  "Upon your
+word?"  (A substitute for "Hope you'll die!" proposed by the
+master.)  "Yes."  "And sacred honor?"  "Yes."  Then Mliss gave him
+a fierce little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off.  For two or
+three days after that she condescended to appear more like other
+children, and be, as she expressed it, "good."
+
+Two years had passed since the master's advent at Smith's Pocket,
+and as his salary was not large, and the prospects of Smith's
+Pocket eventually becoming the capital of the State not entirely
+definite, he contemplated a change.  He had informed the school
+trustees privately of his intentions, but educated young men of
+unblemished moral character being scarce at that time, he consented
+to continue his school term through the winter to early spring.
+None else knew of his intention except his one friend, a Dr.
+Duchesne, a young Creole physician known to the people of Wingdam
+as "Duchesny."  He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher, Clytie, or
+any of his scholars.  His reticence was partly the result of a
+constitutional indisposition to fuss, partly a desire to be spared
+the questions and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly that he
+never really believed he was going to do anything before it was
+done.
+
+He did not like to think of Mliss.  It was a selfish instinct,
+perhaps, which made him try to fancy his feeling for the child was
+foolish, romantic, and unpractical.  He even tried to imagine that
+she would do better under the control of an older and sterner
+teacher.  Then she was nearly eleven, and in a few years, by the
+rules of Red Mountain, would be a woman.  He had done his duty.
+After Smith's death he addressed letters to Smith's relatives, and
+received one answer from a sister of Melissa's mother.  Thanking
+the master, she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic States
+for California with her husband in a few months.  This was a slight
+superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for
+Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving,
+sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide
+her wayward nature.  Yet, when the master had read the letter,
+Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and
+afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
+represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent
+mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
+
+When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been
+gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a
+few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest
+Home, or Examination.  So the savants and professionals of Smith's
+Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing
+timid children in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a
+witness box.  As usual in such cases, the most audacious and self-
+possessed were the lucky recipients of the honors.  The reader will
+imagine that in the present instance Mliss and Clytie were
+preeminent, and divided public attention; Mliss with her clearness
+of material perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid
+self-esteem and saintlike correctness of deportment.  The other
+little ones were timid and blundering.  Mliss's readiness and
+brilliancy, of course, captivated the greatest number and provoked
+the greatest applause.  Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously
+awakened the strongest sympathies of a class whose athletic forms
+were ranged against the walls, or whose handsome bearded faces
+looked in at the windows.  But Mliss's popularity was overthrown by
+an unexpected circumstance.
+
+McSnagley had invited himself, and had been going through the
+pleasing entertainment of frightening the more timid pupils by the
+vaguest and most ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive
+funereal tone; and Mliss had soared into astronomy, and was
+tracking the course of our spotted ball through space, and keeping
+time with the music of the spheres, and defining the tethered
+orbits of the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
+"Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions of this yere yearth
+and the move-MENTS of the sun, and I think ye said it had been a
+doing of it since the creashun, eh?"  Mliss nodded a scornful
+affirmative.  "Well, war that the truth?" said McSnagley, folding
+his arms.  "Yes," said Mliss, shutting up her little red lips
+tightly.  The handsome outlines at the windows peered further in
+the schoolroom, and a saintly Raphael face, with blond beard and
+soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp in the diggings,
+turned toward the child and whispered, "Stick to it, Mliss!"  The
+reverend gentleman heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
+glance at the master, then at the children, and then rested his
+look on Clytie.  That young woman softly elevated her round, white
+arm.  Its seductive curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
+specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest worshipers, worn
+in honor of the occasion.  There was a momentary silence.  Clytie's
+round cheeks were very pink and soft.  Clytie's big eyes were very
+bright and blue.  Clytie's low-necked white book muslin rested
+softly on Clytie's white, plump shoulders.  Clytie looked at the
+master, and the master nodded.  Then Clytie spoke softly:
+
+"Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him!"
+There was a low hum of applause in the schoolroom, a triumphant
+expression on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's, and
+a comical look of disappointment reflected from the windows.  Mliss
+skimmed rapidly over her astronomy, and then shut the book with a
+loud snap.  A groan burst from McSnagley, an expression of
+astonishment from the schoolroom, a yell from the windows, as Mliss
+brought her red fist down on the desk, with the emphatic
+declaration:
+
+"It's a damn lie.  I don't believe it!"
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The long wet season had drawn near its close.  Signs of spring were
+visible in the swelling buds and rushing torrents.  The pine
+forests exhaled the fresher spicery.  The azaleas were already
+budding, the ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery for spring.
+On the green upland which climbed Red Mountain at its southern
+aspect the long spike of the monkshood shot up from its broad-
+leaved stool, and once more shook its dark-blue bells.  Again the
+billow above Smith's grave was soft and green, its crest just
+tossed with the foam of daisies and buttercups.  The little
+graveyard had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year, and the
+mounds were placed two by two by the little paling until they
+reached Smith's grave, and there there was but one.  General
+superstition had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was vacant.
+
+There had been several placards posted about the town, intimating
+that, at a certain period, a celebrated dramatic company would
+perform, for a few days, a series of "side-splitting" and
+"screaming farces"; that, alternating pleasantly with this, there
+would be some melodrama and a grand divertisement which would
+include singing, dancing, etc.  These announcements occasioned a
+great fluttering among the little folk, and were the theme of much
+excitement and great speculation among the master's scholars.  The
+master had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing was sacred
+and rare, that she should go, and on that momentous evening the
+master and Mliss "assisted."
+
+The performance was the prevalent style of heavy mediocrity; the
+melodrama was not bad enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
+But the master, turning wearily to the child, was astonished and
+felt something like self-accusation in noticing the peculiar effect
+upon her excitable nature.  The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
+each stroke of her panting little heart.  Her small passionate lips
+were slightly parted to give vent to her hurried breath.  Her
+widely opened lids threw up and arched her black eyebrows.  She did
+not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny man, for Mliss
+seldom laughed.  Nor was she discreetly affected to the delicate
+extremes of the corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-
+hearted "Clytie," who was talking with her "feller" and ogling the
+master at the same moment.  But when the performance was over, and
+the green curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long deep
+breath, and turned to the master's grave face with a half-
+apologetic smile and wearied gesture.  Then she said, "Now take me
+home!" and dropped the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once
+more in fancy on the mimic stage.
+
+On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master thought proper to
+ridicule the whole performance.  Now he shouldn't wonder if Mliss
+thought that the young lady who acted so beautifully was really in
+earnest, and in love with the gentleman who wore such fine clothes.
+Well, if she were in love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
+"Why?" said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the drooping lid.  "Oh!
+well, he couldn't support his wife at his present salary, and pay
+so much a week for his fine clothes, and then they wouldn't receive
+as much wages if they were married as if they were merely lovers--
+that is," added the master, "if they are not already married to
+somebody else; but I think the husband of the pretty young countess
+takes the tickets at the door, or pulls up the curtain, or snuffs
+the candles, or does something equally refined and elegant.  As to
+the young man with nice clothes, which are really nice now, and
+must cost at least two and a half or three dollars, not to speak of
+that mantle of red drugget which I happen to know the price of, for
+I bought some of it for my room once--as to this young man, Lissy,
+he is a pretty good fellow, and if he does drink occasionally, I
+don't think people ought to take advantage of it and give him black
+eyes and throw him in the mud.  Do you?  I am sure he might owe me
+two dollars and a half a long time, before I would throw it up in
+his face, as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam."
+
+Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and was trying to look in
+his eyes, which the young man kept as resolutely averted.  Mliss
+had a faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in a species
+of sardonic humor, which was equally visible in her actions and her
+speech.  But the young man continued in this strain until they had
+reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited Mliss in her maternal
+charge.  Waiving the invitation of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and
+rest, and shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the blue-eyed
+Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused himself, and went home.
+
+For two or three days after the advent of the dramatic company,
+Mliss was late at school, and the master's usual Friday afternoon
+ramble was for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
+trustworthy guide.  As he was putting away his books and preparing
+to leave the schoolhouse, a small voice piped at his side, "Please,
+sir?"  The master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.
+
+"Well, my little man," said the master, impatiently, "what is it?
+quick!"
+
+"Please, sir, me and 'Kerg' thinks that Mliss is going to run away
+agin."
+
+"What's that, sir?" said the master, with that unjust testiness
+with which we always receive disagreeable news.
+
+"Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and 'Kerg' and me see her
+talking with one of those actor fellers, and she's with him now;
+and please, sir, yesterday she told 'Kerg' and me she could make a
+speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy, and she spouted
+right off by heart," and the little fellow paused in a collapsed
+condition.
+
+"What actor?" asked the master.
+
+"Him as wears the shiny hat.  And hair.  And gold pin.  And gold
+chain," said the just Aristides, putting periods for commas to eke
+out his breath.
+
+The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an unpleasant
+tightness in his chest and thorax, and walked out in the road.
+Aristides trotted along by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with
+his short legs to the master's strides, when the master stopped
+suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against him.  "Where were they
+talking?" asked the master, as if continuing the conversation.
+
+"At the Arcade," said Aristides.
+
+When they reached the main street the master paused.  "Run down
+home," said he to the boy.  "If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade
+and tell me.  If she isn't there, stay home; run!"  And off trotted
+the short-legged Aristides.
+
+The Arcade was just across the way--a long, rambling building
+containing a barroom, billiard room, and restaurant.  As the young
+man crossed the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-
+by turned and looked after him.  He looked at his clothes, took out
+his handkerchief, and wiped his face before he entered the barroom.
+It contained the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as he
+entered.  One of them looked at him so fixedly and with such a
+strange expression that the master stopped and looked again, and
+then saw it was only his own reflection in a large mirror.  This
+made the master think that perhaps he was a little excited, and so
+he took up a copy of the RED MOUNTAIN BANNER from one of the
+tables, and tried to recover his composure by reading the column of
+advertisements.
+
+He then walked through the barroom, through the restaurant, and
+into the billiard room.  The child was not there.  In the latter
+apartment a person was standing by one of the tables with a broad-
+brimmed glazed hat on his head.  The master recognized him as the
+agent of the dramatic company; he had taken a dislike to him at
+their first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing his beard
+and hair.  Satisfied that the object of his search was not there,
+he turned to the man with a glazed hat.  He had noticed the master,
+but tried that common trick of unconsciousness in which vulgar
+natures always fail.  Balancing a billiard cue in his hand, he
+pretended to play with a ball in the center of the table.  The
+master stood opposite to him until he raised his eyes; when their
+glances met, the master walked up to him.
+
+He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but when he began to
+speak, something kept rising in his throat and retarded his
+utterance, and his own voice frightened him, it sounded so distant,
+low, and resonant.  "I understand," he began, "that Melissa Smith,
+an orphan, and one of my scholars, has talked with you about
+adopting your profession.  Is that so?"
+
+The man with the glazed hat leaned over the table and made an
+imaginary shot that sent the ball spinning round the cushions.
+Then, walking round the table, he recovered the ball and placed it
+upon the spot.  This duty discharged, getting ready for another
+shot, he said:
+
+"S'pose she has?"
+
+The master choked up again, but, squeezing the cushion of the table
+in his gloved hand, he went on:
+
+"If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you that I am her
+guardian, and responsible for her career.  You know as well as I do
+the kind of life you offer her.  As you may learn of anyone here, I
+have already brought her out of an existence worse than death--out
+of the streets and the contamination of vice.  I am trying to do so
+again.  Let us talk like men.  She has neither father, mother,
+sister, or brother.  Are you seeking to give her an equivalent for
+these?"
+
+The man with the glazed hat examined the point of his cue, and then
+looked around for somebody to enjoy the joke with him.
+
+"I know that she is a strange, willful girl," continued the master,
+"but she is better than she was.  I believe that I have some
+influence over her still.  I beg and hope, therefore, that you will
+take no further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
+leave her to me.  I am willing--"  But here something rose again in
+the master's throat, and the sentence remained unfinished.
+
+The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the master's silence, raised
+his head with a coarse, brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice:
+
+"Want her yourself, do you?  That cock won't fight here, young
+man!"
+
+The insult was more in the tone than in the words, more in the
+glance than tone, and more in the man's instinctive nature than all
+these.  The best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is a
+blow.  The master felt this, and, with his pent-up, nervous energy
+finding expression in the one act, he struck the brute full in his
+grinning face.  The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
+another, and tore the glove and skin from the master's hand from
+knuckle to joint.  It opened up the corners of the fellow's mouth,
+and spoilt the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to come.
+
+There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and the trampling of
+many feet.  Then the crowd parted right and left, and two sharp
+quick reports followed each other in rapid succession.  Then they
+closed again about his opponent, and the master was standing alone.
+He remembered picking bits of burning wadding from his coat sleeve
+with his left hand.  Someone was holding his other hand.  Looking
+at it, he saw it was still bleeding from the blow, but his fingers
+were clenched around the handle of a glittering knife.  He could
+not remember when or how he got it.
+
+The man who was holding his hand was Mr. Morpher.  He hurried the
+master to the door, but the master held back, and tried to tell him
+as well as he could with his parched throat about "Mliss."  "It's
+all right, my boy," said Mr. Morpher.  "She's home!"  And they
+passed out into the street together.  As they walked along Mr.
+Morpher said that Mliss had come running into the house a few
+moments before, and had dragged him out, saying that somebody was
+trying to kill the master at the Arcade.  Wishing to be alone, the
+master promised Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the agent again
+that night, and parted from him, taking the road toward the
+schoolhouse.  He was surprised in nearing it to find the door open-
+-still more surprised to find Mliss sitting there.
+
+The master's nature, as I have hinted before, had, like most
+sensitive organizations, a selfish basis.  The brutal taunt thrown
+out by his late adversary still rankled in his heart.  It was
+possible, he thought, that such a construction might be put upon
+his affection for the child, which at best was foolish and
+Quixotic.  Besides, had she not voluntarily abnegated his authority
+and affection?  And what had everybody else said about her?  Why
+should he alone combat the opinion of all, and be at last obliged
+tacitly to confess the truth of all they predicted?  And he had
+been a participant in a low barroom fight with a common boor, and
+risked his life, to prove what?  What had he proved?  Nothing?
+What would the people say?  What would his friends say?  What would
+McSnagley say?
+
+In his self-accusation the last person he should have wished to
+meet was Mliss.  He entered the door, and going up to his desk,
+told the child, in a few cold words, that he was busy, and wished
+to be alone.  As she rose he took her vacant seat, and, sitting
+down, buried his head in his hands.  When he looked up again she
+was still standing there.  She was looking at his face with an
+anxious expression.
+
+"Did you kill him?" she asked.
+
+"No!" said the master.
+
+"That's what I gave you the knife for!" said the child, quickly.
+
+"Gave me the knife?" repeated the master, in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, gave you the knife.  I was there under the bar.  Saw you hit
+him.  Saw you both fall.  He dropped his old knife.  I gave it to
+you.  Why didn't you stick him?" said Mliss rapidly, with an
+expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture of the little
+red hand.
+
+The master could only look his astonishment.
+
+"Yes," said Mliss.  "If you'd asked me, I'd told you I was off with
+the play-actors.  Why was I off with the play-actors?  Because you
+wouldn't tell me you was going away.  I knew it.  I heard you tell
+the Doctor so.  I wasn't a goin' to stay here alone with those
+Morphers.  I'd rather die first."
+
+With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly consistent with her
+character, she drew from her bosom a few limp green leaves, and,
+holding them out at arm's length, said in her quick vivid way, and
+in the queer pronunciation of her old life, which she fell into
+when unduly excited:
+
+"That's the poison plant you said would kill me.  I'll go with the
+play-actors, or I'll eat this and die here.  I don't care which.  I
+won't stay here, where they hate and despise me!  Neither would you
+let me, if you didn't hate and despise me too!"
+
+The passionate little breast heaved, and two big tears peeped over
+the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but she whisked them away with the
+corner of her apron as if they had been wasps.
+
+"If you lock me up in jail," said Mliss, fiercely, "to keep me from
+the play-actors, I'll poison myself.  Father killed himself--why
+shouldn't I?  You said a mouthful of that root would kill me, and I
+always carry it here," and she struck her breast with her clenched
+fist.
+
+The master thought of the vacant plot beside Smith's grave, and of
+the passionate little figure before him.  Seizing her hands in his
+and looking full into her truthful eyes, he said:
+
+"Lissy, will you go with ME?"
+
+The child put her arms around his neck, and said joyfully, "Yes."
+
+"But now--tonight?"
+
+"Tonight."
+
+And, hand in hand, they passed into the road--the narrow road that
+had once brought her weary feet to the master's door, and which it
+seemed she should not tread again alone.  The stars glittered
+brightly above them.  For good or ill the lesson had been learned,
+and behind them the school of Red Mountain closed upon them
+forever.
+
+
+
+THE RIGHT EYE OF THE COMMANDER
+
+
+The year of grace 1797 passed away on the coast of California in a
+southwesterly gale.  The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered
+by the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough and turbulent;
+its foam clung quivering to the seaward wall of the Mission garden;
+the air was filled with flying sand and spume, and as the Senor
+Commandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra, looked from the deep
+embrasured window of the Presidio guardroom, he felt the salt
+breath of the distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried
+cheeks.
+
+The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully from the window
+of the guardroom.  He may have been reviewing the events of the
+year now about to pass away.  But, like the garrison at the
+Presidio, there was little to review; the year, like its
+predecessors, had been uneventful--the days had slipped by in a
+delicious monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or
+interruption.  The regularly recurring feasts and saints' days, the
+half-yearly courier from San Diego, the rare transport ship and
+rarer foreign vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal
+life.  If there was no achievement, there was certainly no failure.
+Abundant harvests and patient industry amply supplied the wants of
+Presidio and Mission.  Isolated from the family of nations, the
+wars which shook the world concerned them not so much as the last
+earthquake; the struggle that emancipated their sister colonies on
+the other side of the continent to them had no suggestiveness.  In
+short, it was that glorious Indian summer of California history
+around which so much poetical haze still lingers--that bland,
+indolent autumn of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
+wintry storms of Mexican independence and the reviving spring of
+American conquest.
+
+The Commander turned from the window and walked toward the fire
+that burned brightly on the deep ovenlike hearth.  A pile of
+copybooks, the work of the Presidio school, lay on the table.  As
+he turned over the leaves with a paternal interest, and surveyed
+the fair round Scripture text--the first pious pothooks of the
+pupils of San Carlos--an audible commentary fell from his lips:
+"'Abimelech took her from Abraham'--ah, little one, excellent!--
+'Jacob sent to see his brother'--body of Christ! that upstroke of
+thine, Paquita, is marvelous; the Governor shall see it!"  A film
+of honest pride dimmed the Commander's left eye--the right, alas!
+twenty years before had been sealed by an Indian arrow.  He rubbed
+it softly with the sleeve of his leather jacket, and continued:
+"'The Ishmaelites having arrived--'"
+
+He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard, a foot upon the
+threshold, and a stranger entered.  With the instinct of an old
+soldier, the Commander, after one glance at the intruder, turned
+quickly toward the wall, where his trusty Toledo hung, or should
+have been hanging.  But it was not there, and as he recalled that
+the last time he had seen that weapon it was being ridden up and
+down the gallery by Pepito, the infant son of Bautista, the
+tortilla-maker, he blushed and then contented himself with frowning
+upon the intruder.
+
+But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was decidedly peaceful.
+He was unarmed, and wore the ordinary cape of tarpaulin and sea
+boots of a mariner.  Except a villainous smell of codfish, there
+was little about him that was peculiar.
+
+His name, as he informed the Commander, in Spanish that was more
+fluent than elegant or precise--his name was Peleg Scudder.  He was
+master of the schooner GENERAL COURT, of the port of Salem in
+Massachusetts, on a trading voyage to the South Seas, but now
+driven by stress of weather into the bay of San Carlos.  He begged
+permission to ride out the gale under the headlands of the blessed
+Trinity, and no more.  Water he did not need, having taken in a
+supply at Bodega.  He knew the strict surveillance of the Spanish
+port regulations in regard to foreign vessels, and would do nothing
+against the severe discipline and good order of the settlement.
+There was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he glanced
+toward the desolate parade ground of the Presidio and the open
+unguarded gate.  The fact was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had
+discreetly retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm, and
+was then sound asleep in the corridor.
+
+The Commander hesitated.  The port regulations were severe, but he
+was accustomed to exercise individual authority, and beyond an old
+order issued ten years before, regarding the American ship
+COLUMBIA, there was no precedent to guide him.  The storm was
+severe, and a sentiment of humanity urged him to grant the
+stranger's request.  It is but just to the Commander to say that
+his inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with his decision.
+He would have denied with equal disregard of consequences that
+right to a seventy-four-gun ship which he now yielded so gracefully
+to this Yankee trading schooner.  He stipulated only that there
+should be no communication between the ship and shore.  "For
+yourself, Senor Captain," he continued, "accept my hospitality.
+The fort is yours as long as you shall grace it with your
+distinguished presence"; and with old-fashioned courtesy, he made
+the semblance of withdrawing from the guardroom.
+
+Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of the half-dismantled
+fort, the two moldy brass cannon, cast in Manila a century
+previous.  and the shiftless garrison.  A wild thought of accepting
+the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the reckless spirit
+of a man who never let slip an offer for trade, for a moment filled
+his brain, but a timely reflection of the commercial unimportance
+of the transaction checked him.  He only took a capacious quid of
+tobacco as the Commander gravely drew a settle before the fire, and
+in honor of his guest untied the black-silk handkerchief that bound
+his grizzled brows.
+
+What passed between Salvatierra and his guest that night it becomes
+me not, as a grave chronicler of the salient points of history, to
+relate.  I have said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker,
+and under the influence of divers strong waters, furnished by his
+host, he became still more loquacious.  And think of a man with a
+twenty years' budget of gossip!  The Commander learned, for the
+first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies; of the French
+Revolution; of the great Napoleon, whose achievements, perhaps,
+Peleg colored more highly than the Commander's superiors would have
+liked.  And when Peleg turned questioner, the Commander was at his
+mercy.  He gradually made himself master of the gossip of the
+Mission and Presidio, the "small-beer" chronicles of that pastoral
+age, the conversion of the heathen, the Presidio schools, and even
+asked the Commander how he had lost his eye!  It is said that at
+this point of the conversation Master Peleg produced from about his
+person divers small trinkets, kickshaws, and newfangled trifles,
+and even forced some of them upon his host.  It is further alleged
+that under the malign influence of Peleg and several glasses of
+aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat of his decorum, and
+behaved in a manner unseemly for one in his position, reciting
+high-flown Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin, high voice
+divers madrigals and heathen canzonets of an amorous complexion;
+chiefly in regard to a "little one" who was his, the Commander's,
+"soul"!  These allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of a
+serious chronicler, should be received with great caution, and are
+introduced here as simple hearsay.  That the Commander, however,
+took a handkerchief and attempted to show his guest the mysteries
+of the SEMICUACUA, capering in an agile but indecorous manner about
+the apartment, has been denied.  Enough for the purposes of this
+narrative that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to bed with many
+protestations of undying friendship, and then, as the gale had
+abated, took his leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the
+GENERAL COURT.  When the day broke the ship was gone.
+
+I know not if Peleg kept his word with his host.  It is said that
+the holy fathers at the Mission that night heard a loud chanting in
+the plaza, as of the heathens singing psalms through their noses;
+that for many days after an odor of salt codfish prevailed in the
+settlement; that a dozen hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice
+or seed, were found in the possession of the wife of the baker, and
+that several bushels of shoe pegs, which bore a pleasing
+resemblance to oats, but were quite inadequate to the purposes of
+provender, were discovered in the stable of the blacksmith.  But
+when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a Yankee trader's
+word, the stringent discipline of the Spanish port regulations, and
+the proverbial indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon the
+confidence of a simple people, he will at once reject this part of
+the story.
+
+
+A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798, awoke the Commander.
+The sun was shining brightly, and the storm had ceased.  He sat up
+in bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left eye.  As the
+remembrance of the previous night came back to him, he jumped from
+his couch and ran to the window.  There was no ship in the bay.  A
+sudden thought seemed to strike him, and he rubbed both of his
+eyes.  Not content with this, he consulted the metallic mirror
+which hung beside his crucifix.  There was no mistake; the
+Commander had a visible second eye--a right one--as good, save for
+the purposes of vision, as the left.
+
+Whatever might have been the true secret of this transformation,
+but one opinion prevailed at San Carlos.  It was one of those rare
+miracles vouchsafed a pious Catholic community as an evidence to
+the heathen, through the intercession of the blessed San Carlos
+himself.  That their beloved Commander, the temporal defender of
+the Faith, should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation
+was most fit and seemly.  The Commander himself was reticent; he
+could not tell a falsehood--he dared not tell the truth.  After
+all, if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the powers of his
+right eye were actually restored, was it wise and discreet for him
+to undeceive them?  For the first time in his life the Commander
+thought of policy--for the first time he quoted that text which has
+been the lure of so many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
+"all things to all men."  Infeliz Hermenegildo Salvatierra!
+
+For by degrees an ominous whisper crept though the little
+settlement.  The Right Eye of the Commander, although miraculous,
+seemed to exercise a baleful effect upon the beholder.  No one
+could look at it without winking.  It was cold, hard, relentless,
+and unflinching.  More than that, it seemed to be endowed with a
+dreadful prescience--a faculty of seeing through and into the
+inarticulate thoughts of those it looked upon.  The soldiers of the
+garrison obeyed the eye rather than the voice of their commander,
+and answered his glance rather than his lips in questioning.  The
+servants could not evade the ever watchful but cold attention that
+seemed to pursue them.  The children of the Presidio school
+smirched their copybooks under the awful supervision, and poor
+Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that marvelous upstroke
+when her patron stood beside her.  Gradually distrust, suspicion,
+self-accusation, and timidity took the place of trust, confidence,
+and security throughout San Carlos.  Whenever the Right Eye of the
+Commander fell, a shadow fell with it.
+
+Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful influence of his
+miraculous acquisition.  Unconscious of its effect upon others, he
+only saw in their actions evidence of certain things that the
+crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New Year's eve.  His most
+trusty retainers stammered, blushed, and faltered before him.
+Self-accusations, confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or
+extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest inquiries.  The
+very children that he loved--his pet pupil, Paquita--seemed to be
+conscious of some hidden sin.  The result of this constant
+irritation showed itself more plainly.  For the first half-year the
+Commander's voice and eye were at variance.  He was still kind,
+tender, and thoughtful in speech.  Gradually, however, his voice
+took upon itself the hardness of his glance and its skeptical,
+impassive quality, and as the year again neared its close it was
+plain that the Commander had fitted himself to the eye, and not the
+eye to the Commander.
+
+It may be surmised that these changes did not escape the watchful
+solicitude of the Fathers.  Indeed, the few who were first to
+ascribe the right eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the
+special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked openly of
+witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel, the evil one.  It would have
+fared ill with Hermenegildo Salvatierra had he been aught but
+Commander or amenable to local authority.  But the reverend father,
+Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no power over the political executive,
+and all attempts at spiritual advice failed signally.  He retired
+baffled and confused from his first interview with the Commander,
+who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction in the fateful power of
+his glance.  The holy Father contradicted himself, exposed the
+fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted, committed
+himself to several undoubted heresies.  When the Commander stood up
+at mass, if the officiating priest caught that skeptical and
+searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.  Even the power
+of the Holy Church seemed to be lost, and the last hold upon the
+affections of the people and the good order of the settlement
+departed from San Carlos.
+
+As the long dry summer passed, the low hills that surrounded the
+white walls of the Presidio grew more and more to resemble in hue
+the leathern jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself seemed to
+have borrowed his dry, hard glare.  The earth was cracked and
+seamed with drought; a blight had fallen upon the orchards and
+vineyards, and the rain, long-delayed and ardently prayed for, came
+not.  The sky was as tearless as the right eye of the Commander.
+Murmurs of discontent, insubordination, and plotting among the
+Indians reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more firmly,
+tightened the knot of his black-silk handkerchief, and looked up
+his Toledo.
+
+The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander sitting, at the
+hour of evening prayers, alone in the guardroom.  He no longer
+attended the services of the Holy Church, but crept away at such
+times to some solitary spot, where he spent the interval in silent
+meditation.  The firelight played upon the low beams and rafters,
+but left the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness.  Sitting
+thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and looking down, saw the
+figure of Paquita, his little Indian pupil, at his knee.  "Ah,
+littlest of all," said the Commander, with something of his old
+tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives of his native
+speech--"sweet one, what doest thou here?  Art thou not afraid of
+him whom everyone shuns and fears?"
+
+"No," said the little Indian, readily, "not in the dark.  I hear
+your voice--the old voice; I feel your touch--the old touch; but I
+see not your eye, Senor Commandante.  That only I fear--and that, O
+senor, O my father," said the child, lifting her little arms
+towards his--"that I know is not thine own!"
+
+The Commander shuddered and turned away.  Then, recovering himself,
+he kissed Paquita gravely on the forehead and bade her retire.  A
+few hours later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio, he
+sought his own couch and slept peacefully.
+
+At about the middle watch of the night a dusky figure crept through
+the low embrasure of the Commander's apartment.  Other figures were
+flitting through the parade ground, which the Commander might have
+seen had he not slept so quietly.  The intruder stepped noiselessly
+to the couch and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration.
+Something glittered in the firelight as the savage lifted his arm;
+another moment and the sore perplexities of Hermenegildo
+Salvatierra would have been over, when suddenly the savage started
+and fell back in a paroxysm of terror.  The Commander slept
+peacefully, but his right eye, widely opened, fixed and unaltered,
+glared coldly on the would-be assassin.  The man fell to the earth
+in a fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.
+
+To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal blows thick and fast
+upon the mutinous savages who now thronged the room was the work of
+a moment.  Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined Indians
+were speedily driven beyond the walls, but in the scuffle the
+Commander received a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand
+to that mysterious organ, it was gone.  Never again was it found,
+and never again, for bale or bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of
+the Commander.
+
+With it passed away the spell that had fallen upon San Carlos.  The
+rain returned to invigorate the languid soil, harmony was restored
+between priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved over
+the sere hillsides, the children flocked again to the side of their
+martial preceptor, a TE DEUM was sung in the Mission Church, and
+pastoral content once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of San
+Carlos.  And far southward crept the GENERAL COURT with its master,
+Peleg Scudder, trafficking in beads and peltries with the Indians,
+and offering glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions to
+the chiefs.
+
+
+
+NOTES BY FLOOD AND FIELD
+
+
+PART I--IN THE FIELD
+
+It was near the close of an October day that I began to be
+disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley.  I had been riding
+since sunrise, and my course through the depressing monotony of the
+long level landscape affected me more like a dull dyspeptic dream
+than a business journey, performed under that sincerest of natural
+phenomena--a California sky.  The recurring stretches of brown and
+baked fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard
+outline of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving
+cattle, seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic
+picture that never changed.  Active exercise might have removed
+this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since
+given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
+
+It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader
+under that title.  The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and
+dry seasons were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant
+hills.  In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid
+for the slow hectic which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else
+Nature was too practical for such thin disguises.  She merely
+turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old
+diagnosis of Death in her sharp, contracted features.
+
+In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite
+any but a morbid fancy.  There were no clouds in the flinty blue
+heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little
+ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere.
+Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the
+shadows deepened on the plain.  The fringe of alder by the
+watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse forward.  A half-
+hour's active spurring brought me to a corral, and a little beyond
+a house, so low and broad it seemed at first sight to be half-
+buried in the earth.
+
+My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil, like
+some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping
+with the vast prospect.  There were no recesses along its roughly
+boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the
+daily sunshine.  No projection for the wind by night to grow
+musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden
+shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap.  Its
+uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though
+bloodshot and inflamed from a too-long unlidded existence.  The
+tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed against the
+rattling wind.
+
+To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to
+the rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building
+by a slight platform.  A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing
+there, and met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without
+speaking, led the way to the principal room.  As I entered, four
+young men who were reclining by the fire slightly altered their
+attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither
+curiosity nor interest.  A hound started from a dark corner with a
+growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,
+and silenced again.  I can't tell why, but I instantly received the
+impression that for a long time the group by the fire had not
+uttered a word or moved a muscle.  Taking a seat, I briefly stated
+my business.
+
+Was a United States surveyor.  Had come on account of the Espiritu
+Santo Rancho.  Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of
+township lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of private
+grants.  There had been some intervention to the old survey by a
+Mr. Tryan who had preempted adjacent--"settled land warrants,"
+interrupted the old man.  "Ah, yes!  Land warrants--and then this
+was Mr. Tryan?"
+
+I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting
+other public lines with private surveys as I looked in his face.
+It was certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular
+effect of that mining operation known as "ground sluicing"; the
+harder lines of underlying character were exposed, and what were
+once plastic curves and soft outlines were obliterated by some
+powerful agency.
+
+There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing
+atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an EX PARTE statement
+of the contest, with a fluency, which, like the wind without,
+showed frequent and unrestrained expression.  He told me--what I
+had already learned--that the boundary line of the old Spanish
+grant was a creek, described in the loose phraseology of the DESENO
+as beginning in the VALDA or skirt of the hill, its precise
+location long the subject of litigation.  I listened and answered
+with little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the wind
+which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd face,
+which was again reflected in the resemblance that the silent group
+by the fire bore toward him.  He was still talking, and the wind
+was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark
+addressed to the recumbent figures.
+
+"Now, then, which on ye'll see the stranger up the creek to
+Altascar's, tomorrow?"
+
+There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no
+decided answer.
+
+"Kin you go, Kerg?"
+
+"Who's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?"
+
+This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another
+hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he
+was lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's hair.
+
+"Well, Tom, wot's to hinder you from goin'?"
+
+"Mam's goin' to Brown's store at sunup, and I s'pose I've got to
+pack her and the baby agin."
+
+I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited
+for the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was
+one of the finest things I had ever seen.
+
+"Wise?"
+
+Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and
+patched boot into the discourse.  The old man flushed quickly.
+
+"I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war
+down the river."
+
+"Said he wouldn't without'en order.  Said it was like pulling gum
+teeth to get the money from you even then."
+
+There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man's
+parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the
+family, sank back in honorable retirement.
+
+"Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren't pestered with
+wimmin and children, p'r'aps you'll go," said Tryan, with a nervous
+twitching, intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably
+mirthful.
+
+Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said shortly:
+
+"Got no saddle."
+
+"Wot's gone of your saddle?"
+
+"Kerg, there"--indicating his brother with a look such as Cain
+might have worn at the sacrifice.
+
+"You lie!" returned Kerg, cheerfully.
+
+Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around
+his head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which
+fearlessly met his own.  But it was only for a moment; his arm soon
+dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his
+face.  He allowed me to take the chair from his hand, and I was
+trying to pacify him by the assurance that I required no guide when
+the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice:
+
+"Theer's George comin'! why don't ye ask him?  He'll go and
+introduce you to Don Fernandy's darter, too, ef you ain't
+pertickler."
+
+The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some
+domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was
+followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man
+entered.  Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a
+shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the
+corner, sat down, his hands clasped lightly together and his very
+handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.
+
+Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he
+made upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as
+guide, and he cheerfully assented.  But some domestic duty called
+him presently away.
+
+The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting
+the prevailing influence, I silently watched the spurting flame,
+listening to the wind which continually shook the tenement.
+Besides the one chair which had acquired a new importance in my
+eyes, I presently discovered a crazy table in one corner, with an
+ink bottle and pen; the latter in that greasy state of
+decomposition peculiar to country taverns and farmhouses.  A goodly
+array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a
+dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the
+horse about them.  Some deer and bear skins completed the
+inventory.  As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the
+shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it
+difficult to believe I had ever known a different existence.  My
+profession had often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among
+those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness made me
+feel so lonely and uncomfortable I shrank closer to myself, not
+without grave doubts--which I think occur naturally to people in
+like situations--that this was the general rule of humanity and I
+was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception.  It was a relief
+when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a
+general movement in the family.  We walked across the dark
+platform, which led to another low-ceiled room.  Its entire length
+was occupied by a table, at the farther end of which a weak-eyed
+woman was already taking her repast as she at the same time gave
+nourishment to a weak-eyed baby.  As the formalities of
+introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no notice of
+me, I was enabled to slip into a seat without discomposing or
+interrupting her.  Tryan extemporized a grace, and the attention of
+the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.
+
+The meal was a sincere one.  Gentle gurglings at the upper end of
+the table often betrayed the presence of the "wellspring of
+pleasure."  The conversation generally referred to the labors of
+the day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts of missing
+stock.  Yet the supper was such a vast improvement upon the
+previous intellectual feast that when a chance allusion of mine to
+the business of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the interest
+grew quite exciting.  I remember he inveighed bitterly against the
+system of ranch-holding by the "greasers," as he was pleased to
+term the native Californians.  As the same ideas have been
+sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances they may be
+worthy of record.
+
+"Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that ever lay outer
+doors.  Whar's the papers for it?  Was it grants?  Mighty fine
+grants--most of 'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession.  More
+fools the 'Merrikans for lettin' 'em hold 'em.  Wat paid for 'em?
+'Merrikan and blood money.
+
+"Didn't they oughter have suthin' out of their native country?  Wot
+for?  Did they ever improve?  Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers,
+not so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they a sittin'
+home and smokin'.  With their gold and silver candlesticks, and
+missions, and crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich?
+Them sort things wurent allowed in Mizzoori."
+
+At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and
+met the half laughing, half embarrassed look of George.  The act
+did not escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of
+seeing that the rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance
+against us.
+
+"It was agin Nater, and agin God," added Tryan.  "God never
+intended gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and
+crucifixens.  That's why he sent 'Merrikans here.  Nater never
+intended such a climate for lazy lopers.  She never gin six months'
+sunshine to be slept and smoked away."
+
+How long he continued and with what further illustration I could
+not say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-
+room.  I was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door
+leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a bed.
+
+"You'd better sleep there tonight," he said; "you'll be more
+comfortable, and I'll call you early."
+
+I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which
+were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and
+vanished.
+
+A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone.  The "boys"
+returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places.  A larger
+log was thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a
+furnace, but it did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the
+hard faces that it lit.  In half an hour later, the furs which had
+served as chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mattresses,
+and each received its owner's full-length figure.  Mr. Tryan had
+not returned, and I missed George.  I sat there until, wakeful and
+nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall.  There was
+no sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of the
+sleepers.  At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my
+hat and opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.
+
+The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the
+wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the
+familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed
+relief.  I ran not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square
+outline of the house was lost in the alder bushes.  An
+uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten
+flat by the force of the gale.  As I kept on I noticed a slight
+elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded
+by the ascent of an Indian mound.  It struck me forcibly as
+resembling an island in the sea.  Its height gave me a better view
+of the expanding plain.  But even here I found no rest.  The
+ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow
+sung in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the
+star, I sought the house again.
+
+But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform.
+The door of the lower building was open, and the old man was
+sitting beside the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a
+look in his face as though he were hunting up prophecies against
+the "Greaser."  I turned to enter, but my attention was attracted
+by a blanketed figure lying beside the house, on the platform.  The
+broad chest heaving with healthy slumber, and the open, honest face
+were familiar.  It was George, who had given up his bed to the
+stranger among his people.  I was about to wake him, but he lay so
+peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed.  And I went to bed with
+a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure
+soothing me to sleep.
+
+
+I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and
+grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my
+bed, ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of
+the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes.  I looked around me.  The wind
+had been magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the
+windows.  A dash of cold water, with an extra chill on from the tin
+basin, helped to brighten me.  It was still early, but the family
+had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in
+the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had already "packed"
+his relatives away.  I felt more cheerful--there are few troubles
+Youth cannot distance with the start of a good night's rest.  After
+a substantial breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we
+were mounted and dashing down the plain.
+
+We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and
+baked with summer's heat, but which in winter, George told me,
+overflowed its banks.  I still retain a vivid impression of that
+morning's ride, the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against
+the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and the expanding track
+before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan,
+musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata.  He
+rode powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride and
+unbroken in nature.  Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by
+the cumbrous MACHILLAS of the Spanish saddle, which levels all
+equine distinctions.  The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit
+that can gripe, and if need be, crush the jaw it controls.
+
+Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me, as we
+again bear down into sunlit space.  Can this be "Chu Chu," staid
+and respectable filly of American pedigree--Chu Chu, forgetful of
+plank roads and cobblestones, wild with excitement, twinkling her
+small white feet beneath me?  George laughs out of a cloud of dust.
+"Give her her head; don't you see she likes it?" and Chu Chu seems
+to like it, and whether bitten by native tarantula into native
+barbarism or emulous of the roan, "blood" asserts itself, and in a
+moment the peaceful servitude of years is beaten out in the music
+of her clattering hoofs.  The creek widens to a deep gully.  We
+dive into it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving cloud
+of impalpable powder with us.  Cattle are scattered over the plain,
+grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds.  George
+makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include
+them all in his vaquero's loop, and says, "Ours!"
+
+"About how many, George?"
+
+"Don't know."
+
+"How many?"
+
+"'Well, p'r'aps three thousand head," says George, reflecting.  "We
+don't know, takes five men to look 'em up and keep run."
+
+"What are they worth?"
+
+"About thirty dollars a head."
+
+I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the
+laughing George.  Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of
+the Tryan household is expressed in that look, for George averts
+his eye and says, apologetically:
+
+"I've tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he
+says it ain't no use to settle down, just yet.  We must keep
+movin'.  In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles
+should fall through, and we'd have to get up and move stakes
+further down."
+
+Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are
+passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the center
+of the mass.  I follow, or rather Chu Chu darts after the roan, and
+in a few moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable
+horns and hoofs.  "TORO!" shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm,
+and the band opens a way for the swinging riata.  I can feel their
+steaming breaths, and their spume is cast on Chu Chu's quivering
+flank.
+
+Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove
+might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range
+the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines,
+economically got up to meet the exigencies of a six months'
+rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle with the distracting
+wind and the blinding dust.
+
+"That's not our brand," says George; "they're strange stock," and
+he points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological
+sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is
+chasing.  But the herd are closing round us with low mutterings,
+and George has again recourse to the authoritative "TORO," and with
+swinging riata divides the "bossy bucklers" on either side.  When
+we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I venture to ask
+George if they ever attack anyone.
+
+"Never horsemen--sometimes footmen.  Not through rage, you know,
+but curiosity.  They think a man and his horse are one, and if they
+meet a chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in
+the pursuit of knowledge.  But," adds George, "here's the lower
+bench of the foothills, and here's Altascar's corral, and that
+White building you see yonder is the casa."
+
+A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing another adobe
+building, baked with the solar beams of many summers.  Leaving our
+horses in the charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were
+basking lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep
+shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon us, as sudden and
+grateful as a plunge in cool water, from its contrast with the
+external glare and heat.  In the center of a low-ceiled apartment
+sat an old man with a black-silk handkerchief tied about his head,
+the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving his
+gamboge-colored face.  The odor of CIGARRITOS was as incense added
+to the cathedral gloom of the building.
+
+As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George
+advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of
+tenderness and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the
+heart by so much devotion in the careless youth.  In fact, my eyes
+were still dazzled by the effect of the outer sunshine, and at
+first I did not see the white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who
+slipped into the corridor as we entered.
+
+It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which
+would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had
+just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment.  But he
+listened calmly--not a muscle of his dark face stirring--and the
+smoke curling placidly from his lips showed his regular
+respiration.  When I had finished, he offered quietly to accompany
+us to the line of demarcation.  George had meanwhile disappeared,
+but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English, in the
+corridor, betrayed his vicinity.  When he returned again, a little
+absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most self-
+possessed of the party, extinguished his black-silk cap beneath
+that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect.
+A serape thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting.
+Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an
+hour from the time of our arrival we were again "loping" in the
+staring sunlight.
+
+But not as cheerfully as before.  George and myself were weighed
+down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet.  To break the
+silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that
+there might be further intervention or appeal, but the proffered
+oil and wine were returned with a careless shrug of the shoulders
+and a sententious "QUE BUENO?--Your courts are always just."
+
+The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery was a bearing
+monument of the new line, and there we halted.  We were surprised
+to find the old man Tryan waiting us.  For the first time during
+our interview the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in
+his yellow cheek.  I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed
+out the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.
+
+"The deputies will be here tomorrow to run the lines from this
+initial point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe,
+gentlemen."
+
+Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of
+dried grass in his hands.  George and I exchanged glances.  He
+presently arose from his stooping posture, and advancing to within
+a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a voice broken with passion:
+
+"And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my
+land in the fashion of my country."
+
+He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
+
+"I don't know your courts, your judges, or your CORREGIDORES.  Take
+the LLANO!--and take this with it.  May the drought seize your
+cattle till their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying
+lawyers!  May it be the curse and torment of your old age, as you
+and yours have made it of mine!"
+
+We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only
+the passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility
+but ill concealing his triumph, interrupted:
+
+"Let him curse on.  He'll find 'em coming home to him sooner than
+the cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride.  The Lord is on
+the side of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers."
+
+Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet
+sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power
+of his native invective.
+
+"Stealer of the Sacrament!  Open not!--open not, I say, your lying,
+Judas lips to me!  Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!--car-
+r-r-ramba!"
+
+With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant
+thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it
+had been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the
+saddle and galloped away.
+
+George turned to me:
+
+"Will you go back with us tonight?"
+
+I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire,
+and the roaring wind, and hesitated.
+
+"Well then, goodby."
+
+"Goodby, George."
+
+Another wring of the hands, and we parted.  I had not ridden far
+when I turned and looked back.  The wind had risen early that
+afternoon, and was already sweeping across the plain.  A cloud of
+dust traveled before it, and a picturesque figure occasionally
+emerging therefrom was my last indistinct impression of George
+Tryan.
+
+
+PART II--IN THE FLOOD
+
+
+Three months after the survey of the Espiritu Santo Rancho, I was
+again in the valley of the Sacramento.  But a general and terrible
+visitation had erased the memory of that event as completely as I
+supposed it had obliterated the boundary monuments I had planted.
+The great flood of 1861-62 was at its height when, obeying some
+indefinite yearning, I took my carpetbag and embarked for the
+inundated valley.
+
+There was nothing to be seen from the bright cabin windows of the
+GOLDEN CITY but night deepening over the water.  The only sound was
+the pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous for the past two
+weeks, and did not disturb the national gravity of my countrymen as
+they silently sat around the cabin stove.  Some on errands of
+relief to friends and relatives wore anxious faces, and conversed
+soberly on the one absorbing topic.  Others, like myself, attracted
+by curiosity listened eagerly to newer details.  But with that
+human disposition to seize upon any circumstance that might give
+chance event the exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half-
+conscious of something more than curiosity as an impelling motive.
+
+The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky
+greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged
+levee of Sacramento.  Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey
+us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible.  I resigned
+myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called "Joe," and,
+wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material, about as
+suggestive of warmth as court plaster might have been, took my seat
+in the stern sheets of his boat.  It was no slight inward struggle
+to part from the steamer that to most of the passengers was the
+only visible connecting link between us and the dry and habitable
+earth, but we pulled away and entered the city, stemming a rapid
+current as we shot the levee.
+
+We glided up the long level of K Street--once a cheerful, busy
+thoroughfare, now distressing in its silent desolation.  The turbid
+water which seemed to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at
+right angles in sluggish rivers through the streets.  Nature had
+revenged herself on the local taste by disarraying the regular
+rectangles by huddling houses on street corners, where they
+presented abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them in
+compact ruin.  Crafts of all kinds were gliding in and out of low-
+arched doorways.  The water was over the top of the fences
+surrounding well-kept gardens, in the first stories of hotels and
+private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets as well as
+roughly boarded floors.  And a silence quite as suggestive as the
+visible desolation was in the voiceless streets that no longer
+echoed to carriage wheel or footfall.  The low ripple of water, the
+occasional splash of oars, or the warning cry of boatmen were the
+few signs of life and habitation.
+
+With such scenes before my eyes and such sounds in my ears, as I
+lie lazily in the boat, is mingled the song of my gondolier who
+sings to the music of his oars.  It is not quite as romantic as his
+brother of the Lido might improvise, but my Yankee "Giuseppe" has
+the advantage of earnestness and energy, and gives a graphic
+description of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds of
+self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing out a balcony
+from which some California Bianca or Laura had been snatched, half-
+clothed and famished.  Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses
+the proffered fare, for--am I not a citizen of San Francisco, which
+was first to respond to the suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not
+he, Giuseppe, a member of the Howard Society?  No! Giuseppe is
+poor, but cannot take my money.  Still, if I must spend it, there
+is the Howard Society, and the women and children without food and
+clothes at the Agricultural Hall.
+
+I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to the Hall--a dismal,
+bleak place, ghastly with the memories of last year's opulence and
+plenty, and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's mite.
+But here Giuseppe tells me of the "Relief Boat" which leaves for
+the flooded district in the interior, and here, profiting by the
+lesson he has taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity to
+the account of others, and am accepted of those who go forth to
+succor and help the afflicted.  Giuseppe takes charge of my
+carpetbag, and does not part from me until I stand on the slippery
+deck of "Relief Boat No. 3."
+
+An hour later I am in the pilothouse, looking down upon what was
+once the channel of a peaceful river.  But its banks are only
+defined by tossing tufts of willow washed by the long swell that
+breaks over a vast inland sea.  Stretches of "tule" land fertilized
+by its once regular channel and dotted by flourishing ranchos are
+now cleanly erased.  The cultivated profile of the old landscape
+had faded.  Dotted lines in symmetrical perspective mark orchards
+that are buried and chilled in the turbid flood.  The roofs of a
+few farmhouses are visible, and here and there the smoke curling
+from chimneys of half-submerged tenements shows an undaunted life
+within.  Cattle and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting the
+fate of their companions whose carcasses drift by us, or swing in
+eddies with the wrecks of barns and outhouses.  Wagons are stranded
+everywhere where the tide could carry them.  As I wipe the
+moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering on the deck
+from the lowering clouds, dashing against the window, dripping from
+the willows, hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling,
+sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last into deeper and
+vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive quiet and concealment.
