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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of By Shore and Sedge, 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: By Shore and Sedge
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2178]
+Release Date: May, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY SHORE AND SEDGE ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BY SHORE AND SEDGE
+
+
+by
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
+  SARAH WALKER
+  A SHIP OF '49
+
+
+
+
+BY SHORE AND SEDGE
+
+
+
+AN APOSTLE OF THE TULES
+
+I
+
+On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were camped in Tasajara
+Valley, California.  It could not have been for the prospect, since a
+more barren, dreary, monotonous, and uninviting landscape never
+stretched before human eye; it could not have been for convenience or
+contiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty miles away; it could
+not have been for health or salubrity, as the breath of the
+ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes swept through the
+valley; it could not have been for space or comfort, for, encamped on
+an unlimited plain, men and women were huddled together as closely as
+in an urban tenement-house, without the freedom or decency of rural
+isolation; it could not have been for pleasant companionship, as
+dejection, mental anxiety, tears, and lamentation were the dominant
+expression; it was not a hurried flight from present or impending
+calamity, for the camp had been deliberately planned, and for a week
+pioneer wagons had been slowly arriving; it was not an irrevocable
+exodus, for some had already returned to their homes that others might
+take their places.  It was simply a religious revival of one or two
+denominational sects, known as a "camp-meeting."
+
+A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
+congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-rooms,
+known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the actual
+dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized shanties of boards
+and canvas, sometimes mere corrals or inclosures open to the cloudless
+sky, or more often the unhitched covered wagon which had brought them
+there.  The singular resemblance to a circus, already profanely
+suggested, was carried out by a straggling fringe of boys and
+half-grown men on the outskirts of the encampment, acrimonious with
+disappointed curiosity, lazy without the careless ease of vagrancy, and
+vicious without the excitement of dissipation.  For the coarse poverty
+and brutal economy of the larger arrangements, the dreary panorama of
+unlovely and unwholesome domestic details always before the eyes, were
+hardly exciting to the senses.  The circus might have been more
+dangerous, but scarcely more brutalizing.  The actors themselves, hard
+and aggressive through practical struggles, often warped and twisted
+with chronic forms of smaller diseases, or malformed and crippled
+through carelessness and neglect, and restless and uneasy through some
+vague mental distress and inquietude that they had added to their
+burdens, were scarcely amusing performers.  The rheumatic Parkinsons,
+from Green Springs; the ophthalmic Filgees, from Alder Creek; the
+ague-stricken Harneys, from Martinez Bend; and the feeble-limbed
+Steptons, from Sugar Mill, might, in their combined families, have
+suggested a hospital, rather than any other social assemblage.  Even
+their companionship, which had little of cheerful fellowship in it,
+would have been grotesque but for the pathetic instinct of some mutual
+vague appeal from the hardness of their lives and the helplessness of
+their conditions that had brought them together.  Nor was this appeal
+to a Higher Power any the less pathetic that it bore no reference
+whatever to their respective needs or deficiencies, but was always an
+invocation for a light which, when they believed they had found it, to
+unregenerate eyes scarcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in which
+their feet were continually stumbling.  One might have smiled at the
+idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for "justification by
+Faith," but the actual spectacle of old Simon Fergus, whose shot-gun
+was still in his wagon, offering up that appeal with streaming eyes and
+agonized features was painful beyond a doubt.  To seek and obtain an
+exaltation of feeling vaguely known as "It," or less vaguely veiling a
+sacred name, was the burden of the general appeal.
+
+The large tent had been filled, and between the exhortations a certain
+gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by singing, which had the effect of
+continuing in an easy, rhythmical, impersonal, and irresponsible way
+the sympathies of the meeting.  This was interrupted by a young man who
+rose suddenly, with that spontaneity of impulse which characterized the
+speakers, but unlike his predecessors, he remained for a moment mute,
+trembling and irresolute.  The fatal hesitation seemed to check the
+unreasoning, monotonous flow of emotion, and to recall to some extent
+the reason and even the criticism of the worshipers.  He stammered a
+prayer whose earnestness was undoubted, whose humility was but too
+apparent, but his words fell on faculties already benumbed by
+repetition and rhythm.  A slight movement of curiosity in the rear
+benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new preacher,
+helped to prolong the interruption.  A heavy man of strong physical
+expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical cry of "Glory!" and a
+tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred adjuration.  Still the meeting
+wavered.  With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw his
+arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent tears.  An
+anxious hush followed; the speaker still continued to sob on his
+neighbor's shoulder.  Almost before the fact could be commented upon,
+it was noticed that the entire rank of worshipers on the bench beside
+him were crying also; the second and third rows were speedily dissolved
+in tears, until even the very youthful scoffers in the last benches
+suddenly found their half-hysterical laughter turned to sobs.  The
+danger was averted, the reaction was complete; the singing commenced,
+and in a few moments the hapless cause of the interruption and the man
+who had retrieved the disaster stood together outside the tent.  A
+horse was picketed near them.
+
+The victor was still panting from his late exertions, and was more or
+less diluvial in eye and nostril, but neither eye nor nostril bore the
+slightest tremor of other expression.  His face was stolid and
+perfectly in keeping with his physique,--heavy, animal, and
+unintelligent.