+
+As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows
+oppressive.  I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of
+the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from
+temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their
+individual misery.  Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and
+transfer a number of our passengers.  From them we learn how
+inward-bound vessels report to have struck the well-defined channel
+of the Sacramento, fifty miles beyond the bar.  There is a
+voluntary contribution taken among the generous travelers for the
+use of our afflicted, and we part company with a hearty "Godspeed"
+on either side.  But our signal lights are not far distant before a
+familiar sound comes back to us--an indomitable Yankee cheer--which
+scatters the gloom.
+
+Our course is altered, and we are steaming over the obliterated
+banks far in the interior.  Once or twice black objects loom up
+near us--the wrecks of houses floating by.  There is a slight rift
+in the sky toward the north, and a few bearing stars to guide us
+over the waste.  As we penetrate into shallower water, it is deemed
+advisable to divide our party into smaller boats, and diverge over
+the submerged prairie.  I borrow a peacoat of one of the crew, and
+in that practical disguise am doubtfully permitted to pass into one
+of the boats.  We give way northerly.  It is quite dark yet,
+although the rift of cloud has widened.
+
+It must have been about three o'clock, and we were lying upon our
+oars in an eddy formed by a clump of cottonwood, and the light of
+the steamer is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the
+silence is broken by the "bow oar":
+
+"Light ahead."
+
+All eyes are turned in that direction.  In a few seconds a
+twinkling light appears, shines steadily, and again disappears as
+if by the shifting position of some black object apparently
+drifting close upon us.
+
+"Stern, all; a steamer!"
+
+"Hold hard there!  Steamer be damned!" is the reply of the
+coxswain.  "It's a house, and a big one too."
+
+It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a huge fragment of
+the darkness.  The light comes from a single candle, which shines
+through a window as the great shape swings by.  Some recollection
+is drifting back to me with it as I listen with beating heart.
+
+"There's someone in it, by heavens!  Give way, boys--lay her
+alongside.  Handsomely, now!  The door's fastened; try the window;
+no! here's another!"
+
+In another moment we are trampling in the water which washes the
+floor to the depth of several inches.  It is a large room, at the
+farther end of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a blanket,
+holding a candle in one hand, and apparently absorbed in the book
+he holds with the other.  I spring toward him with an exclamation:
+
+"Joseph Tryan!"
+
+He does not move.  We gather closer to him, and I lay my hand
+gently on his shoulder, and say:
+
+"Look up, old man, look up!  Your wife and children, where are
+they?  The boys--George!  Are they here? are they safe?"
+
+He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to mine, and we
+involuntarily recoil before his look.  It is a calm and quiet
+glance, free from fear, anger, or pain; but it somehow sends the
+blood curdling through our veins.  He bowed his head over his book
+again, taking no further notice of us.  The men look at me
+compassionately, and hold their peace.  I make one more effort:
+
+"Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor who surveyed your
+ranch--the Espiritu Santo?  Look up, old man!"
+
+He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his blanket.  Presently
+he repeated to himself "The surveyor who surveyed your ranch--
+Espiritu Santo" over and over again, as though it were a lesson he
+was trying to fix in his memory.
+
+I was turning sadly to the boatmen when he suddenly caught me
+fearfully by the hand and said:
+
+"Hush!"
+
+We were silent.
+
+"Listen!"  He puts his arm around my neck and whispers in my ear,
+"I'm a MOVING OFF!"
+
+"Moving off?"
+
+"Hush!  Don't speak so loud.  Moving off.  Ah! wot's that?  Don't
+you hear?--there! listen!"
+
+We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click beneath the floor.
+
+"It's them wot he sent!--Old Altascar sent.  They've been here all
+night.  I heard 'em first in the creek, when they came to tell the
+old man to move farther off.  They came nearer and nearer.  They
+whispered under the door, and I saw their eyes on the step--their
+cruel, hard eyes.  Ah, why don't they quit?"
+
+I tell the men to search the room and see if they can find any
+further traces of the family, while Tryan resumes his old attitude.
+It is so much like the figure I remember on the breezy night that a
+superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me.  When they have
+returned, I tell them briefly what I know of him, and the old man
+murmurs again:
+
+"Why don't they quit, then?  They have the stock--all gone--gone,
+gone for the hides and hoofs," and he groans bitterly.
+
+"There are other boats below us.  The shanty cannot have drifted
+far, and perhaps the family are safe by this time," says the
+coxswain, hopefully.
+
+We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless, and carry him to
+the boat.  He is still grasping the Bible in his right hand, though
+its strengthening grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers
+in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer while a pale gleam in
+the sky shows the coming day.
+
+I was weary with excitement, and when we reached the steamer, and I
+had seen Joseph Tryan comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a
+blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep.  But even then
+the figure of the old man often started before me, and a sense of
+uneasiness about George made a strong undercurrent to my drifting
+dreams.  I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the morning by
+the engineer, who told me one of the old man's sons had been picked
+up and was now on board.
+
+"Is it George Tryan?" I ask quickly.
+
+"Don't know; but he's a sweet one, whoever he is," adds the
+engineer, with a smile at some luscious remembrance.  "You'll find
+him for'ard."
+
+I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not George, but the
+irrepressible Wise, sitting on a coil of rope, a little dirtier and
+rather more dilapidated than I can remember having seen him.
+
+He is examining, with apparent admiration, some rough, dry clothes
+that have been put out for his disposal.  I cannot help thinking
+that circumstances have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness.
+He puts me at my ease by at once addressing me:
+
+"These are high old times, ain't they?  I say, what do you reckon's
+become o' them thar bound'ry moniments you stuck?  Ah!"
+
+The pause which succeeds this outburst is the effect of a spasm of
+admiration at a pair of high boots, which, by great exertion, he
+has at last pulled on his feet.
+
+"So you've picked up the ole man in the shanty, clean crazy?  He
+must have been soft to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the
+old woman.  Didn't know me from Adam; took me for George!"
+
+At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness, Wise was
+evidently divided between amusement and chagrin.  I took advantage
+of the contending emotions to ask about George.
+
+"Don't know whar he is!  If he'd tended stock instead of running
+about the prairie, packin' off wimmin and children, he might have
+saved suthin.  He lost every hoof and hide, I'll bet a cooky!  Say
+you," to a passing boatman, "when are you goin' to give us some
+grub?  I'm hungry 'nough to skin and eat a hoss.  Reckon I'll turn
+butcher when things is dried up, and save hides, horns, and
+taller."
+
+I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer
+climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.
+
+"Have you any idea what you'll do, Wise?" I ask.
+
+"Thar ain't much to do now," says the practical young man.  "I'll
+have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight.
+The land ain't worth much now, and won't be, I dessay, for some
+time.  Wonder whar the ole man'll drive stakes next."
+
+"I meant as to your father and George, Wise."
+
+"Oh, the old man and I'll go on to 'Miles's,' whar Tom packed the
+old woman and babies last week.  George'll turn up somewhar atween
+this and Altascar's ef he ain't thar now."
+
+I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
+
+"Well, I reckon he ain't lost much in stock.  I shouldn't wonder if
+George helped him drive 'em up the foothills.  And his casa's built
+too high.  Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet.  Ah," says Wise,
+with reflective admiration, "those greasers ain't the darned fools
+people thinks 'em.  I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er
+Californy."  But the appearance of "grub" cut this rhapsody short.
+
+"I shall keep on a little farther," I say, "and try to find
+George."
+
+Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned
+upon him.
+
+"I don't think you'll save much.  What's the percentage--workin' on
+shares, eh!"
+
+I answer that I am only curious, which I feel lessens his opinion
+of me, and with a sadder feeling than his assurance of George's
+safety might warrant, I walked away.
+
+From others whom we picked up from time to time we heard of
+George's self-sacrificing devotion, with the praises of the many he
+had helped and rescued.  But I did not feel disposed to return
+until I had seen him, and soon prepared myself to take a boat to
+the lower VALDA of the foothills, and visit Altascar.  I soon
+perfected my arrangements, bade farewell to Wise, and took a last
+look at the old man, who was sitting by the furnace fires quite
+passive and composed.  Then our boat head swung round, pulled by
+sturdy and willing hands.
+
+It was again raining, and a disagreeable wind had risen.  Our
+course lay nearly west, and we soon knew by the strong current that
+we were in the creek of the Espiritu Santo.  From time to time the
+wrecks of barns were seen, and we passed many half-submerged
+willows hung with farming implements.
+
+We emerge at last into a broad silent sea.  It is the "LLANO DE
+ESPIRITU SANTO."  As the wind whistles by me, piling the shallower
+fresh water into mimic waves, I go back, in fancy, to the long ride
+of October over that boundless plain, and recall the sharp outlines
+of the distant hills, which are now lost in the lowering clouds.
+The men are rowing silently, and I find my mind, released from its
+tension, growing benumbed and depressed as then.  The water, too,
+is getting more shallow as we leave the banks of the creek, and
+with my hand dipped listlessly over the thwarts, I detect the tops
+of chimisal, which shows the tide to have somewhat fallen.  There
+is a black mound, bearing to the north of the line of alder, making
+an adverse current, which, as we sweep to the right to avoid, I
+recognize.  We pull close alongside and I call to the men to stop.
+
+There was a stake driven near its summit with the initials, "L. E.
+S. I."  Tied halfway down was a curiously worked riata.  It was
+George's.  It had been cut with some sharp instrument, and the
+loose gravelly soil of the mound was deeply dented with horses'
+hoofs.  The stake was covered with horsehairs.  It was a record,
+but no clue.
+
+The wind had grown more violent as we still fought our way forward,
+resting and rowing by turns, and oftener "poling" the shallower
+surface, but the old VALDA, or bench, is still distant.  My
+recollection of the old survey enables me to guess the relative
+position of the meanderings of the creek, and an occasional simple
+professional experiment to determine the distance gives my crew the
+fullest faith in my ability.  Night overtakes us in our impeded
+progress.  Our condition looks more dangerous than it really is,
+but I urge the men, many of whom are still new in this mode of
+navigation, to greater exertion by assurance of perfect safety and
+speedy relief ahead.  We go on in this way until about eight
+o'clock, and ground by the willows.  We have a muddy walk for a few
+hundred yards before we strike a dry trail, and simultaneously the
+white walls of Altascar's appear like a snowbank before us.  Lights
+are moving in the courtyard; but otherwise the old tomblike repose
+characterizes the building.
+
+One of the peons recognized me as I entered the court, and Altascar
+met me on the corridor.
+
+I was too weak to do more than beg his hospitality for the men who
+had dragged wearily with me.  He looked at my hand, which still
+unconsciously held the broken riata.  I began, wearily, to tell him
+about George and my fears, but with a gentler courtesy than was
+even his wont, he gravely laid his hand on my shoulder.
+
+"POCO A POCO, senor--not now.  You are tired, you have hunger, you
+have cold.  Necessary it is you should have peace."
+
+He took us into a small room and poured out some French cognac,
+which he gave to the men that had accompanied me.  They drank and
+threw themselves before the fire in the larger room.  The repose of
+the building was intensified that night, and I even fancied that
+the footsteps on the corridor were lighter and softer.  The old
+Spaniard's habitual gravity was deeper; we might have been shut out
+from the world as well as the whistling storm, behind those ancient
+walls with their time-worn inheritor.
+
+Before I could repeat my inquiry he retired.  In a few minutes two
+smoking dishes of CHUPA with coffee were placed before us, and my
+men ate ravenously.  I drank the coffee, but my excitement and
+weariness kept down the instincts of hunger.
+
+I was sitting sadly by the fire when he reentered.
+
+"You have eat?"
+
+I said, "Yes," to please him.
+
+"BUENO, eat when you can--food and appetite are not always."
+
+He said this with that Sancho-like simplicity with which most of
+his countrymen utter a proverb, as though it were an experience
+rather than a legend, and, taking the riata from the floor, held it
+almost tenderly before him.
+
+"It was made by me, senor."
+
+"I kept it as a clue to him, Don Altascar," I said.  "If I could
+find him--"
+
+"He is here."
+
+"Here! and"--but I could not say "well!"  I understood the gravity
+of the old man's face, the hushed footfalls, the tomblike repose of
+the building, in an electric flash of consciousness; I held the
+clue to the broken riata at last.  Altascar took my hand, and we
+crossed the corridor to a somber apartment.  A few tall candles
+were burning in sconces before the window.
+
+In an alcove there was a deep bed with its counterpane, pillows,
+and sheets heavily edged with lace, in all that splendid luxury
+which the humblest of these strange people lavish upon this single
+item of their household.  I stepped beside it and saw George lying,
+as I had seen him once before, peacefully at rest.  But a greater
+sacrifice than that he had known was here, and his generous heart
+was stilled forever.
+
+"He was honest and brave," said the old man, and turned away.
+There was another figure in the room; a heavy shawl drawn over her
+graceful outline, and her long black hair hiding the hands that
+buried her downcast face.  I did not seem to notice her, and,
+retiring presently, left the loving and loved together.
+
+When we were again beside the crackling fire, in the shifting
+shadows of the great chamber, Altascar told me how he had that
+morning met the horse of George Tryan swimming on the prairie; how
+that, farther on, he found him lying, quite cold and dead, with no
+marks or bruises on his person; that he had probably become
+exhausted in fording the creek, and that he had as probably reached
+the mound only to die for want of that help he had so freely given
+to others; that, as a last act, he had freed his horse.  These
+incidents were corroborated by many who collected in the great
+chamber that evening--women and children--most of them succored
+through the devoted energies of him who lay cold and lifeless
+above.
+
+He was buried in the Indian mound--the single spot of strange
+perennial greenness which the poor aborigines had raised above the
+dusty plain.  A little slab of sandstone with the initials "G. T."
+is his monument, and one of the bearings of the initial corner of
+the new survey of the "Espiritu Santo Rancho."
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN
+
+
+In 1858 Fiddletown considered her a very pretty woman.  She had a
+quantity of light chestnut hair, a good figure, a dazzling
+complexion, and a certain languid grace which passed easily for
+gentle-womanliness.  She always dressed becomingly, and in what
+Fiddletown accepted as the latest fashion.  She had only two
+blemishes: one of her velvety eyes, when examined closely, had a
+slight cast; and her left cheek bore a small scar left by a single
+drop of vitriol-- happily the only drop of an entire phial--thrown
+upon her by one of her own jealous sex, that reached the pretty
+face it was intended to mar.  But when the observer had studied the
+eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally
+incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was
+thought by some to add piquancy to her smile.  The youthful editor
+of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an
+exaggerated dimple."  Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of
+the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more
+particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you,
+you ever laid your two blank eyes upon--a Creole woman, sir, in New
+Orleans.  And this woman had a scar--a line extending, blank me,
+from her eye to her blank chin.  And this woman, sir, thrilled you,
+sir; maddened you, sir; absolutely sent your blank soul to
+perdition with her blank fascination!  And one day I said to her,
+'Celeste, how in blank did you come by that beautiful scar, blank
+you?'  And she said to me, 'Star, there isn't another white man
+that I'd confide in but you; but I made that scar myself,
+purposely, I did, blank me.'  These were her very words, sir, and
+perhaps you think it a blank lie, sir; but I'll put up any blank
+sum you can name and prove it, blank me."
+
+Indeed, most of the male population of Fiddletown were or had been
+in love with her.  Of this number, about one-half believed that
+their love was returned, with the exception, possibly, of her own
+husband.  He alone had been known to express skepticism.
+
+The name of the gentleman who enjoyed this infelicitous distinction
+was Tretherick.  He had been divorced from an excellent wife to
+marry this Fiddletown enchantress.  She, also, had been divorced;
+but it was hinted that some previous experiences of hers in that
+legal formality had made it perhaps less novel, and probably less
+sacrificial.  I would not have it inferred from this that she was
+deficient in sentiment, or devoid of its highest moral expression.
+Her intimate friend had written (on the occasion of her second
+divorce), "The cold world does not understand Clara yet"; and
+Colonel Starbottle had remarked blankly that with the exception of
+a single woman in Opelousas Parish, La., she had more soul than the
+whole caboodle of them put together.  Few indeed could read those
+lines entitled "Infelissimus," commencing "Why waves no cypress
+o'er this brow?" originally published in the AVALANCHE, over the
+signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of
+sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous
+indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable
+jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had
+suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire
+absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to the query.
+
+Indeed, it was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a
+metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the
+medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of
+Tretherick.  Several poems descriptive of the effects of California
+scenery upon a too-sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for
+the infinite which an enforced study of the heartlessness of
+California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr.
+Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between
+Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess.  Mr.
+Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden
+sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some
+reflections on the vanity of his pursuit--he supplied several
+mining camps with whisky and tobacco--in conjunction with the
+dreariness of the dusty plain on which he habitually drove, may
+have touched some chord in sympathy with this sensitive woman.
+Howbeit, after a brief courtship--as brief as was consistent with
+some previous legal formalities--they were married; and Mr.
+Tretherick brought his blushing bride to Fiddletown, or
+"Fideletown," as Mrs. Tretherick preferred to call it in her poems.
+
+The union was not a felicitous one.  It was not long before Mr.
+Tretherick discovered that the sentiment he had fostered while
+freighting between Stockton and Knight's Ferry was different from
+that which his wife had evolved from the contemplation of
+California scenery and her own soul.  Being a man of imperfect
+logic, this caused him to beat her; and she, being equally faulty
+in deduction, was impelled to a certain degree of unfaithfulness on
+the same premise.  Then Mr. Tretherick began to drink, and Mrs.
+Tretherick to contribute regularly to the columns of the AVALANCHE.
+It was at this time that Colonel Starbottle discovered a similarity
+in Mrs. Tretherick's verse to the genius of Sappho, and pointed it
+out to the citizens of Fiddletown in a two-columned criticism,
+signed "A. S.," also published in the AVALANCHE, and supported by
+extensive quotation.  As the AVALANCHE did not possess a font of
+Greek type, the editor was obliged to reproduce the Leucadian
+numbers in the ordinary Roman letter, to the intense disgust of
+Colonel Starbottle, and the vast delight of Fiddletown, who saw fit
+to accept the text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw--a language
+with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian
+Territories, was supposed to be familiar.  Indeed, the next week's
+INTELLIGENCER contained some vile doggerel supposed to be an answer
+to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a
+Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium signed "A.
+S. S."
+
+The result of this jocularity was briefly given in a later copy of
+the AVALANCHE.  "An unfortunate rencounter took place on Monday
+last, between the Hon. Jackson Flash of THE DUTCH FLAT
+INTELLIGENCER and the well-known Col. Starbottle of this place, in
+front of the Eureka Saloon.  Two shots were fired by the parties
+without injury to either, although it is said that a passing
+Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his legs from
+the colonel's double-barreled shotgun, which were not intended for
+him.  John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's
+firearms hereafter.  The cause of the affray is not known, although
+it is hinted that there is a lady in the case.  The rumor that
+points to a well-known and beautiful poetess whose lucubrations
+have often graced our columns seems to gain credence from those
+that are posted."
+
+Meanwhile the passiveness displayed by Tretherick under these
+trying circumstances was fully appreciated in the gulches.  "The
+old man's head is level," said one long-booted philosopher.  "Ef
+the colonel kills Flash, Mrs. Tretherick is avenged: if Flash drops
+the colonel, Tretherick is all right.  Either way, he's got a sure
+thing."  During this delicate condition of affairs, Mrs. Tretherick
+one day left her husband's home and took refuge at the Fiddletown
+Hotel, with only the clothes she had on her back.  Here she staid
+for several weeks, during which period it is only justice to say
+that she bore herself with the strictest propriety.
+
+It was a clear morning in early spring that Mrs. Tretherick,
+unattended, left the hotel, and walked down the narrow street
+toward the fringe of dark pines which indicated the extreme limits
+of Fiddletown.  The few loungers at that early hour were
+preoccupied with the departure of the Wingdown coach at the other
+extremity of the street; and Mrs. Tretherick reached the suburbs of
+the settlement without discomposing observation.  Here she took a
+cross street or road, running at right angles with the main
+thoroughfare of Fiddletown and passing through a belt of woodland.
+It was evidently the exclusive and aristocratic avenue of the town.
+The dwellings were few, ambitious, and uninterrupted by shops.  And
+here she was joined by Colonel Starbottle.
+
+The gallant colonel, notwithstanding that he bore the swelling port
+which usually distinguished him, that his coat was tightly buttoned
+and his boots tightly fitting, and that his cane, hooked over his
+arm, swung jauntily, was not entirely at his ease.  Mrs.
+Tretherick, however, vouchsafed him a gracious smile and a glance
+of her dangerous eyes; and the colonel, with an embarrassed cough
+and a slight strut, took his place at her side.
+
+"The coast is clear," said the colonel, "and Tretherick is over at
+Dutch Flat on a spree.  There is no one in the house but a
+Chinaman; and you need fear no trouble from him.  I," he continued,
+with a slight inflation of the chest that imperiled the security of
+his button, "I will see that you are protected in the removal of
+your property."
+
+"I'm sure it's very kind of you, and so disinterested!" simpered
+the lady as they walked along.  "It's so pleasant to meet someone
+who has soul--someone to sympathize with in a community so hardened
+and heartless as this."  And Mrs. Tretherick cast down her eyes,
+but not until they wrought their perfect and accepted work upon her
+companion.
+
+"Yes, certainly, of course," said the colonel, glancing nervously
+up and down the street--"yes, certainly."  Perceiving, however,
+that there was no one in sight or hearing, he proceeded at once to
+inform Mrs. Tretherick that the great trouble of his life, in fact,
+had been the possession of too much soul.  That many women--as a
+gentleman she would excuse him, of course, from mentioning names--
+but many beautiful women had often sought his society, but being
+deficient, madam, absolutely deficient, in this quality, he could
+not reciprocate.  But when two natures thoroughly in sympathy,
+despising alike the sordid trammels of a low and vulgar community
+and the conventional restraints of a hypocritical society--when two
+souls in perfect accord met and mingled in poetical union, then--
+but here the colonel's speech, which had been remarkable for a
+certain whisky-and-watery fluency, grew husky, almost inaudible,
+and decidedly incoherent.  Possibly Mrs. Tretherick may have heard
+something like it before, and was enabled to fill the hiatus.
+Nevertheless, the cheek that was on the side of the colonel was
+quite virginal and bashfully conscious until they reached their
+destination.
+
+It was a pretty little cottage, quite fresh and warm with paint,
+very pleasantly relieved against a platoon of pines, some of whose
+foremost files had been displaced to give freedom to the fenced
+enclosure in which it sat.  In the vivid sunlight and perfect
+silence, it had a new, uninhabited look, as if the carpenters and
+painters had just left it.  At the farther end of the lot, a
+Chinaman was stolidly digging; but there was no other sign of
+occupancy.  "The coast," as the colonel had said, was indeed
+"clear."  Mrs. Tretherick paused at the gate.  The colonel would
+have entered with her, but was stopped by a gesture.  "Come for me
+in a couple of hours, and I shall have everything packed," she
+said, as she smiled, and extended her hand.  The colonel seized and
+pressed it with great fervor.  Perhaps the pressure was slightly
+returned; for the gallant colonel was impelled to inflate his
+chest, and trip away as smartly as his stubby-toed, high-heeled
+boots would permit.  When he had gone, Mrs. Tretherick opened the
+door, listened a moment in the deserted hall, and then ran quickly
+upstairs to what had been her bedroom.
+
+Everything there was unchanged as on the night she left it.  On the
+dressing-table stood her bandbox, as she remembered to have left it
+when she took out her bonnet.  On the mantle lay the other glove
+she had forgotten in her flight.  The two lower drawers of the
+bureau were half-open (she had forgotten to shut them); and on its
+marble top lay her shawl pin and a soiled cuff.  What other
+recollections came upon her I know not; but she suddenly grew quite
+white, shivered, and listened with a beating heart, and her hand
+upon the door.  Then she stepped to the mirror, and half-fearfully,
+half-curiously, parted with her fingers the braids of her blond
+hair above her little pink ear, until she came upon an ugly, half-
+healed scar.  She gazed at this, moving her pretty head up and down
+to get a better light upon it, until the slight cast in her velvety
+eyes became very strongly marked indeed.  Then she turned away with
+a light, reckless, foolish laugh, and ran to the closet where hung
+her precious dresses.  These she inspected nervously, and missing
+suddenly a favorite black silk from its accustomed peg, for a
+moment, thought she should have fainted.  But discovering it the
+next instant lying upon a trunk where she had thrown it, a feeling
+of thankfulness to a superior Being who protects the friendless for
+the first time sincerely thrilled her.  Then, albeit she was
+hurried for time, she could not resist trying the effect of a
+certain lavender neck ribbon upon the dress she was then wearing,
+before the mirror.  And then suddenly she became aware of a child's
+voice close beside her, and she stopped.  And then the child's
+voice repeated, "Is it Mamma?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick faced quickly about.  Standing in the doorway was a
+little girl of six or seven.  Her dress had been originally fine,
+but was torn and dirty; and her hair, which was a very violent red,
+was tumbled seriocomically about her forehead.  For all this, she
+was a picturesque little thing, even through whose childish
+timidity there was a certain self-sustained air which is apt to
+come upon children who are left much to themselves.  She was
+holding under her arm a rag doll, apparently of her own
+workmanship, and nearly as large as herself--a doll with a
+cylindrical head, and features roughly indicated with charcoal.  A
+long shawl, evidently belonging to a grown person, dropped from her
+shoulders and swept the floor.
+
+The spectacle did not excite Mrs. Tretherick's delight.  Perhaps
+she had but a small sense of humor.  Certainly, when the child,
+still standing in the doorway, again asked, "Is it Mamma?" she
+answered sharply, "No, it isn't," and turned a severe look upon the
+intruder.
+
+The child retreated a step, and then, gaining courage with the
+distance, said in deliciously imperfect speech:
+
+"Dow 'way then! why don't you dow away?"
+
+But Mrs. Tretherick was eying the shawl.  Suddenly she whipped it
+off the child's shoulders, and said angrily:
+
+"How dared you take my things, you bad child?"
+
+"Is it yours?  Then you are my mamma; ain't you?  You are Mamma!"
+she continued gleefully; and before Mrs. Tretherick could avoid
+her, she had dropped her doll, and, catching the woman's skirts
+with both hands, was dancing up and down before her.
+
+"What's your name, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick coldly, removing
+the small and not very white hands from her garments.
+
+"Tarry."
+
+"Tarry?"
+
+"Yeth.  Tarry.  Tarowline."
+
+"Caroline?"
+
+"Yeth.  Tarowline Tretherick."
+
+"Whose child ARE you?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick still more coldly,
+to keep down a rising fear.
+
+"Why, yours," said the little creature with a laugh.  "I'm your
+little durl.  You're my mamma, my new mamma.  Don't you know my ol'
+mamma's dorn away, never to turn back any more?  I don't live wid
+my ol' mamma now.  I live wid you and Papa."
+
+"How long have you been here?" asked Mrs. Tretherick snappishly.
+
+"I fink it's free days," said Carry reflectively.
+
+"You think!  Don't you know?" sneered Mrs. Tretherick.  "Then,
+where did you come from?"
+
+Carry's lip began to work under this sharp cross-examination.  With
+a great effort and a small gulp, she got the better of it, and
+answered:
+
+"Papa, Papa fetched me--from Miss Simmons--from Sacramento, last
+week."
+
+"Last week!  You said three days just now," returned Mrs.
+Tretherick with severe deliberation.
+
+"I mean a monf," said Carry, now utterly adrift in sheer
+helplessness and confusion.
+
+"Do you know what you are talking about?" demanded Mrs. Tretherick
+shrilly, restraining an impulse to shake the little figure before
+her and precipitate the truth by specific gravity.
+
+But the flaming red head here suddenly disappeared in the folds of
+Mrs. Tretherick's dress, as if it were trying to extinguish itself
+forever.
+
+"There now--stop that sniffling," said Mrs. Tretherick, extricating
+her dress from the moist embraces of the child and feeling
+exceedingly uncomfortable.  "Wipe your face now, and run away, and
+don't bother.  Stop," she continued, as Carry moved away.  "Where's
+your papa?"
+
+"He's dorn away too.  He's sick.  He's been dorn"--she hesitated--
+"two, free, days."
+
+"Who takes care of you, child?" said Mrs. Tretherick, eying her
+curiously.
+
+"John, the Chinaman.  I tresses myselth.  John tooks and makes the
+beds."
+
+"Well, now, run away and behave yourself, and don't bother me any
+more," said Mrs. Tretherick, remembering the object of her visit.
+"Stop--where are you going?" she added as the child began to ascend
+the stairs, dragging the long doll after her by one helpless leg.
+
+"Doin' upstairs to play and be dood, and no bother Mamma."
+
+"I ain't your mamma," shouted Mrs. Tretherick, and then she swiftly
+re-entered her bedroom and slammed the door.
+
+Once inside, she drew forth a large trunk from the closet and set
+to work with querulous and fretful haste to pack her wardrobe.  She
+tore her best dress in taking it from the hook on which it hung:
+she scratched her soft hands twice with an ambushed pin.  All the
+while, she kept up an indignant commentary on the events of the
+past few moments.  She said to herself she saw it all.  Tretherick
+had sent for this child of his first wife--this child of whose
+existence he had never seemed to care--just to insult her, to fill
+her place.  Doubtless the first wife herself would follow soon, or
+perhaps there would be a third.  Red hair, not auburn, but RED--of
+course the child, this Caroline, looked like its mother, and, if
+so, she was anything but pretty.  Or the whole thing had been
+prepared: this red-haired child, the image of its mother, had been
+kept at a convenient distance at Sacramento, ready to be sent for
+when needed.  She remembered his occasional visits there on--
+business, as he said.  Perhaps the mother already was there; but
+no, she had gone East.  Nevertheless, Mrs. Tretherick, in her then
+state of mind, preferred to dwell upon the fact that she might be
+there.  She was dimly conscious, also, of a certain satisfaction in
+exaggerating her feelings.  Surely no woman had ever been so
+shamefully abused.  In fancy, she sketched a picture of herself
+sitting alone and deserted, at sunset, among the fallen columns of
+a ruined temple, in a melancholy yet graceful attitude, while her
+husband drove rapidly away in a luxurious coach-and-four, with a
+red-haired woman at his side.  Sitting upon the trunk she had just
+packed, she partly composed a lugubrious poem describing her
+sufferings as, wandering alone and poorly clad, she came upon her
+husband and "another" flaunting in silks and diamonds.  She
+pictured herself dying of consumption, brought on by sorrow--a
+beautiful wreck, yet still fascinating, gazed upon adoringly by the
+editor of the AVALANCHE and Colonel Starbottle.  And where was
+Colonel Starbottle all this while?  Why didn't he come?  He, at
+least, understood her.  He--she laughed the reckless, light laugh
+of a few moments before; and then her face suddenly grew grave, as
+it had not a few moments before.
+
+What was that little red-haired imp doing all this time?  Why was
+she so quiet?  She opened the door noiselessly, and listened.  She
+fancied that she heard, above the multitudinous small noises and
+creakings and warpings of the vacant house, a smaller voice singing
+on the floor above.  This, as she remembered, was only an open
+attic that had been used as a storeroom.  With a half-guilty
+consciousness, she crept softly upstairs and, pushing the door
+partly open, looked within.
+
+Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single
+small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half
+illuminating the barren, dreary apartment.  In the ray of this
+sunbeam she saw the child's glowing hair, as if crowned by a red
+aureole, as she sat upon the floor with her exaggerated doll
+between her knees.  She appeared to be talking to it; and it was
+not long before Mrs. Tretherick observed that she was rehearsing
+the interview of a half-hour before.  She catechized the doll
+severely, cross-examining it in regard to the duration of its stay
+there, and generally on the measure of time.  The imitation of Mrs.
+Tretherick's manner was exceedingly successful, and the
+conversation almost a literal reproduction, with a single
+exception.  After she had informed the doll that she was not her
+mother, at the close of the interview she added pathetically, "that
+if she was dood, very dood, she might be her mamma, and love her
+very much."
+
+I have already hinted that Mrs. Tretherick was deficient in a sense
+of humor.  Perhaps it was for this reason that this whole scene
+affected her most unpleasantly; and the conclusion sent the blood
+tingling to her cheek.  There was something, too, inconceivably
+lonely in the situation.  The unfurnished vacant room, the half-
+lights, the monstrous doll, whose very size seemed to give a
+pathetic significance to its speechlessness, the smallness of the
+one animate, self-centered figure--all these touched more or less
+deeply the half-poetic sensibilities of the woman.  She could not
+help utilizing the impression as she stood there, and thought what
+a fine poem might be constructed from this material if the room
+were a little darker, the child lonelier--say, sitting beside a
+dead mother's bier, and the wind wailing in the turrets.  And then
+she suddenly heard footsteps at the door below, and recognized the
+tread of the colonel's cane.
+
+She flew swiftly down the stairs, and encountered the colonel in
+the hall.  Here she poured into his astonished ear a voluble and
+exaggerated statement of her discovery, and indignant recital of
+her wrongs.  "Don't tell me the whole thing wasn't arranged
+beforehand; for I know it was!" she almost screamed.  "And think,"
+she added, "of the heartlessness of the wretch, leaving his own
+child alone here in that way."
+
+"It's a blank shame!" stammered the colonel, without the least idea
+of what he was talking about.  In fact, utterly unable as he was to
+comprehend a reason for the woman's excitement, with his estimate
+of her character, I fear he showed it more plainly than he
+intended.  He stammered, expanded his chest, looked stern, gallant,
+tender, but all unintelligently.  Mrs. Tretherick, for an instant,
+experienced a sickening doubt of the existence of natures in
+perfect affinity.
+
+"It's of no use," said Mrs. Tretherick with sudden vehemence, in
+answer to some inaudible remark of the colonel's, and withdrawing
+her hand from the fervent grasp of that ardent and sympathetic man.
+"It's of no use: my mind is made up.  You can send for my trunk as
+soon as you like; but I shall stay here, and confront that man with
+the proof of his vileness.  I will put him face to face with his
+infamy."
+
+I do not know whether Colonel Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the
+convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity
+afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's
+own child in his own house.  He was dimly aware, however, of some
+unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite
+longing of his own sentimental nature.  But, before he could say
+anything, Carry appeared on the landing above them, looking
+timidly, and yet half-critically, at the pair.
+
+"That's her," said Mrs. Tretherick excitedly.  In her deepest
+emotions, in either verse or prose, she rose above a consideration
+of grammatical construction.
+
+"Ah!" said the colonel, with a sudden assumption of parental
+affection and jocularity that was glaringly unreal and affected.
+"Ah! pretty little girl, pretty little girl!  How do you do?  How
+are you?  You find yourself pretty well, do you, pretty little
+girl?"  The colonel's impulse also was to expand his chest and
+swing his cane, until it occurred to him that this action might be
+ineffective with a child of six or seven.  Carry, however, took no
+immediate notice of this advance, but further discomposed the
+chivalrous colonel by running quickly to Mrs. Tretherick and hiding
+herself, as if for protection, in the folds of her gown.
+Nevertheless, the colonel was not vanquished.  Falling back into an
+attitude of respectful admiration, he pointed out a marvelous
+resemblance to the "Madonna and Child."  Mrs. Tretherick simpered,
+but did not dislodge Carry as before.  There was an awkward pause
+for a moment; and then Mrs. Tretherick, motioning significantly to
+the child, said in a whisper: "Go now.  Don't come here again, but
+meet me tonight at the hotel."  She extended her hand: the colonel
+bent over it gallantly and, raising his hat, the next moment was
+gone.
+
+"Do you think," said Mrs. Tretherick with an embarrassed voice and
+a prodigious blush, looking down, and addressing the fiery curls
+just visible in the folds of her dress--"do you think you will be
+'dood' if I let you stay in here and sit with me?"
+
+"And let me tall you Mamma?" queried Carry, looking up.
+
+"And let you call me Mamma!" assented Mrs. Tretherick with an
+embarrassed laugh.
+
+"Yeth," said Carry promptly.
+
+They entered the bedroom together.  Carry's eye instantly caught
+sight of the trunk.
+
+"Are you dowin' away adain, Mamma?" she said with a quick nervous
+look, and a clutch at the woman's dress.
+
+"No-o," said Mrs. Tretherick, looking out of the window.
+
+"Only playing your dowin' away," suggested Carry with a laugh.
+"Let me play too."
+
+Mrs. Tretherick assented.  Carry flew into the next room, and
+presently reappeared dragging a small trunk, into which she gravely
+proceeded to pack her clothes.  Mrs. Tretherick noticed that they
+were not many.  A question or two regarding them brought out some
+further replies from the child; and before many minutes had
+elapsed, Mrs. Tretherick was in possession of all her earlier
+history.  But, to do this, Mrs. Tretherick had been obliged to take
+Carry upon her lap, pending the most confidential disclosures.
+They sat thus a long time after Mrs. Tretherick had apparently
+ceased to be interested in Carry's disclosures; and when lost in
+thought, she allowed the child to rattle on unheeded, and ran her
+fingers through the scarlet curls.
+
+"You don't hold me right, Mamma," said Carry at last, after one or
+two uneasy shiftings of position.
+
+"How should I hold you?" asked Mrs. Tretherick with a half-amused,
+half-embarrassed laugh.
+
+"Dis way," said Carry, curling up into position, with one arm
+around Mrs. Tretherick's neck and her cheek resting on her bosom--
+"dis way--dere."  After a little preparatory nestling, not unlike
+some small animal, she closed her eyes, and went to sleep.
+
+For a few moments the woman sat silent, scarcely daring to breathe
+in that artificial attitude.  And then, whether from some occult
+sympathy in the touch, or God best knows what, a sudden fancy began
+to thrill her.  She began by remembering an old pain that she had
+forgotten, an old horror that she had resolutely put away all these
+years.  She recalled days of sickness and distrust--days of an
+overshadowing fear--days of preparation for something that was to
+be prevented, that WAS prevented, with mortal agony and fear.  She
+thought of a life that might have been--she dared not say HAD been-
+-and wondered.  It was six years ago; if it had lived, it would
+have been as old as Carry.  The arms which were folded loosely
+around the sleeping child began to tremble, and tighten their
+clasp.  And then the deep potential impulse came, and with a half-
+sob, half-sigh, she threw her arms out and drew the body of the
+sleeping child down, down, into her breast, down again and again as
+if she would hide it in the grave dug there years before.  And the
+gust that shook her passed, and then, ah me! the rain.
+
+A drop or two fell upon the curls of Carry, and she moved uneasily
+in her sleep.  But the woman soothed her again--it was SO easy to
+do it now--and they sat there quiet and undisturbed, so quiet that
+they might have seemed incorporate of the lonely silent house, the
+slowly declining sunbeams, and the general air of desertion and
+abandonment, yet a desertion that had in it nothing of age, decay,
+or despair.
+
+
+Colonel Starbottle waited at the Fiddletown Hotel all that night in
+vain.  And the next morning, when Mr. Tretherick returned to his
+husks, he found the house vacant and untenanted, except by motes
+and sunbeams.
+
+When it was fairly known that Mrs. Tretherick had run away, taking
+Mr. Tretherick's own child with her, there was some excitement and
+much diversity of opinion, in Fiddletown.  THE DUTCH FLAT
+INTELLIGENCER openly alluded to the "forcible abduction" of the
+child with the same freedom, and it is to be feared the same
+prejudice, with which it had criticized the abductor's poetry.  All
+of Mrs. Tretherick's own sex, and perhaps a few of the opposite
+sex, whose distinctive quality was not, however, very strongly
+indicated, fully coincided in the views of the INTELLIGENCER.  The
+majority, however, evaded the moral issue; that Mrs. Tretherick had
+shaken the red dust of Fiddletown from her dainty slippers was
+enough for them to know.  They mourned the loss of the fair
+abductor more than her offense.  They promptly rejected Tretherick
+as an injured husband and disconsolate father, and even went so far
+as to openly cast discredit on the sincerity of his grief.  They
+reserved an ironical condolence for Colonel Starbottle, overbearing
+that excellent man with untimely and demonstrative sympathy in
+barrooms, saloons, and other localities not generally deemed
+favorable to the display of sentiment.  "She was alliz a skittish
+thing, Kernel," said one sympathizer, with a fine affectation of
+gloomy concern and great readiness of illustration; "and it's
+kinder nat'ril thet she'd get away someday, and stampede that theer
+colt: but thet she should shake YOU, Kernel, diet she should jist
+shake you--is what gits me.  And they do say thet you jist hung
+around thet hotel all night, and payrolled them corriders, and
+histed yourself up and down them stairs, and meandered in and out
+o' thet piazzy, and all for nothing?"  It was another generous and
+tenderly commiserating spirit that poured additional oil and wine
+on the colonel's wounds.  "The boys yer let on thet Mrs. Tretherick
+prevailed on ye to pack her trunk and a baby over from the house to
+the stage offis, and that the chap ez did go off with her thanked
+you, and offered you two short bits, and sed ez how he liked your
+looks, and ud employ you agin--and now you say it ain't so?  Well,
+I'll tell the boys it ain't so, and I'm glad I met you, for stories
+DO get round."
+
+Happily for Mrs. Tretherick's reputation, however, the Chinaman in
+Tretherick's employment, who was the only eyewitness of her flight,
+stated that she was unaccompanied, except by the child.  He further
+deposed that, obeying her orders, he had stopped the Sacramento
+coach, and secured a passage for herself and child to San
+Francisco.  It was true that Ah Fe's testimony was of no legal
+value.  But nobody doubted it.  Even those who were skeptical of
+the pagan's ability to recognize the sacredness of the truth
+admitted his passionless, unprejudiced unconcern.  But it would
+appear, from a hitherto unrecorded passage of this veracious
+chronicle, that herein they were mistaken.
+
+It was about six months after the disappearance of Mrs. Tretherick
+that Ah Fe, while working in Tretherick's lot, was hailed by two
+passing Chinamen.  They were the ordinary mining coolies, equipped
+with long poles and baskets for their usual pilgrimages.  An
+animated conversation at once ensued between Ah Fe and his brother
+Mongolians--a conversation characterized by that usual shrill
+volubility and apparent animosity which was at once the delight and
+scorn of the intelligent Caucasian who did not understand a word of
+it.  Such, at least, was the feeling with which Mr. Tretherick on
+his veranda and Colonel Starbottle, who was passing, regarded their
+heathenish jargon.  The gallant colonel simply kicked them out of
+his way; the irate Tretherick, with an oath, threw a stone at the
+group, and dispersed them, but not before one or two slips of
+yellow rice paper, marked with hieroglyphics, were exchanged, and a
+small parcel put into Ah Fe's hands.  When Ah Fe opened this in the
+dim solitude of his kitchen, he found a little girl's apron,
+freshly washed, ironed, and folded.  On the corner of the hem were
+the initials "C. T."  Ah Fe tucked it away in a corner of his
+blouse, and proceeded to wash his dishes in the sink with a smile
+of guileless satisfaction.
+
+Two days after this, Ah Fe confronted his master.  "Me no likee
+Fiddletown.  Me belly sick.  Me go now."  Mr. Tretherick violently
+suggested a profane locality.  Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and
+withdrew.
+
+Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel
+Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently
+interested that gentleman.  When he concluded, the colonel handed
+him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece.  "If you bring me an
+answer, I'll double that--sabe, John?"  Ah Fe nodded.  An interview
+equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place
+between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been
+the youthful editor of the AVALANCHE.  Yet I regret to state that,
+after proceeding some distance on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke
+the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside
+down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and
+in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he
+met on the road, for a trifling gratuity.  The agony of Colonel
+Starbottle on finding his wash bill made out on the unwritten side
+of one of these squares, and delivered to him with his weekly clean
+clothes, and the subsequent discovery that the remaining portions
+of his letter were circulated by the same method from the Chinese
+laundry of one Fung Ti of Fiddletown, has been described to me as
+peculiarly affecting.  Yet I am satisfied that a higher nature,
+rising above the levity induced by the mere contemplation of the
+insignificant details of this breach of trust, would find ample
+retributive justice in the difficulties that subsequently attended
+Ah Fe's pilgrimage.
+
+On the road to Sacramento he was twice playfully thrown from the
+top of the stagecoach by an intelligent but deeply intoxicated
+Caucasian, whose moral nature was shocked at riding with one
+addicted to opium-smoking.  At Hangtown he was beaten by a passing
+stranger--purely an act of Christian supererogation.  At Dutch Flat
+he was robbed by well-known hands from unknown motives.  At
+Sacramento he was arrested on suspicion of being something or
+other, and discharged with a severe reprimand--possibly for not
+being it, and so delaying the course of justice.  At San Francisco
+he was freely stoned by children of the public schools; but, by
+carefully avoiding these monuments of enlightened progress, he at
+last reached, in comparative safety, the Chinese quarters, where
+his abuse was confined to the police and limited by the strong arm
+of the law.
+
+The next day he entered the washhouse of Chy Fook as an assistant,
+and on the following Friday was sent with a basket of clean clothes
+to Chy Fook's several clients.
+
+It was the usual foggy afternoon as he climbed the long windswept
+hill of California Street--one of those bleak, gray intervals that
+made the summer a misnomer to any but the liveliest San Franciscan
+fancy.  There was no warmth or color in earth or sky, no light nor
+shade within or without, only one monotonous, universal neutral
+tint over everything.  There was a fierce unrest in the wind-
+whipped streets: there was a dreary vacant quiet in the gray
+houses.  When Ah Fe reached the top of the hill, the Mission Ridge
+was already hidden, and the chill sea breeze made him shiver.  As
+he put down his basket to rest himself, it is possible that, to his
+defective intelligence and heathen experience, this "God's own
+climate," as was called, seemed to possess but scant tenderness,
+softness, or mercy.  But it is possible that Ah Fe illogically
+confounded this season with his old persecutors, the
+schoolchildren, who, being released from studious confinement, at
+this hour were generally most aggressive.  So he hastened on, and
+turning a corner, at last stopped before a small house.
+
+It was the usual San Franciscan urban cottage.  There was the
+little strip of cold green shrubbery before it; the chilly, bare
+veranda, and above this, again, the grim balcony, on which no one
+sat.  Ah Fe rang the bell.  A servant appeared, glanced at his
+basket, and reluctantly admitted him, as if he were some necessary
+domestic animal.  Ah Fe silently mounted the stairs, and entering
+the open door of the front chamber, put down the basket and stood
+passively on the threshold.
+
+A woman, who was sitting in the cold gray light of the window, with
+a child in her lap, rose listlessly, and came toward him.  Ah Fe
+instantly recognized Mrs. Tretherick; but not a muscle of his
+immobile face changed, nor did his slant eyes lighten as he met her
+own placidly.  She evidently did not recognize him as she began to
+count the clothes.  But the child, curiously examining him,
+suddenly uttered a short, glad cry.
+
+"Why, it's John, Mamma!  It's our old John what we had in
+Fiddletown."
+
+For an instant Ah Fe's eyes and teeth electrically lightened.  The
+child clapped her hands, and caught at his blouse.  Then he said
+shortly: "Me John--Ah Fe--allee same.  Me know you.  How do?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick dropped the clothes nervously, and looked hard at
+Ah Fe.  Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that
+sharpened Carry's perception, she even then could not distinguish
+him above his fellows.  With a recollection of past pain, and an
+obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when he had
+left Fiddletown.
+
+"Longee time.  No likee Fiddletown, no likee Tlevelick.  Likee San
+Flisco.  Likee washee.  Likee Tally."
+
+Ah Fe's laconics pleased Mrs. Tretherick.  She did not stop to
+consider how much an imperfect knowledge of English added to his
+curt directness and sincerity.  But she said, "Don't tell anybody
+you have seen me," and took out her pocketbook.
+
+Ah Fe, without looking at it, saw that it was nearly empty.  Ah Fe,
+without examining the apartment, saw that it was scantily
+furnished.  Ah Fe, without removing his eyes from blank vacancy,
+saw that both Mrs. Tretherick and Carry were poorly dressed.  Yet
+it is my duty to state that Ah Fe's long fingers closed promptly
+and firmly over the half-dollar which Mrs. Tretherick extended to
+him.
+
+Then he began to fumble in his blouse with a series of
+extraordinary contortions.  After a few moments, he extracted from
+apparently no particular place a child's apron, which he laid upon
+the basket with the remark:
+
+"One piecee washman flagittee."
+
+Then he began anew his fumblings and contortions.  At last his
+efforts were rewarded by his producing, apparently from his right
+ear, a many-folded piece of tissue paper.  Unwrapping this
+carefully, he at last disclosed two twenty-dollar gold pieces,
+which he handed to Mrs. Tretherick.
+
+"You leavee money topside of blulow, Fiddletown.  Me findee money.
+Me fetchee money to you.  All lightee."
+
+"But I left no money on the top of the bureau, John," said Mrs.
+Tretherick earnestly.  "There must be some mistake.  It belongs to
+some other person.  Take it back, John."
+
+Ah Fe's brow darkened.  He drew away from Mrs. Tretherick's
+extended hand, and began hastily to gather up his basket.
+
+"Me no takee it back.  No, no!  Bimeby pleesman he catchee me.  He
+say, 'God damn thief!--catchee flowty dollar: come to jailee.'  Me
+no takee back.  You leavee money topside blulow, Fiddletown.  Me
+fetchee money you.  Me no takee back."
+
+Mrs. Tretherick hesitated.  In the confusion of her flight, she
+MIGHT have left the money in the manner he had said.  In any event,
+she had no right to jeopardize this honest Chinaman's safety by
+refusing it.  So she said: "Very well, John, I will keep it.  But
+you must come again and see me--" here Mrs. Tretherick hesitated
+with a new and sudden revelation of the fact that any man could
+wish to see any other than herself--"and, and--Carry."
+
+Ah Fe's face lightened.  He even uttered a short ventriloquistic
+laugh without moving his mouth.  Then, shouldering his basket, he
+shut the door carefully and slid quietly down stairs.  In the lower
+hall he, however, found an unexpected difficulty in opening the
+front door, and, after fumbling vainly at the lock for a moment,
+looked around for some help or instruction.  But the Irish handmaid
+who had let him in was contemptuously oblivious of his needs, and
+did not appear.
+
+There occurred a mysterious and painful incident, which I shall
+simply record without attempting to explain.  On the hall table a
+scarf, evidently the property of the servant before alluded to, was
+lying.  As Ah Fe tried the lock with one hand, the other rested
+lightly on the table.  Suddenly, and apparently of its own
+volition, the scarf began to creep slowly toward Ah Fe's hand; from
+Ah Fe's hand it began to creep up his sleeve slowly, and with an
+insinuating, snakelike motion; and then disappeared somewhere in
+the recesses of his blouse.  Without betraying the least interest
+or concern in this phenomenon, Ah Fe still repeated his experiments
+upon the lock.  A moment later the tablecloth of red damask, moved
+by apparently the same mysterious impulse, slowly gathered itself
+under Ah Fe's fingers, and sinuously disappeared by the same hidden
+channel.  What further mystery might have followed, I cannot say;
+for at this moment Ah Fe discovered the secret of the lock, and was
+enabled to open the door coincident with the sound of footsteps
+upon the kitchen stairs.  Ah Fe did not hasten his movements, but
+patiently shouldering his basket, closed the door carefully behind
+him again, and stepped forth into the thick encompassing fog that
+now shrouded earth and sky.
+
+From her high casement window, Mrs. Tretherick watched Ah Fe's
+figure until it disappeared in the gray cloud.  In her present
+loneliness, she felt a keen sense of gratitude toward him, and may
+have ascribed to the higher emotions and the consciousness of a
+good deed that certain expansiveness of the chest, and swelling of
+the bosom, that was really due to the hidden presence of the scarf
+and tablecloth under his blouse.  For Mrs. Tretherick was still
+poetically sensitive.  As the gray fog deepened into night, she
+drew Carry closer toward her, and, above the prattle of the child,
+pursued a vein of sentimental and egotistic recollection at once
+bitter and dangerous.  The sudden apparition of Ah Fe linked her
+again with her past life at Fiddletown.  Over the dreary interval
+between, she was now wandering--a journey so piteous, willful,
+thorny, and useless that it was no wonder that at last Carry
+stopped suddenly in the midst of her voluble confidences to throw
+her small arms around the woman's neck, and bid her not to cry.
+
+Heaven forefend that I should use a pen that should be ever
+dedicated to an exposition of unalterable moral principle to
+transcribe Mrs. Tretherick's own theory of this interval and
+episode, with its feeble palliations, its illogical deductions, its
+fond excuses, and weak apologies.  It would seem, however, that her
+experience had been hard.  Her slender stock of money was soon
+exhausted.  At Sacramento she found that the composition of verse,
+although appealing to the highest emotions of the human heart, and
+compelling the editorial breast to the noblest commendation in the
+editorial pages, was singularly inadequate to defray the expenses
+of herself and Carry.  Then she tried the stage, but failed
+signally.  Possibly her conception of the passions was different
+from that which obtained with a Sacramento audience; but it was
+certain that her charming presence, so effective at short range,
+was not sufficiently pronounced for the footlights.  She had
+admirers enough in the greenroom, but awakened no abiding affection
+among the audience.  In this strait, it occurred to her that she
+had a voice--a contralto of no very great compass or cultivation,
+but singularly sweet and touching; and she finally obtained
+position in a church choir.  She held it for three months, greatly
+to her pecuniary advantage, and, it is said, much to the
+satisfaction of the gentlemen in the back pews, who faced toward
+her during the singing of the last hymn.
+
+I remember her quite distinctly at this time.  The light that
+slanted through the oriel of St. Dives's choir was wont to fall
+very tenderly on her beautiful head with its stacked masses of
+deerskin-colored hair, on the low black arches of her brows, and to
+deepen the pretty fringes that shaded her eyes of Genoa velvet.
+Very pleasant it was to watch the opening and shutting of that
+small straight mouth, with its quick revelation of little white
+teeth, and to see the foolish blood faintly deepen her satin cheek
+as you watched.  For Mrs. Tretherick was very sweetly conscious of
+admiration and, like most pretty women, gathered herself under your
+eye like a racer under the spur.
+
+And then, of course, there came trouble.  I have it from the
+soprano--a little lady who possessed even more than the usual
+unprejudiced judgment of her sex--that Mrs. Tretherick's conduct
+was simply shameful; that her conceit was unbearable; that, if she
+considered the rest of the choir as slaves, she (the soprano) would
+like to know it; that her conduct on Easter Sunday with the basso
+had attracted the attention of the whole congregation; and that she
+herself had noticed Dr. Cope twice look up during the service; that
+her (the soprano's) friends had objected to her singing in the
+choir with a person who had been on the stage, but she had waived
+this.  Yet she had it from the best authority that Mrs. Tretherick
+had run away from her husband, and that this red-haired child who
+sometimes came in the choir was not her own.  The tenor confided to
+me behind the organ that Mrs. Tretherick had a way of sustaining a
+note at the end of a line in order that her voice might linger
+longer with the congregation--an act that could be attributed only
+to a defective moral nature; that as a man (he was a very popular
+dry goods clerk on weekdays, and sang a good deal from apparently
+behind his eyebrows on the Sabbath)--that as a man, sir, he would
+put up with it no longer.  The basso alone--a short German with a
+heavy voice, for which he seemed reluctantly responsible, and
+rather grieved at its possession--stood up for Mrs. Tretherick, and
+averred that they were jealous of her because she was "bretty."
+The climax was at last reached in an open quarrel, wherein Mrs.
+Tretherick used her tongue with such precision of statement and
+epithet that the soprano burst into hysterical tears, and had to be
+supported from the choir by her husband and the tenor.  This act
+was marked intentionally to the congregation by the omission of the
+usual soprano solo.  Mrs. Tretherick went home flushed with
+triumph, but on reaching her room frantically told Carry that they
+were beggars henceforward; that she--her mother--had just taken the
+very bread out of her darling's mouth, and ended by bursting into a
+flood of penitent tears.  They did not come so quickly as in her
+old poetical days; but when they came they stung deeply.  She was
+roused by a formal visit from a vestryman--one of the music
+committee.  Mrs. Tretherick dried her long lashes, put on a new
+neck ribbon, and went down to the parlor.  She staid there two
+hours--a fact that might have occasioned some remark but that the
+vestryman was married, and had a family of grownup daughters.  When
+Mrs. Tretherick returned to her room, she sang to herself in the
+glass and scolded Carry--but she retained her place in the choir.
+
+It was not long, however.  In due course of time, her enemies
+received a powerful addition to their forces in the committeeman's
+wife.  That lady called upon several of the church members and on
+Dr. Cope's family.  The result was that, at a later meeting of the
+music committee, Mrs. Tretherick's voice was declared inadequate to
+the size of the building and she was invited to resign.  She did
+so.  She had been out of a situation for two months, and her scant
+means were almost exhausted, when Ah Fe's unexpected treasure was
+tossed into her lap.
+
+The gray fog deepened into night, and the street lamps started into
+shivering life as, absorbed in these unprofitable memories, Mrs.
+Tretherick still sat drearily at her window.  Even Carry had
+slipped away unnoticed; and her abrupt entrance with the damp
+evening paper in her hand roused Mrs. Tretherick, and brought her
+back to an active realization of the present.  For Mrs. Tretherick
+was wont to scan the advertisements in the faint hope of finding
+some avenue of employment--she knew not what--open to her needs;
+and Carry had noted this habit.
+
+Mrs. Tretherick mechanically closed the shutters, lit the lights,
+and opened the paper.  Her eye fell instinctively on the following
+paragraph in the telegraphic column:
+
+
+FIDDLETOWN, 7th.--Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this
+place, died last night of delirium tremens.  Mr. Tretherick was
+addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by
+domestic trouble.
+
+
+Mrs. Tretherick did not start.  She quietly turned over another
+page of the paper, and glanced at Carry.  The child was absorbed in
+a book.  Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder
+of the evening was unusually silent and cold.  When Carry was
+undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees
+beside the bed, and, taking Carry's flaming head between her hands,
+said:
+
+"Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?"
+
+"No," said Carry, after a moment's thought.
+
+"But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give
+you nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?"
+
+Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner.  "Should YOU,
+Mamma?"
+
+Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair.  "Go to
+sleep," she said sharply, and turned away.
+
+But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around
+her, and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at
+last was broken up by sobs.
+
+"Don't ky, Mamma," whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of
+their recent conversation.  "Don't ky.  I fink I SHOULD like a new
+papa, if he loved you very much--very, very much!"
+
+A month afterward, to everybody's astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was
+married.  The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently
+elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils
+of the State.  As I cannot record the event in finer language than
+that used by the correspondent of THE SACRAMENTO GLOBE, I venture
+to quote some of his graceful periods.  "The relentless shafts of
+the sly god have been lately busy among our gallant Solons.  We
+quote 'one more unfortunate.'  The latest victim is the Hon. C.
+Starbottle of Calaveras.  The fair enchantress in the case is a
+beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a
+fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of
+San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary."
+
+THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER saw fit, however, to comment upon the
+fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered
+press.  "The new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately
+advented in the legislature with a little bill to change the name
+of Tretherick to Starbottle.  They call it a marriage certificate
+down there.  Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we
+presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts."  It is but
+just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel's victory was by
+no means an easy one.  To a natural degree of coyness on the part
+of the lady was added the impediment of a rival--a prosperous
+undertaker from Sacramento, who had first seen and loved Mrs.
+Tretherick at the theater and church, his professional habits
+debarring him from ordinary social intercourse, and indeed any
+other than the most formal public contact with the sex.  As this
+gentleman had made a snug fortune during the felicitous prevalence
+of a severe epidemic, the colonel regarded him as a dangerous
+rival.  Fortunately, however, the undertaker was called in
+professionally to lay out a brother senator, who had unhappily
+fallen by the colonel's pistol in an affair of honor; and either
+deterred by physical consideration from rivalry, or wisely
+concluding that the colonel was professionally valuable, he
+withdrew from the field.
+
+The honeymoon was brief, and brought to a close by an untoward
+incident.  During their bridal trip, Carry had been placed in the
+charge of Colonel Starbottle's sister.  On their return to the
+city, immediately on reaching their lodgings, Mrs. Starbottle
+announced her intention of at once proceeding to Mrs. Culpepper's
+to bring the child home.  Colonel Starbottle, who had been
+exhibiting for some time a certain uneasiness which he had
+endeavored to overcome by repeated stimulation, finally buttoned
+his coat tightly across his breast, and after walking unsteadily
+once or twice up and down the room, suddenly faced his wife with
+his most imposing manner.
+
+"I have deferred," said the colonel with an exaggeration of port
+that increased with his inward fear, and a growing thickness of
+speech--"I have deferr--I may say poshponed statement o' fack thash
+my duty ter dishclose ter ye.  I did no wish to mar sushine mushal
+happ'ness, to bligh bud o' promise, to darken conjuglar sky by
+unpleasht revelashun.  Musht be done--by God, m'm, musht do it now.
+The chile is gone!"
+
+"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Starbottle.
+
+There was something in the tone of her voice, in the sudden
+drawing-together of the pupils of her eyes, that for a moment
+nearly sobered the colonel, and partly collapsed his chest.
+
+"I'll splain all in a minit," he said with a deprecating wave of
+the hand.  "Everything shall be splained.  The-the-the-melencholly
+event wish preshipitate our happ'ness--the myster'us prov'nice wish
+releash you--releash chile! hunerstan?--releash chile.  The mom't
+Tretherick die--all claim you have in chile through him--die too.
+Thash law.  Who's chile b'long to?  Tretherick?  Tretherick dead.
+Chile can't b'long dead man.  Damn nonshense b'long dead man.  I'sh
+your chile? no! whose chile then?  Chile b'long to 'ts mother.
+Unnerstan?"
+
+"Where is she?" said Mrs. Starbottle, with a very white face and a
+very low voice.
+
+"I'll splain all.  Chile b'long to 'ts mother.  Thash law.  I'm
+lawyer, leshlator, and American sis'n.  Ish my duty as lawyer, as
+leshlator, and 'merikan sis'n to reshtore chile to suff'rin mother
+at any coss--any coss."
+
+"Where is she?" repeated Mrs. Starbottle, with her eyes still fixed
+on the colonel's face.
+
+"Gone to 'ts m'o'r.  Gone East on shteamer, yesserday.  Waffed by
+fav'rin gales to suff'rin p'rent.  Thash so!"
+
+Mrs. Starbottle did not move.  The colonel felt his chest slowly
+collapsing, but steadied himself against a chair, and endeavored to
+beam with chivalrous gallantry not unmixed with magisterial
+firmness upon her as she sat.
+
+"Your feelin's, m'm, do honor to yer sex, but conshider situashun.
+Conshider m'or's feelings--conshider MY feelin's."  The colonel
+paused, and flourishing a white handkerchief, placed it negligently
+in his breast, and then smiled tenderly above it, as over laces and
+ruffles, on the woman before him.  "Why should dark shed-der cass
+bligh on two sholes with single beat?  Chile's fine chile, good
+chile, but summonelse chile!  Chile's gone, Clar'; but all ish'n't
+gone, Clar'.  Conshider dearesht, you all's have me!"
+
+Mrs. Starbottle started to her feet.  "YOU!" she cried, bringing
+out a chest note that made the chandeliers ring--"You that I
+married to give my darling food and clothes--YOU! a dog that I
+whistled to my side to keep the men off me--YOU!"
+
+She choked up, and then dashed past him into the inner room, which
+had been Carry's; then she swept by him again into her own bedroom,
+and then suddenly reappeared before him, erect, menacing, with a
+burning fire over her cheekbones, a quick straightening of her
+arched brows and mouth, a squaring of jaw, and ophidian flattening
+of the head.
+
+"Listen!" she said in a hoarse, half-grown boy's voice.  "Hear me!
+If you ever expect to set eyes on me again, you must find the
+child.  If you ever expect to speak to me again, to touch me, you
+must bring her back.  For where she goes, I go; you hear me!  Where
+she has gone, look for me."
+
+She struck out past him again with a quick feminine throwing-out of
+her arms from the elbows down, as if freeing herself from some
+imaginary bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked
+the door.  Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in
+superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept
+by, lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa.
+Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his
+foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not
+entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he
+succumbed to the exhausting quality of his emotions, and the
+narcotic quantity of his potations.
+
+Meantime, within, Mrs. Starbottle was excitedly gathering her
+valuables and packing her trunk, even as she had done once before
+in the course of this remarkable history.  Perhaps some
+recollection of this was in her mind; for she stopped to lean her
+burning cheeks upon her hand, as if she saw again the figure of the
+child standing in the doorway, and heard once more a childish voice
+asking, "Is it Mamma?"  But the epithet now stung her to the quick,
+and with a quick, passionate gesture she dashed it away with a tear
+that had gathered in her eye.  And then it chanced that, in turning
+over some clothes, she came upon the child's slipper with a broken
+sandal string.  She uttered a great cry here--the first she had
+uttered--and caught it to her breast, kissing it passionately again
+and again, and rocking from side to side with a motion peculiar to
+her sex.  And then she took it to the window, the better to see it
+through her now streaming eyes.  Here she was taken with a sudden
+fit of coughing that she could not stifle with the handkerchief she
+put to her feverish lips.  And then she suddenly grew very faint.
+The window seemed to recede before her, the floor to sink beneath
+her feet; and staggering to the bed, she fell prone upon it with
+the sandal and handkerchief pressed to her breast.  Her face was
+quite pale, the orbit of her eyes dark; and there was a spot upon
+her lip, another on her handkerchief, and still another on the
+white counterpane of the bed.
+
+The wind had risen, rattling the window sashes and swaying the
+white curtains in a ghostly way.  Later, a gray fog stole softly
+over the roofs, soothing the wind-roughened surfaces, and in-
+wrapping all things in an uncertain light and a measureless peace.
+She lay there very quiet--for all her troubles, still a very pretty
+bride.  And on the other side of the bolted door the gallant
+bridegroom, from his temporary couch, snored peacefully.
+
+
+A week before Christmas Day, 1870, the little town of Genoa, in the
+State of New York, exhibited, perhaps more strongly than at any
+other time, the bitter irony of its founders and sponsors.  A
+driving snowstorm that had whitened every windward hedge, bush,
+wall, and telegraph pole, played around this soft Italian Capital,
+whirled in and out of the great staring wooden Doric columns of its
+post office and hotel, beat upon the cold green shutters of its
+best houses, and powdered the angular, stiff, dark figures in its
+streets.  From the level of the street, the four principal churches
+of the town stood out starkly, even while their misshapen spires
+were kindly hidden in the low, driving storm.  Near the railroad
+station, the new Methodist chapel, whose resemblance to an enormous
+locomotive was further heightened by the addition of a pyramidal
+row of front steps, like a cowcatcher, stood as if waiting for a
+few more houses to be hitched on to proceed to a pleasanter
+location.  But the pride of Genoa--the great Crammer Institute for
+Young Ladies--stretched its bare brick length and reared its cupola
+plainly from the bleak Parnassian hill above the principal avenue.
+There was no evasion in the Crammer Institute of the fact that it
+was a public institution.  A visitor upon its doorsteps, a pretty
+face at its window, were clearly visible all over the township.
+
+The shriek of the engine of the four-o'clock Northern express
+brought but few of the usual loungers to the depot.  Only a single
+passenger alighted, and was driven away in the solitary waiting
+sleigh toward the Genoa Hotel.  And then the train sped away again,
+with that passionless indifference to human sympathies or curiosity
+peculiar to express trains; the one baggage truck was wheeled into
+the station again; the station door was locked; and the
+stationmaster went home.
+
+The locomotive whistle, however, awakened the guilty consciousness
+of three young ladies of the Crammer Institute, who were even then
+surreptitiously regaling themselves in the bakeshop and
+confectionery saloon of Mistress Phillips in a by-lane.  For even
+the admirable regulations of the Institute failed to entirely
+develop the physical and moral natures of its pupils.  They
+conformed to the excellent dietary rules in public, and in private
+drew upon the luxurious rations of their village caterer.  They
+attended church with exemplary formality, and flirted informally
+during service with the village beaux.  They received the best and
+most judicious instruction during school hours, and devoured the
+trashiest novels during recess.  The result of which was an
+aggregation of quite healthy, quite human, and very charming young
+creatures that reflected infinite credit on the Institute.  Even
+Mistress Phillips, to whom they owed vast sums, exhilarated by the
+exuberant spirits and youthful freshness of her guests, declared
+that the sight of "them young things" did her good, and had even
+been known to shield them by shameless equivocation.
+
+"Four o'clock, girls! and, if we're not back to prayers by five,
+we'll be missed," said the tallest of these foolish virgins, with
+an aquiline nose, and certain quiet elan that bespoke the leader,
+as she rose from her seat.  "Have you got the books, Addy?"  Addy
+displayed three dissipated-looking novels under her waterproof.
+"And the provisions, Carry?"  Carry showed a suspicious parcel
+filling the pocket of her sack.  "All right, then.  Come, girls,
+trudge--Charge it," she added, nodding to her host as they passed
+toward the door.  "I'll pay you when my quarter's allowance comes."
+
+"No, Kate," interposed Carry, producing her purse, "let me pay;
+it's my turn."
+
+"Never!" said Kate, arching her black brows loftily, "even if you
+do have rich relatives, and regular remittances from California.
+Never!  Come, girls, forward, march!"
+
+As they opened the door, a gust of wind nearly took them off their
+feet.  Kindhearted Mrs. Phillips was alarmed.  "Sakes alive, galls!
+ye mussn't go out in sich weather.  Better let me send word to the
+Institoot, and make ye up a nice bed tonight in my parlor."  But
+the last sentence was lost in a chorus of half-suppressed shrieks
+as the girls, hand in hand, ran down the steps into the storm, and
+were at once whirled away.
+
+The short December day, unlit by any sunset glow, was failing fast.
+It was quite dark already, and the air was thick with driving snow.
+For some distance their high spirits, youth, and even inexperience
+kept them bravely up; but, in ambitiously attempting a short cut
+from the highroad across an open field, their strength gave out,
+the laugh grew less frequent, and tears began to stand in Carry's
+brown eyes.  When they reached the road again, they were utterly
+exhausted.  "Let us go back," said Carry.
+
+"We'd never get across that field again," said Addy.
+
+"Let's stop at the first house, then," said Carry.
+
+"The first house," said Addy, peering through the gathering
+darkness, "is Squire Robinson's."  She darted a mischievous glance
+at Carry that, even in her discomfort and fear, brought the quick
+blood to her cheek.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Kate with gloomy irony, "certainly; stop at the
+squire's by all means, and be invited to tea, and be driven home
+after by your dear friend Mr. Harry, with a formal apology from
+Mrs. Robinson, and hopes that the young ladies may be excused this
+time.  No!" continued Kate with sudden energy.  "That may suit YOU;
+but I'm going back as I came--by the window, or not at all"  Then
+she pounced suddenly, like a hawk, on Carry, who was betraying a
+tendency to sit down on a snowbank and whimper, and shook her
+briskly.  "You'll be going to sleep next.  Stay, hold your tongues,
+all of you--what's that?"
+
+It was the sound of sleigh bells.  Coming down toward them out of
+the darkness was a sleigh with a single occupant.  "Hold down your
+heads, girls: if it's anybody that knows us, we're lost."  But it
+was not, for a voice strange to their ears, but withal very kindly
+and pleasant, asked if its owner could be of any help to them.  As
+they turned toward him, they saw it was a man wrapped in a handsome
+sealskin cloak, wearing a sealskin cap; his face, half-concealed by
+a muffler of the same material, disclosing only a pair of long
+mustaches, and two keen dark eyes.  "It's a son of old Santa
+Claus!" whispered Addy.  The girls tittered audibly as they tumbled
+into the sleigh; they had regained their former spirits.  "Where
+shall I take you?" said the stranger quietly.  There was a hurried
+whispering; and then Kate said boldly, "To the Institute."  They
+drove silently up the hill, until the long, ascetic building loomed
+up before them.  The stranger reined up suddenly.  "You know the
+way better than I," he said.  "Where do you go in?"  "Through the
+back window," said Kate with sudden and appalling frankness.  "I
+see!" responded their strange driver quietly and, alighting
+quickly, removed the bells from the horses.  "We can drive as near
+as you please now," he added by way of explanation.  "He certainly
+is a son of Santa Claus," whispered Addy.  "Hadn't we better ask
+after his father?"  "Hush!" said Kate decidedly.  "He is an angel,
+I dare say."  She added with a delicious irrelevance, which was,
+however, perfectly understood by her feminine auditors, "We are
+looking like three frights."
+
+Cautiously skirting the fences, they at last pulled up a few feet
+from a dark wall.  The stranger proceeded to assist them to alight.
+There was still some light from the reflected snow; and as he
+handed his fair companions to the ground, each was conscious of
+undergoing an intense though respectful scrutiny.  He assisted them
+gravely to open the window, and then discreetly retired to the
+sleigh until the difficult and somewhat discomposing ingress was
+made.  He then walked to the window.  "Thank you and good night!"
+whispered three voices.  A single figure still lingered.  The
+stranger leaned over the window sill.  "Will you permit me to light
+my cigar here?  It might attract attention if I struck a match
+outside."  By the upspringing light he saw the figure of Kate very
+charmingly framed in by the window.  The match burnt slowly out in
+his fingers.  Kate smiled mischievously.  The astute young woman
+had detected the pitiable subterfuge.  For what else did she stand
+at the head of her class, and had doting parents paid three years'
+tuition?
+
+The storm had passed, and the sun was shining quite cheerily in the
+eastern recitation room the next morning when Miss Kate, whose seat
+was nearest the window, placing her hand pathetically upon her
+heart, affected to fall in bashful and extreme agitation upon the
+shoulder of Carry, her neighbor.  "HE has come," she gasped in a
+thrilling whisper.  "Who?" asked Carry sympathetically, who never
+clearly understood when Kate was in earnest.  "Who?--Why, the man
+who rescued us last night!  I saw him drive to the door this
+moment.  Don't speak; I shall be better in a moment--there!" she
+said, and the shameless hypocrite passed her hand pathetically
+across her forehead with a tragic air.
+
+"What can he want?" asked Carry, whose curiosity was excited.  "I
+don't know," said Kate, suddenly relapsing into gloomy cynicism.
+"Possibly to put his five daughters to school; perhaps to finish
+his young wife, and warn her against us."
+
+"He didn't look old, and he didn't seem like a married man,"
+rejoined Addy thoughtfully.
+
+"That was his art, you poor creature!" returned Kate scornfully.
+"You can never tell anything of these men, they are so deceitful.
+Besides, it's just my fate!"
+
+"Why, Kate," began Carry, in serious concern.
+
+"Hush!  Miss Walker is saying something," said Kate, laughing.
+
+"The young ladies will please give attention," said a slow,
+perfunctory voice.  "Miss Carry Tretherick is wanted in the
+parlor."
+
+Meantime Mr. Jack Prince, the name given on the card, and various
+letters and credentials submitted to the Rev. Mr. Crammer, paced
+the somewhat severe apartment known publicly as the "reception
+parlor" and privately to the pupils as "purgatory."  His keen eyes
+had taken in the various rigid details, from the flat steam
+"radiator," like an enormous japanned soda cracker, that heated one
+end of the room to the monumental bust of Dr. Crammer that
+hopelessly chilled the other; from the Lord's Prayer, executed by a
+former writing master in such gratuitous variety of elegant
+calligraphic trifling as to abate considerably the serious value of
+the composition, to three views of Genoa from the Institute, which
+nobody ever recognized, taken on the spot by the drawing teacher;
+from two illuminated texts of Scripture in an English letter, so
+gratuitously and hideously remote as to chill all human interest,
+to a large photograph of the senior class, in which the prettiest
+girls were Ethiopian in complexion, and sat, apparently, on each
+other's heads and shoulders.  His fingers had turned listlessly the
+leaves of school-catalogues, the SERMONS of Dr. Crammer, the POEMS
+of Henry Kirke White, the LAYS OF THE SANCTUARY and LIVES OF
+CELEBRATED WOMEN.  His fancy, and it was a nervously active one,
+had gone over the partings and greetings that must have taken place
+here, and wondered why the apartment had yet caught so little of
+the flavor of humanity; indeed, I am afraid he had almost forgotten
+the object of his visit when the door opened, and Carry Tretherick
+stood before him.
+
+It was one of those faces he had seen the night before, prettier
+even than it had seemed then; and yet I think he was conscious of
+some disappointment, without knowing exactly why.  Her abundant
+waving hair was of a guinea-golden tint, her complexion of a
+peculiar flowerlike delicacy, her brown eyes of the color of
+seaweed in deep water.  It certainly was not her beauty that
+disappointed him.
+
+Without possessing his sensitiveness to impression, Carry was, on
+her part, quite as vaguely ill at ease.  She saw before her one of
+those men whom the sex would vaguely generalize as "nice," that is
+to say, correct in all the superficial appointments of style,
+dress, manners, and feature.  Yet there was a decidedly
+unconventional quality about him: he was totally unlike anything or
+anybody that she could remember; and as the attributes of
+originality are often as apt to alarm as to attract people, she was
+not entirely prepossessed in his favor.
+
+"I can hardly hope," he began pleasantly, "that you remember me.
+It is eleven years ago, and you were a very little girl.  I am
+afraid I cannot even claim to have enjoyed that familiarity that
+might exist between a child of six and a young man of twenty-one.
+I don't think I was fond of children.  But I knew your mother very
+well.  I was editor of the AVALANCHE in Fiddletown when she took
+you to San Francisco."
+
+"You mean my stepmother; she wasn't my mother, you know,"
+interposed Carry hastily.
+
+Mr. Prince looked at her curiously.  "I mean your stepmother," he
+said gravely.  "I never had the pleasure of meeting your mother."
+
+"No; MOTHER hasn't been in California these twelve years."
+
+There was an intentional emphasizing of the title and of its
+distinction that began to interest coldly Prince after his first
+astonishment was past.
+
+"As I come from your stepmother now," he went on with a slight
+laugh, "I must ask you to go back for a few moments to that point.
+After your father's death, your mother--I mean your stepmother--
+recognized the fact that your mother, the first Mrs. Tretherick,
+was legally and morally your guardian and, although much against
+her inclination and affections, placed you again in her charge."
+
+"My stepmother married again within a month after father died, and
+sent me home," said Carry with great directness, and the faintest
+toss of her head.
+
+Mr. Prince smiled so sweetly, and apparently so sympathetically,
+that Carry began to like him.  With no other notice of the
+interruption he went on, "After your stepmother had performed this
+act of simple justice, she entered into an agreement with your
+mother to defray the expenses of your education until your
+eighteenth year, when you were to elect and choose which of the two
+should thereafter be your guardian, and with whom you would make
+your home.  This agreement, I think, you are already aware of, and,
+I believe, knew at the time."
+
+"I was a mere child then," said Carry.
+
+"Certainly," said Mr. Prince, with the same smile.  "Still the
+conditions, I think, have never been oppressive to you nor your
+mother; and the only time they are likely to give you the least
+uneasiness will be when you come to make up your mind in the choice
+of your guardian.  That will be on your eighteenth birthday--the
+twentieth, I think, of the present month."
+
+Carry was silent.
+
+"Pray do not think that I am here to receive your decision, even if
+it be already made.  I only came to inform you that your
+stepmother, Mrs. Starbottle, will be in town tomorrow, and will
+pass a few days at the hotel.  If it is your wish to see her before
+you make up your mind, she will be glad to meet you.  She does not,
+however, wish to do anything to influence your judgment.
+
+"Does Mother know she is coming?" said Carry hastily.
+
+"I do not know," said Prince gravely.  "I only know that if you
+conclude to see Mrs. Starbottle, it will be with your mother's
+permission.  Mrs. Starbottle will keep sacredly this part of the
+agreement, made ten years ago.  But her health is very poor; and
+the change and country quiet of a few days may benefit her."  Mr.
+Prince bent his keen, bright eyes upon the young girl, and almost
+held his breath until she spoke again.
+
+"Mother's coming up today or tomorrow," she said, looking up.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Prince with a sweet and languid smile.
+
+"Is Colonel Starbottle here too?" asked Carry, after a pause.
+
+"Colonel Starbottle is dead.  Your stepmother is again a widow."
+
+"Dead!" repeated Carry.
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Prince.  "Your stepmother has been singularly
+unfortunate in surviving her affections."
+
+Carry did not know what he meant, and looked so.  Mr. Prince smiled
+reassuringly.
+
+Presently Carry began to whimper.
+
+Mr. Prince softly stepped beside her chair.
+
+"I am afraid," he said with a very peculiar light in his eye, and a
+singular dropping of the corners of his mustache--"I am afraid you
+are taking this too deeply.  It will be some days before you are
+called upon to make a decision.  Let us talk of something else.  I
+hope you caught no cold last evening."
+
+Carry's face shone out again in dimples.
+
+"You must have thought us so queer!  It was too bad to give you so
+much trouble."
+
+"None whatever, I assure you.  My sense of propriety," he added
+demurely, "which might have been outraged had I been called upon to
+help three young ladies out of a schoolroom window at night.  was
+deeply gratified at being able to assist them in again."  The
+doorbell rang loudly, and Mr. Prince rose.  "Take your own time,
+and think well before you make your decision."  But Carry's ear and
+attention were given to the sound of voices in the hall.  At the
+same moment, the door was thrown open, and a servant announced,
+"Mrs. Tretherick and Mr. Robinson."
+
+The afternoon train had just shrieked out its usual indignant
+protest at stopping at Genoa at all as Mr. Jack Prince entered the
+outskirts of the town, and drove toward his hotel.  He was wearied
+and cynical.  A drive of a dozen miles through unpicturesque
+outlying villages, past small economic farmhouses, and hideous
+villas that violated his fastidious taste, had, I fear, left that
+gentleman in a captious state of mind.  He would have even avoided
+his taciturn landlord as he drove up to the door; but that
+functionary waylaid him on the steps.  "There's a lady in the
+sittin'-room, waitin' for ye."  Mr. Prince hurried upstairs, and
+entered the room as Mrs. Starbottle flew toward him.
+
+She had changed sadly in the last ten years.  Her figure was wasted
+to half its size.  The beautiful curves of her bust and shoulders
+were broken or inverted.  The once full, rounded arm was shrunken
+in its sleeve; and the golden hoops that encircled her wan wrists
+almost slipped from her hands as her long, scant fingers closed
+convulsively around Jack's.  Her cheekbones were painted that
+afternoon with the hectic of fever: somewhere in the hollows of
+those cheeks were buried the dimples of long ago, but their graves
+were forgotten.  Her lustrous eyes were still beautiful, though the
+orbits were deeper than before.  Her mouth was still sweet,
+although the lips parted more easily over the little teeth, even in
+breathing, and showed more of them than she was wont to do before.
+The glory of her blond hair was still left: it was finer, more
+silken and ethereal, yet it failed even in its plenitude to cover
+the hollows of the blue-veined temples.
+
+"Clara!" said Jack reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, forgive me, Jack!" she said, falling into a chair, but still
+clinging to his hand--"forgive me, dear; but I could not wait
+longer.  I should have died, Jack--died before another night.  Bear
+with me a little longer (it will not be long), but let me stay.  I
+may not see her, I know; I shall not speak to her: but it's so
+sweet to feel that I am at last near her, that I breathe the same
+air with my darling.  I am better already, Jack, I am indeed.  And
+you have seen her today?  How did she look?  What did she say?
+Tell me all, everything, Jack.  Was she beautiful?  They say she
+is.  Has she grown?  Would you have known her again?  Will she
+come, Jack?  Perhaps she has been here already; perhaps"--she had
+risen with tremulous excitement, and was glancing at the door--
+"perhaps she is here now.  Why don't you speak, Jack?  Tell me
+all."
+
+The keen eyes that looked down into hers were glistening with an
+infinite tenderness that none, perhaps, but she would have deemed
+them capable of.  "Clara," he said gently and cheerily, "try and
+compose yourself.  You are trembling now with the fatigue and
+excitement of your journey.  I have seen Carry; she is well and
+beautiful.  Let that suffice you now."
+
+His gentle firmness composed and calmed her now, as it had often
+done before.  Stroking her thin hand, he said, after a pause, "Did
+Carry ever write to you?"
+
+"Twice, thanking me for some presents.  They were only schoolgirl
+letters," she added, nervously answering the interrogation of his
+eyes.
+
+"Did she ever know of your own troubles? of your poverty, of the
+sacrifices you made to pay her bills, of your pawning your clothes
+and jewels, of your--"
+
+"No, no!" interrupted the woman quickly: "no! How could she?  I
+have no enemy cruel enough to tell her that."
+
+"But if she--or if Mrs. Tretherick--had heard of it?  If Carry
+thought you were poor, and unable to support her properly, it might
+influence her decision.  Young girls are fond of the position that
+wealth can give.  She may have rich friends, maybe a lover."
+
+Mrs. Starbottle winced at the last sentence.  "But," she said
+eagerly, grasping Jack's hand, "when you found me sick and helpless
+at Sacramento, when you--God bless you for it, Jack!--offered to
+help me to the East, you said you knew of something, you had some
+plan, that would make me and Carry independent."
+
+"Yes," said Jack hastily; "but I want you to get strong and well
+first.  And, now that you are calmer, you shall listen to my visit
+to the school."
+
+It was then that Mr. Jack Prince proceeded to describe the
+interview already recorded, with a singular felicity and discretion
+that shames my own account of that proceeding.  Without suppressing
+a single fact, without omitting a word or detail, he yet managed to
+throw a poetic veil over that prosaic episode, to invest the
+heroine with a romantic roseate atmosphere, which, though not
+perhaps entirely imaginary, still, I fear, exhibited that genius
+which ten years ago had made the columns of THE FIDDLETOWN
+AVALANCHE at once fascinating and instructive.  It was not until he
+saw the heightening color, and heard the quick breathing, of his
+eager listener, that he felt a pang of self-reproach.  "God help
+her and forgive me!" he muttered between his clinched teeth; "but
+how can I tell her ALL now!"
+
+That night, when Mrs. Starbottle laid her weary head upon her
+pillow, she tried to picture to herself Carry at the same moment
+sleeping peacefully in the great schoolhouse on the hill; and it
+was a rare comfort to this yearning, foolish woman to know that she
+was so near.  But at this moment Carry was sitting on the edge of
+her bed, half-undressed, pouting her pretty lips and twisting her
+long, leonine locks between her fingers as Miss Kate Van Corlear--
+dramatically wrapped in a long white counterpane, her black eyes
+sparkling, and her thoroughbred nose thrown high in air--stood over
+her like a wrathful and indignant ghost; for Carry had that evening
+imparted her woes and her history to Miss Kate, and that young lady
+had "proved herself no friend" by falling into a state of fiery
+indignation over Carry's "ingratitude," and openly and shamelessly
+espousing the claims of Mrs. Starbottle.  "Why, if the half you
+tell me is true, your mother and those Robinsons are making of you
+not only a little coward, but a little snob, miss.  Respectability,
+forsooth!  Look you, my family are centuries before the
+Trethericks; but if my family had ever treated me in this way, and
+then asked me to turn my back on my best friend, I'd whistle them
+down the wind;" and here Kate snapped her fingers, bent her black
+brows, and glared around the room as if in search of a recreant Van
+Corlear.
+
+"You just talk this way because you have taken a fancy to that Mr.
+Prince," said Carry.
+
+In the debasing slang of the period, that had even found its way
+into the virgin cloisters of the Crammer Institute, Miss Kate, as
+she afterward expressed it, instantly "went for her."
+
+First, with a shake of her head, she threw her long black hair over
+one shoulder, then, dropping one end of the counterpane from the
+other like a vestal tunic, she stepped before Carry with a
+purposely exaggerated classic stride.  "And what if I have, miss!
+What if I happen to know a gentleman when I see him!  What if I
+happen to know that among a thousand such traditional,
+conventional, feeble editions of their grandfathers as Mr. Harry
+Robinson, you cannot find one original, independent, individualized
+gentleman like your Prince!  Go to bed, miss, and pray to Heaven
+that he may be YOUR Prince indeed.  Ask to have a contrite and
+grateful heart, and thank the Lord in particular for having sent
+you such a friend as Kate Van Corlear."  Yet, after an imposing
+dramatic exit, she reappeared the next moment as a straight white
+flash, kissed Carry between the brows, and was gone.
+
+The next day was a weary one to Jack Prince.  He was convinced in
+his mind that Carry would not come; yet to keep this consciousness
+from Mrs. Starbottle, to meet her simple hopefulness with an equal
+degree of apparent faith, was a hard and difficult task.  He would
+have tried to divert her mind by taking her on a long drive; but
+she was fearful that Carry might come during her absence; and her
+strength, he was obliged to admit, had failed greatly.  As he
+looked into her large and awe-inspiring clear eyes, a something he
+tried to keep from his mind--to put off day by day from
+contemplation--kept asserting itself directly to his inner
+consciousness.  He began to doubt the expediency and wisdom of his
+management.  He recalled every incident of his interview with
+Carry, and half-believed that its failure was due to himself.  Yet
+Mrs. Starbottle was very patient and confident; her very confidence
+shook his faith in his own judgment.  When her strength was equal
+to the exertion, she was propped up in her chair by the window,
+where she could see the school and the entrance to the hotel.  In
+the intervals she would elaborate pleasant plans for the future,
+and would sketch a country home.  She had taken a strange fancy, as
+it seemed to Prince, to the present location; but it was notable
+that the future, always thus outlined, was one of quiet and repose.
+She believed she would get well soon; in fact, she thought she was
+now much better than she had been, but it might be long before she
+should be quite strong again.  She would whisper on in this way
+until Jack would dash madly down into the barroom, order liquors
+that he did not drink, light cigars that he did not smoke, talk
+with men that he did not listen to, and behave generally as our
+stronger sex is apt to do in periods of delicate trials and
+perplexity.
+
+The day closed with a clouded sky and a bitter, searching wind.
+With the night fell a few wandering flakes of snow.  She was still
+content and hopeful; and, as Jack wheeled her from the window to
+the fire, she explained to him how that, as the school term was
+drawing near its close, Carry was probably kept closely at her
+lessons during the day, and could only leave the school at night.
+So she sat up the greater part of the evening, and combed her
+silken hair, and as far as her strength would allow, made an
+undress toilet to receive her guest.  "We must not frighten the
+child, Jack," she said apologetically, and with something of her
+old coquetry.
+
+It was with a feeling of relief that, at ten o'clock, Jack received
+a message from the landlord, saying that the doctor would like to
+see him for a moment downstairs.  As Jack entered the grim, dimly
+lighted parlor, he observed the hooded figure of a woman near the
+fire.  He was about to withdraw again when a voice that he
+remembered very pleasantly said:
+
+"Oh, it's all right!  I'm the doctor."
+
+The hood was thrown back, and Prince saw the shining black hair and
+black, audacious eyes of Kate Van Corlear.
+
+"Don't ask any questions.  I'm the doctor, and there's my
+prescription," and she pointed to the half-frightened, half-sobbing
+Carry in the corner--"to be taken at once."
+
+"Then Mrs. Tretherick has given her permission?"
+
+"Not much, if I know the sentiments of that lady," replied Kate
+saucily.
+
+"Then how did you get away?" asked Prince gravely.
+
+"BY THE WINDOW."
+
+When Mr. Prince had left Carry in the arms of her stepmother, he
+returned to the parlor.
+
+"Well?" demanded Kate.
+
+"She will stay--YOU will, I hope, also--tonight."
+
+"As I shall not be eighteen, and my own mistress on the twentieth,
+and as I haven't a sick stepmother, I won't."
+
+"Then you will give me the pleasure of seeing you safely through
+the window again?"
+
+When Mr. Prince returned an hour later, he found Carry sitting on a
+low stool at Mrs. Starbottle's feet.  Her head was in her
+stepmother's lap, and she had sobbed herself to sleep.  Mrs.
+Starbottle put her finger to her lip.  "I told you she would come.
+God bless you, Jack! and good night."
+
+The next morning Mrs. Tretherick, indignant, the Rev. Asa Crammer,
+principal, injured, and Mr. Joel Robinson, Sr., complacently
+respectable, called upon Mr. Prince.  There was a stormy meeting,
+ending in a demand for Carry.  "We certainly cannot admit of this
+interference," said Mrs. Tretherick, a fashionably dressed,
+indistinctive-looking woman.  "It is several days before the
+expiration of our agreement; and we do not feel, under the
+circumstances, justified in releasing Mrs. Starbottle from its
+conditions."  "Until the expiration of the school term, we must
+consider Miss Tretherick as complying entirely with its rules and
+discipline," imposed Dr. Crammer.  "The whole proceeding is
+calculated to injure the prospects, and compromise the position, of
+Miss Tretherick in society," suggested Mr. Robinson.
+
+In vain Mr. Prince urged the failing condition of Mrs. Starbottle,
+her absolute freedom from complicity with Carry's flight, the
+pardonable and natural instincts of the girl, and his own assurance
+that they were willing to abide by her decision.  And then, with a
+rising color in his cheek, a dangerous look in his eye, but a
+singular calmness in his speech, he added:
+
+"One word more.  It becomes my duty to inform you of a circumstance
+which would certainly justify me, as an executor of the late Mr.
+Tretherick, in fully resisting your demands.  A few months after
+Mr. Tretherick's death, through the agency of a Chinaman in his
+employment, it was discovered that he had made a will, which was
+subsequently found among his papers.  The insignificant value of
+his bequest--mostly land, then quite valueless--prevented his
+executors from carrying out his wishes, or from even proving the
+will, or making it otherwise publicly known, until within the last
+two or three years, when the property had enormously increased in
+value.  The provisions of that bequest are simple, but
+unmistakable.  The property is divided between Carry and her
+stepmother, with the explicit condition that Mrs. Starbottle shall
+become her legal guardian, provide for her education, and in all
+details stand to her IN LOCO PARENTIS."
+
+"What is the value of this bequest?" asked Mr. Robinson.  "I cannot
+tell exactly, but not far from half a million, I should say,"
+returned Prince.  "Certainly, with this knowledge, as a friend of
+Miss Tretherick I must say that her conduct is as judicious as it
+is honorable to her," responded Mr. Robinson.  "I shall not presume
+to question the wishes, or throw any obstacles in the way of
+carrying out the intentions, of my dead husband," added Mrs.
+Tretherick; and the interview was closed.
+
+When its result was made known to Mrs. Starbottle, she raised
+Jack's hand to her feverish lips.  "It cannot add to MY happiness
+now, Jack; but tell me, why did you keep it from her?"  Jack
+smiled, but did not reply.
+
+Within the next week the necessary legal formalities were
+concluded, and Carry was restored to her stepmother.  At Mrs.
+Starbottle's request, a small house in the outskirts of the town
+was procured; and thither they removed to wait the spring, and Mrs.
+Starbottle's convalescence.  Both came tardily that year.
+
+Yet she was happy and patient.  She was fond of watching the
+budding of the trees beyond her window--a novel sight to her
+Californian experience--and of asking Carry their names and
+seasons.  Even at this time she projected for that summer, which
+seemed to her so mysteriously withheld, long walks with Carry
+through the leafy woods, whose gray, misty ranks she could see
+along the hilltop.  She even thought she could write poetry about
+them, and recalled the fact as evidence of her gaining strength;
+and there is, I believe, still treasured by one of the members of
+this little household a little carol so joyous, so simple, and so
+innocent that it might have been an echo of the robin that called
+to her from the window, as perhaps it was.
+
+And then, without warning, there dropped from Heaven a day so
+tender, so mystically soft, so dreamily beautiful, so throbbing and
+alive with the fluttering of invisible wings, so replete and
+bounteously overflowing with an awakening and joyous resurrection
+not taught by man or limited by creed, that they thought it fit to
+bring her out and lay her in that glorious sunshine that sprinkled
+like the droppings of a bridal torch the happy lintels and doors.
+And there she lay beatified and calm.
+
+Wearied by watching, Carry had fallen asleep by her side; and Mrs.
+Starbottle's thin fingers lay like a benediction on her head.
+Presently she called Jack to her side.
+
+"Who was that," she whispered, "who just came in?"
+
+"Miss Van Corlear," said Jack, answering the look in her great
+hollow eyes.
+
+"Jack," she said, after a moment's silence, "sit by me a moment;
+dear Jack: I've something I must say.  If I ever seemed hard, or
+cold, or coquettish to you in the old days, it was because I loved
+you, Jack, too well to mar your future by linking it with my own.
+I always loved you, dear Jack, even when I seemed least worthy of
+you.  That is gone now.  But I had a dream lately, Jack, a foolish
+woman's dream--that you might find what I lacked in HER," and she
+glanced lovingly at the sleeping girl at her side; "that you might
+love her as you have loved me.  But even that is not to be, Jack,
+is it?" and she glanced wistfully in his face.  Jack pressed her
+hand, but did not speak.  After a few moments' silence, she again
+said: "Perhaps you are right in your choice.  She is a goodhearted
+girl, Jack--but a little bold."
+
+And with this last flicker of foolish, weak humanity in her
+struggling spirit, she spoke no more.  When they came to her a
+moment later, a tiny bird that had lit upon her breast flew away;
+and the hand that they lifted from Carry's head fell lifeless at
+her side.
+
+
+
+BARKER'S LUCK
+
+
+A bird twittered!  The morning sun shining through the open window
+was apparently more potent than the cool mountain air, which had
+only caused the sleeper to curl a little more tightly in his
+blankets.  Barker's eyes opened instantly upon the light and the
+bird on the window ledge.  Like all healthy young animals he would
+have tried to sleep again, but with his momentary consciousness
+came the recollection that it was his turn to cook the breakfast
+that morning, and he regretfully rolled out of his bunk to the
+floor.  Without stopping to dress, he opened the door and stepped
+outside, secure in the knowledge that he was overlooked only by the
+Sierras, and plunged his head and shoulders in the bucket of cold
+water that stood by the door.  Then he began to clothe himself,
+partly in the cabin and partly in the open air, with a lapse
+between the putting on of his trousers and coat which he employed
+in bringing in wood.  Raking together the few embers on the adobe
+hearth, not without a prudent regard to the rattlesnake which had
+once been detected in haunting the warm ashes, he began to prepare
+breakfast.  By this time the other sleepers, his partners Stacy and
+Demorest, young men of about his own age, were awake, alert, and
+lazily critical of his progress.
+
+"I don't care about my quail on toast being underdone for
+breakfast," said Stacy, with a yawn; "and you needn't serve with
+red wine.  I'm not feeling very peckish this morning."
+
+"And I reckon you can knock off the fried oysters after the Spanish
+mackerel for ME," said Demorest gravely.  "The fact is, that last
+bottle of Veuve Clicquot we had for supper wasn't as dry as I am
+this morning."
+
+Accustomed to these regular Barmecide suggestions, Barker made no
+direct reply.  Presently, looking up from the fire, he said,
+"There's no more saleratus, so you mustn't blame me if the biscuit
+is extra heavy.  I told you we had none when you went to the
+grocery yesterday."
+
+"And I told you we hadn't a red cent to buy any with," said Stacy,
+who was also treasurer.  "Put these two negatives together and you
+make the affirmative--saleratus.  Mix freely and bake in a hot
+oven."
+
+Nevertheless, after a toilet as primitive as Barker's they sat down
+to what he had prepared with the keen appetite begotten of the
+mountain air and the regretful fastidiousness born of the
+recollection of better things.  Jerked beef, frizzled with salt
+pork in a frying-pan, boiled potatoes, biscuit, and coffee composed
+the repast.  The biscuits, however, proving remarkably heavy after
+the first mouthful, were used as missiles, thrown through the open
+door at an empty bottle which had previously served as a mark for
+revolver practice, and a few moments later pipes were lit to
+counteract the effects of the meal and take the taste out of their
+mouths.  Suddenly they heard the sound of horses' hoofs, saw the
+quick passage of a rider in the open space before the cabin, and
+felt the smart impact upon the table of some small object thrown by
+him.  It was the regular morning delivery of the county newspaper!
+
+"He's getting to be a mighty sure shot," said Demorest approvingly,
+looking at his upset can of coffee as he picked up the paper,
+rolled into a cylindrical wad as tightly as a cartridge, and began
+to straighten it out.  This was no easy matter, as the sheet had
+evidently been rolled while yet damp from the press; but Demorest
+eventually opened it and ensconced himself behind it.
+
+"Nary news?" asked Stacy.
+
+"No.  There never is any," said Demorest scornfully.  "We ought to
+stop the paper."
+
+"You mean the paper man ought to.  WE don't pay him," said Barker
+gently.
+
+"Well, that's the same thing, smarty.  No news, no pay.  Hallo!" he
+continued, his eyes suddenly riveted on the paper.  Then, after the
+fashion of ordinary humanity, he stopped short and read the
+interesting item to himself.  When he had finished he brought his
+fist and the paper, together, violently down upon the table.  "Now
+look at this!  Talk of luck, will you?  Just think of it.  Here are
+WE--hard-working men with lots of sabe, too--grubbin' away on this
+hillside like niggers, glad to get enough at the end of the day to
+pay for our soggy biscuits and horse-bean coffee, and just look
+what falls into the lap of some lazy sneakin' greenhorn who never
+did a stoke of work in his life!  Here are WE, with no foolishness,
+no airs nor graces, and yet men who would do credit to twice that
+amount of luck--and seem born to it, too--and we're set aside for
+some long, lank, pen-wiping scrub who just knows enough to sit down
+on his office stool and hold on to a bit of paper."
+
+"What's up now?" asked Stacy, with the carelessness begotten of
+familiarity with his partner's extravagance.
+
+"Listen," said Demorest, reading.  "Another unprecedented rise has
+taken place in the shares of the 'Yellow Hammer First Extension
+Mine' since the sinking of the new shaft.  It was quoted yesterday
+at ten thousand dollars a foot.  When it is remembered that
+scarcely two years ago the original shares, issued at fifty dollars
+per share, had dropped to only fifty cents a share, it will be seen
+that those who were able to hold on have got a good thing."
+
+"What mine did you say?" asked Barker.  looking up meditatively
+from the dishes he was already washing.
+
+"The Yellow Hammer First Extension," returned Demorest shortly.
+
+"I used to have some shares in that, and I think I have them
+still," said Barker musingly.
+
+"Yes," said Demorest promptly; "the paper speaks of it here.  'We
+understand,'" he continued, reading aloud, "'that our eminent
+fellow citizen, George Barker, otherwise known as "Get Left Barker"
+and "Chucklehead," is one of these fortunate individuals.'"
+
+"No," said Barker, with a slight flush of innocent pleasure, "it
+can't say that.  How could it know?"
+
+Stacy laughed, but Demorest coolly continued: "You didn't hear all.
+Listen!  'We say WAS one of them; but having already sold his
+apparently useless certificates to our popular druggist, Jones, for
+corn plasters, at a reduced rate, he is unable to realize.'"
+
+"You may laugh, boys," said Barker, with simple seriousness; "but I
+really believe I have got 'em yet.  Just wait.  I'll see!"  He rose
+and began to drag out a well-worn valise from under his bunk.  "You
+see," he continued, "they were given to me by an old chap in
+return--"
+
+"For saving his life by delaying the Stockton boat that afterward
+blew up," returned Demorest briefly.  "We know it all!  His hair
+was white, and his hand trembled slightly as he laid these shares
+in yours, saying, and you never forgot the words, 'Take 'em, young
+man--and'--"
+
+"For lending him two thousand dollars, then," continued Barker with
+a simple ignoring of the interruption, as he quietly brought out
+the valise.
+
+"TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS!" repeated Stacy.  "When did YOU have two
+thousand dollars?"
+
+"When I first left Sacramento--three years ago," said Barker,
+unstrapping the valise.
+
+"How long did you have it?" said Demorest incredulously.
+
+"At least two days, I think," returned Barker quietly.  "Then I met
+that man.  He was hard-up, and I lent him my pile and took those
+shares.  He died afterward."
+
+"Of course he did," said Demorest severely.  "They always do.
+Nothing kills a man more quickly than an action of that kind."
+Nevertheless the two partners regarded Barker rummaging among some
+loose clothes and papers with a kind of paternal toleration.  "If
+you can't find them, bring out your government bonds," suggested
+Stacy.  But the next moment, flushed and triumphant, Barker rose
+from his knees, and came toward them carrying some papers in his
+hands.  Demorest seized them from him, opened them, spread them on
+the table, examined hurriedly the date, signatures, and transfers,
+glanced again quickly at the newspaper paragraph, looked wildly at
+Stacy and then at Barker, and gasped:
+
+"By the living hookey! it is SO!"
+
+"B'gosh! he HAS got 'em!" echoed Stacy.
+
+"Twenty shares," continued Demorest breathlessly, "at ten thousand
+dollars a share--even if it's only a foot--is two hundred thousand
+dollars!  Jerusalem!"
+
+"Tell me, fair sir," said Stacy, with sparkling eyes, "hast still
+left in yonder casket any rare jewels, rubies, sarcenet, or links
+of fine gold?  Peradventure a pearl or two may have been
+overlooked!"
+
+"No--that's all," returned Barker simply.
+
+"You hear him!  Rothschild says 'that's all.'  Prince Esterhazy
+says he hasn't another red cent--only two hundred thousand
+dollars."
+
+"What ought I to do, boys?" asked Barker, timidly glancing from one
+to the other.  Yet he remembered with delight all that day, and for
+many a year afterward, that he saw in their faces only unselfish
+joy and affection at that supreme moment.
+
+"Do?" said Demorest promptly.  "Stand on your head and yell!  No!
+stop!  Come here!"  He seized both Barker and Stacy by the hand,
+and ran out into the open air.  Here they danced violently with
+clasped hands around a small buckeye, in perfect silence, and then
+returned to the cabin, grave but perspiring.
+
+"Of course," said Barker, wiping his forehead, "we'll just get some
+money on these certificates and buy up that next claim which
+belongs to old Carter--where you know we thought we saw the
+indication."
+
+"We'll do nothing of the kind," said Demorest decidedly.  "WE ain't
+in it.  That money is yours, old chap--every cent of it--property
+acquired before marriage, you know; and the only thing we'll do is
+to be damned before we'll see you drop a dime of it into this
+Godforsaken hole.  No!"
+
+"But we're partners," gasped Barker.
+
+"Not in THIS!  The utmost we can do for you, opulent sir--though it
+ill becomes us horny-handed sons of toil to rub shoulders with
+Dives--is perchance to dine with you, to take a pasty and a glass
+of Malvoisie, at some restaurant in Sacramento--when you've got
+things fixed, in honor of your return to affluence.  But more would
+ill become us!"
+
+"But what are YOU going to do?" said Barker, with a half-hysteric,
+half-frightened smile.
+
+"We have not yet looked through our luggage," said Demorest with
+invincible gravity, "and there's a secret recess--a double FOND--to
+my portmanteau, known only to a trusty page, which has not been
+disturbed since I left my ancestral home in Faginia.  There may be
+a few First Debentures of Erie or what not still there."
+
+"I felt some strange, disklike protuberances in my dress suit the
+other day, but belike they are but poker chips," said Stacy
+thoughtfully.
+
+An uneasy feeling crept over Barker.  The color which had left his
+fresh cheek returned to it quickly, and he turned his eyes away.
+Yet he had seen nothing in his companions' eyes but affection--with
+even a certain kind of tender commiseration that deepened his
+uneasiness.  "I suppose," he said desperately, after a pause, "I
+ought to go over to Boomville and make some inquiries."
+
+"At the bank, old chap; at the bank!" said Demorest emphatically.
+"Take my advice and don't go ANYWHERE ELSE.  Don't breathe a word
+of your luck to anybody.  And don't, whatever you do, be tempted to
+sell just now; you don't know how high that stock's going to jump
+yet."
+
+"I thought," stammered Barker, "that you boys might like to go over
+with me."
+
+"We can't afford to take another holiday on grub wages, and we're
+only two to work today," said Demorest, with a slight increase of
+color and the faintest tremor in his voice.  "And it won't do, old
+chap, for us to be seen bumming round with you on the heels of your
+good fortune.  For everybody knows we're poor, and sooner or later
+everybody'll know you WERE rich even when you first came to us."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Barker indignantly.
+
+"Gospel, my boy!" said Demorest shortly.
+
+"The frozen truth, old man!" said Stacy.
+
+Barker took up his hat with some stiffness and moved toward the
+door.  Here he stopped irresolutely, an irresolution that seemed to
+communicate itself to his partners.  There was a moment's awkward
+silence.  Then Demorest suddenly seized him by the shoulders with a
+grip that was half a caress, and walked him rapidly to the door.
+"And now don't stand foolin' with us, Barker boy; but just trot off
+like a little man, and get your grip on that fortune; and when
+you've got your hooks in it hang on like grim death.  You'll"--he
+hesitated for an instant only, possibly to find the laugh that
+should have accompanied his speech--"you're sure to find US here
+when you get back."
+
+Hurt to the quick, but restraining his feelings, Barker clapped his
+hat on his head and walked quickly away.  The two partners stood
+watching him in silence until his figure was lost in the
+underbrush.  Then they spoke.
+
+"Like him--wasn't it?" said Demorest.
+
+"Just him all over," said Stacy.
+
+"Think of him having that stock stowed away all these years and
+never even bothering his dear old head about it!"
+
+'And think of his wanting to put the whole thing into this rotten
+hillside with us!"
+
+"And he'd have done it, by gosh! and never thought of it again.
+That's Barker."
+
+"Dear old man!"
+
+"Good old chap!"
+
+"I've been wondering if one of us oughtn't to have gone with him?
+He's just as likely to pour his money into the first lap that opens
+for it," said Stacy.
+
+"The more reason why we shouldn't prevent him, or seem to prevent
+him," said Demorest almost fiercely.  "There will be knaves and
+fools enough who will try and put the idea of our using him into
+his simple heart without that.  No!  Let him do as he likes with
+it--but let him be himself.  I'd rather have him come back to us
+even after he's lost the money--his old self and empty-handed--than
+try to change the stuff God put into him and make him more like
+others."
+
+The tone and manner were so different from Demorest's usual levity
+that Stacy was silent.  After a pause he said: "Well! we shall miss
+him on the hillside--won't we?"
+
+Demorest did not reply.  Reaching out his hand abstractedly, he
+wrenched off a small slip from a sapling near him, and began slowly
+to pull the leaves off, one by one, until they were all gone.  Then
+he switched it in the air, struck his bootleg smartly with it, said
+roughly: "Come, let's get to work!" and strode away.
+
+Meantime Barker on his way to Boomville was no less singular in his
+manner.  He kept up his slightly affected attitude until he had
+lost sight of the cabin.  But, being of a simple nature, his
+emotions were less complex.  If he had not seen the undoubted look
+of affection in the eyes of his partners he would have imagined
+that they were jealous of his good fortune.  Yet why had they
+refused his offer to share it with him?  Why had they so strangely
+assumed that their partnership with him had closed?  Why had they
+declined to go with him?  Why had this money--of which he had
+thought so little, and for which he had cared so little--changed
+them toward him?  It had not changed HIM--HE was the same!  He
+remembered how they had often talked and laughed over a prospective
+"strike" in mining and speculated what THEY would do together with
+the money!  And now that "luck" had occurred to one of them,
+individually, the effect was only to alienate them!  He could not
+make it out.  He was hurt, wounded--yet oddly enough he was
+conscious now of a certain power within him to hurt and wound in
+retribution.  He was rich: he would let them see HE could do
+without them.  He was quite free now to think only of himself and
+Kitty.
+
+For it must be recorded that with all this young gentleman's
+simplicity and unselfishness, with all his loyal attitude to his
+partners, his FIRST thought at the moment he grasped the fact of
+his wealth was of a young lady.  It was Kitty Carter, the daughter
+of the hotelkeeper at Boomville, who owned the claim that the
+partners had mutually coveted.  That a pretty girl's face should
+flash upon him with his conviction that he was now a rich man meant
+perhaps no disloyalty to his partners, whom he would still have
+helped.  But it occurred to him now, in his half-hurt, half-
+vengeful state, that they had often joked him about Kitty, and
+perhaps further confidence with them was debarred.  And it was only
+due to his dignity that he should now see Kitty at once.
+
+This was easy enough, for in the naive simplicity of Boomville and
+the economic arrangements of her father, she occasionally waited
+upon the hotel table.  Half the town was always actively in love
+with her; the other half HAD BEEN, and was silent, cynical, but
+hopeless in defeat.  For Kitty was one of those singularly pretty
+girls occasionally met with in Southwestern frontier civilization
+whose distinct and original refinement of face and figure were so
+remarkable and original as to cast a doubt on the sagacity and
+prescience of one parent and the morality of the other, yet no
+doubt with equal injustice.  But the fact remained that she was
+slight, graceful, and self-contained, and moved beside her stumpy,
+commonplace father, and her faded, commonplace mother in the
+dining-room of the Boomville Hotel like some distinguished alien.
+The three partners, by virtue, perhaps, of their college education
+and refined manners, had been exceptionally noticed by Kitty.  And
+for some occult reason--the more serious, perhaps, because it had
+no obvious or logical presumption to the world generally--Barker
+was particularly favored.
+
+He quickened his pace, and as the flagstaff of the Boomville Hotel
+rose before him in the little hollow, he seriously debated whether
+he had not better go to the bank first, deposit his shares, and get
+a small advance on them to buy a new necktie or a "boiled shirt" in
+which to present himself to Miss Kitty; but, remembering that he
+had partly given his word to Demorest that he would keep his shares
+intact for the present, he abandoned this project, probably from
+the fact that his projected confidence with Kitty was already a
+violation of Demorest's injunctions of secrecy, and his conscience
+was sufficiently burdened with that breach of faith.
+
+But when he reached the hotel, a strange trepidation overcame him.
+The dining-room was at its slack water, between the ebb of
+breakfast and before the flow of the preparation for the midday
+meal.  He could not have his interview with Kitty in that dreary
+waste of reversed chairs and bare trestlelike tables, and she was
+possibly engaged in her household duties.  But Miss Kitty had
+already seen him cross the road, and had lounged into the dining-
+room with an artfully simulated air of casually examining it.  At
+the unexpected vision of his hopes, arrayed in the sweetest and
+freshest of rosebud-sprigged print, his heart faltered.  Then,
+partly with the desperation of a timid man, and partly through the
+working of a half-formed resolution, he met her bright smile with a
+simple inquiry for her father.  Miss Kitty bit her pretty lip,
+smiled slightly, and preceded him with great formality to the
+office.  Opening the door, without raising her lashes to either her
+father or the visitor, she said, with a mischievous accenting of
+the professional manner, "Mr. Barker to see you on business," and
+tripped sweetly away.
+
+And this slight incident precipitated the crisis.  For Barker
+instantly made up his mind that he must purchase the next claim for
+his partners of this man Carter, and that he would be obliged to
+confide to him the details of his good fortune, and as a proof of
+his sincerity and his ability to pay for it, he did so bluntly.
+Carter was a shrewd business man, and the well-known simplicity of
+Barker was a proof of his truthfulness, to say nothing of the
+shares that were shown to him.  His selling price for his claim had
+been two hundred dollars, but here was a rich customer who, from a
+mere foolish sentiment, would be no doubt willing to pay more.  He
+hesitated with a bland but superior smile.  "Ah, that was my price
+at my last offer, Mr. Barker," he said suavely; "but, you see,
+things are going up since then."
+
+The keenest duplicity is apt to fail before absolute simplicity.
+Barker, thoroughly believing him, and already a little frightened
+at his own presumption--not for the amount of the money involved,
+but from the possibility of his partners refusing his gift utterly--
+quickly took advantage of this LOCUS PENITENTIAE.  "No matter,
+then," he said hurriedly; "perhaps I had better consult my partners
+first; in fact," he added, with a gratuitous truthfulness all his
+own, "I hardly know whether they will take it of me, so I think
+I'll wait."
+
+Carter was staggered; this would clearly not do!  He recovered
+himself with an insinuating smile.  "You pulled me up too short,
+Mr. Barker; I'm a business man, but hang it all! what's that among
+friends?  If you reckoned I GAVE MY WORD at two hundred--why, I'm
+there!  Say no more about it--the claim's yours.  I'll make you out
+a bill of sale at once."
+
+"But," hesitated Barker, "you see I haven't got the money yet, and--"
+
+"Money!" echoed Carter bluntly, "what's that among friends?  Gimme
+your note at thirty days--that's good enough for ME.  An' we'll
+settle the whole thing now--nothing like finishing a job while
+you're about it."  And before the bewildered and doubtful visitor
+could protest, he had filled up a promissory note for Barker's
+signature and himself signed a bill of sale for the property.  "And
+I reckon, Mr. Barker, you'd like to take your partners by surprise
+about this little gift of yours," he added smilingly.  "Well, my
+messenger is starting for the Gulch in five minutes; he's going by
+your cabin, and he can just drop this bill o' sale, as a kind o'
+settled fact, on 'em afore they can say anything, see!  There's
+nothing like actin' on the spot in these sort of things.  And don't
+you hurry 'bout them either!  You see, you sorter owe us a friendly
+call--havin' always dropped inter the hotel only as a customer--so
+ye'll stop here over luncheon, and I reckon, as the old woman is
+busy, why Kitty will try to make the time pass till then by playin'
+for you on her new pianner."
+
+Delighted, yet bewildered by the unexpected invitation and
+opportunity, Barker mechanically signed the promissory note, and as
+mechanically addressed the envelope of the bill of sale to
+Demorest, which Carter gave to the messenger.  Then he followed his
+host across the hall to the apartment known as "Miss Kitty's
+parlor."  He had often heard of it as a sanctum impervious to the
+ordinary guest.  Whatever functions the young girl assumed at the
+hotel and among her father's boarders, it was vaguely understood
+that she dropped them on crossing that sacred threshold, and became
+"MISS Carter."  The county judge had been entertained there, and
+the wife of the bank manager.  Barker's admission there was
+consequently an unprecedented honor.
+
+He cast his eyes timidly round the room, redolent and suggestive in
+various charming little ways of the young girl's presence.  There
+was the cottage piano which had been brought up in sections on the
+backs of mules from the foot of the mountain; there was a crayon
+head of Minerva done by the fair occupant at the age of twelve;
+there was a profile of herself done by a traveling artist; there
+were pretty little china ornaments and many flowers, notably a
+faded but still scented woodland shrub which Barker had presented
+to her two weeks ago, and over which Miss Kitty had discreetly
+thrown her white handkerchief as he entered.  A wave of hope passed
+over him at the act, but it was quickly spent as Mr. Carter's
+roughly playful voice introduced him:
+
+"Ye kin give Mr. Barker a tune or two to pass time afore lunch,
+Kitty.  You kin let him see what you're doing in that line.  But
+you'll have to sit up now, for this young man's come inter some
+property, and will be sasheying round in 'Frisco afore long with a
+biled shirt and a stovepipe, and be givin' the go-by to Boomville.
+Well! you young folks will excuse me for a while, as I reckon I'll
+just toddle over and get the recorder to put that bill o' sale on
+record.  Nothin' like squaring things to onct, Mr. Barker."
+
+As he slipped away, Barker felt his heart sink.  Carter had not
+only bluntly forestalled him with the news and taken away his
+excuse for a confidential interview, but had put an ostentatious
+construction on his visit.  What could she think of him now?  He
+stood ashamed and embarrassed before her.
+
+But Miss Kitty, far from noticing his embarrassment in a sudden
+concern regarding the "horrid" untidiness of the room, which made
+her cheeks quite pink in one spot and obliged her to take up and
+set down in exactly the same place several articles, was
+exceedingly delighted.  In fact, she did not remember ever having
+been so pleased before in her life!  These things were always so
+unexpected!  Just like the weather, for instance.  It was quite
+cool last night--and now it was just stifling.  And so dusty!  Had
+Mr. Barker noticed the heat coming from the Gulch?  Or perhaps,
+being a rich man, he--with a dazzling smile--was above walking now.
+It was so kind of him to come here first and tell her father.
+
+"I really wanted to tell only--YOU, Miss Carter," stammered Barker.
+"You see--" he hesitated.  But Miss Kitty saw perfectly.  He wanted
+to tell HER, and, seeing her, he asked for HER FATHER!  Not that it
+made the slightest difference to her, for her father would have
+been sure to have told her.  It was also kind of her father to
+invite him to luncheon.  Otherwise she might not have seen him
+before he left Boomville.
+
+But this was more than Barker could stand.  With the same desperate
+directness and simplicity with which he had approached her father,
+he now blurted out his whole heart to her.  He told her how he had
+loved her hopelessly from the first time that they had spoken
+together at the church picnic.  Did she remember it?  How he had
+sat and worshiped her, and nothing else, at church!  How her voice
+in the church choir had sounded like an angel's; how his poverty
+and his uncertain future had kept him from seeing her often, lest
+he should be tempted to betray his hopeless passion.  How as soon
+as he realized that he had a position, that his love for her need
+not make her ridiculous to the world's eyes, he came to tell her
+ALL.  He did not even dare to hope!  But she would HEAR him at
+least, would she not?
+
+Indeed, there was no getting away from his boyish, simple,
+outspoken declaration.  In vain Kitty smiled, frowned, glanced at
+her pink cheeks in the glass, and stopped to look out of the
+window.  The room was filled with his love--it was encompassing
+her--and, despite his shy attitude, seemed to be almost embracing
+her.  But she managed at last to turn upon him a face that was now
+as white and grave as his own was eager and glowing.
+
+"Sit down," she said gently.
+
+He did so obediently, but wonderingly.  She then opened the piano
+and took a seat upon the music stool before it, placed some loose
+sheets of music in the rack, and ran her fingers lightly over the
+keys.  Thus intrenched, she let her hands fall idly in her lap, and
+for the first time raised her eyes to his.
+
+"Now listen to me--be good and don't interrupt!  There!--not so
+near; you can hear what I have to say well enough where you are.
+That will do."
+
+Barker had halted with the chair he was dragging toward her and sat
+down.
+
+"Now," said Miss Kitty, withdrawing her eyes and looking straight
+before her, "I believe everything you say; perhaps I oughtn't to--
+or at least SAY it--but I do.  There!  But because I do believe
+you--it seems to me all wrong!  For the very reasons that you give
+for not having spoken to me BEFORE, if you really felt as you say
+you did, are the same reasons why you should not speak to me now.
+You see, all this time you have let nobody but yourself know how
+you felt toward me.  In everybody's eyes YOU and your partners have
+been only the three stuck-up, exclusive, college-bred men who mined
+a poor claim in the Gulch, and occasionally came here to this hotel
+as customers.  In everybody's eyes I have been only the rich hotel-
+keeper's popular daughter who sometimes waited upon you--but
+nothing more.  But at least we were then pretty much alike, and as
+good as each other.  And now, as soon as you have become suddenly
+rich, and, of course, the SUPERIOR, you rush down here to ask me to
+acknowledge it by accepting you!"
+
+"You know I never meant that, Miss Kitty," burst out Barker
+vehemently, but his protest was drowned in a rapid roulade from the
+young lady's fingers on the keys.  He sank back in his chair.
+
+"Of course you never MEANT it," she said with an odd laugh; "but
+everybody will take it in that way, and you cannot go round to
+everybody in Boomville and make the pretty declaration you have
+just made to me.  Everybody will say I accepted you for your money;
+everybody will say it was a put-up job of my father's.  Everybody
+will say that you threw yourself away on me.  And I don't know but
+that they would be right.  Sit down, please! or I shall play again.
+
+"You see," she went on, without looking at him, "just now you like
+to remember that you fell in love with me first as a pretty waiter
+girl, but if I became your wife it's just what you would like to
+FORGET.  And I shouldn't, for I should always like to think of the
+time when you came here, whenever you could afford it and sometimes
+when you couldn't, just to see me; and how we used to make excuses
+to speak with each other over the dishes.  You don't know what
+these things mean to a woman who"--she hesitated a moment, and then
+added abruptly, "but what does that matter?  You would not care to
+be reminded of it.  So," she said, rising up with a grave smile and
+grasping her hands tightly behind her, "it's a good deal better
+that you should begin to forget it now.  Be a good boy and take my
+advice.  Go to San Francisco.  You will meet some girl there in a
+way you will not afterward regret.  You are young, and your riches,
+to say nothing," she added in a faltering voice that was somewhat
+inconsistent with the mischievous smile that played upon her lips,
+"of your kind and simple heart, will secure that which the world
+would call unselfish affection from one more equal to you, but
+would always believe was only BOUGHT if it came from me."
+
+"I suppose you are right," he said simply.
+
+She glanced quickly at him, and her eyebrows straightened.  He had
+risen, his face white and his gray eyes widely opened.  "I suppose
+you are right," he went on, "because you are saying to me what my
+partners said to me this morning, when I offered to share my wealth
+with them, God knows as honestly as I offered to share my heart
+with you.  I suppose that you are both right; that there must be
+some curse of pride or selfishness upon the money that I have got;
+but I have not felt it yet, and the fault does not lie with me."
+
+She gave her shoulders a slight shrug, and turned impatiently
+toward the window.  When she turned back again he was gone.  The
+room around her was empty; this room, which a moment before had
+seemed to be pulsating with his boyish passion, was now empty, and
+empty of HIM.  She bit her lips, rose, and ran eagerly to the
+window.  She saw his straw hat and brown curls as he crossed the
+road.  She drew her handkerchief sharply away from the withered
+shrub over which she had thrown it, and cast the once treasured
+remains in the hearth.  Then, possibly because she had it ready in
+her hand, she clapped the handkerchief to her eyes, and sinking
+sideways upon the chair he had risen from, put her elbows on its
+back, and buried her face in her hands.
+
+It is the characteristic and perhaps cruelty of a simple nature to
+make no allowance for complex motives, or to even understand them!
+So it seemed to Barker that his simplicity had been met with equal
+directness.  It was the possession of this wealth that had in some
+way hopelessly changed his relations with the world.  He did not
+love Kitty any the less; he did not even think she had wronged him;
+they, his partners and his sweetheart, were cleverer than he; there
+must be some occult quality in this wealth that he would understand
+when he possessed it, and perhaps it might even make him ashamed of
+his generosity; not in the way they had said, but in his tempting
+them so audaciously to assume a wrong position.  It behoved him to
+take possession of it at once, and to take also upon himself alone
+the knowledge, the trials, and responsibilities it would incur.
+His cheeks flushed again as he thought he had tried to tempt an
+innocent girl with it, and he was keenly hurt that he had not seen
+in Kitty's eyes the tenderness that had softened his partners'
+refusal.  He resolved to wait no longer, but sell his dreadful
+stock at once.  He walked directly to the bank.
+
+The manager, a shrewd but kindly man, to whom Barker was known
+already, received him graciously in recognition of his well-known
+simple honesty, and respectfully as a representative of the equally
+well-known poor but "superior" partnership of the Gulch.  He
+listened with marked attention to Barker's hesitating but brief
+story, only remarking at its close:
+
+"You mean, of course, the 'SECOND Extension' when you say 'First'?"
+
+"No," said Barker; "I mean the 'First'--and it said First in the
+Boomville paper."
+
+"Yes, yes!--I saw it--it was a printer's error.  The stock of the
+'First' was called in two years ago.  No!  You mean the 'Second,'
+for, of course, you've followed the quotations, and are likely to
+know what stock you're holding shares of.  When you go back, take a
+look at them, and you'll see I am right."
+
+"But I brought them with me," said Barker, with a slight flushing
+as he felt in his pocket, "and I am quite sure they are the
+'First.'  He brought them out and laid them on the desk before the
+manager.
+
+The words "First Extension" were plainly visible.  The manager
+glanced curiously at Barker, and his brow darkened.
+
+"Did anybody put this up on you?" he said sternly.  "Did your
+partners send you here with this stuff?"
+
+"No! no!" said Barker eagerly.  "No one!  It's all MY mistake.  I
+see it now.  I trusted to the newspaper."
+
+"And you mean to say you never examined the stock or the
+quotations, nor followed it in any way, since you had it?"
+
+"Never!" said Barker.  "Never thought about IT AT ALL till I saw
+the newspaper.  So it's not worth anything?"  And, to the infinite
+surprise of the manager, there was a slight smile on his boyish
+face.
+
+"I am afraid it is not worth the paper it's written on," said the
+manager gently.
+
+The smile on Barker's face increased to a little laugh, in which
+his wondering companion could not help joining.  "Thank you," said
+Barker suddenly, and rushed away.
+
+"He beats everything!" said the manager, gazing after him.  "Damned
+if he didn't seem even PLEASED."
+
+He WAS pleased.  The burden of wealth had fallen from his
+shoulders; the dreadful incubus that had weighed him down and
+parted his friends from him was gone!  And he had not got rid of it
+by spending it foolishly.  It had not ruined anybody yet; it had
+not altered anybody in HIS eyes.  It was gone; and he was a free
+and happy man once more.  He would go directly back to his
+partners; they would laugh at him, of course, but they could not
+look at him now with the same sad, commiserating eyes.  Perhaps
+even Kitty--but here a sudden chill struck him.  He had forgotten
+the bill of sale!  He had forgotten the dreadful promissory note
+given to her father in the rash presumption of his wealth!  How
+could it ever be paid?  And more than that, it had been given in a
+fraud.  He had no money when he gave it, and no prospect of any but
+what he was to get from those worthless shares.  Would anybody
+believe him that it was only a stupid blunder of his own?  Yes, his
+partners might believe him; but, horrible thought, he had already
+implicated THEM in his fraud!  Even now, while he was standing
+there hesitatingly in the road, they were entering upon the new
+claim he had NOT PAID FOR--COULD NOT PAY FOR--and in the guise of a
+benefactor he was dishonoring them.  Yet it was Carter he must meet
+first; he must confess all to him.  He must go back to the hotel--
+that hotel where he had indignantly left her, and tell the father
+he was a fraud.  It was terrible to think of; perhaps it was part
+of that money curse that he could not get rid of, and was now
+realizing; but it MUST be done.  He was simple, but his very
+simplicity had that unhesitating directness of conclusion which is
+the main factor of what men call "pluck."
+
+He turned back to the hotel and entered the office.  But Mr. Carter
+had not yet returned.  What was to be done?  He could not wait
+there; there was no time to be lost; there was only one other
+person who knew his expectations, and to whom he could confide his
+failure--it was Kitty.  It was to taste the dregs of his
+humiliation, but it must be done.  He ran up the staircase and
+knocked timidly at the sitting-room door.  There was a momentary
+pause, and a weak voice said "Come in."  Barker opened the door;
+saw the vision of a handkerchief thrown away, of a pair of tearful
+eyes that suddenly changed to stony indifference, and a graceful
+but stiffening figure.  But he was past all insult now.
+
+"I would not intrude," he said simply, "but I came only to see your
+father.  I have made an awful blunder--more than a blunder, I
+think--a FRAUD.  Believing that I was rich, I purchased your
+father's claim for my partners, and gave him my promissory note.  I
+came here to give him back his claim--for that note can NEVER be
+paid!  I have just been to the bank; I find I have made a stupid
+mistake in the name of the shares upon which I based my belief in
+my wealth.  The ones I own are worthless--am as poor as ever--I am
+even poorer, for I owe your father money I can never pay!"
+
+To his amazement he saw a look of pain and scorn come into her
+troubled eyes which he had never seen before.  "This is a feeble
+trick," she said bitterly; "it is unlike you--it is unworthy of
+you!"
+
+"Good God!  You must believe me.  Listen! it was all a mistake--a
+printer's error.  I read in the paper that the stock for the First
+Extension mine had gone up, when it should have been the Second.  I
+had some old stock of the First, which I had kept for years, and
+only thought of when I read the announcement in the paper this
+morning.  I swear to you--"
+
+But it was unnecessary.  There was no doubting the truth of that
+voice--that manner.  The scorn fled from Miss Kitty's eyes to give
+place to a stare, and then suddenly changed to two bubbling blue
+wells of laughter.  She went to the window and laughed.  She sat
+down to the piano and laughed.  She caught up the handkerchief, and
+hiding half her rosy face in it, laughed.  She finally collapsed
+into an easy chair, and, burying her brown head in its cushions,
+laughed long and confidentially until she brought up suddenly
+against a sob.  And then was still.
+
+Barker was dreadfully alarmed.  He had heard of hysterics before.
+He felt he ought to do something.  He moved toward her timidly, and
+gently drew away her handkerchief.  Alas! the blue wells were
+running over now.  He took her cold hands in his; he knelt beside
+her and passed his arm around her waist.  He drew her head upon his
+shoulder.  He was not sure that any of these things were effective
+until she suddenly lifted her eyes to his with the last ray of
+mirth in them vanishing in a big teardrop, put her arms round his
+neck, and sobbed:
+
+"Oh, George!  You blessed innocent!"
+
+An eloquent silence was broken by a remorseful start from Barker.
+
+"But I must go and warn my poor partners, dearest; there yet may be
+time; perhaps they have not yet taken possession of your father's
+claim."
+
+"Yes, George dear," said the young girl, with sparkling eyes; "and
+tell them to do so AT ONCE!"
+
+"What?" gasped Barker.
+
+"At once--do you hear?--or it may be too late!  Go quick."
+
+"But your father--Oh, I see, dearest, you will tell him all
+yourself, and spare me."
+
+"I shall do nothing so foolish, Georgey.  Nor shall you!  Don't you
+see the note isn't due for a month?  Stop!  Have you told anybody
+but Paw and me?"
+
+"Only the bank manager."
+
+She ran out of the room and returned in a minute tying the most
+enchanting of hats by a ribbon under her oval chin.  "I'll run over
+and fix him," she said.
+
+"Fix him?" returned Barker, aghast.
+
+"Yes, I'll say your wicked partners have been playing a practical
+joke on you, and he mustn't give you away.  He'll do anything for
+me."
+
+"But my partners didn't!  On the contrary--"
+
+"Don't tell me, George," said Miss Kitty severely.  "THEY ought
+never to have let you come here with that stuff.  But come!  You
+must go at once.  You must not meet Paw; you'll blurt out
+everything to him; I know you!  I'll tell him you could not stay to
+luncheon.  Quick, now; go.  What?  Well--there!"
+
+Whatever it represented, the exclamation was apparently so
+protracted that Miss Kitty was obliged to push her lover to the
+front landing before she could disappear by the back stairs.  But
+once in the street, Barker no longer lingered.  It was a good three
+miles back to the Gulch; he might still reach it by the time his
+partners were taking their noonday rest, and he resolved that
+although the messenger had preceded him, they would not enter upon
+the new claim until the afternoon.  For Barker, in spite of his
+mistress's injunction, had no idea of taking what he couldn't pay
+for; he would keep the claim intact until something could be
+settled.  For the rest, he walked on air!  Kitty loved him!  The
+accursed wealth no longer stood between them.  They were both poor
+now--everything was possible.
+
+The sun was beginning to send dwarf shadows toward the east when he
+reached the Gulch.  Here a new trepidation seized him.  How would
+his partners receive the news of his utter failure?  HE was happy,
+for he had gained Kitty through it.  But they?  For a moment it
+seemed to him that he had purchased his happiness through their
+loss.  He stopped, took off his hat, and ran his fingers
+remorsefully through his damp curls.
+
+Another thing troubled him.  He had reached the crest of the Gulch,
+where their old working ground was spread before him like a map.
+They were not there; neither were they lying under the four pines
+on the ridge where they were wont to rest at midday.  He turned
+with some alarm to the new claim adjoining theirs, but there was no
+sign of them there either.  A sudden fear that they had, after
+parting from him, given up the claim in a fit of disgust and
+depression, and departed, now overcame him.  He clapped his hand on
+his head and ran in the direction of the cabin.
+
+He had nearly reached it when the rough challenge of "Who's there?"
+from the bushes halted him, and Demorest suddenly swung into the
+trail.  But the singular look of sternness and impatience which he
+was wearing vanished as he saw Barker, and with a loud shout of
+"All right, it's only Barker!  Hooray!" he ran toward him.  In an
+instant he was joined by Stacy from the cabin, and the two men,
+catching hold of their returning partner, waltzed him joyfully and
+breathlessly into the cabin.  But the quick-eyed Demorest suddenly
+let go his hold and stared at Barker's face.  "Why, Barker, old
+boy, what's up?"
+
+"Everything's up," gasped the breathless Barker.  "It's all up
+about these stocks.  It's all a mistake; all an infernal lie of
+that newspaper.  I never had the right kind of shares.  The ones I
+have are worthless rags"; and the next instant he had blurted out
+his whole interview with the bank manager.
+
+The two partners looked at each other, and then, to Barker's
+infinite perplexity, the same extraordinary convulsion that had
+seized Miss Kitty fell upon them.  They laughed, holding on each
+other's shoulders; they laughed, clinging to Barker's struggling
+figure; they went out and laughed with their backs against a tree.
+They laughed separately and in different corners.  And then they
+came up to Barker with tears in their eyes, dropped their heads on
+his shoulder, and murmured exhaustedly:
+
+"You blessed ass!"
+
+"But," said Stacy suddenly, "how did you manage to buy the claim?"
+
+"Ah! that's the most awful thing, boys.  I've NEVER PAID FOR IT,"
+groaned Barker.
+
+"But Carter sent us the bill of sale," persisted Demorest, "or we
+shouldn't have taken it."
+
+"I gave my promissory note at thirty days," said Barker
+desperately, "and where's the money to come from now?  But," he
+added wildly, as the men glanced at each other--"you said 'taken
+it.'  Good heavens! you don't mean to say that I'm TOO late--that
+you've--you've touched it?"
+
+"I reckon that's pretty much what we HAVE been doing," drawled
+Demorest.
+
+"It looks uncommonly like it," drawled Stacy.
+
+Barker glanced blankly from the one to the other.  "Shall we pass
+our young friend in to see the show?" said Demorest to Stacy.
+
+"Yes, if he'll be perfectly quiet and not breathe on the glasses,"
+returned Stacy.
+
+They each gravely took one of Barker's hands and led him to the
+corner of the cabin.  There, on an old flour barrel, stood a large
+tin prospecting pan, in which the partners also occasionally used
+to knead their bread.  A dirty towel covered it.  Demorest whisked
+it dexterously aside, and disclosed three large fragments of
+decomposed gold and quartz.  Barker started back.
+
+"Heft it!" said Demorest grimly.
+
+Barker could scarcely lift the pan!
+
+"Four thousand dollars' weight if a penny!" said Stacy, in short
+staccato sentences.  "In a pocket!  Brought it out the second
+stroke of the pick!  We'd been awfully blue after you left.
+Awfully blue, too, when that bill of sale came, for we thought
+you'd been wasting your money on US.  Reckoned we oughtn't to take
+it, but send it straight back to you.  Messenger gone!  Then
+Demorest reckoned as it was done it couldn't be undone, and we
+ought to make just one 'prospect' on the claim, and strike a single
+stroke for you.  And there it is.  And there's more on the
+hillside."
+
+"But it isn't MINE!  It isn't YOURS!  It's Carter's.  I never had
+the money to pay for it--and I haven't got it now."
+
+"But you gave the note--and it is not due for thirty days."
+
+A recollection flashed upon Barker.  "Yes," he said with thoughtful
+simplicity, "that's what Kitty said."
+
+"Oh, Kitty said so," said both partners, gravely.
+
+"Yes," stammered Barker, turning away with a heightened color, and,
+as I didn't stay there to luncheon, I think I'd better be getting
+it ready."  He picked up the coffeepot and turned to the hearth as
+his two partners stepped beyond the door.
+
+"Wasn't it exactly like him?" said Demorest.
+
+"Him all over," said Stacy.
+
+"And his worry over that note?" said Demorest.
+
+"And 'what Kitty said,'" said Stacy.
+
+"Look here!  I reckon that wasn't ALL that Kitty said."
+
+"Of course not."
+
+"What luck!"
+
+
+
+A YELLOW DOG
+
+
+I never knew why in the Western States of America a yellow dog
+should be proverbially considered the acme of canine degradation
+and incompetency, nor why the possession of one should seriously
+affect the social standing of its possessor.  But the fact being
+established, I think we accepted it at Rattlers Ridge without
+question.  The matter of ownership was more difficult to settle;
+and although the dog I have in my mind at the present writing
+attached himself impartially and equally to everyone in camp, no
+one ventured to exclusively claim him; while, after the
+perpetration of any canine atrocity, everybody repudiated him with
+indecent haste.
+
+"Well, I can swear he hasn't been near our shanty for weeks," or
+the retort, "He was last seen comin' out of YOUR cabin," expressed
+the eagerness with which Rattlers Ridge washed its hands of any
+responsibility.  Yet he was by no means a common dog, nor even an
+unhandsome dog; and it was a singular fact that his severest
+critics vied with each other in narrating instances of his
+sagacity, insight, and agility which they themselves had witnessed.
+
+He had been seen crossing the "flume" that spanned Grizzly Canyon
+at a height of nine hundred feet, on a plank six inches wide.  He
+had tumbled down the "shoot" to the South Fork, a thousand feet
+below, and was found sitting on the riverbank "without a scratch,
+'cept that he was lazily givin' himself with his off hind paw."  He
+had been forgotten in a snowdrift on a Sierran shelf, and had come
+home in the early spring with the conceited complacency of an
+Alpine traveler and a plumpness alleged to have been the result of
+an exclusive diet of buried mail bags and their contents.  He was
+generally believed to read the advance election posters, and
+disappear a day or two before the candidates and the brass band--
+which he hated--came to the Ridge.  He was suspected of having
+overlooked Colonel Johnson's hand at poker, and of having conveyed
+to the Colonel's adversary, by a succession of barks, the danger of
+betting against four kings.
+
+While these statements were supplied by wholly unsupported
+witnesses, it was a very human weakness of Rattlers Ridge that the
+responsibility of corroboration was passed to the dog himself, and
+HE was looked upon as a consummate liar.
+
+"Snoopin' round yere, and CALLIN' yourself a poker sharp, are ye!
+Scoot, you yaller pizin!" was a common adjuration whenever the
+unfortunate animal intruded upon a card party.  "Ef thar was a
+spark, an ATOM of truth in THAT DOG, I'd believe my own eyes that I
+saw him sittin' up and trying to magnetize a jay bird off a tree.
+But wot are ye goin' to do with a yaller equivocator like that?"
+
+I have said that he was yellow--or, to use the ordinary expression,
+"yaller."  Indeed, I am inclined to believe that much of the
+ignominy attached to the epithet lay in this favorite
+pronunciation.  Men who habitually spoke of a "YELLOW bird," a
+"YELLOW-hammer," a "YELLOW leaf," always alluded to him as a
+"YALLER dog."
+
+He certainly WAS yellow.  After a bath--usually compulsory--he
+presented a decided gamboge streak down his back, from the top of
+his forehead to the stump of his tail, fading in his sides and
+flank to a delicate straw color.  His breast, legs, and feet--when
+not reddened by "slumgullion," in which he was fond of wading--were
+white.  A few attempts at ornamental decoration from the India-ink
+pot of the storekeeper failed, partly through the yellow dog's
+excessive agility, which would never give the paint time to dry on
+him, and partly through his success in transferring his markings to
+the trousers and blankets of the camp.
+
+The size and shape of his tail--which had been cut off before his
+introduction to Rattlers Ridge--were favorite sources of
+speculation to the miners, as determining both his breed and his
+moral responsibility in coming into camp in that defective
+condition.  There was a general opinion that he couldn't have
+looked worse with a tail, and its removal was therefore a
+gratuitous effrontery.
+
+His best feature was his eyes, which were a lustrous Vandyke brown,
+and sparkling with intelligence; but here again he suffered from
+evolution through environment, and their original trustful openness
+was marred by the experience of watching for flying stones, sods,
+and passing kicks from the rear, so that the pupils were
+continually reverting to the outer angle of the eyelid.
+
+Nevertheless, none of these characteristics decided the vexed
+question of his BREED.  His speed and scent pointed to a "hound,"
+and it is related that on one occasion he was laid on the trail of
+a wildcat with such success that he followed it apparently out of
+the State, returning at the end of two weeks footsore, but blandly
+contented.
+
+Attaching himself to a prospecting party, he was sent under the
+same belief, "into the brush" to drive off a bear, who was supposed
+to be haunting the campfire.  He returned in a few minutes WITH the
+bear, DRIVING IT INTO the unarmed circle and scattering the whole
+party.  After this the theory of his being a hunting dog was
+abandoned.  Yet it was said--on the usual uncorroborated evidence--
+that he had "put up" a quail; and his qualities as a retriever were
+for a long time accepted, until, during a shooting expedition for
+wild ducks, it was discovered that the one he had brought back had
+never been shot, and the party were obliged to compound damages
+with an adjacent settler.
+
+His fondness for paddling in the ditches and "slumgullion" at one
+time suggested a water spaniel.  He could swim, and would
+occasionally bring out of the river sticks and pieces of bark that
+had been thrown in; but as HE always had to be thrown in with them,
+and was a good-sized dog, his aquatic reputation faded also.  He
+remained simply "a yaller dog."  What more could be said?  His
+actual name was "Bones"--given to him, no doubt, through the
+provincial custom of confounding the occupation of the individual
+with his quality, for which it was pointed out precedent could be
+found in some old English family names.
+
+But if Bones generally exhibited no preference for any particular
+individual in camp, he always made an exception in favor of
+drunkards.  Even an ordinary roistering bacchanalian party brought
+him out from under a tree or a shed in the keenest satisfaction.
+He would accompany them through the long straggling street of the
+settlement, barking his delight at every step or misstep of the
+revelers, and exhibiting none of that mistrust of eye which marked
+his attendance upon the sane and the respectable.  He accepted even
+their uncouth play without a snarl or a yelp, hypocritically
+pretending even to like it; and I conscientiously believe would
+have allowed a tin can to be attached to his tail if the hand that
+tied it on were only unsteady, and the voice that bade him "lie
+still" were husky with liquor.  He would "see" the party cheerfully
+into a saloon, wait outside the door--his tongue fairly lolling
+from his mouth in enjoyment--until they reappeared, permit them
+even to tumble over him with pleasure, and then gambol away before
+them, heedless of awkwardly projected stones and epithets.  He
+would afterward accompany them separately home, or lie with them at
+crossroads until they were assisted to their cabins.  Then he would
+trot rakishly to his own haunt by the saloon stove, with the
+slightly conscious air of having been a bad dog, yet of having had
+a good time.
+
+We never could satisfy ourselves whether his enjoyment arose from
+some merely selfish conviction that he was more SECURE with the
+physically and mentally incompetent, from some active sympathy with
+active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental
+superiority at such moments.  But the general belief leant toward
+his kindred sympathy as a "yaller dog" with all that was
+disreputable.  And this was supported by another very singular
+canine manifestation--the "sincere flattery" of simulation or
+imitation.
+
+"Uncle Billy" Riley for a short time enjoyed the position of being
+the camp drunkard, and at once became an object of Bones' greatest
+solicitude.  He not only accompanied him everywhere, curled at his
+feet or head according to Uncle Billy's attitude at the moment,
+but, it was noticed, began presently to undergo a singular
+alteration in his own habits and appearance.  From being an active,
+tireless scout and forager, a bold and unovertakable marauder, he
+became lazy and apathetic; allowed gophers to burrow under him
+without endeavoring to undermine the settlement in his frantic
+endeavors to dig them out, permitted squirrels to flash their tails
+at him a hundred yards away, forgot his usual caches, and left his
+favorite bones unburied and bleaching in the sun.  His eyes grew
+dull, his coat lusterless, in proportion as his companion became
+blear-eyed and ragged; in running, his usual arrowlike directness
+began to deviate, and it was not unusual to meet the pair together,
+zigzagging up the hill.  Indeed, Uncle Billy's condition could be
+predetermined by Bones' appearance at times when his temporary
+master was invisible.  "The old man must have an awful jag on
+today," was casually remarked when an extra fluffiness and
+imbecility was noticeable in the passing Bones.  At first it was
+believed that he drank also, but when careful investigation proved
+this hypothesis untenable, he was freely called a "derned time-
+servin', yaller hypocrite."  Not a few advanced the opinion that if
+Bones did not actually lead Uncle Billy astray, he at least
+"slavered him over and coddled him until the old man got conceited
+in his wickedness."  This undoubtedly led to a compulsory divorce
+between them, and Uncle Billy was happily dispatched to a
+neighboring town and a doctor.
+
+Bones seemed to miss him greatly, ran away for two days, and was
+supposed to have visited him, to have been shocked at his
+convalescence, and to have been "cut" by Uncle Billy in his
+reformed character; and he returned to his old active life again,
+and buried his past with his forgotten bones.  It was said that he
+was afterward detected in trying to lead an intoxicated tramp into
+camp after the methods employed by a blind man's dog, but was
+discovered in time by the--of course--uncorroborated narrator.
+
+I should be tempted to leave him thus in his original and
+picturesque sin, but the same veracity which compelled me to
+transcribe his faults and iniquities obliges me to describe his
+ultimate and somewhat monotonous reformation, which came from no
+fault of his own.
+
+It was a joyous day at Rattlers Ridge that was equally the advent
+of his change of heart and the first stagecoach that had been
+induced to diverge from the highroad and stop regularly at our
+settlement.  Flags were flying from the post office and Polka
+saloon, and Bones was flying before the brass band that he
+detested, when the sweetest girl in the county--Pinkey Preston--
+daughter of the county judge and hopelessly beloved by all Rattlers
+Ridge, stepped from the coach which she had glorified by occupying
+as an invited guest.
+
+"What makes him run away?" she asked quickly, opening her lovely
+eyes in a possibly innocent wonder that anything could be found to
+run away from her.
+
+"He don't like the brass band," we explained eagerly.
+
+"How funny," murmured the girl; "is it as out of tune as all that?"
+
+This irresistible witticism alone would have been enough to satisfy
+us--we did nothing but repeat it to each other all the next day--
+but we were positively transported when we saw her suddenly gather
+her dainty skirts in one hand and trip off through the red dust
+toward Bones, who, with his eyes over his yellow shoulder, had
+halted in the road, and half-turned in mingled disgust and rage at
+the spectacle of the descending trombone.  We held our breath as
+she approached him.  Would Bones evade her as he did us at such
+moments, or would he save our reputation, and consent, for the
+moment, to accept her as a new kind of inebriate?  She came nearer;
+he saw her; he began to slowly quiver with excitement--his stump of
+a tail vibrating with such rapidity that the loss of the missing
+portion was scarcely noticeable.  Suddenly she stopped before him,
+took his yellow head between her little hands, lifted it, and
+looked down in his handsome brown eyes with her two lovely blue
+ones.  What passed between them in that magnetic glance no one ever
+knew.  She returned with him; said to him casually: "We're not
+afraid of brass bands, are we?" to which he apparently acquiesced,
+at least stifling his disgust of them while he was near her--which
+was nearly all the time.
+
+During the speechmaking her gloved hand and his yellow head were
+always near together, and at the crowning ceremony--her public
+checking of Yuba Bill's "waybill" on behalf of the township, with a
+gold pencil presented to her by the Stage Company--Bones' joy, far
+from knowing no bounds, seemed to know nothing but them, and he
+witnessed it apparently in the air.  No one dared to interfere.
+For the first time a local pride in Bones sprang up in our hearts--
+and we lied to each other in his praises openly and shamelessly.
+
+Then the time came for parting.  We were standing by the door of
+the coach, hats in hand, as Miss Pinkey was about to step into it;
+Bones was waiting by her side, confidently looking into the
+interior, and apparently selecting his own seat on the lap of Judge
+Preston in the corner, when Miss Pinkey held up the sweetest of
+admonitory fingers.  Then, taking his head between her two hands,
+she again looked into his brimming eyes, and said, simply, "GOOD
+dog," with the gentlest of emphasis on the adjective, and popped
+into the coach.
+
+The six bay horses started as one, the gorgeous green and gold
+vehicle bounded forward, the red dust rose behind, and the yellow
+dog danced in and out of it to the very outskirts of the
+settlement.  And then he soberly returned.
+
+A day or two later he was missed--but the fact was afterward known
+that he was at Spring Valley, the county town where Miss Preston
+lived, and he was forgiven.  A week afterward he was missed again,
+but this time for a longer period, and then a pathetic letter
+arrived from Sacramento for the storekeeper's wife.
+
+"Would you mind," wrote Miss Pinkey Preston, "asking some of your
+boys to come over here to Sacramento and bring back Bones?  I don't
+mind having the dear dog walk out with me at Spring Valley, where
+everyone knows me; but here he DOES make one so noticeable, on
+account of HIS COLOR.  I've got scarcely a frock that he agrees
+with.  He don't go with my pink muslin, and that lovely buff tint
+he makes three shades lighter.  You know yellow is SO trying."
+
+A consultation was quickly held by the whole settlement, and a
+deputation sent to Sacramento to relieve the unfortunate girl.  We
+were all quite indignant with Bones--but, oddly enough, I think it
+was greatly tempered with our new pride in him.  While he was with
+us alone, his peculiarities had been scarcely appreciated, but the
+recurrent phrase "that yellow dog that they keep at the Rattlers"
+gave us a mysterious importance along the countryside, as if we had
+secured a "mascot" in some zoological curiosity.
+
+This was further indicated by a singular occurrence.  A new church
+had been built at the crossroads, and an eminent divine had come
+from San Francisco to preach the opening sermon.  After a careful
+examination of the camp's wardrobe, and some felicitous exchange of
+apparel, a few of us were deputed to represent "Rattlers" at the
+Sunday service.  In our white ducks, straw hats, and flannel
+blouses, we were sufficiently picturesque and distinctive as
+"honest miners" to be shown off in one of the front pews.
+
+Seated near the prettiest girls, who offered us their hymn books--
+in the cleanly odor of fresh pine shavings, and ironed muslin, and
+blown over by the spices of our own woods through the open windows,
+a deep sense of the abiding peace of Christian communion settled
+upon us.  At this supreme moment someone murmured in an awe-
+stricken whisper:
+
+"WILL you look at Bones?"
+
+We looked.  Bones had entered the church and gone up in the gallery
+through a pardonable ignorance and modesty; but, perceiving his
+mistake, was now calmly walking along the gallery rail before the
+astounded worshipers.  Reaching the end, he paused for a moment,
+and carelessly looked down.  It was about fifteen feet to the floor
+below--the simplest jump in the world for the mountain-bred Bones.
+Daintily, gingerly, lazily, and yet with a conceited airiness of
+manner, as if, humanly speaking, he had one leg in his pocket and
+were doing it on three, he cleared the distance, dropping just in
+front of the chancel, without a sound, turned himself around three
+times, and then lay comfortably down.
+
+Three deacons were instantly in the aisle, coming up before the
+eminent divine, who, we fancied, wore a restrained smile.  We heard
+the hurried whispers: "Belongs to them."  "Quite a local
+institution here, you know."  "Don't like to offend sensibilities;"
+and the minister's prompt "By no means," as he went on with his
+service.
+
+A short month ago we would have repudiated Bones; today we sat
+there in slightly supercilious attitudes, as if to indicate that
+any affront offered to Bones would be an insult to ourselves, and
+followed by our instantaneous withdrawal in a body.
+
+All went well, however, until the minister, lifting the large Bible
+from the communion table and holding it in both hands before him,
+walked toward a reading stand by the altar rails.  Bones uttered a
+distinct growl.  The minister stopped.
+
+We, and we alone, comprehended in a flash the whole situation.  The
+Bible was nearly the size and shape of one of those soft clods of
+sod which we were in the playful habit of launching at Bones when
+he lay half-asleep in the sun, in order to see him cleverly evade
+it.
+
+We held our breath.  What was to be done?  But the opportunity
+belonged to our leader, Jeff Briggs--a confoundedly good-looking
+fellow, with the golden mustache of a northern viking and the curls
+of an Apollo.  Secure in his beauty and bland in his self-conceit,
+he rose from the pew, and stepped before the chancel rails.
+
+"I would wait a moment, if I were you, sir," he said, respectfully,
+"and you will see that he will go out quietly."
+
+"What is wrong?" whispered the minister in some concern.
+
+"He thinks you are going to heave that book at him, sir, without
+giving him a fair show, as we do."
+
+The minister looked perplexed, but remained motionless, with the
+book in his hands.  Bones arose, walked halfway down the aisle, and
+vanished like a yellow flash!
+
+With this justification of his reputation, Bones disappeared for a
+week.  At the end of that time we received a polite note from Judge
+Preston, saying that the dog had become quite domiciled in their
+house, and begged that the camp, without yielding up their valuable
+PROPERTY in him, would allow him to remain at Spring Valley for an
+indefinite time; that both the judge and his daughter--with whom
+Bones was already an old friend--would be glad if the members of
+the camp would visit their old favorite whenever they desired, to
+assure themselves that he was well cared for.
+
+I am afraid that the bait thus ingenuously thrown out had a good
+deal to do with our ultimate yielding.  However, the reports of
+those who visited Bones were wonderful and marvelous.  He was
+residing there in state, lying on rugs in the drawing-room, coiled
+up under the judicial desk in the judge's study, sleeping regularly
+on the mat outside Miss Pinkey's bedroom door, or lazily snapping
+at flies on the judge's lawn.
+
+"He's as yaller as ever," said one of our informants, "but it don't
+somehow seem to be the same back that we used to break clods over
+in the old time, just to see him scoot out of the dust."
+
+And now I must record a fact which I am aware all lovers of dogs
+will indignantly deny, and which will be furiously bayed at by
+every faithful hound since the days of Ulysses.  Bones not only
+FORGOT, but absolutely CUT US!  Those who called upon the judge in
+"store clothes" he would perhaps casually notice, but he would
+sniff at them as if detecting and resenting them under their
+superficial exterior.  The rest he simply paid no attention to.
+The more familiar term of "Bonesy"--formerly applied to him, as in
+our rare moments of endearment--produced no response.  This pained,
+I think, some of the more youthful of us; but, through some strange
+human weakness, it also increased the camp's respect for him.
+Nevertheless, we spoke of him familiarly to strangers at the very
+moment he ignored us.  I am afraid that we also took some pains to
+point out that he was getting fat and unwieldy, and losing his
+elasticity, implying covertly that his choice was a mistake and his
+life a failure.
+
+A year after, he died, in the odor of sanctity and respectability,
+being found one morning coiled up and stiff on the mat outside Miss
+Pinkey's door.  When the news was conveyed to us, we asked
+permission, the camp being in a prosperous condition, to erect a
+stone over his grave.  But when it came to the inscription we could
+only think of the two words murmured to him by Miss Pinkey, which
+we always believe effected his conversion:
+
+"GOOD Dog!"
+
+
+
+A MOTHER OF FIVE
+
+
+She was a mother--and a rather exemplary one--of five children,
+although her own age was barely nine.  Two of these children were
+twins, and she generally alluded to them as "Mr. Amplach's
+children," referring to an exceedingly respectable gentleman in the
+next settlement who, I have reason to believe, had never set eyes
+on her or them.  The twins were quite naturally alike--having been
+in a previous state of existence two ninepins--and were still
+somewhat vague and inchoate below their low shoulders in their long
+clothes, but were also firm and globular about the head, and there
+were not wanting those who professed to see in this an unmistakable
+resemblance to their reputed father.  The other children were dolls
+of different ages, sex, and condition, but the twins may be said to
+have been distinctly her own conception.  Yet such was her
+admirable and impartial maternity that she never made any
+difference between them.  "The Amplach's children" was a
+description rather than a distinction.
+
+She was herself the motherless child of Robert Foulkes, a
+hardworking but somewhat improvident teamster on the Express Route
+between Big Bend and Reno.  His daily avocation, when she was not
+actually with him in the wagon, led to an occasional dispersion of
+herself and her progeny along the road and at wayside stations
+between those places.  But the family was generally collected
+together by rough but kindly hands already familiar with the
+handling of her children.  I have a very vivid recollection of Jim
+Carter trampling into a saloon, after a five-mile walk through a
+snowdrift, with an Amplach twin in his pocket.  "Suthin' ought to
+be done," he growled, "to make Meary a little more careful o' them
+Amplach children; I picked up one outer the snow a mile beyond Big
+Bend."  "God bless my soul!" said a casual passenger, looking up
+hastily; "I didn't know Mr. Amplach was married."  Jim winked
+diabolically at us over his glass.  "No more did I," he responded
+gloomily, "but you can't tell anything about the ways o' them
+respectable, psalm-singing jay birds."  Having thus disposed of
+Amplach's character, later on, when he was alone with Mary, or
+"Meary," as she chose to pronounce it, the rascal worked upon her
+feelings with an account of the infant Amplach's sufferings in the
+snowdrift and its agonized whisperings for "Meary! Meary!" until
+real tears stood in Mary's blue eyes.  "Let this be a lesson to
+you," he concluded, drawing the ninepin dexterously from his
+pocket, "for it took nigh a quart of the best forty-rod whisky to
+bring that child to."  Not only did Mary firmly believe him, but
+for weeks afterwards "Julian Amplach"--this unhappy twin--was kept
+in a somnolent attitude in the cart, and was believed to have
+contracted dissipated habits from the effects of his heroic
+treatment.
+
+Her numerous family was achieved in only two years, and succeeded
+her first child, which was brought from Sacramento at considerable
+expense by a Mr. William Dodd, also a teamster, on her seventh
+birthday.  This, by one of those rare inventions known only to a
+child's vocabulary, she at once called "Misery"--probably a
+combination of "Missy," as she herself was formerly termed by
+strangers, and "Missouri," her native State.  It was an excessively
+large doll at first--Mr. Dodd wishing to get the worth of his
+money--but time, and perhaps an excess of maternal care, remedied
+the defect, and it lost flesh and certain unemployed parts of its
+limbs very rapidly.  It was further reduced in bulk by falling
+under the wagon and having the whole train pass over it, but
+singularly enough its greatest attenuation was in the head and
+shoulders--the complexion peeling off as a solid layer, followed by
+the disappearance of distinct strata of its extraordinary
+composition.  This continued until the head and shoulders were much
+too small for even its reduced frame, and all the devices of
+childish millinery--a shawl secured with tacks and well hammered
+in, and a hat which tilted backward and forward and never appeared
+at the same angle--failed to restore symmetry.  Until one dreadful
+morning, after an imprudent bath, the whole upper structure
+disappeared, leaving two hideous iron prongs standing erect from
+the spinal column.  Even an imaginative child like Mary could not
+accept this sort of thing as a head.  Later in the day Jack Roper,
+the blacksmith at the "Crossing," was concerned at the plaintive
+appearance before his forge of a little girl clad in a bright-blue
+pinafore of the same color as her eyes, carrying her monstrous
+offspring in her arms.  Jack recognized her and instantly divined
+the situation.  "You haven't," he suggested kindly, "got another
+head at home--suthin' left over," Mary shook her head sadly; even
+her prolific maternity was not equal to the creation of children in
+detail.  "Nor anythin' like a head?" he persisted sympathetically.
+Mary's loving eyes filled with tears.  "No, nuffen!"  "You
+couldn't," he continued thoughtfully, "use her the other side up?--
+we might get a fine pair o' legs outer them irons," he added,
+touching the two prongs with artistic suggestion.  "Now look here"--
+he was about to tilt the doll over when a small cry of feminine
+distress and a swift movement of a matronly little arm arrested the
+evident indiscretion.  "I see," he said gravely.  "Well, you come
+here tomorrow, and we'll fix up suthin' to work her."  Jack was
+thoughtful the rest of the day, more than usually impatient with
+certain stubborn mules to be shod, and even knocked off work an
+hour earlier to walk to Big Bend and a rival shop.  But the next
+morning when the trustful and anxious mother appeared at the forge
+she uttered a scream of delight.  Jack had neatly joined a hollow
+iron globe, taken from the newel post of some old iron staircase
+railing, to the two prongs, and covered it with a coat of red
+fireproof paint.  It was true that its complexion was rather high,
+that it was inclined to be top-heavy, and that in the long run the
+other dolls suffered considerably by enforced association with this
+unyielding and implacable head and shoulders, but this did not
+diminish Mary's joy over her restored first-born.  Even its utter
+absence of features was no defect in a family where features were
+as evanescent as in hers, and the most ordinary student of
+evolution could see that the "Amplach" ninepins were in legitimate
+succession to the globular-headed "Misery."  For a time I think
+that Mary even preferred her to the others.  Howbeit it was a
+pretty sight to see her on a summer afternoon sitting upon a
+wayside stump, her other children dutifully ranged around her, and
+the hard, unfeeling head of Misery pressed deep down into her
+loving little heart as she swayed from side to side, crooning her
+plaintive lullaby.  Small wonder that the bees took up the song and
+droned a slumberous accompaniment, or that high above her head the
+enormous pines, stirred through their depths by the soft Sierran
+air--or Heaven knows what--let slip flickering lights and shadows
+to play over that cast-iron face, until the child, looking down
+upon it with the quick, transforming power of love, thought that it
+smiled.
+
+The two remaining members of the family were less distinctive.
+"Gloriana"--pronounced as two words: "Glory Anna"--being the work
+of her father, who also named it, was simply a cylindrical roll of
+canvas wagon-covering, girt so as to define a neck and waist, with
+a rudely inked face--altogether a weak, pitiable, manlike
+invention; and "Johnny Dear," alleged to be the representative of
+John Doremus, a young storekeeper who occasionally supplied Mary
+with gratuitous sweets.  Mary never admitted this, and as we were
+all gentlemen along that road, we were blind to the suggestion.
+"Johnny Dear" was originally a small plaster phrenological cast of
+a head and bust, begged from some shop window in the county town,
+with a body clearly constructed by Mary herself.  It was an ominous
+fact that it was always dressed as a BOY, and was distinctly the
+most HUMAN-looking of all her progeny.  Indeed, in spite of the
+faculties that were legibly printed all over its smooth, white,
+hairless head, it was appallingly lifelike.  Left sometimes by Mary
+astride of the branch of a wayside tree, horsemen had been known to
+dismount hurriedly and examine it, returning with a mystified
+smile, and it was on record that Yuba Bill had once pulled up the
+Pioneer Coach at the request of curious and imploring passengers,
+and then grimly installed "Johnny Dear" beside him on the box seat,
+publicly delivering him to Mary at Big Bend, to her wide-eyed
+confusion and the first blush we had ever seen on her round,
+chubby, sunburnt cheeks.  It may seem strange that with her great
+popularity and her well-known maternal instincts, she had not been
+kept fully supplied with proper and more conventional dolls; but it
+was soon recognized that she did not care for them--left their
+waxen faces, rolling eyes, and abundant hair in ditches, or
+stripped them to help clothe the more extravagant creatures of her
+fancy.  So it came that "Johnny Dear's" strictly classical profile
+looked out from under a girl's fashionable straw sailor hat, to the
+utter obliteration of his prominent intellectual faculties; the
+Amplach twins wore bonnets on their ninepins heads, and even an
+attempt was made to fit a flaxen scalp on the iron-headed Misery.
+But her dolls were always a creation of her own--her affection for
+them increasing with the demand upon her imagination.  This may
+seem somewhat inconsistent with her habit of occasionally
+abandoning them in the woods or in the ditches.  But she had an
+unbounded confidence in the kindly maternity of Nature, and trusted
+her children to the breast of the Great Mother as freely as she did
+herself in her own motherlessness.  And this confidence was rarely
+betrayed.  Rats, mice, snails, wildcats, panther, and bear never
+touched her lost waifs.  Even the elements were kindly; an Amplach
+twin buried under a snowdrift in high altitudes reappeared
+smilingly in the spring in all its wooden and painted integrity.
+We were all Pantheists then--and believed this implicitly.  It was
+only when exposed to the milder forces of civilization that Mary
+had anything to fear.  Yet even then, when Patsy O'Connor's
+domestic goat had once tried to "sample" the lost Misery, he had
+retreated with the loss of three front teeth, and Thompson's mule
+came out of an encounter with that iron-headed prodigy with a
+sprained hind leg and a cut and swollen pastern.
+
+But these were the simple Arcadian days of the road between Big
+Bend and Reno, and progress and prosperity, alas! brought changes
+in their wake.  It was already whispered that Mary ought to be
+going to school, and Mr. Amplach--still happily oblivious of the
+liberties taken with his name--as trustee of the public school at
+Duckville, had intimated that Mary's bohemian wanderings were a
+scandal to the county.  She was growing up in ignorance, a dreadful
+ignorance of everything but the chivalry, the deep tenderness, the
+delicacy and unselfishness of the rude men around her, and
+obliviousness of faith in anything but the immeasurable bounty of
+Nature toward her and her children.  Of course there was a fierce
+discussion between "the boys" of the road and the few married
+families of the settlement on this point, but, of course, progress
+and "snivelization"--as the boys chose to call it--triumphed.  The
+projection of a railroad settled it; Robert Foulkes, promoted to a
+foremanship of a division of the line, was made to understand that
+his daughter must be educated.  But the terrible question of Mary's
+family remained.  No school would open its doors to that
+heterogeneous collection, and Mary's little heart would have broken
+over the rude dispersal or heroic burning of her children.  The
+ingenuity of Jack Roper suggested a compromise.  She was allowed to
+select one to take to school with her; the others were ADOPTED by
+certain of her friends, and she was to be permitted to visit them
+every Saturday afternoon.  The selection was a cruel trial, so
+cruel that, knowing her undoubted preference for her firstborn,
+Misery, we would not have interfered for worlds, but in her
+unexpected choice of "Johnny Dear" the most unworldly of us knew
+that it was the first glimmering of feminine tact--her first
+submission to the world of propriety that she was now entering.
+"Johnny Dear" was undoubtedly the most presentable; even more,
+there was an educational suggestion in its prominent, mapped-out
+phrenological organs.  The adopted fathers were loyal to their
+trust.  Indeed, for years afterward the blacksmith kept the iron-
+headed Misery on a rude shelf, like a shrine, near his bunk; nobody
+but himself and Mary ever knew the secret, stolen, and thrilling
+interviews that took place during the first days of their
+separation.  Certain facts, however, transpired concerning Mary's
+equal faithfulness to another of her children.  It is said that one
+Saturday afternoon, when the road manager of the new line was
+seated in his office at Reno in private business discussion with
+two directors, a gentle tap was heard at the door.  It was opened
+to an eager little face, a pair of blue eyes, and a blue pinafore.
+To the astonishment of the directors, a change came over the face
+of the manager.  Taking the child gently by the hand, he walked to
+his desk, on which the papers of the new line were scattered, and
+drew open a drawer from which he took a large ninepin
+extraordinarily dressed as a doll.  The astonishment of the two
+gentlemen was increased at the following quaint colloquy between
+the manager and the child.
+
+"She's doing remarkably well in spite of the trying weather, but I
+have had to keep her very quiet," said the manager, regarding the
+ninepin critically.
+
+"Ess," said Mary quickly, "It's just the same with Johnny Dear; his
+cough is f'ightful at nights.  But Misery's all right.  I've just
+been to see her."
+
+"There's a good deal of scarlet fever around," continued the
+manager with quiet concern, "and we can't be too careful.  But I
+shall take her for a little run down the line tomorrow."
+
+The eyes of Mary sparkled and overflowed like blue water.  Then
+there was a kiss, a little laugh, a shy glance at the two curious
+strangers, the blue pinafore fluttered away, and the colloquy
+ended.  She was equally attentive in her care of the others, but
+the rag baby "Gloriana," who had found a home in Jim Carter's cabin
+at the Ridge, living too far for daily visits, was brought down
+regularly on Saturday afternoon to Mary's house by Jim, tucked in
+asleep in his saddle bags or riding gallantly before him on the
+horn of his saddle.  On Sunday there was a dress parade of all the
+dolls, which kept Mary in heart for the next week's desolation.
+
+But there came one Saturday and Sunday when Mary did not appear,
+and it was known along the road that she had been called to San
+Francisco to meet an aunt who had just arrived from "the States."
+It was a vacant Sunday to "the boys," a very hollow, unsanctified
+Sunday, somehow, without that little figure.  But the next, Sunday,
+and the next, were still worse, and then it was known that the
+dreadful aunt was making much of Mary, and was sending her to a
+grand school--a convent at Santa Clara--where it was rumored girls
+were turned out so accomplished that their own parents did not know
+them.  But WE knew that was impossible to our Mary; and a letter
+which came from her at the end of the month, and before the convent
+had closed upon the blue pinafore, satisfied us, and was balm to
+our anxious hearts.  It was characteristic of Mary; it was
+addressed to nobody in particular, and would--but for the prudence
+of the aunt--have been entrusted to the post office open and
+undirected.  It was a single sheet, handed to us without a word by
+her father; but as we passed it from hand to hand, we understood it
+as if we had heard our lost playfellow's voice.
+
+"Ther's more houses in 'Frisco than you kin shake a stick at and
+wimmens till you kant rest, but mules and jakasses ain't got no
+sho, nor blacksmiffs shops, wich is not to be seen no wear.  Rapits
+and Skwirls also bares and panfers is on-noun and unforgotten on
+account of the streets and Sunday skoles.  Jim Roper you orter be
+very good to Mizzery on a kount of my not bein' here, and not
+harten your hart to her bekos she is top heavy--which is ontroo and
+simply an imptient lie--like you allus make.  I have a kinary bird
+wot sings deliteful--but isn't a yellerhamer sutch as I know, as
+you'd think.  Dear Mister Montgommery, don't keep Gulan Amplak to
+mutch shet up in office drors; it isn't good for his lungs and
+chest.  And don't you ink his head--nother! youre as bad as the
+rest.  Johnny Dear, you must be very kind to your attopted father,
+and you, Glory Anna, must lov your kind Jimmy Carter verry mutch
+for taking you hossback so offen.  I has been buggy ridin' with an
+orficer who has killed injuns real!  I am comin' back soon with
+grate affeckshun, so luke out and mind."
+
+But it was three years before she returned, and this was her last
+and only letter.  The "adopted fathers" of her children were
+faithful, however, and when the new line was opened, and it was
+understood that she was to be present with her father at the
+ceremony, they came, with a common understanding, to the station to
+meet their old playmate.  They were ranged along the platform--poor
+Jack Roper a little overweighted with a bundle he was carrying on
+his left arm.  And then a young girl in the freshness of her teens
+and the spotless purity of a muslin frock that although brief in
+skirt was perfect in fit, faultlessly booted and gloved, tripped
+from the train, and offered a delicate hand in turn to each of her
+old friends.  Nothing could be prettier than the smile on the
+cheeks that were no longer sunburnt; nothing could be clearer than
+the blue eyes lifted frankly to theirs.  And yet, as she gracefully
+turned away with her father, the faces of the four adopted parents
+were found to be as red and embarrassed as her own on the day that
+Yuba Bill drove up publicly with "Johnny Dear" on the box seat.
+
+"You weren't such a fool," said Jack Montgomery to Roper, "as to
+bring Misery here with you?"
+
+"I was," said Roper with a constrained laugh--"and you?"  He had
+just caught sight of the head of a ninepin peeping from the
+manager's pocket.  The man laughed, and then the four turned
+silently away.
+
+"Mary" had indeed come back to them; but not "The Mother of Five!"
+
+
+
+BULGER'S REPUTATION
+
+
+We all remembered very distinctly Bulger's advent in Rattlesnake
+Camp.  It was during the rainy season--a season singularly inducive
+to settled reflective impressions as we sat and smoked around the
+stove in Mosby's grocery.  Like older and more civilized
+communities, we had our periodic waves of sentiment and opinion,
+with the exception that they were more evanescent with us, and as
+we had just passed through a fortnight of dissipation and
+extravagance, owing to a visit from some gamblers and speculators,
+we were now undergoing a severe moral revulsion, partly induced by
+reduced finances and partly by the arrival of two families with
+grownup daughters on the hill.  It was raining, with occasional
+warm breaths, through the open window, of the southwest trades,
+redolent of the saturated spices of the woods and springing
+grasses, which perhaps were slightly inconsistent with the hot
+stove around which we had congregated.  But the stove was only an
+excuse for our listless, gregarious gathering; warmth and idleness
+went well together, and it was currently accepted that we had
+caught from the particular reptile which gave its name to our camp
+much of its pathetic, lifelong search for warmth, and its habit of
+indolently basking in it.
+
+A few of us still went through the affectation of attempting to dry
+our damp clothes by the stove, and sizzling our wet boots against
+it; but as the same individuals calmly permitted the rain to drive
+in upon them through the open window without moving, and seemed to
+take infinite delight in the amount of steam they generated, even
+that pretense dropped.  Crotalus himself, with his tail in a muddy
+ditch, and the sun striking cold fire from his slit eyes as he
+basked his head on a warm stone beside it, could not have typified
+us better.
+
+Percy Briggs took his pipe from his mouth at last and said, with
+reflective severity:
+
+"Well, gentlemen, if we can't get the wagon road over here, and if
+we're going to be left out by the stagecoach company, we can at
+least straighten up the camp, and not have it look like a cross
+between a tenement alley and a broken-down circus.  I declare, I
+was just sick when these two Baker girls started to make a short
+cut through the camp.  Darned if they didn't turn round and take to
+the woods and the rattlers again afore they got halfway.  And that
+benighted idiot, Tom Rollins, standin' there in the ditch,
+spattered all over with slumgullion 'til he looked like a spotted
+tarrypin, wavin' his fins and sashaying backwards and forrards and
+sayin', 'This way, ladies; this way!'"
+
+"I didn't," returned Tom Rollins, quite casually, without looking
+up from his steaming boots; "I didn't start in night afore last to
+dance 'The Green Corn Dance' outer 'Hiawatha,' with feathers in my
+hair and a red blanket on my shoulders, round that family's new
+potato patch, in order that it might 'increase and multiply.'  I
+didn't sing 'Sabbath Morning Bells' with an anvil accompaniment
+until twelve o'clock at night over at the Crossing, so that they
+might dream of their Happy Childhood's Home.  It seems to me that
+it wasn't me did it.  I might be mistaken--it was late--but I have
+the impression that it wasn't me."
+
+From the silence that followed, this would seem to have been
+clearly a recent performance of the previous speaker, who, however,
+responded quite cheerfully:
+
+"An evenin' o' simple, childish gaiety don't count.  We've got to
+start in again FAIR.  What we want here is to clear up and
+encourage decent immigration, and get rid o' gamblers and
+blatherskites that are makin' this yer camp their happy hunting-
+ground.  We don't want any more permiskus shootin'.  We don't want
+any more paintin' the town red.  We don't want any more swaggerin'
+galoots ridin' up to this grocery and emptyin' their six-shooters
+in the air afore they 'light.  We want to put a stop to it
+peacefully and without a row--and we kin.  We ain't got no bullies
+of our own to fight back, and they know it, so they know they won't
+get no credit bullyin' us; they'll leave, if we're only firm.  It's
+all along of our cussed fool good-nature; they see it amuses us,
+and they'll keep it up as long as the whisky's free.  What we want
+to do is, when the next man comes waltzin' along--"
+
+A distant clatter from the rocky hillside here mingled with the
+puff of damp air through the window.
+
+"Looks as ef we might hev a show even now," said Tom Rollins,
+removing his feet from the stove as we all instinctively faced
+toward the window.
+
+"I reckon you're in with us in this, Mosby?" said Briggs, turning
+toward the proprietor of the grocery, who had been leaning
+listlessly against the wall behind his bar.
+
+"Arter the man's had a fair show," said Mosby, cautiously.  He
+deprecated the prevailing condition of things, but it was still an
+open question whether the families would prove as valuable
+customers as his present clients.  "Everything in moderation,
+gentlemen."
+
+The sound of galloping hoofs came nearer, now swishing in the soft
+mud of the highway, until the unseen rider pulled up before the
+door.  There was no shouting, however, nor did he announce himself
+with the usual salvo of firearms.  But when, after a singularly
+heavy tread and the jingle of spurs on the platform, the door flew
+open to the newcomer, he seemed a realization of our worst
+expectations.  Tall, broad, and muscular, he carried in one hand a
+shotgun, while from his hip dangled a heavy navy revolver.  His
+long hair, unkempt but oiled, swept a greasy circle around his
+shoulders; his enormous mustache, dripping with wet, completely
+concealed his mouth.  His costume of fringed buckskin was wild and
+outre even for our frontier camp.  But what was more confirmative
+of our suspicions was that he was evidently in the habit of making
+an impression, and after a distinct pause at the doorway, with only
+a side glance at us, he strode toward the bar.
+
+"As there don't seem to be no hotel hereabouts, I reckon I kin put
+up my mustang here and have a shakedown somewhere behind that
+counter," he said.  His voice seemed to have added to its natural
+depth the hoarseness of frequent overstraining.
+
+"Ye ain't got no bunk to spare, you boys, hev ye?" asked Mosby,
+evasively, glancing at Percy Briggs without looking at the
+stranger.  We all looked at Briggs also; it was HIS affair after
+all--HE had originated this opposition.  To our surprise he said
+nothing.
+
+The stranger leaned heavily on the counter.
+
+"I was speaking to YOU," he said, with his eyes on Mosby, and
+slightly accenting the pronoun with a tap of his revolver butt on
+the bar.  "Ye don't seem to catch on."
+
+Mosby smiled feebly, and again cast an imploring glance at Briggs.
+To our greater astonishment, Briggs said, quietly: "Why don't you
+answer the stranger, Mosby?"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mosby, suavely, to the newcomer, while an angry
+flush crossed his check as he recognized the position in which
+Briggs had placed him.  "Of course, you're welcome to what doings I
+hev here, but I reckoned these gentlemen over there," with a
+vicious glance at Briggs, "might fix ye up suthin' better; they're
+so pow'ful kind to your sort."
+
+The stranger threw down a gold piece on the counter and said: "Fork
+out your whisky, then," waited until his glass was filled, took it
+in his hand, and then, drawing an empty chair to the stove, sat
+down beside Briggs.  "Seein' as you're that kind," he said, placing
+his heavy hand on Briggs's knee, "mebbe ye kin tell me ef thar's a
+shanty or a cabin at Rattlesnake that I kin get for a couple o'
+weeks.  I saw an empty one at the head o' the hill.  You see,
+gennelmen," he added confidentially as he swept the drops of whisky
+from his long mustache with his fingers and glanced around our
+group, "I've got some business over at Bigwood," our nearest town,
+"but ez a place to stay AT it ain't my style."
+
+"What's the matter with Bigwood?" said Briggs, abruptly.
+
+"It's too howlin', too festive, too rough; thar's too much yellin'
+and shootin' goin' day and night.  Thar's too many card sharps and
+gay gamboliers cavortin' about the town to please me.  Too much
+permiskus soakin' at the bar and free jimjams.  What I want is a
+quiet place what a man kin give his mind and elbow a rest from
+betwixt grippin' his shootin' irons and crookin' in his whisky.  A
+sort o' slow, quiet, easy place LIKE THIS."
+
+We all stared at him, Percy Briggs as fixedly as any.  But there
+was not the slightest trace of irony, sarcasm, or peculiar
+significance in his manner.  He went on slowly:
+
+"When I struck this yer camp a minit ago; when I seed that thar
+ditch meanderin' peaceful like through the street, without a hotel
+or free saloon or express office on either side; with the smoke
+just a curlin' over the chimbley of that log shanty, and the bresh
+just set fire to and a smolderin' in that potato patch with a kind
+o' old-time stingin' in your eyes and nose, and a few women's duds
+just a flutterin' on a line by the fence, I says to myself:
+'Bulger--this is peace!  This is wot you're lookin' for, Bulger--
+this is wot you're wantin'--this is wot YOU'LL HEV!'"
+
+"You say you've business over at Bigwood.  What business?" said
+Briggs.
+
+"It's a peculiar business, young fellow," returned the stranger,
+gravely.  "Thar's different men ez has different opinions about it.
+Some allows it's an easy business, some allows it's a rough
+business; some says it's a sad business, others says it's gay and
+festive.  Some wonders ez how I've got into it, and others wonder
+how I'll ever get out of it.  It's a payin' business--it's a
+peaceful sort o' business when left to itself.  It's a peculiar
+business--a business that sort o' b'longs to me, though I ain't got
+no patent from Washington for it.  It's MY OWN business."  He
+paused, rose, and saying, "Let's meander over and take a look at
+that empty cabin, and ef she suits me, why, I'll plank down a slug
+for her on the spot, and move in tomorrow," walked towards the
+door.  "I'll pick up suthin' in the way o' boxes and blankets from
+the grocery," he added, looking at Mosby, "and ef thar's a corner
+whar I kin stand my gun and a nail to hang up my revolver--why, I'm
+all thar!"
+
+By this time we were no longer astonished when Briggs rose also,
+and not only accompanied the sinister-looking stranger to the empty
+cabin, but assisted him in negotiating with its owner for a
+fortnight's occupancy.  Nevertheless, we eagerly assailed Briggs on
+his return for some explanation of this singular change in his
+attitude toward the stranger.  He coolly reminded us, however, that
+while his intention of excluding ruffianly adventurers from the
+camp remained the same, he had no right to go back on the
+stranger's sentiments, which were evidently in accord with our own,
+and although Mr. Bulger's appearance was inconsistent with them,
+that was only an additional reason why we should substitute a mild
+firmness for that violence which we all deprecated, but which might
+attend his abrupt dismissal.  We were all satisfied except Mosby,
+who had not yet recovered from Briggs's change of front, which he
+was pleased to call "craw-fishing."  "Seemed to me his account of
+his business was extraordinary satisfactory!  Sorter filled the
+bill all round--no mistake thar," he suggested, with a malicious
+irony.  "I like a man that's outspoken."
+
+"I understood him very well," said Briggs, quietly.
+
+"In course you did.  Only when you've settled in your MIND whether
+he was describing horse-stealing or tract-distributing, mebbe
+you'll let ME know."
+
+It would seem, however, that Briggs did not interrogate the
+stranger again regarding it, nor did we, who were quite content to
+leave matters in Briggs's hands.  Enough that Mr. Bulger moved into
+the empty cabin the next day, and, with the aid of a few old boxes
+from the grocery, which he quickly extemporized into tables and
+chairs, and the purchase of some necessary cooking utensils, soon
+made himself at home.  The rest of the camp, now thoroughly
+aroused, made a point of leaving their work in the ditches,
+whenever they could, to stroll carelessly around Bulger's tenement
+in the vague hope of satisfying a curiosity that had become
+tormenting.  But they could not find that he was doing anything of
+a suspicious character--except, perhaps, from the fact that it was
+not OUTWARDLY suspicious, which I grieve to say did not lull them
+to security.  He seemed to be either fixing up his cabin or smoking
+in his doorway.  On the second day he checked this itinerant
+curiosity by taking the initiative himself, and quietly walking
+from claim to claim and from cabin to cabin with a pacific but by
+no means a satisfying interest.  The shadow of his tall figure
+carrying his inseparable gun, which had not yet apparently "stood
+in the corner," falling upon an excavated bank beside the delving
+miners, gave them a sense of uneasiness they could not explain; a
+few characteristic yells of boisterous hilarity from their noontide
+gathering under a cottonwood somehow ceased when Mr. Bulger was
+seen gravely approaching, and his casual stopping before a poker
+party in the gulch actually caused one of the most reckless
+gamblers to weakly recede from "a bluff" and allow his adversary to
+sweep the board.  After this it was felt that matters were becoming
+serious.  There was no subsequent patrolling of the camp before the
+stranger's cabin.  Their curiosity was singularly abated.  A
+general feeling of repulsion, kept within bounds partly by the
+absence of any overt act from Bulger, and partly by an inconsistent
+over-consciousness of his shotgun, took its place.  But an
+unexpected occurrence revived it.
+
+One evening, as the usual social circle were drawn around Mosby's
+stove, the lazy silence was broken by the familiar sounds of pistol
+shots and a series of more familiar shrieks and yells from the
+rocky hill road.  The circle quickly recognized the voices of their
+old friends the roisterers and gamblers from Sawyer's Dam; they as
+quickly recognized the returning shouts here and there from a few
+companions who were welcoming them.  I grieve to say that in spite
+of their previous attitude of reformation a smile of gratified
+expectancy lit up the faces of the younger members, and even the
+older ones glanced dubiously at Briggs.  Mosby made no attempt to
+conceal a sigh of relief as he carefully laid out an extra supply
+of glasses in his bar.  Suddenly the oncoming yells ceased, the
+wild gallop of hoofs slackened into a trot, and finally halted, and
+even the responsive shouts of the camp stopped also.  We all looked
+vacantly at each other; Mosby leaped over his counter and went to
+the door; Briggs followed with the rest of us.  The night was dark,
+and it was a few minutes before we could distinguish a straggling,
+vague, but silent procession moving through the moist, heavy air on
+the hill.  But, to our surprise, it was moving away from us--
+absolutely LEAVING the camp!  We were still staring in expectancy
+when out of the darkness slowly emerged a figure which we
+recognized at once as Captain Jim, one of the most reckless members
+of our camp.  Pushing us back into the grocery he entered without a
+word, closed the door behind him, and threw himself vacantly into a
+chair.  We at once pressed around him.  He looked up at us dazedly,
+drew a long breath, and said slowly:
+
+"It's no use, gentlemen! Suthin's GOT to be done with that Bulger;
+and mighty quick."
+
+"What's the matter?" we asked eagerly.
+
+"Matter!" he repeated, passing his hand across his forehead.
+"Matter!  Look yere!  Ye all of you heard them boys from Sawyer's
+Dam coming over the hill?  Ye heard their music--mebbe ye heard US
+join in the chorus?  Well, on they came waltzing down the hill,
+like old times, and we waitin' for 'em.  Then, jest as they passed
+the old cabin, who do you think they ran right into--shooting iron,
+long hair and mustache, and all that--standing there plump in the
+road? why, Bulger!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well!--Whatever it was--don't ask ME--but, dern my skin, ef after
+a word or two from HIM--them boys just stopped yellin', turned
+round like lambs, and rode away, peaceful-like, along with him.  We
+ran after them a spell, still yellin', when that thar Bulger faced
+around, said to us that he'd 'come down here for quiet,' and ef he
+couldn't hev it he'd have to leave with those gentlemen WHO WANTED
+IT too! And I'm gosh darned ef those GENTLEMEN--you know 'em all--
+Patsey Carpenter, Snapshot Harry, and the others--ever said a
+darned word, but kinder nodded 'So long' and went away!"
+
+Our astonishment and mystification were complete; and I regret to
+say, the indignation of Captain Jim and Mosby equally so.  "If
+we're going to be bossed by the first newcomer," said the former,
+gloomily, "I reckon we might as well take our chances with the
+Sawyer's Dam boys, whom we know."
+
+"Ef we are going to hev the legitimate trade of Rattlesnake
+interfered with by the cranks of some hidin' horse thief or retired
+road agent," said Mosby, "we might as well invite the hull of
+Joaquin Murietta's gang here at once!  But I suppose this is part
+o' Bulger's particular 'business,'" he added, with a withering
+glance at Briggs.
+
+"I understand it all," said Briggs, quietly.  "You know I told you
+that bullies couldn't live in the same camp together.  That's human
+nature--and that's how plain men like you and me manage to scud
+along without getting plugged.  You see, Bulger wasn't going to hev
+any of his own kind jumpin' his claim here.  And I reckon he was
+pow'ful enough to back down Sawyer's Dam.  Anyhow, the bluff told--
+and here we are in peace and quietness."
+
+"Until he lets us know what is his little game," sneered Mosby.
+
+Nevertheless, such is the force of mysterious power that although
+it was exercised against what we firmly believed was the
+independence of the camp, it extorted a certain respect from us.  A
+few thought it was not a bad thing to have a professional bully,
+and even took care to relate the discomfiture of the wicked youth
+of Sawyer's Dam for the benefit of a certain adjacent and powerful
+camp who had looked down upon us.  He himself, returning the same
+evening from his self-imposed escort, vouchsafed no other reason
+than the one he had already given.  Preposterous as it seemed, we
+were obliged to accept it, and the still more preposterous
+inference that he had sought Rattlesnake Camp solely for the
+purpose of acquiring and securing its peace and quietness.
+Certainly he had no other occupation; the little work he did upon
+the tailings of the abandoned claim which went with his little
+cabin was scarcely a pretense.  He rode over on certain days to
+Bigwood on account of his business, but no one had ever seen him
+there, nor could the description of his manner and appearance evoke
+any information from the Bigwoodians.  It remained a mystery.
+
+It had also been feared that the advent of Bulger would intensify
+that fear and dislike of riotous Rattlesnake which the two families
+had shown, and which was the origin of Briggs's futile attempt at
+reformation.  But it was discovered that since his arrival the
+young girls had shown less timidity in entering the camp, and had
+even exchanged some polite conversation and good-humoured badinage
+with its younger and more impressible members.  Perhaps this tended
+to make these youths more observant, for a few days later, when the
+vexed question of Bulger's business was again under discussion, one
+of them remarked, gloomily:
+
+"I reckon there ain't no doubt WHAT he's here for!"
+
+The youthful prophet was instantly sat upon after the fashion of
+all elderly critics since Job's.  Nevertheless, after a pause he
+was permitted to explain.
+
+"Only this morning, when Lance Forester and me were chirping with
+them gals out on the hill, who should we see hanging around in the
+bush but that cussed Bulger!  We allowed at first that it might be
+only a new style of his interferin', so we took no notice, except
+to pass a few remarks about listeners and that sort o' thing, and
+perhaps to bedevil the girls a little more than we'd hev done if
+we'd been alone.  Well, they laughed, and we laughed--and that was
+the end of it.  But this afternoon, as Lance and me were meandering
+down by their cabin, we sorter turned into the woods to wait till
+they'd come out.  Then all of a suddent Lance stopped as rigid as a
+pointer that's flushed somethin', and says, 'B'gosh!'  And thar,
+under a big redwood, sat that slimy hypocrite Bulger, twisting his
+long mustaches and smiling like clockwork alongside o' little Meely
+Baker--you know her, the pootiest of the two sisters--and she
+smilin' back on him.  Think of it! that unknown, unwashed,
+longhaired tramp and bully, who must be forty if a day, and that
+innocent gal of sixteen.  It was simply disgustin'!"
+
+I need not say that the older cynics and critics already alluded to
+at once improved the occasion.  'What more could be expected?
+Women, the world over, were noted for this sort of thing!  This
+long-haired, swaggering bully, with his air of mystery, had
+captivated them, as he always had done since the days of Homer.
+Simple merit, which sat lowly in barrooms, and conceived projects
+for the public good around the humble, unostentatious stove, was
+nowhere!  Youth could not too soon learn this bitter lesson.  And
+in this case youth too, perhaps, was right in its conjectures, for
+this WAS, no doubt, the little game of the perfidious Bulger.  We
+recalled the fact that his unhallowed appearance in camp was almost
+coincident with the arrival of the two families.  We glanced at
+Briggs; to our amazement, for the first time he looked seriously
+concerned.  But Mosby in the meantime leaned his elbows lazily over
+the counter and, in a slow voice, added fuel to the flame.
+
+"I wouldn't hev spoken of it before," he said, with a sidelong
+glance at Briggs, "for it might be all in the line o' Bulger's
+'business,' but suthin' happened the other night that, for a minit,
+got me!  I was passin' the Bakers' shanty, and I heard one of them
+gals a singing a camp-meeting hymn.  I don't calkilate to run agin
+you young fellers in any sparkin' or canoodlin' that's goin' on,
+but her voice sounded so pow'ful soothin' and pretty thet I jest
+stood there and listened.  Then the old woman--old Mother Baker--
+SHE joined in, and I listened too.  And then--dern my skin!--but a
+man's voice joined in--jest belching outer that cabin!--and I
+sorter lifted myself up and kem away.
+
+"That voice, gentlemen," said Mosby, lingering artistically as he
+took up a glass and professionally eyed it before wiping it with
+his towel, "that voice, cumf'bly fixed thar in thet cabin among
+them wimen folks, was Bulger's!"
+
+Briggs got up, with his eyes looking the darker for his flushed
+face.  "Gentlemen," he said huskily, "thar's only one thing to be
+done.  A lot of us have got to ride over to Sawyer's Dam tomorrow
+morning and pick up as many square men as we can muster; there's a
+big camp meeting goin' on there, and there won't be no difficulty
+in that.  When we've got a big enough crowd to show we mean
+business, we must march back here and ride Bulger out of this camp!
+I don't hanker arter Vigilance Committees, as a rule--it's a rough
+remedy--it's like drinkin' a quart o' whisky agin rattlesnake
+poison but it's got to be done!  We don't mind being sold ourselves
+but when it comes to our standin' by and seein' the only innocent
+people in Rattlesnake given away--we kick!  Bulger's got to be
+fired outer this camp!  And he will be!"
+
+But he was not.
+
+For when, the next morning, a determined and thoughtful procession
+of the best and most characteristic citizens of Rattlesnake Camp
+filed into Sawyer's Dam, they found that their mysterious friends
+had disappeared, although they met with a fraternal but subdued
+welcome from the general camp.  But any approach to the subject of
+their visit, however, was received with a chilling dissapproval.
+Did they not know that lawlessness of any kind, even under the rude
+mantle of frontier justice, was to be deprecated and scouted when a
+"means of salvation, a power of regeneration," such as was now
+sweeping over Sawyer's Dam, was at hand?  Could they not induce
+this man who was to be violently deported to accompany them
+willingly to Sawyer's Dam and subject himself to the powerful
+influence of the "revival" then in full swing?
+
+The Rattlesnake boys laughed bitterly, and described the man of
+whom they talked so lightly; but in vain.  "It's no use,
+gentlemen," said a more worldly bystander, in a lower voice, "the
+camp meetin's got a strong grip here, and betwixt you and me there
+ain't no wonder.  For the man that runs it--the big preacher--has
+got new ways and methods that fetches the boys every time.  He
+don't preach no cut-and-dried gospel; he don't carry around no
+slop-shop robes and clap 'em on you whether they fit or not; but he
+samples and measures the camp afore he wades into it.  He scouts
+and examines; he ain't no mere Sunday preacher with a comfortable
+house and once-a-week church, but he gives up his days and nights
+to it, and makes his family work with him, and even sends 'em
+forward to explore the field.  And he ain't no white-choker
+shadbelly either, but fits himself, like his gospel, to the men he
+works among.  Ye ought to hear him afore you go.  His tent is just
+out your way.  I'll go with you."
+
+Too dejected to offer any opposition, and perhaps a little curious
+to see this man who had unwittingly frustrated their design of
+lynching Bulger, they halted at the outer fringe of worshipers who
+packed the huge inclosure.  They had not time to indulge their
+cynicisms over this swaying mass of emotional, half-thinking, and
+almost irresponsible beings, nor to detect any similarity between
+THEIR extreme methods and the scheme of redemption they themselves
+were seeking, for in a few moments, apparently lifted to his feet
+on a wave of religious exultation, the famous preacher arose.  The
+men of Rattlesnake gasped for breath.
+
+It was Bulger!
+
+But Briggs quickly recovered himself.  "By what name," said he,
+turning passionately towards his guide, "does this man--this
+impostor--call himself here?"
+
+"Baker."
+
+"Baker?" echoed the Rattlesnake contingent.
+
+"Baker?" repeated Lance Forester, with a ghastly smile.
+
+"Yes," returned their guide.  "You oughter know it too!  For he
+sent his wife and daughters over, after his usual style, to sample
+your camp, a week ago!  Come, now, what are you givin' us?"
+
+
+
+IN THE TULES
+
+
+He had never seen a steamboat in his life.  Born and reared in one
+of the Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only
+known the "dugout" or canoe as a means of conveyance across the
+scant streams whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a
+necessity.  The long, narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen,
+known familiarly as a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed
+across the plains to California in '53, did not help his conception
+by that nautical figure.  And when at last he dropped upon the land
+of promise through one of the Southern mountain passes he halted
+all unconsciously upon the low banks of a great yellow river amidst
+a tangled brake of strange, reed-like grasses that were unknown to
+him.  The river, broadening as it debouched through many channels
+into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE of his
+journeyings.  Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant
+meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into
+the great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to
+his lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted
+wagon into a temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and
+"settle."
+
+There was little difficulty in so doing.  The cultivated clearings
+he had passed were few and far between; the land would be his by
+discovery and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-
+reliance made him independent of neighbors.  He took his first meal
+in his new solitude under a spreading willow, but so near his
+natural boundary that the waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but
+a few feet from him.  The sun sank, deepening the gold of the river
+until it might have been the stream of Pactolus itself.  But Martin
+Morse had no imagination; he was not even a gold-seeker; he had
+simply obeyed the roving instincts of the frontiersman in coming
+hither.  The land was virgin and unoccupied; it was his; he was
+alone.  These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with less
+concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation
+than the man of cities who had moved into a next street.  When the
+sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and
+went quietly to sleep.
+
+But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could
+not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation.  It was a
+deep throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that
+seemed even to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay.  As
+it came nearer it separated itself into a labored, monotonous
+panting, continuous, but distinct from an equally monotonous but
+fainter beating of the waters, as if the whole track of the river
+were being coursed and trodden by a multitude of swiftly trampling
+feet.  A strange feeling took possession of him--half of fear, half
+of curious expectation.  It was coming nearer.  He rose, leaped
+hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank.  The night was dark;
+at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky pierced
+with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars.  Then there seemed to
+be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical
+constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with
+three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him
+and apparently on his own level.  It was almost upon him; he
+involuntarily drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of
+where he stood, and resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk,
+whose vagueness, topped by enormous towers, was yet illuminated by
+those open squares of light that he had taken for stars, but which
+he saw now were brilliantly lit windows.
+
+Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across
+the meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen.  But all
+this was nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted
+curtains and open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this
+strange and wonderful spectacle.  Elegantly dressed men and women
+moved through brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one
+a banquet seemed to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants;
+in another were men playing cards around marble-topped tables; in
+another the light flashed back again from the mirrors and
+glistening glasses and decanters of a gorgeous refreshment saloon;
+in smaller openings there was the shy disclosure of dainty white
+curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate apartments.
+
+Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified.  It was as if some
+invisible Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world
+of which he had never dreamed.  It was THE world--a world of which
+he knew nothing in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western
+isolation--sweeping by him with the rush of an unknown planet.  In
+another moment it was gone; a shower of sparks shot up from one of
+the towers and fell all around him, and then vanished, even as he
+remembered the set piece of "Fourth of July" fireworks had vanished
+in his own rural town when he was a boy.  The darkness fell with it
+too.  But such was his utter absorption and breathless
+preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself, and
+he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the
+low banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!
+
+He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later
+from the opposite direction on its return trip.  He watched it the
+next night and the next.  Hereafter he never missed it, coming or
+going--whatever the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and
+lonely life.  He felt he could not have slept without seeing it go
+by.  Oddly enough, his interest and desire did not go further.
+Even had he the time and money to spend in a passage on the boat,
+and thus actively realize the great world of which he had only
+these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness kept him from
+it.  It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs that his
+ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was dimly
+conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling
+with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien
+criticism.  For there was much that he did not understand, and some
+things that grated upon his lonely independence.
+
+One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little
+longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the
+retreating boat.  Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain
+irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,
+diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank.
+Looking at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the
+water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a
+black arm in an unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke.  It was a
+struggling man.  But it was quickly evident that the current was
+too strong and the turbulence of the shallow water too great for
+his efforts.  Without a moment's hesitation, clad as he was in only
+his shirt and trousers, Morse strode into the reeds, and the next
+moment, with a call of warning, was swimming toward the now wildly
+struggling figure.  But, from some unknown reason, as Morse
+approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent protest and
+desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's extended arm.
+
+Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man,
+Morse, a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and
+propelled him at arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as
+much reluctance as incapacity, toward the bank.  As their feet
+touched the reeds and slimy bottom the man's resistance ceased, and
+he lapsed quite listlessly in Morse's arms.  Half lifting, half
+dragging his burden, he succeeded at last in gaining the strip of
+meadow, and deposited the unconscious man beneath the willow tree.
+Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.
+
+But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up
+and wringing the water from his clothes.  He then saw for the first
+time, by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly
+dressed and of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that
+bright and fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in
+his solitude.  He eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the
+whisky.  Then he rose to his feet, staggered a few steps forward,
+and glanced curiously around him at the still motionless wagon, the
+few felled trees and evidence of "clearing," and even at the rude
+cabin of logs and canvas just beginning to rise from the ground a
+few paces distant, and said, impatiently:
+
+"Where the devil am I?"
+
+Morse hesitated.  He was unable to name the locality of his
+dwelling-place.  He answered briefly:
+
+"On the right bank of the Sacramento."
+
+The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with
+resentment.  "Oh! " he said, with ironical gravity, "and I suppose
+that this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River.
+Thank you!"
+
+Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only
+settled there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.
+
+"What's your nearest town, then?"
+
+"Thar ain't any.  Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the
+crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've
+heard on."
+
+The stranger's look of suspicion passed.  "Well he said, in an
+imperative fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of
+habit as the occasion, "I want a horse, and mighty quick, too."
+
+"H'ain't got any."
+
+"No horse?  How did you get to this place?"
+
+Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.
+
+The stranger again stared curiously at him.  After a pause he said,
+with a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: "Pike--aren't you?"
+
+Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California
+slang for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt,
+he replied simply:
+
+"I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri."
+
+"Well," said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, "you must
+beg or steal a horse from your neighbors."
+
+"Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles."
+
+"Then send fifteen miles!  Stop."  He opened his still clinging
+shirt and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse.  "There!
+there's two hundred and fifty dollars in that.  Now, I want a
+horse.  Sabe?"
+
+"Thar ain't anyone to send," said Morse, quietly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you are all alone here?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+"And you fished me out--all by yourself?"
+
+"Yes.
+
+The stranger again examined him curiously.  Then he suddenly
+stretched out his hand and grasped his companion's.
+
+"All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over
+there tomorrow."
+
+"I was goin' on to say," said Morse, simply, "that if you'll lie by
+tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and
+fetch you back a horse afore noon."
+
+"That's enough."  He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse.
+"Did you never hear," he said, with a singular smile, "that it was
+about the meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a
+drowning man?"
+
+"No," said Morse, simply.  "I reckon it orter be the meanest if you
+DIDN'T."
+
+"That depends upon the man you save," said the stranger, with the
+same ambiguous smile, "and whether the SAVING him is only putting
+things off.  Look here," he added, with an abrupt return to his
+imperative style, "can't you give me some dry clothes?"
+
+Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a "hickory shirt," well
+worn, but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap.  The
+stranger put them on while his companion busied himself in
+collecting a pile of sticks and dry leaves.
+
+"What's that for?" said the stranger, suddenly.
+
+"A fire to dry your clothes."
+
+The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.
+
+"Not any fire tonight if I know it," he said, brusquely.  Before
+Morse could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in
+another tone, dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the
+tree, "Now, tell me all about yourself, and what you are doing
+here."
+
+Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he
+had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for
+a "location."  He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial
+bottom and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he
+hoped soon to acquire.  The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself
+to a sitting position, and, taking a penknife from his damp
+clothes, began to clean his nails in the bright moonlight--an
+occupation which made the simple Morse wander vaguely in his
+narration.
+
+"And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever
+till you'll shake yourself out of your boots?"
+
+Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.
+
+"And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up
+and walk over you and your cabin and your stock?"
+
+"No.  For I reckon to move my shanty farther back."
+
+The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.
+
+"If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in.  I
+suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?"
+
+Morse pointed to the wagon.  "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed;
+you kin lie there."  Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the
+inconsequence and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous
+conversation.
+
+"I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful
+kempany o' nights.  I never seed one afore I kem here," and then,
+with the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of
+further preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of
+his late experiences.  The stranger listened with a singular
+interest and a quietly searching eye.
+
+"Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw
+me.  What else did you see?  Anything before that--before you saw
+me in the water?"
+
+"No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all."
+
+"Ah," said the stranger.  "Well, I'm going to turn in."  He walked
+to the wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it
+with his wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets.  A
+moment later he seemed to be in a profound slumber.
+
+It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy,
+that he began to realize his strange experiences.  The domination
+of this man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature
+independent and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question
+his right or to resent his rudeness.  He had accepted his guest's
+careless or premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his
+accident as a matter of course, and had never dreamed of
+questioning him.  That it was a natural accident of that great
+world so apart from his own experiences he did not doubt, and
+thought no more about it.  The advent of the man himself was
+greater to him than the causes which brought him there.  He was as
+yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious
+stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with
+even the slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his
+hand felt yet warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive
+grasp, as if it had been a woman's.  There is a simple intuition of
+friendship in some lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly
+akin to love at first sight.  Even the audacities and insolence of
+this stranger affected Morse as he might have been touched and
+captivated by the coquetries or imperiousness of some bucolic
+virgin.  And this reserved and shy frontiersman found himself that
+night sleepless, and hovering with an abashed timidity and
+consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his guest, as if he
+had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of some
+slumbering Amaryllis.
+
+He was off by daylight--after having placed a rude breakfast by the
+side of the still sleeping guest--and before midday he had returned
+with a horse.  When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the
+amount he had paid for the horse, the man said curtly:
+
+"What's that for?"
+
+"Your change.  I paid only fifty dollars for the horse."
+
+The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile.  Then, replacing
+the pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the
+horse.
+
+"So your name's Martin Morse!  Well--goodby, Morsey!"
+
+Morse hesitated.  A blush rose to his dark check.  "You didn't tell
+me your name," he said.  "In case--"
+
+"In case I'm WANTED?  Well, you can call me Captain Jack."  He
+smiled, and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and
+cantered away.
+
+Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods
+and living over his experiences of the previous night, until he
+fancied he could almost see his strange guest again.  The narrow
+strip of meadow was haunted by him.  There was the tree under which
+he had first placed him, and that was where he had seen him sitting
+up in his dripping but well-fitting clothes.  In the rough garments
+he had worn and returned lingered a new scent of some delicate
+soap, overpowering the strong alkali flavor of his own.  He was
+early by the river side, having a vague hope, he knew not why, that
+he should again see him and recognize him among the passengers.  He
+was wading out among the reeds, in the faint light of the rising
+moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first seen the
+stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in the
+water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but
+had been dislodged by his movements.  To his horror it bore a faint
+resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night.  But a
+second glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline
+showed him that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far
+different from his former companion.  There was a bruise upon his
+matted forehead and an enormous wound in his throat already washed
+bloodless, white, and waxen.  An inexplicable fear came upon him,
+not at the sight of the corpse, for he had been in Indian massacres
+and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond recognition; but from some
+moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened and deepened with the
+far-off pant of the advancing steamboat.  Scarcely knowing why, he
+dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the reeds, as
+if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime.  Then, to
+his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the
+steamboat and the beat of its paddles were "slowing" as the vague
+bulk came in sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested
+wheels sent a surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through
+the sedge that half submerged him.  The flashing of three or four
+lanterns on deck and the motionless line of lights abreast of him
+dazzled his eyes, but he knew that the low fringe of willows hid
+his house and wagon completely from view.  A vague murmur of voices
+from the deck was suddenly overridden by a sharp order, and to his
+relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent a pulsation through
+the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.  A sense of
+relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious that
+for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.
+
+When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its
+clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of
+formality and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some
+law papers from their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and
+electors' notices which he had seen in the papers.  He then buried
+the corpse in a shallow trench, which he dug by the light of the
+moon.  He had no question of responsibility; his pioneer training
+had not included coroners' inquests in its experience; in giving
+the body a speedy and secure burial from predatory animals he did
+what one frontiersman would do for another--what he hoped might be
+done for him.  If his previous unaccountable feelings returned
+occasionally, it was not from that; but rather from some uneasiness
+in regard to his late guest's possible feelings, and a regret that
+he had not been here at the finding of the body.  That it would in
+some way have explained his own accident he did not doubt.
+
+The boat did not "slow up" the next night, but passed as usual; yet
+three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its
+coming with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity--which
+was his nearest approach to imagination.  He was then able to
+examine it more closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he
+now began to call "his friend" in his verbal communings with
+himself--but whom he did not seem destined to again discover; until
+one day, to his astonishment, a couple of fine horses were brought
+to his clearing by a stock-drover.  They had been "ordered" to be
+left there.  in vain Morse expostulated and questioned.
+
+"Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?" said the drover, with
+business brusqueness; "and I reckon there ain't no other man o'
+that name around here?"
+
+"No," said Morse.
+
+"Well, then, they're YOURS."
+
+"But who sent them?" insisted Morse.  "What was his name, and where
+does he live?"
+
+"I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o'
+buyers," said the drover dryly; "but the horses is 'Morgan,' you
+can bet your life."  He grinned as he rode away.
+
+That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to
+his again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he
+lived in that dream.  But Captain Jack did not come.  The animals
+were of great service to him in "rounding up" the stock he now
+easily took in for pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having
+a partner or a hired man.  The idea that this superior gentleman in
+fine clothes might ever appear to him in the former capacity had
+even flitted through his brain, but he had rejected it with a sigh.
+But the thought that, with luck and industry, he himself might, in
+course of time, approximate to Captain Jack's evident station, DID
+occur to him, and was an incentive to energy.  Yet it was quite
+distinct from the ordinary working man's ambition of wealth and
+state.  It was only that it might make him more worthy of his
+friend.  The great world was still as it had appeared to him in the
+passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to criticize.
+
+For all that, he prospered in his occupation.  But one day he woke
+with listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his
+daily labors.  At night his listlessness changed to active pain and
+a feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river,
+as if his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in
+its yellow stream.  But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange
+dreams assailed him of dead bodies arising with swollen and
+distorted lips to touch his own as he strove to drink, or of his
+mysterious guest battling with him in its current, and driving him
+ashore.  Again, when he essayed to bathe his parched and crackling
+limbs in its flood, he would be confronted with the dazzling lights
+of the motionless steamboat and the glare of stony eyes--until he
+fled in aimless terror.  How long this lasted he knew not, until
+one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man sitting by
+his bed and a Negress in the doorway.
+
+"You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'" said the stranger,
+dropping Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes,
+"but you're all right now, and will pull through."
+
+"Who are you?" stammered Morse feebly.
+
+"Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento."
+
+"How did you come here?"
+
+"I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.
+There she is."  He pointed to the smiling Negress.
+
+"WHO ordered you?"
+
+The doctor smiled with professional tolerance.  "One of your
+friends, of course."
+
+"But what was his name?"
+
+"Really, I don't remember.  But don't distress yourself.  He has
+settled for everything right royally.  You have only to get strong
+now.  My duty is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse.
+Only when you are strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back
+farther from the river."
+
+And that was all he knew.  For even the nurse who attended him
+through the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him
+nothing more.  He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for
+a new and strange phase of his simple, childish affection for his
+benefactor, partly superinduced by his illness, was affecting him.
+He was beginning to feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was
+dimly conscious that his mysterious guest was only coldly returning
+his hospitality and benefits, while holding aloof from any
+association with him--and indicating the immeasurable distance that
+separated their future intercourse.  He had withheld any kind
+message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even his NAME.
+The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled beneath
+the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach or
+resentment.  He could not return the horses, although in a fit of
+childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not
+reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the
+nurse.
+
+He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river,
+with a faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might
+mysteriously be conveyed to him.  He even thought of selling out
+his location and abandoning it, that he might escape the cold
+surveillance of his heartless friend.  All this was undoubtedly
+childish--but there is an irrepressible simplicity of youth in all
+deep feeling, and the worldly inexperience of the frontiersman left
+him as innocent as a child.  In this phase of his unrequited
+affection he even went so far as to seek some news of Captain Jack
+at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish quest, even to take
+the steamboat from thence to Stockton.
+
+What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such
+natures.  Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it
+contained for him utterly vanished.  He found it noisy, formal,
+insincere, and--had he ever understood or used the word in his
+limited vocabulary--VULGAR.  Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that
+the prevailing sentiment and action of those who frequented it--and
+for whom it was built--were of a lower grade than his own.  And,
+strangely enough, this gave him none of his former sense of
+critical superiority, but only of his own utter and complete
+isolation.  He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from
+deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone,
+unchallenged, unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in
+spirit, as he had so often done in his dreams.
+
+His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no
+interruption; to him their speech was almost foreign in its
+allusions to things he did not understand, or, worse, seemed
+inconsistent with their eagerness and excitement.  How different
+from all this were his old recollections of slowly oncoming teams,
+uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in his former
+wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man to man,
+and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian
+tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with
+the lazy, restful hospitality of the night!  And how fierce here
+this continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this
+lull of passage.  For above all and through all he was conscious of
+the feverish haste of speed and exertion.
+
+The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the
+ponderous piston.  The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of
+gossip and news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and
+books in the reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the
+staterooms, were all dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the
+perpetual throb of the demon of hurry and unrest.  And when at last
+a horrible fascination dragged him into the engine room, and he saw
+the cruel relentless machinery at work, he seemed to recognize and
+understand some intelligent but pitiless Moloch, who was dragging
+this feverish world at its heels.
+
+Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he
+could view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by
+certain signs unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching
+his own locality.  He knew that his cabin and clearing would be
+undiscernible behind the fringe of willows on the bank, but he
+already distinguished the points where a few cottonwoods struggled
+into a promontory of lighter foliage beyond them.  Here voices fell
+upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware that two men had lazily
+crossed over from the other side of the boat, and were standing
+before him looking upon the bank.
+
+"It was about here, I reckon," said one, listlessly, as if
+continuing a previous lagging conversation, "that it must have
+happened.  For it was after we were making for the bend we've just
+passed that the deputy, goin' to the stateroom below us, found the
+door locked and the window open.  But both men--Jack Despard and
+Seth Hall, the sheriff--weren't to be found.  Not a trace of 'em.
+The boat was searched, but all for nothing.  The idea is that the
+sheriff, arter getting his prisoner comf'ble in the stateroom, took
+off Jack's handcuffs and locked the door; that Jack, who was mighty
+desp'rate, bolted through the window into the river, and the
+sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him.  Others allow--for the
+chairs and things was all tossed about in the stateroom--that the
+two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and chucked him out,
+and then slipped cl'ar into the water himself, for the stateroom
+window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap'n allows that
+no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live.  Anyhow, that
+was all they ever knew of it."
+
+"And there wasn't no trace of them found?" said the second man,
+after a long pause.
+
+"No.  Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and
+slung 'em round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of
+the river bed, with all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and
+they mightn't come up for ages; or else the wheels might have
+waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento until there wasn't enough left of
+'em to float, and dropped 'em when the boat stopped."
+
+"It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take," resumed
+the second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.
+
+"Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him
+sure!  And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them
+gamblers, and allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or
+a pistol wasn't to be washed out of life by water."
+
+The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and
+motionless.  Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly
+out of this awful revelation--the thought that his friend was still
+true to him--and that his strange absence and mysterious silence
+were fully accounted for and explained.  And with it came the more
+thrilling fancy that this man was alive now to HIM alone.
+
+HE was the sole custodian of his secret.  The morality of the
+question, while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in
+reference to its effect upon the chances of Captain Jack and the
+power it gave his enemies than his own conscience.  He would rather
+that his friend should have proven the proscribed outlaw who
+retained an unselfish interest in him than the superior gentleman
+who was coldly wiping out his gratitude.  He thought he understood
+now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying moods--even his
+bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable curse
+entailed upon one who should save a drowning man.  Of this he
+recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern
+in his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of
+his protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.
+
+There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his
+farm, where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he
+did so, returning on the same boat.  He was now fully recovered
+from his illness, and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to
+put himself in a position to help the mysterious fugitive when the
+time should come.  The remote farm should always be a haven of
+refuge for him, and in this hope he forbore to take any outside
+help, remaining solitary and alone, that Captain Jack's retreat
+should be inviolate.  And so the long, dry season passed, the hay
+was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the first rains,
+dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river, were all
+that broke his unending solitude.  In this enforced attitude of
+waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new
+idea.  He was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the
+exhortations of some camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the
+idea that he might have been selected to work out the regeneration
+of Captain Jack.  What might not come of this meeting and communing
+together in this lonely spot?  That anything was due to the memory
+of the murdered sheriff, whose bones were rotting in the trench
+that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did not occur to him.
+Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double consideration.
+Friendship and love--and, for the matter of that, religion--are
+eminently one-ideaed.
+
+But one night he awakened with a start.  His hand, which was
+hanging out of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water.  He had barely
+time to spring to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling
+tank before the door fell out as from that inward pressure, and his
+whole shanty collapsed like a pack of cards.  But it fell outwards,
+the roof sliding from over his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he
+was swept from his feet against it, and thence out into what might
+have been another world!  For the rain had ceased, and the full
+moon revealed only one vast, illimitable expanse of water!  It was
+not an overflow, but the whole rushing river magnified and repeated
+a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for breath and clung to
+the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither.  But it was
+bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift glance
+toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping
+torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the
+wooded foothills.  It was the great flood of '54.  In its awe-
+inspiring completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval
+Deluge.
+
+As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the
+overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the
+bough, at last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree.
+Here he was for the moment safe.  But the devastation viewed from
+this height was only the more appalling.  Every sign of his
+clearing, all evidence of his past year's industry, had
+disappeared.  He was now conscious for the first time of the lowing
+of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together on a slight
+eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the flood.
+The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.
+The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with
+the burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and
+cabin which they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely
+lodged in a bough.  The habitual solitude of his locality was now
+strangely invaded by drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and
+fence rails from unknown and remote neighbors, and he could faintly
+hear the far-off calling of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar
+of his wrecked and shattered house.  When day broke he was cold and
+hungry.
+
+Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution
+of the waters.  Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at
+last spread before him on which nothing moved.  An awful silence
+impressed him.  In the afternoon rain again began to fall on this
+gray, nebulous expanse, until the whole world seemed made of
+aqueous vapor.  He had but one idea now--the coming of the evening
+boat, and he would reserve his strength to swim to it.  He did not
+know until later that it could no longer follow the old channel of
+the river, and passed far beyond his sight and hearing.  With his
+disappointment and exposure that night came a return of his old
+fever.  His limbs were alternately racked with pain or benumbed and
+lifeless.  He could scarcely retain his position--at times he
+scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a
+quick plunge downward.  In other moments of lucid misery he was
+conscious of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead
+face of the murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by
+the flood, staring at him from the water; to this was added the
+hallucination of noises.  He heard voices, his own name called by a
+voice he knew--Captain Jack's!
+
+Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance
+and plunged downward.  But before the water closed above his head
+he had had a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--
+of the black hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--
+the sensation of a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a
+strong hand upon his collar, and--unconsciousness!
+
+When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and
+rowed through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was
+taken in through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel
+and cared for.  But all his questions yielded only the information
+that the tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public
+Relief Association--had been dispatched for him with special
+directions, by a man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the
+one who had plunged in for him at the last moment.  The man had
+left the boat at Stockton.  There was nothing more?  Yes!--he had
+left a letter.  Morse seized it feverishly.  It contained only a
+few lines:
+
+
+We are quits now.  You are all right.  I have saved YOU from
+drowning, and shifted the curse to my own shoulders.  Good-by.
+
+CAPTAIN JACK.
+
+
+The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but
+fell back, unconscious.
+
+Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as
+an impoverished and physically shattered man.  He had no means to
+restock the farm left bare by the subsiding water.  A kindly train-
+packer offered him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to
+the mountains--for he knew tracks and passes and could ride.  The
+mountains gave him back a little of the vigor he had lost in the
+river valley, but none of its dreams and ambitions.  One day, while
+tracking a lost mule, he stopped to slake his thirst in a
+waterhole--all that the summer had left of a lonely mountain
+torrent.  Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast also, he
+was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some bits
+of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to
+attract his attention.  Two of the largest he took back to camp
+with him.  They were gold!  From the locality he took out a
+fortune.  Nobody wondered.  To the Californian's superstition it
+was perfectly natural.  It was "nigger luck"--the luck of the
+stupid, the ignorant, the inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony
+of the gods!
+
+But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against
+temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration
+succumbed to rapidly acquired wealth.  So it chanced that one day,
+with a crowd of excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he
+found himself on the outskirts of a lawless mountain town.  An
+eager, frantic crowd had already assembled there--a desperado was
+to be lynched!  Pushing his way through the crowd for a nearer view
+of the exciting spectacle, the changed and reckless Morse was
+stopped by armed men only at the foot of a cart, which upheld a
+quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around his neck, was
+scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end of the rope
+drawn across the limb of a tree above him.  The eyes of the doomed
+man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile
+lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an
+easy gesture of farewell.
+
+And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed
+guard, and a fierce struggle began.  He had overpowered one
+adversary and seized another in his hopeless fight toward the cart
+when the half-astonished crowd felt that something must be done.
+It was done with a sharp report, the upward curl of smoke and the
+falling back of the guard as Morse staggered forward FREE--with a
+bullet in his heart.  Yet even then he did not fall until he
+reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with his arms
+outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.
+
+There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless
+act of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then
+recoiled aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from
+the doomed man himself would have set him free.  But they say--and
+it is credibly recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down
+upon the hopeless sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he
+flung upon the crowd a curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened
+as they were, their blood ran cold, and then leaped furiously to
+their cheeks.
+
+"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with
+a jerk of his head--"Go on, and be damned to you!  I'm ready."
+
+They did not hesitate this time.  And Martin Morse and Captain Jack
+Despard were buried in the same grave.
+
+
+
+A CONVERT OF THE MISSION
+
+
+The largest tent of the Tasajara camp meeting was crowded to its
+utmost extent.  The excitement of that dense mass was at its
+highest pitch.  The Reverend Stephen Masterton, the single erect,
+passionate figure of that confused medley of kneeling worshipers,
+had reached the culminating pitch of his irresistible exhortatory
+power.  Sighs and groans were beginning to respond to his appeals,
+when the reverend brother was seen to lurch heavily forward and
+fall to the ground.
+
+At first the effect was that of a part of his performance; the
+groans redoubled, and twenty or thirty brethren threw themselves
+prostrate in humble imitation of the preacher.  But Sister Deborah
+Stokes, perhaps through some special revelation of feminine
+intuition, grasped the fallen man, tore loose his black silk
+necktie, and dragged him free of the struggling, frantic crowd
+whose paroxysms he had just evoked.  Howbeit he was pale and
+unconscious, and unable to continue the service.  Even the next
+day, when he had slightly recovered, it was found that any attempt
+to renew his fervid exhortations produced the same disastrous
+result.
+
+A council was hurriedly held by the elders.  In spite of the
+energetic protests of Sister Stokes, it was held that the Lord "was
+wrestlin' with his sperrit," and he was subjected to the same
+extraordinary treatment from the whole congregation that he himself
+had applied to THEM.  Propped up pale and trembling in the
+"Mourners' Bench" by two brethren, he was "striven with," exhorted,
+prayed over, and admonished, until insensibility mercifully
+succeeded convulsions.  Spiritual therapeutics having failed, he
+was turned over to the weak and carnal nursing of "womenfolk."  But
+after a month of incapacity he was obliged to yield to "the flesh,"
+and, in the local dialect, "to use a doctor."
+
+It so chanced that the medical practitioner of the district was a
+man of large experience, of military training, and plain speech.
+When, therefore, he one day found in his surgery a man of rude
+Western type, strong-limbed and sunburned, but trembling,
+hesitating and neurotic in movement, after listening to his
+symptoms gravely, he asked, abruptly: "And how much are you
+drinking now?"
+
+"I am a lifelong abstainer," stammered his patient in quivering
+indignation.  But this was followed by another question so frankly
+appalling to the hearer that he staggered to his feet.
+
+"I'm Stephen Masterton--known of men as a circuit preacher, of the
+Northern California district," he thundered--"and an enemy of the
+flesh in all its forms."
+
+"I beg your pardon," responded Dr. Duchesne, grimly, "but as you
+are suffering from excessive and repeated excitation of the nervous
+system, and the depression following prolonged artificial
+exaltation--it makes little difference whether the cause be
+spiritual, as long as there is a certain physical effect upon your
+BODY--which I believe you have brought to me to cure.  Now--as to
+diet? you look all wrong there.
+
+"My food is of the simplest--I have no hankering for fleshpots,"
+responded the patient.
+
+"I suppose you call saleratus bread and salt pork and flapjacks
+SIMPLE?" said the doctor, coolly; "they are COMMON enough, and if
+you were working with your muscles instead of your nerves in that
+frame of yours they might not hurt you; but you are suffering as
+much from eating more than you can digest as the veriest gourmand.
+You must stop all that.  Go down to a quiet watering-place for two
+months." . . .
+
+"I go to a watering-place?" interrupted Masterton; "to the haunt of
+the idle, the frivolous and wanton--never!"
+
+"Well, I'm not particular about a 'watering-place,'" said the
+doctor, with a shrug, "although a little idleness and frivolity
+with different food wouldn't hurt you--but you must go somewhere
+and change your habits and mode of life COMPLETELY.  I will find
+you some sleepy old Spanish town in the southern country where you
+can rest and diet.  If this is distasteful to you," he continued,
+grimly, "you can always call it 'a trial.'"
+
+Stephen Masterton may have thought it so when, a week later, he
+found himself issuing from a rocky gorge into a rough, badly paved,
+hilly street, which seemed to be only a continuation of the
+mountain road itself.  It broadened suddenly into a square or
+plaza, flanked on each side by an irregular row of yellowing adobe
+houses, with the inevitable verandaed tienda in each corner, and
+the solitary, galleried fonda, with a half-Moorish archway leading
+into an inner patio or courtyard in the center.
+
+The whole street stopped as usual at the very door of the Mission
+church, a few hundred yards farther on, and under the shadow of the
+two belfry towers at each angle of the facade, as if this were the
+ultima thule of every traveler.  But all that the eye rested on was
+ruined, worn, and crumbling.  The adobe houses were cracked by the
+incessant sunshine of the half-year-long summer, or the more
+intermittent earthquake shock; the paved courtyard of the fonda was
+so uneven and sunken in the center that the lumbering wagon and
+faded diligencia stood on an incline, and the mules with difficulty
+kept their footing while being unladen; the whitened plaster had
+fallen from the feet of the two pillars that flanked the Mission
+doorway, like bandages from a gouty limb, leaving the reddish core
+of adobe visible; there were apparently as many broken tiles in the
+streets and alleys as there were on the heavy red roofs that
+everywhere asserted themselves--and even seemed to slide down the
+crumbling walls to the ground.  There were hopeless gaps in grille
+and grating of doorways and windows, where the iron bars had
+dropped helplessly out, or were bent at different angles.  The
+walls of the peaceful Mission garden and the warlike presidio were
+alike lost in the escalading vines or leveled by the pushing boughs
+of gnarled pear and olive trees that now surmounted them.  The dust
+lay thick and impalpable in hollow and gutter, and rose in little
+vapory clouds with a soft detonation at every stroke of his horse's
+hoofs.  Over all this dust and ruin, idleness seemed to reign
+supreme.  From the velvet-jacketed figures lounging motionless in
+the shadows of the open doorways--so motionless that only the lazy
+drift of cigarette smoke betokened their breathing--to the
+reclining peons in the shade of a catalpa, or the squatting Indians
+in the arroyo--all was sloth and dirt.
+
+The Rev. Stephen Masterton felt his throat swell with his old
+exhortative indignation.  A gaudy yellow fan waved languidly in
+front of a black rose-crested head at a white-curtained window.  He
+knew he was stifling with righteous wrath, and clapped his spurs to
+his horse.
+
+Nevertheless, in a few days, by the aid of a letter to the
+innkeeper, he was installed in a dilapidated adobe house, not
+unlike those he had seen, but situated in the outskirts and
+overlooking the garden and part of the refectory of the old
+Mission.  It had even a small garden of its own--if a strip of hot
+wall, overburdened with yellow and white roses, a dozen straggling
+callas, a bank of heliotrope, and an almond tree could be called a
+garden.  It had an open doorway, but so heavily recessed in the
+thick walls that it preserved seclusion, a sitting-room, and an
+alcoved bedroom with deep embrasured windows that however excluded
+the unwinking sunlight and kept an even monotone of shade.
+
+Strange to say, he found it cool, restful, and, in spite of the
+dust, absolutely clean, and, but for the scent of heliotrope,
+entirely inodorous.  The dry air seemed to dissipate all noxious
+emanations and decay--the very dust itself in its fine
+impalpability was volatile with a spicelike piquancy, and left no
+stain.
+
+A wrinkled Indian woman, brown and veined like a tobacco leaf,
+ministered to his simple wants.  But these wants had also been
+regulated by Dr. Duchesne.  He found himself, with some grave
+doubts of his effeminacy, breakfasting on a single cup of chocolate
+instead of his usual bowl of molasses-sweetened coffee; crumbling a
+crisp tortilla instead of the heavy saleratus bread, greasy
+flapjack, or the lard-fried steak, and, more wonderful still,
+completing his repast with purple grapes from the Mission wall.  He
+could not deny that it was simple--that it was even refreshing and
+consistent with the climate and his surroundings.  On the other
+hand, it was the frugal diet of the commonest peasant--and were not
+those peons slothful idolaters?
+
+At the end of the week--his correspondence being also restricted by
+his doctor to a few lines to himself regarding his progress--he
+wrote to that adviser:
+
+"The trembling and unquiet has almost ceased; I have less nightly
+turmoil and visions; my carnal appetite seems to be amply mollified
+and soothed by these viands, whatever may be their ultimate effect
+upon the weakness of our common sinful nature.  But I should not be
+truthful to you if I did not warn you that I am viewing with the
+deepest spiritual concern a decided tendency toward sloth, and a
+folding of the hands over matters that often, I fear, are spiritual
+as well as temporal.  I would ask you to consider, in a spirit of
+love, if it be not wise to rouse my apathetic flesh, so as to
+strive, even with the feeblest exhortations, against this sloth in
+others--if only to keep one's self from falling into the pit of
+easy indulgence."
+
+What answer he received is not known, but it is to be presumed that
+he kept loyal faith with his physician, and gave himself up to
+simple walks and rides and occasional meditation.  His solitude was
+not broken in upon; curiosity was too active a vice, and induced
+too much exertion for his indolent neighbors, and the Americano's
+basking seclusion, though unlike the habits of his countrymen, did
+not affect them.  The shopkeeper and innkeeper saluted him always
+with a profound courtesy which awakened his slight resentment,
+partly because he was conscious that it was grateful to him, and
+partly that he felt he ought to have provoked in them a less
+satisfied condition.
+
+Once, when he had unwittingly passed the confines of his own
+garden, through a gap in the Mission orchard, a lissome, black-
+coated shadow slipped past him with an obeisance so profound and
+gentle that he was startled at first into an awkward imitation of
+it himself, and then into an angry self-examination.  He knew that
+he loathed that long-skirted, womanlike garment, that dangling,
+ostentatious symbol, that air of secrecy and mystery, and he
+inflated his chest above his loosely tied cravat and unbuttoned
+waistcoat with a contrasted sense of freedom.  But he was conscious
+the next day of weakly avoiding a recurrence of this meeting, and
+in his self-examination put it down to his self-disciplined
+observance of his doctor's orders.  But when he was strong again,
+and fitted for his Master's work, how strenuously he should improve
+the occasion this gave him of attacking the Scarlet Woman among her
+slaves and worshipers!
+
+His afternoon meditations and the perusal of his only book--the
+Bible--were regularly broken in upon at about sunset by two or
+three strokes from the cracked bell that hung in the open belfry
+which reared itself beyond the gnarled pear tees.  He could not say
+that it was aggressive or persistent, like his own church bells,
+nor that it even expressed to him any religious sentiment.
+Moreover, it was not a Sabbath" bell, but a DAILY one, and even
+then seemed to be only a signal to ears easily responsive, rather
+than a stern reminder.  And the hour was always a singularly
+witching one.
+
+It was when the sun had slipped from the glaring red roofs, and the
+yellowing adobe of the Mission walls and the tall ranks of wild
+oats on the hillside were all of the one color of old gold.  It was
+when the quivering heat of the arroyo and dusty expanse of plaza
+was blending with the soft breath of the sea fog that crept through
+the clefts of the coast range, until a refreshing balm seemed to
+fall like a benediction on all nature.  It was when the trade-wind-
+swept and irritated surfaces of the rocky gorge beyond were soothed
+with clinging vapors; when the pines above no longer rocked
+monotonously, and the great undulating sea of the wild-oat plains
+had gone down and was at rest.  It was at this hour, one afternoon,
+that, with the released scents of the garden, there came to him a
+strange and subtle perfume that was new to his senses.  He laid
+aside his book, went into the garden, and, half-unconscious of his
+trespass, passed through the Mission orchard and thence into the
+little churchyard beside the church.
+
+Looking at the strange inscriptions in an unfamiliar tongue, he was
+singularly touched with the few cheap memorials lying upon the
+graves--like childish toys--and for the moment overlooked the
+papistic emblems that accompanied them.  It struck him vaguely that
+Death, the common leveler, had made even the symbols of a faith
+eternal inferior to those simple records of undying memory and
+affection, and he was for a moment startled into doubt.
+
+He walked to the door of the church; to his surprise it was open.
+Standing upon the threshold, he glanced inside, and stood for a
+moment utterly bewildered.  In a man of refined taste and education
+that bizarre and highly colored interior would have only provoked a
+smile or shrug; to Stephen Masterton's highly emotional nature, but
+artistic inexperience, strangely enough it was profoundly
+impressive.  The heavily timbered, roughly hewn roof, barred with
+alternate bands of blue and Indian red, the crimson hangings, the
+gold and black draperies, affected this religious backwoodsman
+exactly as they were designed to affect the heathen and acolytes
+for whose conversion the temple had been reared.  He could scarcely
+take his eyes from the tinsel-crowned Mother of Heaven, resplendent
+in white and gold and glittering with jewels; the radiant shield
+before the Host, illuminated by tall spectral candles in the
+mysterious obscurity of the altar, dazzled him like the rayed disk
+of the setting sun.
+
+A gentle murmur, as of the distant sea, came from the altar.  In
+his naive bewilderment he had not seen the few kneeling figures in
+the shadow of column and aisle; it was not until a man, whom he
+recognized as a muleteer he had seen that afternoon gambling and
+drinking in the fonda, slipped by him like a shadow and sank upon
+his knees in the center of the aisle that he realized the
+overpowering truth.
+
+HE, Stephen Masterton, was looking upon some rite of Popish
+idolatry!  He was turning quickly away when the keeper of the
+tienda--a man of sloth and sin--gently approached him from the
+shadow of a column with a mute gesture, which he took to be one of
+invitation.  A fierce protest of scorn and indignation swelled to
+his throat, but died upon his lips.  Yet he had strength enough to
+erect his gaunt emaciated figure, throwing out his long arms and
+extended palms in the attitude of defiant exorcism, and then rush
+swiftly from the church.  As he did so he thought he saw a faint
+smile cross the shopkeeper's face, and a whispered exchange of
+words with a neighboring worshiper of more exalted appearance came
+to his ears.  But it was not intelligible to his comprehension.
+
+The next day he wrote to his doctor in that quaint grandiloquence
+of written speech with which the half-educated man balances the
+slips of his colloquial phrasing:
+
+
+Do not let the purgation of my flesh be unduly protracted.  What
+with the sloth and idolatries of Baal and Ashteroth, which I see
+daily around me, I feel that without a protest not only the flesh
+but the spirit is mortified.  But my bodily strength is mercifully
+returning, and I found myself yesterday able to take a long ride at
+that hour which they here keep sacred for an idolatrous rite, under
+the beautiful name of "The Angelus."  Thus do they bear false
+witness to Him!  Can you tell me the meaning of the Spanish words
+"Don Keyhotter"?  I am ignorant of these sensuous Southern
+languages, and am aware that this is not the correct spelling, but
+I have striven to give the phonetic equivalent.  It was used, I am
+inclined to think, in reference to MYSELF, by an idolater.
+
+P.S.--You need not trouble yourself.  I have just ascertained that
+the words in question were simply the title of an idle novel, and,
+of course, could not possibly refer to ME.
+
+
+Howbeit it was as "Don Quixote"--that is, the common Spaniard's
+conception of the Knight of La Mancha, merely the simple fanatic
+and madman--that Mr. Stephen Masterton ever after rode all
+unconsciously through the streets of the Mission, amid the half-
+pitying, half-smiling glances of the people.
+
+In spite of his meditations, his single volume, and his habit of
+retiring early, he found his evenings were growing lonely and
+tedious.  He missed the prayer meeting, and, above all, the hymns.
+He had a fine baritone voice, sympathetic, as may be imagined, but
+not cultivated.  One night, in the seclusion of his garden, and
+secure in his distance from other dwellings, he raised his voice in
+a familiar camp-meeting hymn with a strong Covenanter's ring in the
+chorus.  Growing bolder as he went on, he at last filled the quiet
+night with the strenuous sweep of his chant.  Surprised at his own
+fervor, he paused for a moment, listening, half frightened, half
+ashamed of his outbreak.  But there was only the trilling of the
+night wind in the leaves, or the far-off yelp of a coyote.
+
+For a moment he thought he heard the metallic twang of a stringed
+instrument in the Mission garden beyond his own, and remembered his
+contiguity to the church with a stir of defiance.  But he was
+relieved, nevertheless.  His pent-up emotion had found vent, and
+without the nervous excitement that had followed his old
+exaltation.  That night he slept better.  He had found the Lord
+again--with Psalmody!
+
+The next evening he chanced upon a softer hymn of the same
+simplicity, but with a vein of human tenderness in its aspirations,
+which his more hopeful mood gently rendered.  At the conclusion of
+the first verse he was, however, distinctly conscious of being
+followed by the same twanging sound he had heard on the previous
+night, and which even his untutored ear could recognize as an
+attempt to accompany him.  But before he had finished the second
+verse the unknown player, after an ingenious but ineffectual essay
+to grasp the right chord, abandoned it with an impatient and almost
+pettish flourish, and a loud bang upon the sounding-board of the
+unseen instrument.  Masterton finished it alone.
+
+With his curiosity excited, however, he tried to discover the
+locality of the hidden player.  The sound evidently came from the
+Mission garden; but in his ignorance of the language he could not
+even interrogate his Indian housekeeper.  On the third night,
+however, his hymn was uninterrupted by any sound from the former
+musician.  A sense of disappointment, he knew not why, came over
+him.  The kindly overture of the unseen player had been a relief to
+his loneliness.  Yet he had barely concluded the hymn when the
+familiar sound again struck his ears.  But this time the musician
+played boldly, confidently, and with a singular skill on the
+instrument.
+
+The brilliant prelude over, to his entire surprise and some
+confusion, a soprano voice, high, childish, but infinitely quaint
+and fascinating, was mischievously uplifted.  But alas! even to his
+ears, ignorant of the language, it was very clearly a song of
+levity and wantonness, of freedom and license, of coquetry and
+incitement!  Yet such was its fascination that he fancied it was
+reclaimed by the delightful childlike and innocent expression of
+the singer.
+
+Enough that this tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered man arose and,
+overcome by a curiosity almost as childlike, slipped into the
+garden and glided with an Indian softness of tread toward the
+voice.  The moon shone full upon the ruined Mission wall tipped
+with clusters of dark foliage.  Half hiding, half mingling with one
+of them--an indistinct bulk of light-colored huddled fleeces like
+an extravagant bird's nest--hung the unknown musician.  So intent
+was the performer's preoccupation that Masterton actually reached
+the base of the wall immediately below the figure without
+attracting its attention.  But his foot slipped on the crumbling
+debris with a snapping of dry twigs.  There was a quick little cry
+from above.  He had barely time to recover his position before the
+singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and
+fell outward.  But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed,
+and threw out his long arms.  The next moment they were full of
+soft flounces, a struggling figure was against his breast, and a
+woman's frightened little hands around his neck.  But he had broken
+her fall, and almost instantly, yet with infinite gentleness, he
+released her unharmed, with hardly her crisp flounces crumpled, in
+an upright position against the wall.  Even her guitar, still
+hanging from her shoulder by a yellow ribbon, had bounded elastic
+and resounding against the wall, but lay intact at her satin-
+slippered feet.  She caught it up with another quick little cry,
+but this time more of sauciness than fear, and drew her little hand
+across its strings, half defiantly.
+
+"I hope you are not hurt?" said the circuit preacher, gravely.
+
+She broke into a laugh so silvery that he thought it no
+extravagance to liken it to the moonbeams that played over her made
+audible.  She was lithe, yet plump; barred with black and yellow
+and small-waisted like a pretty wasp.  Her complexion in that light
+was a sheen of pearl satin that made her eyes blacker and her
+little mouth redder than any other color could.  She was small,
+but, remembering the fourteen-year-old wife of the shopkeeper, he
+felt that, for all her childish voice and features, she was a grown
+woman, and a sudden shyness took hold of him.
+
+But she looked pertly in his face, stood her guitar upright before
+her, and put her hands behind her back as she leaned saucily
+against the wall and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It was the fault of you," she said, in a broken English that
+seemed as much infantine as foreign.  "What for you not remain to
+yourself in your own CASA?  So it come.  You creep so--in the dark-
+-and shake my wall, and I fall.  And she," pointing to the guitar,
+"is a'most broke!  And for all thees I have only make to you a
+serenade.  Ingrate!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Masterton quickly, "but I was curious.  I
+thought I might help you, and--"
+
+"Make yourself another cat on the wall, eh?  No; one is enough,
+thank you!"
+
+A frown lowered on Masterton's brow.  "You don't understand me," he
+said, bluntly.  "I did not know WHO was here."
+
+"Ah, BUENO!  Then it is Pepita Ramirez, you see," she said, tapping
+her bodice with one little finger, "all the same; the niece from
+Manuel Garcia, who keeps the Mission garden and lif there.  And
+you?"
+
+"My name is Masterton."
+
+"How mooch?"
+
+"Masterton," he repeated.
+
+She tried to pronounce it once or twice desperately, and then shook
+her little head so violently that a yellow rose fastened over her
+ear fell to the ground.  But she did not heed it, nor the fact that
+Masterton had picked it up.
+
+"Ah, I cannot!" she said, poutingly.  "It is as deefeecult to make
+go as my guitar with your serenade."
+
+"Can you not say 'Stephen Masterton'?" he asked, more gently, with
+a returning and forgiving sense of her childishness.
+
+"Es-stefen?  Ah, ESTEBAN!  Yes; Don Esteban!  BUENO!  Then, Don
+Esteban, what for you sink so melank-olly one night, and one night
+so fierce?  The melank-olly, he ees not so bad; but the fierce--ah!
+he is weeked!  Ess it how the Americano make always his serenade?"
+
+Masterton's brow again darkened.  And his hymn of exultation had
+been mistaken by these people--by this--this wanton child!
+
+"It was no serenade," he replied, curtly; "it was in the praise of
+the Lord!"
+
+"Of how mooch?"
+
+"Of the Lord of Hosts--of the Almighty in Heaven."  He lifted his
+long arms reverently on high.
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a frightened look, slightly edging away from
+the wall.  At a secure distance she stopped.  "Then you are a
+soldier, Don Esteban?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then what for you sink 'I am a soldier of the Lord,' and you will
+make die 'in His army'?  Oh, yes; you have said."  She gathered up
+her guitar tightly under her arm, shook her small finger at him
+gravely, and said, "You are a hoombog, Don Esteban; good a' night,"
+and began to glide away.
+
+"One moment, Miss--Miss Ramirez," called Masterton.  "I--that is
+you--you have--forgotten your rose," he added, feebly, holding up
+the flower.  She halted.
+
+"Ah, yes; he have drop, you have pick him up, he is yours.  I have
+drop, you have pick ME up, but I am NOT yours.  Good a' night,
+COMANDANTE Don Esteban!"
+
+With a light laugh she ran along beside the wall for a little
+distance, suddenly leaped up and disappeared in one of the largest
+gaps in its ruined and helpless structure.  Stephen Masterton gazed
+after her stupidly, still holding the rose in his hand.  Then he
+threw it away and re-entered his home.
+
+Lighting his candle, he undressed himself, prayed fervently--so
+fervently that all remembrance of the idle, foolish incident was
+wiped from his mind, and went to bed.  He slept well and
+dreamlessly.  The next morning, when his thoughts recurred to the
+previous night, this seemed to him a token that he had not deviated
+from his spiritual integrity; it did not occur to him that the
+thought itself was a tacit suspicion.
+
+So his feet quite easily sought the garden again in the early
+sunshine, even to the wall where she had stood.  But he had not
+taken into account the vivifying freshness of the morning, the
+renewed promise of life and resurrection in the pulsing air and
+potent sunlight, and as he stood there he seemed to see the figure
+of the young girl again leaning against the wall in all the charm
+of her irrepressible and innocent youth.  More than that, he found
+the whole scene re-enacting itself before him; the nebulous drapery
+half hidden in the foliage, the cry and the fall; the momentary
+soft contact of the girl's figure against his own, the clinging
+arms around his neck, the brush and fragrance of her flounces--all
+this came back to him with a strength he had NOT felt when it
+occurred.
+
+He was turning hurriedly away when his eyes fell upon the yellow
+rose still lying in the debris where he had thrown it--but still
+pure, fresh, and unfaded.  He picked it up again, with a singular
+fancy that it was the girl herself, and carried it into the house.
+
+As he placed it half shyly in a glass on his table a wonderful
+thought occurred to him.  Was not the episode of last night a
+special providence?  Was not that young girl, wayward and
+childlike, a mere neophyte in her idolatrous religion, as yet
+unsteeped in sloth and ignorance, presented to him as a brand to be
+snatched from the burning?  Was not this the opportunity of
+conversion he had longed for--this the chance of exercising his
+gifts of exhortation that he had been hiding in the napkin of
+solitude and seclusion?  Nay, was not all this PREDESTINED?  His
+illness, his consequent exile to this land of false gods--this
+contiguity to the Mission--was not all this part of a supremely
+ordered plan for the girl's salvation--and was HE not elected and
+ordained for that service?  Nay, more, was not the girl herself a
+mere unconscious instrument in the hands of a higher power; was not
+her voluntary attempt to accompany him in his devotional exercise a
+vague stirring of that predestined force within her?  Was not even
+that wantonness and frivolity contrasted with her childishness--
+which he had at first misunderstood--the stirrings of the flesh and
+the spirit, and was he to abandon her in that struggle of good and
+evil?
+
+He lifted his bowed head, that had been resting on his arm before
+the little flower on the table--as if it were a shrine--with a
+flash of resolve in his blue eyes.  The wrinkled Concepcion coming
+to her duties in the morning scarcely recognized her gloomily
+abstracted master in this transfigured man.  He looked ten years
+younger.
+
+She met his greeting, and the few direct inquiries that his new
+resolve enabled him to make more freely, with some information--
+which a later talk with the shopkeeper, who had a fuller English
+vocabulary, confirmed in detail.
+
+"YES! truly this was a niece of the Mission gardener, who lived
+with her uncle in the ruined wing of the presidio.  She had taken
+her first communion four years ago.  Ah, yes, she was a great
+musician, and could play on the organ.  And the guitar, ah, yes--of
+a certainty.  She was gay, and flirted with the caballeros, young
+and old, but she cared not for any."
+
+Whatever satisfaction this latter statement gave Masterton, he
+believed it was because the absence of any disturbing worldly
+affection would make her an easier convert.
+
+But how continue this chance acquaintance and effect her
+conversion?  For the first time Masterton realized the value of
+expediency; while his whole nature impelled him to seek her society
+frankly and publicly and exhort her openly, he knew that this was
+impossible; still more, he remembered her unmistakable fright at
+his first expression of faith; he must "be wise as the serpent and
+harmless as the dove."  He must work upon her soul alone, and
+secretly.  He, who would have shrunk from any clandestine
+association with a girl from mere human affection, saw no wrong in
+a covert intimacy for the purpose of religious salvation.  Ignorant
+as he was of the ways of the world, and inexperienced in the usages
+of society, he began to plan methods of secretly meeting her with
+all the intrigue of a gallant.  The perspicacity as well as the
+intuition of a true lover had descended upon him in this effort of
+mere spiritual conquest.
+
+Armed with his information and a few Spanish words, he took the
+yellow Concepcion aside and gravely suborned her to carry a note to
+be delivered secretly to Miss Ramirez.  To his great relief and
+some surprise the old woman grinned with intelligence, and her
+withered hand closed with a certain familiar dexterity over the
+epistle and the accompanying gratuity.  To a man less naively one-
+ideaed it might have awakened some suspicion; but to the more
+sanguine hopefulness of Masterton it only suggested the fancy that
+Concepcion herself might prove to be open to conversion, and that
+he should in due season attempt HER salvation also.  But that would
+be later.  For Concepcion was always with him and accessible; the
+girl was not.
+
+The note, which had cost him some labor of composition, simple and
+almost businesslike as was the result, ran as follows:
+
+"I wish to see you upon some matter of grave concern to yourself.
+Will you oblige me by coming again to the wall of the Mission
+tonight at early candlelight?  It would avert worldly suspicion if
+you brought also your guitar."
+
+The afternoon dragged slowly on; Concepcion returned; she had, with
+great difficulty, managed to see the senorita, but not alone; she
+had, however, slipped the note into her hand, not daring to wait
+for an answer.
+
+In his first hopefulness Masterton did not doubt what the answer
+would be, but as evening approached he grew concerned as to the
+girl's opportunities of coming, and regretted that he had not given
+her a choice of time.
+
+Before his evening meal was finished he began to fear for her
+willingness, and doubt the potency of his note.  He was accustomed
+to exhort ORALLY--perhaps he ought to have waited for the chance of
+SPEAKING to her directly without writing.
+
+When the moon rose he was already in the garden.  Lingering at
+first in the shadow of an olive tree, he waited until the moonbeams
+fell on the wall and its crests of foliage.  But nothing moved
+among that ebony tracery; his ear was strained for the familiar
+tinkle of the guitar--all was silent.  As the moon rose higher he
+at last boldly walked to the wall, and listened for any movement on
+the other side of it.  But nothing stirred.  She was evidently NOT
+coming--his note had failed.
+
+He was turning away sadly, but as he faced his home again he heard
+a light laugh beside him.  He stopped.  A black shadow stepped out
+from beneath his own almond tree.  He started when, with a gesture
+that seemed familiar to him, the upper part of the shadow seemed to
+fall away with a long black mantilla and the face of the young girl
+was revealed.
+
+He could see now that she was clad in black lace from head to foot.
+She looked taller, older, and he fancied even prettier than before.
+A sudden doubt of his ability to impress her, a swift realization
+of all the difficulties of the attempt, and, for the first time
+perhaps, a dim perception of the incongruity of the situation came
+over him.
+
+"I was looking for you on the wall," he stammered.
+
+"MADRE DE DIOS!" she retorted, with a laugh and her old audacity,
+"you would that I shall ALWAYS hang there, and drop upon you like a
+pear when you shake the tree?  No!"
+
+"You haven't brought your guitar," he continued, still more
+awkwardly, as he noticed that she held only a long black fan in her
+hand.
+
+"For why?  You would that I PLAY it, and when my uncle say 'Where
+go Pepita?  She is loss,' someone shall say, 'Oh! I have hear her
+tink-a-tink in the garden of the Americano, who lif alone.'  And
+then--it ess finish!"
+
+Masterton began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable.  There was
+something in this situation that he had not dreamed of.  But with
+the persistency of an awkward man he went on.
+
+"But you played on the wall the other night, and tried to accompany
+me."
+
+"But that was lass night and on the wall.  I had not speak to you,
+you had not speak to me.  You had not sent me the leetle note by
+your peon."  She stopped, and suddenly opening her fan before her
+face, so that only her mischievous eyes were visible, added: "You
+had not asked me then to come to hear you make lof to me, Don
+Esteban.  That is the difference."
+
+The circuit preacher felt the blood rush to his face.  Anger,
+shame, mortification, remorse, and fear alternately strove with
+him, but above all and through all he was conscious of a sharp,
+exquisite pleasure--that frightened him still more.  Yet he managed
+to exclaim:
+
+"No! no! You cannot think me capable of such a cowardly trick?"
+
+The girl started, more at the unmistakable sincerity of his
+utterance than at the words, whose full meaning she may have only
+imperfectly caught.
+
+"A treek?  A treek?" she slowly and wonderingly repeated.  Then
+suddenly, as if comprehending him, she turned her round black eyes
+full upon him and dropped her fan from her face.
+
+"And WHAT for you ask me to come here then?"
+
+"I wanted to talk with you," he began, "on far more serious
+matters.  I wished to--" but he stopped.  He could not address this
+quaint child-woman staring at him in black-eyed wonder, in either
+the measured or the impetuous terms with which he would have
+exhorted a maturer responsible being.  He made a step toward her;
+she drew back, striking at his extended hand half impatiently, half
+mischievously with her fan.
+
+He flushed--and then burst out bluntly, "I want to talk with you
+about your soul."
+
+"My what?"
+
+"Your immortal soul, unhappy girl."
+
+"What have you to make with that?  Are you a devil?"  Her eyes grew
+rounder, though she faced him boldly.
+
+"I am a Minister of the Gospel," he said, in hurried entreaty.
+"You must hear me for a moment.  I would save your soul."
+
+"My immortal soul lif with the Padre at the Mission--you moost seek
+her there!  My mortal BODY," she added, with a mischievous smile,
+"say to you, 'good a' night, Don Esteban.'"  She dropped him a
+little curtsy and--ran away.
+
+"One moment, Miss Ramirez," said Masterton, eagerly; but she had
+already slipped beyond his reach.  He saw her little black figure
+passing swiftly beside the moonlit wall, saw it suddenly slide into
+a shadowy fissure, and vanish.
+
+In his blank disappointment he could not bear to re-enter the house
+he had left so sanguinely a few moments before, but walked moodily
+in the garden.  His discomfiture was the more complete since he
+felt that his defeat was owing to some mistake in his methods, and
+not the incorrigibility of his subject.
+
+Was it not a spiritual weakness in him to have resented so sharply
+the girl's imputation that he wished to make love to her?  He
+should have borne it as Christians had even before now borne
+slander and false testimony for their faith!  He might even have
+ACCEPTED it, and let the triumph of her conversion in the end prove
+his innocence.  Or was his purpose incompatible with that sisterly
+affection he had so often preached to the women of his flock?  He
+might have taken her hand, and called her "Sister Pepita," even as
+he had called Deborah "Sister."  He recalled the fact that he had
+for an instant held her struggling in his arms: he remembered the
+thrill that the recollection had caused him, and somehow it now
+sent a burning blush across his face.  He hurried back into the
+house.
+
+The next day a thousand wild ideas took the place of his former
+settled resolution.  He would seek the Padre, this custodian of the
+young girl's soul; he would convince HIM of his error, or beseech
+him to give him an equal access to her spirit!  He would seek the
+uncle of the girl, and work upon his feelings.
+
+Then for three or four days he resolved to put the young girl from
+his mind, trusting after the fashion of his kind for some special
+revelation from a supreme source as an indication for his conduct.
+This revelation presently occurred, as it is apt to occur when
+wanted.
+
+One evening his heart leaped at the familiar sound of Pepita's
+guitar in the distance.  Whatever his ultimate intention now, he
+hurriedly ran into the garden.  The sound came from the former
+direction, but as he unhesitatingly approached the Mission wall, he
+could see that she was not upon it, and as the notes of her guitar
+were struck again, he knew that they came from the other side.  But
+the chords were a prelude to one of his own hymns, and he stood
+entranced as her sweet, childlike voice rose with the very words
+that he had sung.  The few defects were those of purely oral
+imitation, the accents, even the slight reiteration of the "s,"
+were Pepita's own:
+
+
+     Cheeldren oof the Heavenly King,
+     As ye journey essweetly ssing;
+     Essing your great Redeemer's praise,
+     Glorioos in Hees works and ways.
+
+
+He was astounded.  Her recollection of the air and words was the
+more wonderful, for he remembered now that he had only sung that
+particular hymn once.  But to his still greater delight and
+surprise, her voice rose again in the second verse, with a touch of
+plaintiveness that swelled his throat:
+
+
+     We are traveling home to God,
+     In the way our farzers trod,
+     They are happy now, and we
+     Soon their happiness shall see.
+
+
+The simple, almost childish words--so childish that they might have
+been the fitting creation of her own childish lips--here died away
+with a sweep and crash of the whole strings.  Breathless silence
+followed, in which Stephen Masterton could feel the beatings of his
+own heart.
+
+"Miss Ramirez," he called, in a voice that scarcely seemed his own.
+There was no reply.  "Pepita!" he repeated; it was strangely like
+the accent of a lover, but he no longer cared.  Still the singer's
+voice was silent.
+
+Then he ran swiftly beside the wall, as he had seen her run, until
+he came to the fissure.  It was overgrown with vines and brambles
+almost as impenetrable as an abatis, but if she had pierced it in
+her delicate crape dress, so could he!  He brushed roughly through,
+and found himself in a glimmering aisle of pear trees close by the
+white wall of the Mission church.
+
+For a moment in that intricate tracing of ebony and ivory made by
+the rising moon, he was dazzled, but evidently his irruption into
+the orchard had not been as lithe and silent as her own, for a
+figure in a parti-colored dress suddenly started into activity, and
+running from the wall, began to course through the trees until it
+became apparently a part of that involved pattern.  Nothing
+daunted, however, Stephen Masterton pursued, his speed increased as
+he recognized the flounces of Pepita's barred dress, but the young
+girl had the advantage of knowing the locality, and could evade her
+pursuer by unsuspected turns and doubles.
+
+For some moments this fanciful sylvan chase was kept up in perfect
+silence; it might have been a woodland nymph pursued by a wandering
+shepherd.  Masterton presently saw that she was making toward a
+tiled roof that was now visible as projecting over the presidio
+wall, and was evidently her goal of refuge.  He redoubled his
+speed; with skillful audacity and sheer strength of his broad
+shoulders he broke through a dense ceanothus hedge which Pepita was
+swiftly skirting, and suddenly appeared between her and her house.
+
+With her first cry, the young girl turned and tried to bury herself
+in the hedge; but in another stride the circuit preacher was at her
+side, and caught her panting figure in his arms.
+
+While he had been running he had swiftly formulated what he should
+do and what he should say to her.  To his simple appeal for her
+companionship and willing ear he would add a brotherly tenderness,
+that should invite her trustfulness in him; he would confess his
+wrong and ask her forgiveness of his abrupt solicitations; he would
+propose to teach her more hymns, they would practice psalmody
+together; even this priest, the custodian of her soul, could not
+object to that; but chiefly he would thank her: he would tell her
+how she had pleased him, and this would lead to more serious and
+thoughtful converse.  All this was in his mind while he ran, was
+upon his lips as he caught her and for an instant she lapsed,
+exhausted, in his arms.  But, alas! even in that moment he suddenly
+drew her toward him, and kissed her as only a lover could!
+
+
+The wire grass was already yellowing on the Tasajara plains with
+the dusty decay of the long, dry summer when Dr. Duchesne returned
+to Tasajara.  He came to see the wife of Deacon Sanderson, who,
+having for the twelfth time added to the population of the
+settlement, was not "doing as well" as everybody--except, possibly,
+Dr. Duchesne--expected.  After he had made this hollow-eyed, over-
+burdened, undernourished woman as comfortable as he could in her
+rude, neglected surroundings, to change the dreary chronicle of
+suffering, he turned to the husband, and said, "And what has become
+of Mr. Masterton, who used to be in your--vocation?"  A long groan
+came from the deacon.
+
+"Hallo!  I hope he has not had a relapse," said the doctor,
+earnestly.  "I thought I'd knocked all that nonsense out of him--I
+beg your pardon--I mean," he added, hurriedly, "he wrote to me only
+a few weeks ago that he was picking up his strength again and doing
+well!"
+
+"In his weak, gross, sinful flesh--yes, no doubt," returned the
+Deacon, scornfully, "and, perhaps, even in a worldly sense, for
+those who value the vanities of life; but he is lost to us, for all
+time, and lost to eternal life forever.  Not," he continued in
+sanctimonious vindictiveness, "but that I often had my doubts of
+Brother Masterton's steadfastness.  He was too much given to
+imagery and song."
+
+"But what has he done?" persisted Dr. Duchesne.
+
+"Done!  He has embraced the Scarlet Woman!"
+
+"Dear me!" said the doctor, "so soon?  Is it anybody you knew
+here?--not anybody's wife?  Eh?"
+
+"He has entered the Church of Rome," said the Deacon, indignantly,
+"he has forsaken the God of his fathers for the tents of the
+idolaters; he is the consort of Papists and the slave of the Pope!"
+
+"But are you SURE?" said Dr. Duchesne, with perhaps less concern
+than before.
+
+"Sure," returned the Deacon angrily, "didn't Brother Bulkley, on
+account of warning reports made by a God-fearing and soul-seeking
+teamster, make a special pilgrimage to this land of Sodom to
+inquire and spy out its wickedness?  Didn't he find Stephen
+Masterton steeped in the iniquity of practicing on an organ--he
+that scorned even a violin or harmonium in the tents of the Lord--
+in an idolatrous chapel, with a foreign female Papist for a
+teacher?  Didn't he find him a guest at the board of a Jesuit
+priest, visiting the schools of the Mission where this young
+Jezebel of a singer teaches the children to chant in unknown
+tongues?  Didn't he find him living with a wrinkled Indian witch
+who called him 'Padrone'--and speaking her gibberish?  Didn't he
+find him, who left here a man mortified in flesh and spirit and
+pale with striving with sinners, fat and rosy from native wines and
+fleshpots, and even vain and gaudy in colored apparel?  And last of
+all, didn't Brother Bulkley hear that a rumor was spread far and
+wide that this miserable backslider was to take to himself a wife--
+in one of these strange women--that very Jezebel who seduced him?
+What do you call that?"
+
+"It looks a good deal like human nature," said the doctor,
+musingly, "but I call it a cure!"
+
+
+
+THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH
+
+
+The American paused.  He had evidently lost his way.  For the last
+half hour he had been wandering in a medieval town, in a profound
+medieval dream.  Only a few days had elapsed since he had left the
+steamship that carried him hither; and the accents of his own
+tongue, the idioms of his own people, and the sympathetic community
+of New World tastes and expressions still filled his mind until he
+woke up, or rather, as it seemed to him, was falling asleep in the
+past of this Old World town which had once held his ancestors.
+Although a republican, he had liked to think of them in quaint
+distinctive garb, representing state and importance--perhaps even
+aristocratic pre-eminence--content to let the responsibility of
+such "bad eminence" rest with them entirely, but a habit of
+conscientiousness and love for historic truth eventually led him
+also to regard an honest BAUER standing beside his cattle in the
+quaint market place, or a kindly-faced black-eyed DIENSTMADCHEN in
+a doorway, with a timid, respectful interest, as a possible type of
+his progenitors.  For, unlike some of his traveling countrymen in
+Europe, he was not a snob, and it struck him--as an American--that
+it was, perhaps, better to think of his race as having improved
+than as having degenerated.  In these ingenuous meditations he had
+passed the long rows of quaint, high houses, whose sagging roofs
+and unpatched dilapidations were yet far removed from squalor,
+until he had reached the road bordered by poplars, all so unlike
+his own country's waysides--and knew that he had wandered far from
+his hotel.
+
+He did not care, however, to retrace his steps and return by the
+way he had come.  There was, he reasoned, some other street or
+turning that would eventually bring him to the market place and his
+hotel, and yet extend his experience of the town.  He turned at
+right angles into a narrow grass lane, which was, however, as
+neatly kept and apparently as public as the highway.  A few
+moments' walking convinced him that it was not a thoroughfare and
+that it led to the open gates of a park.  This had something of a
+public look, which suggested that his intrusion might be at least a
+pardonable trespass, and he relied, like most strangers, on the
+exonerating quality of a stranger's ignorance.  The park lay in the
+direction he wished to go, and yet it struck him as singular that a
+park of such extent should be still allowed to occupy such valuable
+urban space.  Indeed, its length seemed to be illimitable as he
+wandered on, until he became conscious that he must have again lost
+his way, and he diverged toward the only boundary, a high, thickset
+hedge to the right, whose line he had been following.
+
+As he neared it he heard the sound of voices on the other side,
+speaking in German, with which he was unfamiliar.  Having, as yet,
+met no one, and being now impressed with the fact that for a public
+place the park was singularly deserted, he was conscious that his
+position was getting serious, and he determined to take this only
+chance of inquiring his way.  The hedge was thinner in some places
+than in others, and at times he could see not only the light
+through it but even the moving figures of the speakers, and the
+occasional white flash of a summer gown.  At last he determined to
+penetrate it, and with little difficulty emerged on the other side.
+But here he paused motionless.  He found himself behind a somewhat
+formal and symmetrical group of figures with their backs toward
+him, but all stiffened into attitudes as motionless as his own, and
+all gazing with a monotonous intensity in the direction of a
+handsome building, which had been invisible above the hedge but
+which now seemed to arise suddenly before him.  Some of the figures
+were in uniform.  Immediately before him, but so slightly separated
+from the others that he was enabled to see the house between her
+and her companions, he was confronted by the pretty back,
+shoulders, and blond braids of a young girl of twenty.  Convinced
+that he had unwittingly intruded upon some august ceremonial, he
+instantly slipped back into the hedge, but so silently that his
+momentary presence was evidently undetected.  When he regained the
+park side he glanced back through the interstices; there was no
+movement of the figures nor break in the silence to indicate that
+his intrusion had been observed.  With a long breath of relief he
+hurried from the park.
+
+It was late when he finally got back to his hotel.  But his little
+modern adventure had, I fear, quite outrun his previous medieval
+reflections, and almost his first inquiry of the silver-chained
+porter in the courtyard was in regard to the park.  There was no
+public park in Alstadt!  The Herr possibly alluded to the Hof
+Gardens--the Schloss, which was in the direction he indicated.  The
+Schloss was the residency of the hereditary Grand Duke.  JA WOHL!
+He was stopping there with several Hoheiten.  There was naturally a
+party there--a family reunion.  But it was a private enclosure.  At
+times, when the Grand Duke was not in residence," it was open to
+the public.  In point of fact, at such times tickets of admission
+were to be had at the hotel for fifty pfennige each.  There was
+not, of truth, much to see except a model farm and dairy--the
+pretty toy of a previous Grand Duchess.
+
+But he seemed destined to come into closer collision with the
+modern life of Alstadt.  On entering the hotel, wearied by his long
+walk, he passed the landlord and a man in half-military uniform on
+the landing near his room.  As he entered his apartment he had a
+vague impression, without exactly knowing why, that the landlord
+and the military stranger had just left it.  This feeling was
+deepened by the evident disarrangement of certain articles in his
+unlocked portmanteau and the disorganization of his writing case.
+A wave of indignation passed over him.  It was followed by a knock
+at the door, and the landlord blandly appeared with the stranger.
+
+"A thousand pardons," said the former, smilingly, "but Herr
+Sanderman, the Ober-Inspector of Police, wishes to speak with you.
+I hope we are not intruding?"
+
+"Not NOW," said the American, dryly.
+
+The two exchanged a vacant and deprecating smile.
+
+"I have to ask only a few formal questions," said the Ober-
+Inspector in excellent but somewhat precise English, "to supplement
+the report which, as a stranger, you may not know is required by
+the police from the landlord in regard to the names and quality of
+his guests who are foreign to the town.  You have a passport?"
+
+"I have," said the American still more dryly.  "But I do not keep
+it in an unlocked portmanteau or an open writing case."
+
+"An admirable precaution," said Sanderman, with unmoved politeness.
+"May I see it?  Thanks," he added, glancing over the document which
+the American produced from his pocket.  "I see that you are a born
+American citizen--and an earlier knowledge of that fact would have
+prevented this little contretemps.  You are aware, Mr. Hoffman,
+that your name is German?"
+
+"It was borne by my ancestors, who came from this country two
+centuries ago," said Hoffman, curtly.
+
+"We are indeed honored by your return to it," returned Sanderman
+suavely, "but it was the circumstance of your name being a local
+one, and the possibility of your still being a German citizen
+liable to unperformed military duty, which has caused the trouble."
+His manner was clearly civil and courteous, but Hoffman felt that
+all the time his own face and features were undergoing a profound
+scrutiny from the speaker.
+
+"And you are making sure that you will know me again?" said
+Hoffman, with a smile.
+
+"I trust, indeed, both," returned Sanderman, with a bow, "although
+you will permit me to say that your description here," pointing to
+the passport, "scarcely does you justice.  ACH GOTT! it is the same
+in all countries; the official eye is not that of the young DAMEN."
+
+Hoffman, though not conceited, had not lived twenty years without
+knowing that he was very good-looking, yet there was something in
+the remark that caused him to color with a new uneasiness.
+
+The Ober-Inspector rose with another bow, and moved toward the
+door.  "I hope you will let me make amends for this intrusion by
+doing anything I can to render your visit here a pleasant one.
+Perhaps," he added, "it is not for long."
+
+But Hoffman evaded the evident question, as he resented what he
+imagined was a possible sneer.
+
+"I have not yet determined my movements," he said.
+
+The Ober-Inspector brought his heels together in a somewhat stiffer
+military salute and departed.
+
+Nothing, however, could have exceeded the later almost servile
+urbanity of the landlord, who seemed to have been proud of the
+official visit to his guest.  He was profuse in his attentions, and
+even introduced him to a singularly artistic-looking man of middle
+age, wearing an order in his buttonhole, whom he met casually in
+the hall.
+
+"Our Court photographer," explained the landlord with some fervor,
+"at whose studio, only a few houses distant, most of the Hoheiten
+and Prinzessinen of Germany have sat for their likenesses."
+
+"I should feel honored if the distinguished American Herr would
+give me a visit," said the stranger gravely, as he gazed at Hoffman
+with an intensity which recalled the previous scrutiny of the
+Police Inspector, "and I would be charmed if he would avail himself
+of my poor skill to transmit his picturesque features to my unique
+collection."
+
+Hoffman returned a polite evasion to this invitation, although he
+was conscious of being struck with this second examination of his
+face, and the allusion to his personality.
+
+The next morning the porter met him with a mysterious air.  The
+Herr would still like to see the Schloss?  Hoffman, who had quite
+forgotten his adventure in the park, looked vacant.  JA WOHL--the
+Hof authorities had no doubt heard of his visit and had intimated
+to the hotel proprietor that he might have permission to visit the
+model farm and dairy.  As the American still looked indifferent the
+porter pointed out with some importance that it was a Ducal
+courtesy not to be lightly treated; that few, indeed, of the
+burghers themselves had ever been admitted to this eccentric whim
+of the late Grand Duchess.  He would, of course, be silent about
+it; the Court would not like it known that they had made an
+exception to their rules in favor of a foreigner; he would enter
+quickly and boldly alone.  There would be a housekeeper or a
+dairymaid to show him over the place.
+
+More amused at this important mystery over what he, as an American,
+was inclined to classify as a "free pass" to a somewhat heavy "side
+show," he gravely accepted the permission, and the next morning
+after breakfast set out to visit the model farm and dairy.
+Dismissing his driver, as he had been instructed, Hoffman entered
+the gateway with a mingling of expectancy and a certain amusement
+over the "boldness" which the porter had suggested should
+characterize his entrance.  Before him was a beautifully kept lane
+bordered by arbored and trellised roses, which seemed to sink into
+the distance.  He was instinctively following it when he became
+aware that he was mysteriously accompanied by a man in the livery
+of a chasseur, who was walking among the trees almost abreast of
+him, keeping pace with his step, and after the first introductory
+military salute preserving a ceremonious silence.  There was
+something so ludicrous in this solemn procession toward a peaceful,
+rural industry that by the time they had reached the bottom of the
+lane the American had quite recovered his good humor.  But here a
+new astonishment awaited him.  Nestling before him in a green
+amphitheater lay a little wooden farm-yard and outbuildings, which
+irresistibly suggested that it had been recently unpacked and set
+up from a box of Nuremberg toys.  The symmetrical trees, the
+galleried houses with preternaturally glazed windows, even the
+spotty, disproportionately sized cows in the white-fenced barnyards
+were all unreal, wooden and toylike.
+
+Crossing a miniature bridge over a little stream, from which he was
+quite prepared to hook metallic fish with a magnet their own size,
+he looked about him for some real being to dispel the illusion.
+The mysterious chasseur had disappeared.  But under the arch of an
+arbor, which seemed to be composed of silk ribbons, green glass,
+and pink tissue paper, stood a quaint but delightful figure.
+
+At first it seemed as if he had only dispelled one illusion for
+another.  For the figure before him might have been made of Dresden
+china--so daintily delicate and unique it was in color and
+arrangement.  It was that of a young girl dressed in some forgotten
+medieval peasant garb of velvet braids, silver-staylaced corsage,
+lace sleeves, and helmeted metallic comb.  But, after the Dresden
+method, the pale yellow of her hair was repeated in her bodice, the
+pink of her cheeks was in the roses of her chintz overskirt.  The
+blue of her eyes was the blue of her petticoat; the dazzling
+whiteness of her neck shone again in the sleeves and stockings.
+Nevertheless she was real and human, for the pink deepened in her
+cheeks as Hoffman's hat flew from his head, and she recognized the
+civility with a grave little curtsy.
+
+"You have come to see the dairy," she said in quaintly accurate
+English; "I will show you the way."
+
+"If you please," said Hoffman, gaily, "but--"
+
+"But what?" she said, facing him suddenly with absolutely
+astonished eyes.
+
+Hoffman looked into them so long that their frank wonder presently
+contracted into an ominous mingling of restraint and resentment.
+Nothing daunted, however, he went on:
+
+"Couldn't we shake all that?"
+
+The look of wonder returned.  "Shake all that?" she repeated.  "I
+do not understand."
+
+"Well! I'm not positively aching to see cows, and you must be sick
+of showing them.  I think, too, I've about sized the whole show.
+Wouldn't it be better if we sat down in that arbor--supposing it
+won't fall down--and you told me all about the lot?  It would save
+you a heap of trouble and keep your pretty frock cleaner than
+trapesing round.  Of course," he said, with a quick transition to
+the gentlest courtesy, "if you're conscientious about this thing
+we'll go on and not spare a cow.  Consider me in it with you for
+the whole morning."
+
+She looked at him again, and then suddenly broke into a charming
+laugh.  It revealed a set of strong white teeth, as well as a
+certain barbaric trace in its cadence which civilized restraint had
+not entirely overlaid.
+
+"I suppose she really is a peasant, in spite of that pretty frock,"
+he said to himself as he laughed too.
+
+But her face presently took a shade of reserve, and with a gentle
+but singular significance she said:
+
+"I think you must see the dairy."
+
+Hoffman's hat was in his hand with a vivacity that tumbled the
+brown curls on his forehead.  "By all means," he said instantly,
+and began walking by her side in modest but easy silence.  Now that
+he thought her a conscientious peasant he was quiet and respectful.
+
+Presently she lifted her eyes, which, despite her gravity, had not
+entirely lost their previous mirthfulness, and said:
+
+"But you Americans--in your rich and prosperous country, with your
+large lands and your great harvests--you must know all about
+farming."
+
+"Never was in a dairy in my life," said Hoffman gravely.  "I'm from
+the city of New York, where the cows give swill milk, and are kept
+in cellars."
+
+Her eyebrows contracted prettily in an effort to understand.  Then
+she apparently gave it up, and said with a slanting glint of
+mischief in her eyes:
+
+"Then you come here like the other Americans in hope to see the
+Grand Duke and Duchess and the Princesses?"
+
+"No.  The fact is I almost tumbled into a lot of 'em--standing like
+wax figures--the other side of the park lodge, the other day--and
+got away as soon as I could.  I think I prefer the cows."
+
+Her head was slightly turned away.  He had to content himself with
+looking down upon the strong feet in their serviceable but smartly
+buckled shoes that uplifted her upright figure as she moved beside
+him.
+
+"Of course," he added with boyish but unmistakable courtesy, "if
+it's part of your show to trot out the family, why I'm in that,
+too.  I dare say you could make them interesting."
+
+"But why," she said with her head still slightly turned away toward
+a figure--a sturdy-looking woman, which, for the first time,
+Hoffman perceived was walking in a line with them as the chasseur
+had done--"why did you come here at all?"
+
+"The first time was a fool accident," he returned frankly.  "I was
+making a short cut through what I thought was a public park.  The
+second time was because I had been rude to a Police Inspector whom
+I found going through my things, but who apologized--as I suppose--
+by getting me an invitation from the Grand Duke to come here, and I
+thought it only the square thing to both of 'em to accept it.  But
+I'm mighty glad I came; I wouldn't have missed YOU for a thousand
+dollars.  You see I haven't struck anyone I cared to talk to
+since."  Here he suddenly remarked that she hadn't looked at him,
+and that the delicate whiteness of her neck was quite suffused with
+pink, and stopped instantly.  Presently he said quite easily:
+
+"Who's the chorus?"
+
+"The lady?"
+
+"Yes.  She's watching us as if she didn't quite approve, you know--
+just as if she didn't catch on."
+
+"She's the head housekeeper of the farm.  Perhaps you would prefer
+to have her show you the dairy; shall I call her?"
+
+The figure in question was very short and stout, with voluminous
+petticoats.
+
+"Please don't; I'll stay without your setting that paperweight on
+me.  But here's the dairy.  Don't let her come inside among those
+pans of fresh milk with that smile, or there'll be trouble."
+
+The young girl paused too, made a slight gesture with her hand, and
+the figure passed on as they entered the dairy.  It was beautifully
+clean and fresh.  With a persistence that he quickly recognized as
+mischievous and ironical, and with his characteristic adaptability
+accepted with even greater gravity and assumption of interest, she
+showed him all the details.  From thence they passed to the
+farmyard, where he hung with breathless attention over the names of
+the cows and made her repeat them.  Although she was evidently
+familiar with the subject, he could see that her zeal was fitful
+and impatient.
+
+"Suppose we sit down," he said, pointing to an ostentatious rustic
+seat in the center of the green.
+
+"Sir down?" she repeated wonderingly.  "What for?"
+
+"To talk.  We'll knock off and call it half a day."
+
+"But if you are not looking at the farm you are, of course, going,"
+she said quickly.
+
+"Am I?  I don't think these particulars were in my invitation."
+
+She again broke into a fit of laughter, and at the same time cast a
+bright eye around the field.
+
+"Come," he said gently, "there are no other sightseers waiting, and
+your conscience is clear," and he moved toward the rustic seat.
+
+"Certainly not--there," she added in a low voice.
+
+They moved on slowly together to a copse of willows which overhung
+the miniature stream.
+
+"You are not staying long in Alstadt?" she said.
+
+"No; I only came to see the old town that my ancestors came from."
+
+They were walking so close together that her skirt brushed his
+trousers, but she suddenly drew away from him, and looking him
+fixedly in the eye said:
+
+"Ah, you have relations here?"
+
+"Yes, but they are dead two hundred years."
+
+She laughed again with a slight expression of relief.  They had
+entered the copse and were walking in dense shadow when she
+suddenly stopped and sat down upon a rustic bench.  To his surprise
+he found that they were quite alone.
+
+"Tell me about these relatives," she said, slightly drawing aside
+her skirt to make room for him on the seat.
+
+He did not require a second invitation.  He not only told her all
+about his ancestral progenitors, but, I fear, even about those more
+recent and more nearly related to him; about his own life, his
+vocation--he was a clever newspaper correspondent with a roving
+commission--his ambitions, his beliefs and his romance.
+
+"And then, perhaps, of this visit--you will also make 'copy'?"
+
+He smiled at her quick adaptation of his professional slang, but
+shook his head.
+
+"No," he said gravely.  "No--this is YOU.  The CHICAGO INTERVIEWER
+is big pay and is rich, but it hasn't capital enough to buy you
+from me.
+
+He gently slid his hand toward hers and slipped his fingers softly
+around it.  She made a slight movement of withdrawal, but even
+then--as if in forgetfulness or indifference--permitted her hand to
+rest unresponsively in his.  It was scarcely an encouragement to
+gallantry, neither was it a rejection of an unconscious
+familiarity.
+
+"But you haven't told me about yourself," he said.
+
+"Oh, I"--she returned, with her first approach to coquetry in a
+laugh and a sidelong glance, "of what importance is that to you?
+It is the Grand Duchess and Her Highness the Princess that you
+Americans seek to know.  I am--what I am--as you see."
+
+"You bet," said Hoffman with charming decision.
+
+"I WHAT?"
+
+"You ARE, you know, and that's good enough for me, but I don't even
+know your name."
+
+She laughed again, and after a pause, said: "Elsbeth."
+
+"But I couldn't call you by your first name on our first meeting,
+you know."
+
+"Then you Americans are really so very formal--eh?" she said slyly,
+looking at her imprisoned hand.
+
+"Well, yes," returned Hoffman, disengaging it.  "I suppose we are
+respectful, or mean to be.  But whom am I to inquire for?  To write
+to?"
+
+"You are neither to write nor inquire."
+
+"What?"  She had moved in her seat so as to half-face him with eyes
+in which curiosity, mischief, and a certain seriousness alternated,
+but for the first time seemed conscious of his hand, and accented
+her words with a slight pressure.
+
+"You are to return to your hotel presently, and say to your
+landlord: 'Pack up my luggage.  I have finished with this old town
+and my ancestors, and the Grand Duke, whom I do not care to see,
+and I shall leave Alstadt tomorrow!'"
+
+"Thank you!  I don't catch on."
+
+"Of what necessity should you?  I have said it.  That should be
+enough for a chivalrous American like you."  She again
+significantly looked down at her hand.
+
+"If you mean that you know the extent of the favor you ask of me, I
+can say no more," he said seriously; "but give me some reason for
+it."
+
+"Ah so!" she said, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.  "Then 1
+must tell you.  You say you do not know the Grand Duke and Duchess.
+Well! THEY KNOW YOU.  The day before yesterday you were wandering
+in the park, as you admit.  You say, also, you got through the
+hedge and interrupted some ceremony.  That ceremony was not a Court
+function, Mr. Hoffman, but something equally sacred--the
+photographing of the Ducal family before the Schloss.  You say that
+you instantly withdrew.  But after the photograph was taken the
+plate revealed a stranger standing actually by the side of the
+Princess Alexandrine, and even taking the PAS of the Grand Duke
+himself.  That stranger was you!"
+
+"And the picture was spoiled," said the American, with a quiet
+laugh.
+
+"I should not say that," returned the lady, with a demure glance at
+her companion's handsome face, "and I do not believe that the
+Princess--who first saw the photograph--thought so either.  But she
+is very young and willful, and has the reputation of being very
+indiscreet, and unfortunately she begged the photographer not to
+destroy the plate, but to give it to her, and to say nothing about
+it, except that the plate was defective, and to take another.
+Still it would have ended there if her curiosity had not led her to
+confide a description of the stranger to the Police Inspector, with
+the result you know."
+
+"Then I am expected to leave town because I accidentally stumbled
+into a family group that was being photographed?"
+
+"Because a certain Princess was indiscreet enough to show her
+curiosity about you," corrected the fair stranger.
+
+"But look here!  I'll apologize to the Princess, and offer to pay
+for the plate."
+
+"Then you do want to see the Princess?" said the young girl
+smiling; "you are like the others."
+
+"Bother the Princess!  I want to see YOU.  And I don't see how they
+can prevent it if I choose to remain."
+
+"Very easily.  You will find that there is something wrong with
+your passport, and you will be sent on to Pumpernickel for
+examination.  You will unwittingly transgress some of the laws of
+the town and be ordered to leave it.  You will be shadowed by the
+police until you quarrel with them--like a free American--and you
+are conducted to the frontier.  Perhaps you will strike an officer
+who has insulted you, and then you are finished on the spot."
+
+The American's crest rose palpably until it cocked his straw hat
+over his curls.
+
+"Suppose I am content to risk it--having first laid the whole
+matter and its trivial cause before the American Minister, so that
+he could make it hot for this whole caboodle of a country if they
+happened to 'down me.'  By Jove!  I shouldn't mind being the martyr
+of an international episode if they'd spare me long enough to let
+me get the first 'copy' over to the other side."  His eyes
+sparkled.
+
+"You could expose them, but they would then deny the whole story,
+and you have no evidence.  They would demand to know your
+informant, and I should be disgraced, and the Princess, who is
+already talked about, made a subject of scandal.  But no matter!
+It is right that an American's independence shall not be interfered
+with."
+
+She raised the hem of her handkerchief to her blue eyes and
+slightly turned her head aside.  Hoffman gently drew the
+handkerchief away, and in so doing possessed himself of her other
+hand.
+
+"Look here, Miss--Miss--Elsbeth.  You know I wouldn't give you
+away, whatever happened.  But couldn't I get hold of that
+photographer--I saw him, he wanted me to sit to him--and make him
+tell me?"
+
+"He wanted you to sit to him," she said hurriedly, "and did you?"
+
+"No," he replied.  "He was a little too fresh and previous, though
+I thought he fancied some resemblance in me to somebody else."
+
+"Ah!"  She said something to herself in German which he did not
+understand, and then added aloud:
+
+"You did well; he is a bad man, this photographer.  Promise me you
+shall not sit for him."
+
+"How can I if I'm fired out of the place like this?"  He added
+ruefully, "But I'd like to make him give himself away to me
+somehow."
+
+"He will not, and if he did he would deny it afterward.  Do not go
+near him nor see him.  Be careful that he does not photograph you
+with his instantaneous instrument when you are passing.  Now you
+must go.  I must see the Princess."
+
+"Let me go, too.  I will explain it to her," said Hoffman.
+
+She stopped, looked at him keenly, and attempted to withdraw her
+hands.  "Ah, then it IS so.  It is the Princess you wish to see.
+You are curious--you, too; you wish to see this lady who is
+interested in you.  I ought to have known it.  You are all alike."
+
+He met her gaze with laughing frankness, accepting her outburst as
+a charming feminine weakness, half jealousy, half coquetry--but
+retained her hands.
+
+"Nonsense," he said.  "I wish to see her that I may have the right
+to see you--that you shall not lose your place here through me;
+that I may come again."
+
+"You must never come here again."
+
+"Then you must come where I am.  We will meet somewhere when you
+have an afternoon off.  You shall show me the town--the houses of
+my ancestors--their tombs; possibly--if the Grand Duke rampages--
+the probable site of my own."
+
+She looked into his laughing eyes with her clear, stedfast, gravely
+questioning blue ones.  "Do not you Americans know that it is not
+the fashion here, in Germany, for the young men and the young women
+to walk together--unless they are VERLOBT?"
+
+"VER--which?"
+
+"Engaged."  She nodded her head thrice: viciously, decidedly,
+mischievously.
+
+"So much the better."
+
+"ACH GOTT!"  She made a gesture of hopelessness at his
+incorrigibility, and again attempted to withdraw her hands.
+
+"I must go now."
+
+"Well then, good-by."
+
+It was easy to draw her closer by simply lowering her still captive
+hands.  Then he suddenly kissed her coldly startled lips, and
+instantly released her.  She as instantly vanished.
+
+"Elsbeth," he called quickly.  "Elsbeth!"
+
+Her now really frightened face reappeared with a heightened color
+from the dense foliage--quite to his astonishment.
+
+"Hush," she said, with her finger on her lips.  "Are you mad?"
+
+"I only wanted to remind you to square me with the Princess," he
+laughed as her head disappeared.
+
+He strolled back toward the gate.  Scarcely had he quitted the
+shrubbery before the same chasseur made his appearance with
+precisely the same salute; and, keeping exactly the same distance,
+accompanied him to the gate.  At the corner of the street he hailed
+a droshky and was driven to his hotel.
+
+The landlord came up smiling.  He trusted that the Herr had greatly
+enjoyed himself at the Schloss.  It was a distinguished honor--in
+fact, quite unprecedented.  Hoffman, while he determined not to
+commit himself, nor his late fair companion, was nevertheless
+anxious to learn something more of her relations to the Schloss.
+So pretty, so characteristic, and marked a figure must be well
+known to sightseers.  Indeed, once or twice the idea had crossed
+his mind with a slightly jealous twinge that left him more
+conscious of the impression she had made on him than he had deemed
+possible.  He asked if the model farm and dairy were always shown
+by the same attendants.
+
+"ACH GOTT! no doubt, yes; His Royal Highness had quite a retinue
+when he was in residence."
+
+"And were these attendants in costume?"
+
+"There was undoubtedly a livery for the servants."
+
+Hoffman felt a slight republican irritation at the epithet--he knew
+not why.  But this costume was rather a historical one; surely it
+was not entrusted to everyday menials--and he briefly described it.
+
+His host's blank curiosity suddenly changed to a look of mysterious
+and arch intelligence.
+
+"ACH GOTT! yes!"  He remembered now (with his finger on his nose)
+that when there was a fest at the Schloss the farm and dairy were
+filled with shepherdesses, in quaint costume worn by the ladies of
+the Grand Duke's own theatrical company, who assumed the characters
+with great vivacity.  Surely it was the same, and the Grand Duke
+had treated the Herr to this special courtesy.  Yes--there was one
+pretty, blonde young lady--the Fraulein Wimpfenbuttel, a most
+popular soubrette, who would play it to the life!  And the
+description fitted her to a hair!  Ah, there was no doubt of it;
+many persons, indeed, had been so deceived.
+
+But happily, now that he had given him the wink, the Herr could
+corroborate it himself by going to the theater tonight.  Ah, it
+would be a great joke--quite colossal! if he took a front seat
+where she could see him.  And the good man rubbed his hands in
+gleeful anticipation.
+
+Hoffman had listened to him with a slow repugnance that was only
+equal to his gradual conviction that the explanation was a true
+one, and that he himself had been ridiculously deceived.  The
+mystery of his fair companion's costume, which he had accepted as
+part of the "show"; the inconsistency of her manner and her evident
+occupation; her undeniable wish to terminate the whole episode with
+that single interview; her mingling of worldly aplomb and rustic
+innocence; her perfect self-control and experienced acceptance of
+his gallantry under the simulated attitude of simplicity--all now
+struck him as perfectly comprehensible.  He recalled the actress's
+inimitable touch in certain picturesque realistic details in the
+dairy--which she had not spared him; he recognized it now even in
+their bowered confidences (how like a pretty ballet scene their
+whole interview on the rustic bench was!), and it breathed through
+their entire conversation--to their theatrical parting at the
+close!  And the whole story of the photograph was, no doubt, as
+pure a dramatic invention as the rest!  The Princess's romantic
+interest in him--that Princess who had never appeared (why had he
+not detected the old, well-worn, sentimental situation here?)--was
+all a part of it.  The dark, mysterious hint of his persecution by
+the police was a necessary culmination to the little farce.  Thank
+Heaven! he had not "risen" at the Princess, even if he had given
+himself away to the clever actress in her own humble role.  Then
+the humor of the whole situation predominated and he laughed until
+the tears came to his eyes, and his forgotten ancestors might have
+turned over in their graves without his heeding them.  And with
+this humanizing influence upon him he went to the theater.
+
+It was capacious even for the town, and although the performance
+was a special one he had no difficulty in getting a whole box to
+himself.  He tried to avoid this public isolation by sitting close
+to the next box, where there was a solitary occupant--an officer--
+apparently as lonely as himself.  He had made up his mind that when
+his fair deceiver appeared he would let her see by his significant
+applause that he recognized her, but bore no malice for the trick
+she had played on him.  After all, he had kissed her--he had no
+right to complain.  If she should recognize him, and this
+recognition led to a withdrawal of her prohibition, and their
+better acquaintance, he would be a fool to cavil at her pleasant
+artifice.  Her vocation was certainly a more independent and
+original one than that he had supposed; for its social quality and
+inequality he cared nothing.  He found himself longing for the
+glance of her calm blue eyes, for the pleasant smile that broke the
+seriousness of her sweetly restrained lips.  There was no doubt
+that he should know her even as the heroine of DER CZAR UND DER
+ZIMMERMANN on the bill before him.  He was becoming impatient.  And
+the performance evidently was waiting.  A stir in the outer
+gallery, the clatter of sabers, the filing of uniforms into the
+royal box, and a triumphant burst from the orchestra showed the
+cause.  As a few ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress emerged
+from the background of uniforms and took their places in the front
+of the box, Hoffman looked with some interest for the romantic
+Princess.  Suddenly he saw a face and shoulders in a glitter of
+diamonds that startled him, and then a glance that transfixed him.
+
+He leaned over to his neighbor.  "Who is the young lady in the
+box?"
+
+"The Princess Alexandrine."
+
+"I mean the young lady in blue with blond hair and blue eyes."
+
+"It is the Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie Stephanie, the
+daughter of the Grand Duke--there is none other there."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+He sat silently looking at the rising curtain and the stage.  Then
+be rose quietly, gathered his hat and coat, and left the box.  When
+he reached the gallery he turned instinctively and looked back at
+the royal box.  Her eyes had followed him, and as he remained a
+moment motionless in the doorway her lips parted in a grateful
+smile, and she waved her fan with a faint but unmistakable gesture
+of farewell.
+
+The next morning he left Alstadt.  There was some little delay at
+the Zoll on the frontier, and when Hoffman received back his trunk
+it was accompanied by a little sealed packet which was handed to
+him by the Customhouse Inspector.  Hoffman did not open it until he
+was alone.
+
+
+There hangs upon the wall of his modest apartment in New York a
+narrow, irregular photograph ingeniously framed, of himself
+standing side by side with a young German girl, who, in the
+estimation of his compatriots, is by no means stylish and only
+passably good-looking.  When he is joked by his friends about the
+post of honor given to this production, and questioned as to the
+lady, he remains silent.  The Princess Alexandrine Elsbeth Marie
+Stephanie von Westphalen-Alstadt, among her other royal qualities,
+knew whom to trust.
+
+
+
+THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+In another chronicle which dealt with the exploits of "Chu Chu," a
+Californian mustang, I gave some space to the accomplishments of
+Enriquez Saltillo, who assisted me in training her, and who was
+also brother to Consuelo Saitillo, the young lady to whom I had
+freely given both the mustang and my youthful affections.  I
+consider it a proof of the superiority of masculine friendship that
+neither the subsequent desertion of the mustang nor that of the
+young lady ever made the slightest difference to Enriquez or me in
+our exalted amity.  To a wondering doubt as to what I ever could
+possibly have seen in his sister to admire he joined a tolerant
+skepticism of the whole sex.  This he was wont to express in that
+marvelous combination of Spanish precision and California slang for
+which he was justly famous.  "As to thees women and their little
+game," he would say, "believe me, my friend, your old Oncle 'Enry
+is not in it.  No; he will ever take a back seat when lofe is
+around.  For why?  Regard me here!  If she is a horse, you shall
+say, 'She will buck-jump,' 'She will ess-shy,' 'She will not
+arrive,' or 'She will arrive too quick.'  But if it is thees women,
+where are you?  For when you shall say, 'She will ess-shy,' look
+you, she will walk straight; or she will remain tranquil when you
+think she buck-jump; or else she will arrive and, look you, you
+will not.  You shall get left.  It is ever so.  My father and the
+brother of my father have both make court to my mother when she was
+but a senorita.  My father think she have lofe his brother more.
+So he say to her: 'It is enofe; tranquillize yourself.  I will go.
+I will efface myself.  Adios!  Shake hands!  Ta-ta!  So long!  See
+you again in the fall.'  And what make my mother?  Regard me!  She
+marry my father--on the instant!  Of thees women, believe me,
+Pancho, you shall know nothing.  Not even if they shall make you
+the son of your father or his nephew."
+
+I have recalled this characteristic speech to show the general
+tendency of Enriquez' convictions at the opening of this little
+story.  It is only fair to say, however, that his usual attitude
+toward the sex he so cheerfully maligned exhibited little
+apprehension or caution in dealing with them.  Among the frivolous
+and light-minded intermixture of his race he moved with great
+freedom and popularity.  He danced well; when we went to fandangos
+together his agility and the audacity of his figures always
+procured him the prettiest partners, his professed sentiments, I
+presume, shielding him from subsequent jealousies, heartburnings,
+or envy.  I have a vivid recollection of him in the mysteries of
+the SEMICUACUA, a somewhat corybantic dance which left much to the
+invention of the performers, and very little to the imagination of
+the spectator.  In one of the figures a gaudy handkerchief, waved
+more or less gracefully by dancer and danseuse before the dazzled
+eyes of each other, acted as love's signal, and was used to express
+alternate admiration and indifference, shyness and audacity, fear
+and transport, coyness and coquetry, as the dance proceeded.  I
+need not say that Enriquez' pantomimic illustration of these
+emotions was peculiarly extravagant; but it was always performed
+and accepted with a gravity that was an essential feature of the
+dance.  At such times sighs would escape him which were supposed to
+portray the incipient stages of passion; snorts of jealousy burst
+from him at the suggestion of a rival; he was overtaken by a sort
+of St. Vitus's dance that expressed his timidity in making the
+first advances of affection; the scorn of his ladylove struck him
+with something like a dumb ague; and a single gesture of invitation
+from her produced marked delirium.  All this was very like
+Enriquez; but on the particular occasion to which I refer, I think
+no one was prepared to see him begin the figure with the waving of
+FOUR handkerchiefs!  Yet this he did, pirouetting, capering,
+brandishing his silken signals like a ballerina's scarf in the
+languishment or fire of passion, until, in a final figure, where
+the conquered and submitting fair one usually sinks into the arms
+of her partner, need it be said that the ingenious Enriquez was
+found in the center of the floor supporting four of the dancers!
+Yet he was by no means unduly excited either by the plaudits of the
+crowd or by his evident success with the fair.  "Ah, believe me, it
+is nothing," he said quietly, rolling a fresh cigarette as he
+leaned against the doorway.  "Possibly, I shall have to offer the
+chocolate or the wine to thees girls, or make to them a promenade
+in the moonlight on the veranda.  It is ever so.  Unless, my
+friend," he said, suddenly turning toward me in an excess of
+chivalrous self-abnegation, "unless you shall yourself take my
+place.  Behold, I gif them to you!  I vamos!  I vanish!  I make
+track!  I skedaddle!"  I think he would have carried his
+extravagance to the point of summoning his four gypsy witches of
+partners, and committing them to my care, if the crowd had not at
+that moment parted before the remaining dancers, and left one of
+the onlookers, a tall, slender girl, calmly surveying them through
+gold-rimmed eyeglasses in complete critical absorption.  I stared
+in amazement and consternation; for I recognized in the fair
+stranger Miss Urania Mannersley, the Congregational minister's
+niece!
+
+Everybody knew Rainie Mannersley throughout the length and breadth
+of the Encinal.  She was at once the envy and the goad of the
+daughters of those Southwestern and Eastern immigrants who had
+settled in the valley.  She was correct, she was critical, she was
+faultless and observant.  She was proper, yet independent; she was
+highly educated; she was suspected of knowing Latin and Greek; she
+even spelled correctly!  She could wither the plainest field
+nosegay in the hands of other girls by giving the flowers their
+botanical names.  She never said "Ain't you?" but "Aren't you?"
+She looked upon "Did I which?" as an incomplete and imperfect form
+of "What did I do?"  She quoted from Browning and Tennyson, and was
+believed to have read them.  She was from Boston.  What could she
+possibly be doing at a free-and-easy fandango?
+
+Even if these facts were not already familiar to everyone there,
+her outward appearance would have attracted attention.  Contrasted
+with the gorgeous red, black, and yellow skirts of the dancers, her
+plain, tightly fitting gown and hat, all of one delicate gray, were
+sufficiently notable in themselves, even had they not seemed, like
+the girl herself, a kind of quiet protest to the glaring flounces
+before her.  Her small, straight waist and flat back brought into
+greater relief the corsetless, waistless, swaying figures of the
+Mexican girls, and her long, slim, well-booted feet, peeping from
+the stiff, white edges of her short skirt, made their broad, low-
+quartered slippers, held on by the big toe, appear more
+preposterous than ever.  Suddenly she seemed to realize that she
+was standing there alone, but without fear or embarrassment.  She
+drew back a little, glancing carelessly behind her as if missing
+some previous companion, and then her eyes fell upon mine.  She
+smiled an easy recognition; then a moment later, her glance rested
+more curiously upon Enriquez, who was still by my side.  I
+disengaged myself and instantly joined her, particularly as I
+noticed that a few of the other bystanders were beginning to stare
+at her with little reserve.
+
+"Isn't it the most extraordinary thing you ever saw?" she said
+quietly.  Then, presently noticing the look of embarrassment on my
+face, she went on, more by way of conversation than of explanation:
+
+"I just left uncle making a call on a parishioner next door, and
+was going home with Jocasta (a peon servant of her uncle's), when I
+heard the music, and dropped in.  I don't know what has become of
+her," she added, glancing round the room again; "she seemed
+perfectly wild when she saw that creature over there bounding about
+with his handkerchiefs.  You were speaking to him just now.  Do
+tell me--is he real?"
+
+"I should think there was little doubt of that," I said with a
+vague laugh.
+
+"You know what I mean," she said simply.  "Is he quite sane?  Does
+he do that because he likes it, or is he paid for it?"
+
+This was too much.  I pointed out somewhat hurriedly that he was a
+scion of one of the oldest Castilian families, that the performance
+was a national gypsy dance which he had joined in as a patriot and
+a patron, and that he was my dearest friend.  At the same time I
+was conscious that I wished she hadn't seen his last performance.
+
+"You don't mean to say that all that he did was in the dance?" she
+said.  "I don't believe it.  It was only like him."  As I hesitated
+over this palpable truth, she went on: "I do wish he'd do it again.
+Don't you think you could make him?"
+
+"Perhaps he might if YOU asked him," I said a little maliciously.
+
+"Of course I shouldn't do that," she returned quietly.  "All the
+same, I do believe he is really going to do it--or something else.
+Do look!"
+
+I looked, and to my horror saw that Enriquez, possibly incited by
+the delicate gold eyeglasses of Miss Mannersley, had divested
+himself of his coat, and was winding the four handkerchiefs, tied
+together, picturesquely around his waist, preparatory to some new
+performance.  I tried furtively to give him a warning look, but in
+vain.
+
+"Isn't he really too absurd for anything?" said Miss Mannersley,
+yet with a certain comfortable anticipation in her voice.  "You
+know, I never saw anything like this before.  I wouldn't have
+believed such a creature could have existed."
+
+Even had I succeeded in warning him, I doubt if it would have been
+of any avail.  For, seizing a guitar from one of the musicians, he
+struck a few chords, and suddenly began to zigzag into the center
+of the floor, swaying his body languishingly from side to side in
+time with the music and the pitch of a thin Spanish tenor.  It was
+a gypsy love song.  Possibly Miss Mannersley's lingual
+accomplishments did not include a knowledge of Castilian, but she
+could not fail to see that the gestures and illustrative pantomime
+were addressed to her.  Passionately assuring her that she was the
+most favored daughter of the Virgin, that her eyes were like votive
+tapers, and yet in the same breath accusing her of being a
+"brigand" and "assassin" in her attitude toward "his heart," he
+balanced with quivering timidity toward her, threw an imaginary
+cloak in front of her neat boots as a carpet for her to tread on,
+and with a final astonishing pirouette and a languishing twang of
+his guitar, sank on one knee, and blew, with a rose, a kiss at her
+feet.
+
+If I had been seriously angry with him before for his grotesque
+extravagance, I could have pitied him now for the young girl's
+absolute unconsciousness of anything but his utter ludicrousness.
+The applause of dancers and bystanders was instantaneous and
+hearty; her only contribution to it was a slight parting of her
+thin red lips in a half-incredulous smile.  In the silence that
+followed the applause, as Enriquez walked pantingly away, I heard
+her saying, half to herself, "Certainly a most extraordinary
+creature!"  In my indignation I could not help turning suddenly
+upon her and looking straight into her eyes.  They were brown, with
+that peculiar velvet opacity common to the pupils of nearsighted
+persons, and seemed to defy internal scrutiny.  She only repeated
+carelessly, "Isn't he?" and added: "Please see if you can find
+Jocasta.  I suppose we ought to be going now; and I dare say he
+won't be doing it again.  Ah! there she is.  Good gracious, child!
+what have you got there?"
+
+It was Enriquez' rose which Jocasta had picked up, and was timidly
+holding out toward her mistress.
+
+"Heavens! I don't want it.  Keep it yourself."
+
+I walked with them to the door, as I did not fancy a certain
+glitter in the black eyes of the Senoritas Manuela and Pepita, who
+were watching her curiously.  But I think she was as oblivious of
+this as she was of Enriquez' particular attentions.  As we reached
+the street I felt that I ought to say something more.
+
+"You know," I began casually, "that although those poor people meet
+here in this public way, their gathering is really quite a homely
+pastoral and a national custom; and these girls are all honest,
+hardworking peons or servants enjoying themselves in quite the old
+idyllic fashion."
+
+"Certainly," said the young girl, half-abstractedly.  "Of course
+it's a Moorish dance, originally brought over, I suppose, by those
+old Andalusian immigrants two hundred years ago.  It's quite Arabic
+in its suggestions.  I have got something like it in an old
+CANCIONERO I picked up at a bookstall in Boston.  But," she added,
+with a gasp of reminiscent satisfaction, "that's not like HIM!  Oh,
+no! HE is decidedly original.  Heavens! yes."
+
+I turned away in some discomfiture to join Enriquez, who was calmly
+awaiting me, with a cigarette in his mouth, outside the sala.  Yet
+he looked so unconscious of any previous absurdity that I hesitated
+in what I thought was a necessary warning.  He, however, quickly
+precipitated it.  Glancing after the retreating figures of the two
+women, he said: "Thees mees from Boston is return to her house.
+You do not accompany her?  I shall.  Behold me--I am there."  But I
+linked my arm firmly in his.  Then I pointed out, first, that she
+was already accompanied by a servant; secondly, that if I, who knew
+her, had hesitated to offer myself as an escort, it was hardly
+proper for him, a perfect stranger, to take that liberty; that Miss
+Mannersley was very punctilious of etiquette, which he, as a
+Castilian gentleman, ought to appreciate.
+
+"But will she not regard lofe--the admiration excessif?" he said,
+twirling his thin little mustache meditatively.
+
+"No; she will not," I returned sharply; "and you ought to
+understand that she is on a different level from your Manuelas and
+Carmens."
+
+"Pardon, my friend," he said gravely; "thees women are ever the
+same.  There is a proverb in my language.  Listen: 'Whether the
+sharp blade of the Toledo pierce the satin or the goatskin, it
+shall find behind it ever the same heart to wound.'  I am that
+Toledo blade--possibly it is you, my friend.  Wherefore, let us
+together pursue this girl of Boston on the instant."
+
+But I kept my grasp on Enriquez' arm, and succeeded in restraining
+his mercurial impulses for the moment.  He halted, and puffed
+vigorously at his cigarette; but the next instant he started
+forward again.  "Let us, however, follow with discretion in the
+rear; we shall pass her house; we shall gaze at it; it shall touch
+her heart."
+
+Ridiculous as was this following of the young girl we had only just
+parted from, I nevertheless knew that Enriquez was quite capable of
+attempting it alone, and I thought it better to humor him by
+consenting to walk with him in that direction; but I felt it
+necessary to say:
+
+"I ought to warn you that Miss Mannersley already looks upon your
+performances at the sala as something outre and peculiar, and if I
+were you I shouldn't do anything to deepen that impression."
+
+"You are saying she ees shock?" said Enriquez, gravely.
+
+I felt I could not conscientiously say that she was shocked, and he
+saw my hesitation.  "Then she have jealousy of the senoritas," he
+observed, with insufferable complacency.  "You observe!  I have
+already said.  It is ever so."
+
+I could stand it no longer.  "Look here, Harry," I said, "if you
+must know it, she looks upon you as an acrobat--a paid performer."
+
+"Ah!"--his black eyes sparkled--"the torero, the man who fights the
+bull, he is also an acrobat."
+
+"Yes; but she thinks you a clown!--a GRACIOSO DE TEATRO--there!"
+
+"Then I have make her laugh?" he said coolly.
+
+I don't think he had; but I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"BUENO!" he said cheerfully.  "Lofe, he begin with a laugh, he make
+feenish with a sigh."
+
+I turned to look at him in the moonlight.  His face presented its
+habitual Spanish gravity--a gravity that was almost ironical.  His
+small black eyes had their characteristic irresponsible audacity--
+the irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal.  It could not
+be possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities
+of Miss Mannersley.  I remembered his equally elastic gallantries
+with Miss Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had
+harmlessly rebounded.  As we walked on slowly I continued more
+persuasively: "Of course this is only your nonsense; but don't you
+see, Miss Mannersley thinks it all in earnest and really your
+nature?"  I hesitated, for it suddenly struck me that it WAS really
+his nature.  "And--hang it all!--you don't want her to believe you
+a common buffoon., or some intoxicated muchacho."
+
+"Intoxicated?" repeated Enriquez, with exasperating languishment.
+"Yes; that is the word that shall express itself.  My friend, you
+have made a shot in the center--you have ring the bell every time!
+It is intoxication--but not of aguardiente.  Look!  I have long
+time an ancestor of whom is a pretty story.  One day in church he
+have seen a young girl--a mere peasant girl--pass to the
+confessional.  He look her in her eye, he stagger"--here Enriquez
+wobbled pantomimically into the road--"he fall!"--he would have
+suited the action to the word if I had not firmly held him up.
+"They have taken him home, where he have remain without his
+clothes, and have dance and sing.  But it was the drunkenness of
+lofe.  And, look you, thees village girl was a nothing, not even
+pretty.  The name of my ancestor was--"
+
+"Don Quixote de La Mancha," I suggested maliciously.  "I suspected
+as much.  Come along.  That will do."
+
+"My ancestor's name," continued Enriquez, gravely, "was Antonio
+Hermenegildo de Salvatierra, which is not the same.  Thees Don
+Quixote of whom you speak exist not at all."
+
+"Never mind.  Only, for heaven's sake, as we are nearing the house,
+don't make a fool of yourself again."
+
+It was a wonderful moonlight night.  The deep redwood porch of the
+Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak--the largest
+in the Encinal--was diapered in black and silver.  As the women
+stepped upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the
+door.  Miss Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a
+last look at the beauty of the night as Jocasta entered.  Her
+glance fell upon us as we passed.  She nodded carelessly and
+unaffectedly to me, but as she recognized Enriquez she looked a
+little longer at him with her previous cold and invincible
+curiosity.  To my horror Enriquez began instantly to affect a
+slight tremulousness of gait and a difficulty of breathing; but I
+gripped his arm savagely, and managed to get him past the house as
+the door closed finally on the young lady.
+
+"You do not comprehend, friend Pancho," he said gravely, "but those
+eyes in their glass are as the ESPEJO USTORIO, the burning mirror.
+They burn, they consume me here like paper.  Let us affix to
+ourselves thees tree.  She will, without doubt, appear at her
+window.  We shall salute her for good night."
+
+"We will do nothing of the kind," I said sharply.  Finding that I
+was determined, he permitted me to lead him away.  I was delighted
+to notice, however, that he had indicated the window which I knew
+was the minister's study, and that as the bedrooms were in the rear
+of the house, this later incident was probably not overseen by the
+young lady or the servant.  But I did not part from Enriquez until
+I saw him safely back to the sala, where I left him sipping
+chocolate, his arm alternating around the waists of his two
+previous partners in a delightful Arcadian and childlike
+simplicity, and an apparent utter forgetfulness of Miss Mannersley.
+
+The fandangos were usually held on Saturday night, and the next
+day, being Sunday, 1 missed Enriquez; but as he was a devout
+Catholic I remembered that he was at mass in the morning, and
+possibly at the bullfight at San Antonio in the afternoon.  But I
+was somewhat surprised on the Monday morning following, as I was
+crossing the plaza, to have my arm taken by the Rev. Mr. Mannersley
+in the nearest approach to familiarity that was consistent with the
+reserve of this eminent divine.  I looked at him inquiringly.
+Although scrupulously correct in attire, his features always had a
+singular resemblance to the national caricature known as "Uncle
+Sam," but with the humorous expression left out.  Softly stroking
+his goatee with three fingers, he began condescendingly: "You are,
+I think, more or less familiar with the characteristics and customs
+of the Spanish as exhibited by the settlers here."  A thrill of
+apprehension went through me.  Had he heard of Enriquez'
+proceedings?  Had Miss Mannersley cruelly betrayed him to her
+uncle?  "I have not given that attention myself to their language
+and social peculiarities," he continued, with a large wave of the
+hand, "being much occupied with a study of their religious beliefs
+and superstitions"--it struck me that this was apt to be a common
+fault of people of the Mannersley type--"but I have refrained from
+a personal discussion of them; on the contrary, I have held
+somewhat broad views on the subject of their remarkable missionary
+work, and have suggested a scheme of co-operation with them, quite
+independent of doctrinal teaching, to my brethren of other
+Protestant Christian sects.  These views I first incorporated in a
+sermon last Sunday week, which I am told has created considerable
+attention."  He stopped and coughed slightly.  "I have not yet
+heard from any of the Roman clergy, but I am led to believe that my
+remarks were not ungrateful to Catholics generally."
+
+I was relieved, although still in some wonder why he should address
+me on this topic.  I had a vague remembrance of having heard that
+he had said something on Sunday which had offended some Puritans of
+his flock, but nothing more.  He continued: "I have just said that
+I was unacquainted with the characteristics of the Spanish-American
+race.  I presume, however, they have the impulsiveness of their
+Latin origin.  They gesticulate--eh?  They express their gratitude,
+their joy, their affection, their emotions generally, by spasmodic
+movements?  They naturally dance--sing--eh?"  A horrible suspicion
+crossed my mind; I could only stare helplessly at him.  "I see," he
+said graciously; "perhaps it is a somewhat general question.  I
+will explain myself.  A rather singular occurrence happened to me
+the other night.  I had returned from visiting a parishioner, and
+was alone in my study reviewing my sermon for the next day.  It
+must have been quite late before I concluded, for I distinctly
+remember my niece had returned with her servant fully an hour
+before.  Presently I heard the sounds of a musical instrument in
+the road, with the accents of someone singing or rehearsing some
+metrical composition in words that, although couched in a language
+foreign to me, in expression and modulation gave me the impression
+of being distinctly adulatory.  For some little time, in the
+greater preoccupation of my task, I paid little attention to the
+performance; but its persistency at length drew me in no mere idle
+curiosity to the window.  From thence, standing in my dressing-
+gown, and believing myself unperceived, I noticed under the large
+oak in the roadside the figure of a young man who, by the imperfect
+light, appeared to be of Spanish extraction.  But I evidently
+miscalculated my own invisibility; for he moved rapidly forward as
+I came to the window, and in a series of the most extraordinary
+pantomimic gestures saluted me.  Beyond my experience of a few
+Greek plays in earlier days, I confess I am not an adept in the
+understanding of gesticulation; but it struck me that the various
+phases of gratitude, fervor, reverence, and exaltation were
+successively portrayed.  He placed his hands upon his head, his
+heart, and even clasped them together in this manner."  To my
+consternation the reverend gentleman here imitated Enriquez' most
+extravagant pantomime.  "I am willing to confess," he continued,
+"that I was singularly moved by them, as well as by the highly
+creditable and Christian interest that evidently produced them.  At
+last I opened the window.  Leaning out, I told him that I regretted
+that the lateness of the hour prevented any further response from
+me than a grateful though hurried acknowledgment of his
+praiseworthy emotion, but that I should be glad to see him for a
+few moments in the vestry before service the next day, or at early
+candlelight, before the meeting of the Bible class.  I told him
+that as my sole purpose had been the creation of an evangelical
+brotherhood and the exclusion of merely doctrinal views, nothing
+could be more gratifying to me than his spontaneous and unsolicited
+testimony to my motives.  He appeared for an instant to be deeply
+affected, and, indeed, quite overcome with emotion, and then
+gracefully retired, with some agility and a slight saltatory
+movement."
+
+He paused.  A sudden and overwhelming idea took possession of me,
+and I looked impulsively into his face.  Was it possible that for
+once Enriquez' ironical extravagance had been understood, met, and
+vanquished by a master hand?  But the Rev. Mr. Mannersley's self-
+satisfied face betrayed no ambiguity or lurking humor.  He was
+evidently in earnest; he had complacently accepted for himself the
+abandoned Enriquez' serenade to his niece.  I felt a hysterical
+desire to laugh, but it was checked by my companion's next words.
+
+"I informed my niece of the occurrence in the morning at breakfast.
+She had not heard anything of the strange performance, but she
+agreed with me as to its undoubted origin in a grateful recognition
+of my liberal efforts toward his coreligionists.  It was she, in
+fact, who suggested that your knowledge of these people might
+corroborate my impressions."
+
+I was dumfounded.  Had Miss Mannersley, who must have recognized
+Enriquez' hand in this, concealed the fact in a desire to shield
+him?  But this was so inconsistent with her utter indifference to
+him, except as a grotesque study, that she would have been more
+likely to tell her uncle all about his previous performance.  Nor
+could it be that she wished to conceal her visit to the fandango.
+She was far too independent for that, and it was even possible that
+the reverend gentleman, in his desire to know more of Enriquez'
+compatriots, would not have objected.  In my confusion I meekly
+added my conviction to hers, congratulated him upon his evident
+success, and slipped away.  But I was burning with a desire to see
+Enriquez and know all.  He was imaginative but not untruthful.
+Unfortunately, I learned that he was just then following one of his
+erratic impulses, and had gone to a rodeo at his cousin's, in the
+foothills, where he was alternately exercising his horsemanship in
+catching and breaking wild cattle and delighting his relatives with
+his incomparable grasp of the American language and customs, and of
+the airs of a young man of fashion.  Then my thoughts recurred to
+Miss Mannersley.  Had she really been oblivious that night to
+Enriquez' serenade?  I resolved to find out, if I could, without
+betraying Enriquez.  Indeed, it was possible, after all, that it
+might not have been he.
+
+Chance favored me.  The next evening I was at a party where Miss
+Mannersley, by reason of her position and quality, was a
+distinguished--I had almost written a popular--guest.  But, as I
+have formerly stated, although the youthful fair of the Encinal
+were flattered by her casual attentions, and secretly admired her
+superior style and aristocratic calm, they were more or less uneasy
+under the dominance of her intelligence and education, and were
+afraid to attempt either confidence or familiarity.  They were also
+singularly jealous of her, for although the average young man was
+equally afraid of her cleverness and her candor, he was not above
+paying a tremulous and timid court to her for its effect upon her
+humbler sisters.  This evening she was surrounded by her usual
+satellites, including, of course, the local notables and special
+guests of distinction.  She had been discussing, I think, the
+existence of glaciers on Mount Shasta with a spectacled geologist,
+and had participated with charming frankness in a conversation on
+anatomy with the local doctor and a learned professor, when she was
+asked to take a seat at the piano.  She played with remarkable
+skill and wonderful precision, but coldly and brilliantly.  As she
+sat there in her subdued but perfectly fitting evening dress, her
+regular profile and short but slender neck firmly set upon her high
+shoulders, exhaling an atmosphere of refined puritanism and
+provocative intelligence, the utter incongruity of Enriquez'
+extravagant attentions if ironical, and their equal hopelessness if
+not, seemed to me plainer than ever.  What had this well-poised,
+coldly observant spinster to do with that quaintly ironic ruffler,
+that romantic cynic, that rowdy Don Quixote, that impossible
+Enriquez?  Presently she ceased playing.  Her slim, narrow slipper,
+revealing her thin ankle, remained upon the pedal; her delicate
+fingers were resting idly on the keys; her head was slightly thrown
+back, and her narrow eyebrows prettily knit toward the ceiling in
+an effort of memory.
+
+"Something of Chopin's," suggested the geologist, ardently.
+
+"That exquisite sonata!" pleaded the doctor.
+
+ "Suthin' of Rubinstein.  Heard him once," said a gentleman of
+Siskiyou.  "He just made that pianner get up and howl.  Play Rube."
+
+She shook her head with parted lips and a slight touch of girlish
+coquetry in her manner.  Then her fingers suddenly dropped upon the
+keys with a glassy tinkle; there were a few quick pizzicato chords,
+down went the low pedal with a monotonous strumming, and she
+presently began to hum to herself.  I started--as well I might--for
+I recognized one of Enriquez' favorite and most extravagant guitar
+solos.  It was audacious; it was barbaric; it was, I fear, vulgar.
+As I remembered it--as he sang it--it recounted the adventures of
+one Don Francisco, a provincial gallant and roisterer of the most
+objectionable type.  It had one hundred and four verses, which
+Enriquez never spared me.  I shuddered as in a pleasant, quiet
+voice the correct Miss Mannersley warbled in musical praise of the
+PELLEJO, or wineskin, and a eulogy of the dicebox came caressingly
+from her thin red lips.  But the company was far differently
+affected: the strange, wild air and wilder accompaniment were
+evidently catching; people moved toward the piano; somebody
+whistled the air from a distant corner; even the faces of the
+geologist and doctor brightened.
+
+"A tarantella, I presume?" blandly suggested the doctor.
+
+Miss Mannersley stopped, and rose carelessly from the piano.  "It
+is a Moorish gypsy song of the fifteenth century," she said dryly.
+
+"It seemed sorter familiar, too," hesitated one of the young men,
+timidly, "like as if--don't you know?--you had without knowing it,
+don't you know?"--he blushed slightly--"sorter picked it up
+somewhere."
+
+"I 'picked it up,' as you call it, in the collection of medieval
+manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it," returned Miss
+Mannersley coldly as she turned away.
+
+But I was not inclined to let her off so easily.  I presently made
+my way to her side.  "Your uncle was complimentary enough to
+consult me as to the meaning of the appearance of a certain
+exuberant Spanish visitor at his house the other night."  I looked
+into her brown eyes, but my own slipped off her velvety pupils
+without retaining anything.  Then she reinforced her gaze with a
+pince-nez, and said carelessly:
+
+"Oh, it's you?  How are you?  Well, could you give him any
+information?"
+
+"Only generally," I returned, still looking into her eyes.  "These
+people are impulsive.  The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and
+quicksilver."
+
+She smiled slightly.  "That reminds me of your volatile friend.  He
+was mercurial enough, certainly.  Is he still dancing?"
+
+"And singing sometimes," I responded pointedly.  But she only added
+casually, "A singular creature," without exhibiting the least
+consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser.  I felt
+that Enriquez alone could enlighten me.  I must see him.
+
+I did, but not in the way I expected.  There was a bullfight at San
+Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance
+being changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the
+Americans.  An additional attraction was offered in the shape of a
+bull-and-bear fight, also a concession to American taste, which had
+voted the bullfight "slow," and had averred that the bull "did not
+get a fair show."  I am glad that I am able to spare the reader the
+usual realistic horrors, for in the Californian performances there
+was very little of the brutality that distinguished this function
+in the mother country.  The horses were not miserable, worn-out
+hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the display of
+horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but secured an
+almost absolute safety to horse and rider.  I never saw a horse
+gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in wheeling
+quickly to avoid the bull's charge, they generally regained their
+animals without injury.
+
+The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn
+outskirts of an old Spanish village.  It was a rudely built oval
+amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed
+only over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial
+"notables," but now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives,
+with a sprinkling of American travelers and ranchmen.  The
+impalpable adobe dust of the arena was being whirled into the air
+by the strong onset of the afternoon trade winds, which happily,
+however, helped also to dissipate a reek of garlic, and the acrid
+fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk cigarettes.  I was
+leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the meager and
+circuslike procession to enter with the keys of the bull pen, when
+my attention was attracted to a movement in the reserved gallery.
+A lady and gentleman of a quality that was evidently unfamiliar to
+the rest of the audience were picking their way along the rickety
+benches to a front seat.  I recognized the geologist with some
+surprise, and the lady he was leading with still greater
+astonishment.  For it was Miss Mannersley, in her precise, well-
+fitting walking-costume--a monotone of sober color among the parti-
+colored audience.
+
+However, I was perhaps less surprised than the audience, for I was
+not only becoming as accustomed to the young girl's vagaries as I
+had been to Enriquez' extravagance, but I was also satisfied that
+her uncle might have given her permission to come, as a recognition
+of the Sunday concession of the management, as well as to
+conciliate his supposed Catholic friends.  I watched her sitting
+there until the first bull had entered, and, after a rather brief
+play with the picadors and banderilleros, was dispatched.  At the
+moment when the matador approached the bull with his lethal weapon
+I was not sorry for an excuse to glance at Miss Mannersley.  Her
+hands were in her lap, her head slightly bent forward over her
+knees.  I fancied that she, too, had dropped her eyes before the
+brutal situation; to my horror, I saw that she had a drawing-book
+in her hand and was actually sketching it.  I turned my eyes in
+preference to the dying bull.
+
+The second animal led out for this ingenious slaughter was,
+however, more sullen, uncertain, and discomposing to his butchers.
+He accepted the irony of a trial with gloomy, suspicious eyes, and
+he declined the challenge of whirling and insulting picadors.  He
+bristled with banderillas like a hedgehog, but remained with his
+haunches backed against the barrier, at times almost hidden in the
+fine dust raised by the monotonous stroke of his sullenly pawing
+hoof--his one dull, heavy protest.  A vague uneasiness had infected
+his adversaries; the picadors held aloof, the banderilleros
+skirmished at a safe distance.  The audience resented only the
+indecision of the bull.  Galling epithets were flung at him,
+followed by cries of "ESPADA!" and, curving his elbow under his
+short cloak, the matador, with his flashing blade in hand, advanced
+and--stopped.  The bull remained motionless.
+
+For at that moment a heavier gust of wind than usual swept down
+upon the arena, lifted a suffocating cloud of dust, and whirled it
+around the tiers of benches and the balcony, and for a moment
+seemed to stop the performance.  I heard an exclamation from the
+geologist, who had risen to his feet.  I fancied I heard even a
+faint cry from Miss Mannersley; but the next moment, as the dust
+was slowly settling, we saw a sheet of paper in the air, that had
+been caught up in this brief cyclone, dropping, dipping from side
+to side on uncertain wings, until it slowly descended in the very
+middle of the arena.  It was a leaf from Miss Mannersley's
+sketchbook, the one on which she had been sketching.
+
+In the pause that followed it seemed to be the one object that at
+last excited the bull's growing but tardy ire.  He glanced at it
+with murky, distended eyes; he snorted at it with vague yet
+troubled fury.  Whether he detected his own presentment in Miss
+Mannersley's sketch, or whether he recognized it as an unknown and
+unfamiliar treachery in his surroundings, I could not conjecture;
+for the next moment the matador, taking advantage of the bull's
+concentration, with a complacent leer at the audience, advanced
+toward the paper.  But at that instant a young man cleared the
+barrier into the arena with a single bound, shoved the matador to
+one side, caught up the paper, turned toward the balcony and Miss
+Mannersley with a gesture of apology, dropped gaily before the
+bull, knelt down before him with an exaggerated humility, and held
+up the drawing as if for his inspection.  A roar of applause broke
+from the audience, a cry of warning and exasperation from the
+attendants, as the goaded bull suddenly charged the stranger.  But
+he sprang to one side with great dexterity, made a courteous
+gesture to the matador as if passing the bull over to him, and
+still holding the paper in his hand, re-leaped the barrier, and
+rejoined the audience in safety.  I did not wait to see the deadly,
+dominant thrust with which the matador received the charging bull;
+my eyes were following the figure now bounding up the steps to the
+balcony, where with an exaggerated salutation he laid the drawing
+in Miss Mannersley's lap and vanished.  There was no mistaking that
+thin lithe form, the narrow black mustache, and gravely dancing
+eyes.  The audacity of conception, the extravagance of execution,
+the quaint irony of the sequel, could belong to no one but
+Enriquez.
+
+I hurried up to her as the six yoked mules dragged the carcass of
+the bull away.  She was placidly putting up her book, the unmoved
+focus of a hundred eager and curious eyes.  She smiled slightly as
+she saw me.  "I was just telling Mr. Briggs what an extraordinary
+creature it was, and how you knew him.  He must have had great
+experience to do that sort of thing so cleverly and safely.  Does
+he do it often?  Of course, not just that.  But does he pick up
+cigars and things that I see they throw to the matador?  Does he
+belong to the management?  Mr. Briggs thinks the whole thing was a
+feint to distract the bull," she added, with a wicked glance at the
+geologist, who, I fancied, looked disturbed.
+
+"I am afraid," I said dryly, "that his act was as unpremeditated
+and genuine as it was unusual."
+
+"Why afraid?"
+
+It was a matter-of-fact question, but I instantly saw my mistake.
+What right had I to assume that Enriquez' attentions were any more
+genuine than her own easy indifference; and if I suspected that
+they were, was it fair in me to give my friend away to this
+heartless coquette?  "You are not very gallant," she said, with a
+slight laugh, as I was hesitating, and turned away with her escort
+before I could frame a reply.  But at least Enriquez was now
+accessible, and I should gain some information from him.  I knew
+where to find him, unless he were still lounging about the
+building, intent upon more extravagance; but I waited until I saw
+Miss Mannersley and Briggs depart without further interruption.
+
+The hacienda of Ramon Saltillo, Enriquez' cousin, was on the
+outskirts of the village.  When I arrived there I found Enriquez'
+pinto mustang steaming in the corral, and although I was
+momentarily delayed by the servants at the gateway, I was surprised
+to find Enriquez himself lying languidly on his back in a hammock
+in the patio.  His arms were hanging down listlessly on each side
+as if in the greatest prostration, yet I could not resist the
+impression that the rascal had only just got into the hammock when
+he heard of my arrival.
+
+"You have arrived, friend Pancho, in time," he said, in accents of
+exaggerated weakness.  "I am absolutely exhaust.  I am bursted,
+caved in, kerflummoxed.  I have behold you, my friend, at the
+barrier.  I speak not, I make no sign at the first, because I was
+on fire; I speak not at the feenish--for I am exhaust."
+
+"I see; the bull made it lively for you."
+
+He instantly bounded up in the hammock.  "The bull!  Caramba!  Not
+a thousand bulls!  And thees one, look you, was a craven.  I snap
+my fingers over his horn; I roll my cigarette under his nose."
+
+"Well, then--what was it?"
+
+He instantly lay down again, pulling up the sides of the hammock.
+Presently his voice came from its depths, appealing in hollow tones
+to the sky.  "He asks me--thees friend of my soul, thees brother of
+my life, thees Pancho that I lofe--what it was?  He would that I
+should tell him why I am game in the legs, why I shake in the hand,
+crack in the voice, and am generally wipe out!  And yet he, my
+pardner--thees Francisco--know that I have seen the mees from
+Boston!  That I have gaze into the eye, touch the hand, and for the
+instant possess the picture that hand have drawn!  It was a sublime
+picture, Pancho," he said, sitting up again suddenly, "and have
+kill the bull before our friend Pepe's sword have touch even the
+bone of hees back and make feenish of him."
+
+"Look here, Enriquez," I said bluntly, "have you been serenading
+that girl?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders without the least embarrassment, and
+said: "Ah, yes.  What would you?  It is of a necessity."
+
+"Well," I retored, "then you ought to know that her uncle took it
+all to himself--thought you some grateful Catholic pleased with his
+religious tolerance."
+
+He did not even smile.  "BUENO," he said gravely.  "That make
+something, too.  In thees affair it is well to begin with the
+duenna.  He is the duenna."
+
+"And," I went on relentlessly, "her escort told her just now that
+your exploit in the bull ring was only a trick to divert the bull,
+suggested by the management."
+
+"Bah! her escort is a geologian.  Naturally, she is to him as a
+stone."
+
+I would have continued, but a peon interrupted us at this moment
+with a sign to Enriquez, who leaped briskly from the hammock,
+bidding me wait his return from a messenger in the gateway.
+
+Still unsatisfied of mind, I waited, and sat down in the hammock
+that Enriquez had quitted.  A scrap of paper was lying in its
+meshes, which at first appeared to be of the kind from which
+Enriquez rolled his cigarettes; but as I picked it up to throw it
+away, I found it was of much firmer and stouter material.  Looking
+at it more closely, I was surprised to recognize it as a piece of
+the tinted drawing-paper torn off the "block" that Miss Mannersley
+had used.  It had been deeply creased at right angles as if it had
+been folded; it looked as if it might have been the outer half of a
+sheet used for a note.
+
+It might have been a trifling circumstance, but it greatly excited
+my curiosity.  I knew that he had returned the sketch to Miss
+Mannersley, for I had seen it in her hand.  Had she given him
+another?  And if so, why had it been folded to the destruction of
+the drawing?  Or was it part of a note which he had destroyed?  In
+the first impulse of discovery I walked quickly with it toward the
+gateway where Enriquez had disappeared, intending to restore it to
+him.  He was just outside talking with a young girl.  I started,
+for it was Jocasta--Miss Mannersley's maid.
+
+With this added discovery came that sense of uneasiness and
+indignation with which we illogically are apt to resent the
+withholding of a friend's confidence, even in matters concerning
+only himself.  It was no use for me to reason that it was no
+business of mine, that he was right in keeping a secret that
+concerned another--and a lady; but I was afraid I was even more
+meanly resentful because the discovery quite upset my theory of his
+conduct and of Miss Mannersley's attitude toward him.  I continued
+to walk on to the gateway, where I bade Enriquez a hurried good-by,
+alleging the sudden remembrance of another engagement, but without
+appearing to recognize the girl, who was moving away when, to my
+further discomfiture, the rascal stopped me with an appealing wink,
+threw his arms around my neck, whispered hoarsely in my ear, "Ah!
+you see--you comprehend--but you are the mirror of discretion!" and
+returned to Jocasta.  But whether this meant that he had received a
+message from Miss Mannersley, or that he was trying to suborn her
+maid to carry one, was still uncertain.  He was capable of either.
+During the next two or three weeks I saw him frequently; but as I
+had resolved to try the effect of ignoring Miss Mannersley in our
+conversation, I gathered little further of their relations, and, to
+my surprise, after one or two characteristic extravagances of
+allusion, Enriquez dropped the subject, too.  Only one afternoon,
+as we were parting, he said carelessly: "My friend, you are going
+to the casa of Mannersley tonight.  I too have the honor of the
+invitation.  But you will be my Mercury--my Leporello--you will
+take of me a message to thees Mees Boston, that I am crushed,
+desolated, prostrate, and flabbergasted--that I cannot arrive, for
+I have of that night to sit up with the grand-aunt of my brother-
+in-law, who has a quinsy to the death.  It is sad."
+
+This was the first indication I had received of Miss Mannersley's
+advances.  I was equally surprised at Enriquez' refusal.
+
+"Nonsense!" I said bluntly. "Nothing keeps you from going."
+
+"My friend," returned Enriquez, with a sudden lapse into languish-
+ment that seemed to make him absolutely infirm, "it is everything
+that shall restrain me.  I am not strong.  I shall become weak of
+the knee and tremble under the eye of Mees Boston.  I shall
+precipitate myself to the geologian by the throat.  Ask me another
+conundrum that shall be easy."
+
+He seemed idiotically inflexible, and did not go.  But I did.  I
+found Miss Mannersley exquisitely dressed and looking singularly
+animated and pretty.  The lambent glow of her inscrutable eye as
+she turned toward me might have been flattering but for my
+uneasiness in regard to Enriquez.  I delivered his excuses as
+naturally as I could.  She stiffened for an instant, and seemed an
+inch higher.  "I am so sorry," she said at last in a level voice.
+"I thought he would have been so amusing.  Indeed, I had hoped we
+might try an old Moorish dance together which I have found and was
+practicing."
+
+"He would have been delighted, I know.  It's a great pity he didn't
+come with me," I said quickly; "but," I could not help adding, with
+emphasis on her words, "he is such an 'extraordinary creature,' you
+know."
+
+"I see nothing extraordinary in his devotion to an aged relative,"
+returned Miss Mannersley quietly as she turned away, "except that
+it justifies my respect for his character."
+
+I do not know why I did not relate this to him.  Possibly I had
+given up trying to understand them; perhaps I was beginning to have
+an idea that he could take care of himself.  But I was somewhat
+surprised a few days later when, after asking me to go with him to
+a rodeo at his uncle's he added composedly, "You will meet Mees
+Boston."
+
+I stared, and but for his manner would have thought it part of his
+extravagance.  For the rodeo--a yearly chase of wild cattle for the
+purpose of lassoing and branding them--was a rather brutal affair,
+and purely a man's function; it was also a family affair--a
+property stock-taking of the great Spanish cattle-owners--and
+strangers, particularly Americans, found it difficult to gain
+access to its mysteries and the fiesta that followed.
+
+"But how did she get an invitation?" I asked.  "You did not dare to
+ask--" I began.
+
+"My friend," said Enriquez, with a singular deliberation, "the
+great and respectable Boston herself, and her serene, venerable
+oncle, and other Boston magnificos, have of a truth done me the
+inexpressible honor to solicit of my degraded, papistical oncle
+that she shall come--that she shall of her own superior eye behold
+the barbaric customs of our race."
+
+His tone and manner were so peculiar that I stepped quickly before
+him, laid my hands on his shoulders, and looked down into his face.
+But the actual devil which I now for the first time saw in his eyes
+went out of them suddenly, and he relapsed again in affected
+languishment in his chair.  "I shall be there, friend Pancho," he
+said, with a preposterous gasp.  "I shall nerve my arm to lasso the
+bull, and tumble him before her at her feet.  I shall throw the
+'buck-jump' mustang at the same sacred spot.  I shall pluck for her
+the buried chicken at full speed from the ground, and present it to
+her.  You shall see it, friend Pancho.  I shall be there."
+
+He was as good as his word.  When Don Pedro Amador, his uncle,
+installed Miss Mannersley, with Spanish courtesy, on a raised
+platform in the long valley where the rodeo took place, the gallant
+Enriquez selected a bull from the frightened and galloping herd,
+and, cleverly isolating him from the band, lassoed his hind legs,
+and threw him exactly before the platform where Miss Mannersley was
+seated.  It was Enriquez who caught the unbroken mustang, sprang
+from his own saddle to the bare back of his captive, and with the
+lasso for a bridle, halted him on rigid haunches at Miss
+Mannersley's feet.  It was Enriquez who, in the sports that
+followed, leaned from his saddle at full speed, caught up the
+chicken buried to its head in the sand, without wringing its neck,
+and tossed it unharmed and fluttering toward his mistress.  As for
+her, she wore the same look of animation that I had seen in her
+face at our previous meeting.  Although she did not bring her
+sketchbook with her, as at the bullfight, she did not shrink from
+the branding of the cattle, which took place under her very eyes.
+
+Yet I had never seen her and Enriquez together; they had never, to
+my actual knowledge, even exchanged words.  And now, although she
+was the guest of his uncle, his duties seemed to keep him in the
+field, and apart from her.  Nor, as far as I could detect, did
+either apparently make any effort to have it otherwise.  The
+peculiar circumstance seemed to attract no attention from anyone
+else.  But for what I alone knew--or thought I knew--of their
+actual relations, I should have thought them strangers.
+
+But I felt certain that the fiesta which took place in the broad
+patio of Don Pedro's casa would bring them together.  And later in
+the evening, as we were all sitting on the veranda watching the
+dancing of the Mexican women, whose white-flounced sayas were
+monotonously rising and falling to the strains of two melancholy
+harps, Miss Mannersley rejoined us from the house.  She seemed to
+be utterly absorbed and abstracted in the barbaric dances, and
+scarcely moved as she leaned over the railing with her cheek
+resting on her hand.  Suddenly she arose with a little cry.
+
+"What is it?" asked two or three.
+
+"Nothing--only I have lost my fan."  She had risen, and ,was
+looking abstractedly on the floor.
+
+Half a dozen men jumped to their feet.  "Let me fetch it," they
+said.
+
+"No, thank you.  I think I know where it is, and will go for it
+myself."  She was moving away.
+
+But Don Pedro interposed with Spanish gravity.  Such a thing was
+not to be heard of in his casa.  If the senorita would not permit
+HIM--an old man--to go for it, it must be brought by Enriquez, her
+cavalier of the day.
+
+But Enriquez was not to be found.  I glanced at Miss Mannersley's
+somewhat disturbed face, and begged her to let me fetch it.  I
+thought I saw a flush of relief come into her pale cheek as she
+said, in a lower voice, "On the stone seat in the garden."
+
+I hurried away, leaving Don Pedro still protesting.  I knew the
+gardens, and the stone seat at an angle of the wall, not a dozen
+yards from the casa.  The moon shone full upon it.  There, indeed,
+lay the little gray-feathered fan.  But beside it, also, lay the
+crumpled black gold-embroidered riding-gauntlet that Enriquez had
+worn at the rodeo.
+
+I thrust it hurriedly into my pocket, and ran back.  As I passed
+through the gateway I asked a peon to send Enriquez to me.  The man
+stared.  Did I not know that Don Enriquez had ridden away two
+minutes ago?
+
+When I reached the veranda, I handed the fan to Miss Mannersley
+without a word.  "BUENO," said Don Pedro, gravely; "it is as well.
+There shall be no bones broken over the getting of it, for
+Enriquez, I hear, has had to return to the Encinal this very
+evening."
+
+Miss Mannersley retired early.  I did not inform her of my
+discovery, nor did I seek in any way to penetrate her secret.
+There was no doubt that she and Enriquez had been together, perhaps
+not for the first time; but what was the result of their interview?
+From the young girl's demeanor and Enriquez' hurried departure, I
+could only fear the worst for him.  Had he been tempted into some
+further extravagance and been angrily rebuked, or had he avowed a
+real passion concealed under his exaggerated mask and been
+deliberately rejected?  I tossed uneasily half the night, following
+in my dreams my poor friend's hurrying hoofbeats, and ever starting
+from my sleep at what I thought was the sound of galloping hoofs.
+
+I rose early, and lounged into the patio; but others were there
+before me, and a small group of Don Pedro's family were excitedly
+discussing something, and I fancied they turned away awkwardly and
+consciously as I approached.  There was an air of indefinite
+uneasiness everywhere.  A strange fear came over me with the chill
+of the early morning air.  Had anything happened to Enriquez?  I
+had always looked upon his extravagance as part of his playful
+humor.  Could it be possible that under the sting of rejection he
+had made his grotesque threat of languishing effacement real?
+Surely Miss Mannersley would know or suspect something, if it were
+the case.
+
+I approached one of the Mexican women and asked if the senorita had
+risen.  The woman started, and looked covertly round before she
+replied.  Did not Don Pancho know that Miss Mannersley and her maid
+had not slept in their beds that night, but had gone, none knew
+where?
+
+For an instant I felt an appalling sense of my own responsibility
+in this suddenly serious situation, and hurried after the
+retreating family group.  But as I entered the corridor a vaquero
+touched me on the shoulder.  He had evidently just dismounted, and
+was covered with the dust of the road.  He handed me a note written
+in pencil on a leaf from Miss Mannersley's sketchbook.  It was in
+Enriquez' hand, and his signature was followed by his most
+extravagant rubric.
+
+
+Friend Pancho: When you read this line you shall of a possibility
+think I am no more.  That is where you shall slip up, my little
+brother!  I am much more--I am two times as much, for I have marry
+Miss Boston.  At the Mission Church, at five of the morning, sharp!
+No cards shall be left!  I kiss the hand of my venerable uncle-in-
+law.  You shall say to him that we fly to the South wilderness as
+the combined evangelical missionary to the heathen!  Miss Boston
+herself say this.  Ta-ta!  How are you now?
+
+Your own Enriquez.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Selected Stories of Bret Harte
+
diff --git a/old/old/harte10.zip b/old/old/harte10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60d1a6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/old/harte10.zip