+
+"Ye oughter trusted in the Lord," he said to the young preacher.
+
+"But I did," responded the young man, earnestly.
+
+"That's it.  Justifyin' yourself by works instead o' leanin' onto Him!
+Find Him, sez you!  Git Him, sez you!  Works is vain.  Glory! glory!"
+he continued, with fluent vacuity and wandering, dull, observant eyes.
+
+"But if I had a little more practice in class, Brother Silas, more
+education?"
+
+"The letter killeth," interrupted Brother Silas.  Here his wandering
+eyes took dull cognizance of two female faces peering through the
+opening of the tent.  "No, yer mishun, Brother Gideon, is to seek Him
+in the by-ways, in the wilderness,--where the foxes hev holes and the
+ravens hev their young,--but not in the Temples of the people.  Wot sez
+Sister Parsons?"
+
+One of the female faces detached itself from the tent flaps, which it
+nearly resembled in color, and brought forward an angular figure
+clothed in faded fustian that had taken the various shades and odors of
+household service.
+
+"Brother Silas speaks well," said Sister Parsons, with stridulous
+fluency.  "It's fore-ordained.  Fore-ordinashun is better nor
+ordinashun, saith the Lord.  He shall go forth, turnin' neither to the
+right hand nor the left hand, and seek Him among the lost tribes and
+the ungodly.  He shall put aside the temptashun of Mammon and the
+flesh."  Her eyes and those of Brother Silas here both sought the other
+female face, which was that of a young girl of seventeen.
+
+"Wot sez little Sister Meely,--wot sez Meely Parsons?" continued
+Brother Silas, as if repeating an unctuous formula.
+
+The young girl came hesitatingly forward, and with a nervous cry of
+"Oh, Gideon!" threw herself on the breast of the young man.
+
+For a moment they remained locked in each other's arms.  In the
+promiscuous and fraternal embracings which were a part of the
+devotional exercises of the hour, the act passed without significance.
+The young man gently raised her face.  She was young and comely, albeit
+marked with a half-frightened, half-vacant sorrow.  "Amen," said
+Brother Gideon, gravely.
+
+He mounted his horse and turned to go.  Brother Silas had clasped his
+powerful arms around both women and was holding them in a ponderous
+embrace.
+
+"Go forth, young man, into the wilderness."
+
+The young man bowed his head, and urged his horse forward in the bleak
+and barren plain.  In half an hour every vestige of the camp and its
+unwholesome surroundings was lost in the distance.  It was as if the
+strong desiccating wind, which seemed to spring up at his horse's feet,
+had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the face of the plain,
+swept away the lighter breath of praise and plaint, and dried up the
+easy-flowing tears.  The air was harsh but pure; the grim economy of
+form and shade and color in the level plain was coarse but not vulgar;
+the sky above him was cold and distant but not repellent; the moisture
+that had been denied his eyes at the prayer-meeting overflowed them
+here; the words that had choked his utterance an hour ago now rose to
+his lips.  He threw himself from his horse, and kneeling in the
+withered grass--a mere atom in the boundless plain--lifted his pale
+face against the irresponsive blue and prayed.
+
+He prayed that the unselfish dream of his bitter boyhood, his
+disappointed youth, might come to pass.  He prayed that he might in
+higher hands become the humble instrument of good to his fellow-man. He
+prayed that the deficiencies of his scant education, his self-taught
+learning, his helpless isolation, and his inexperience might be
+overlooked or reinforced by grace.  He prayed that the Infinite
+Compassion might enlighten his ignorance and solitude with a
+manifestation of the Spirit; in his very weakness he prayed for some
+special revelation, some sign or token, some visitation or gracious
+unbending from that coldly lifting sky.  The low sun burned the black
+edge of the distant tules with dull eating fires as he prayed, lit the
+dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual radiance, and then died out.
+The lingering trade winds fired a few volleys over its grave and then
+lapsed into a chilly silence.  The young man staggered to his feet; it
+was quite dark now, but the coming night had advanced a few starry
+vedettes so near the plain they looked like human watch-fires.  For an
+instant he could not remember where he was.  Then a light trembled far
+down at the entrance of the valley.  Brother Gideon recognized it.  It
+was in the lonely farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The abode of the late Reverend Marvin Hiler remained in the
+disorganized condition he had left it when removed from his sphere of
+earthly uselessness and continuous accident.  The straggling fence that
+only half inclosed the house and barn had stopped at that point where
+the two deacons who had each volunteered to do a day's work on it had
+completed their allotted time.  The building of the barn had been
+arrested when the half load of timber contributed by Sugar Mill
+brethren was exhausted, and three windows given by "Christian Seekers"
+at Martinez painfully accented the boarded spaces for the other three
+that "Unknown Friends" in Tasajara had promised but not yet supplied.
+In the clearing some trees that had been felled but not taken away
+added to the general incompleteness.
+
+Something of this unfinished character clung to the Widow Hiler and
+asserted itself in her three children, one of whom was consistently
+posthumous.  Prematurely old and prematurely disappointed, she had all
+the inexperience of girlhood with the cares of maternity, and kept in
+her family circle the freshness of an old maid's misogynistic
+antipathies with a certain guilty and remorseful consciousness of
+widowhood.  She supported the meagre household to which her husband had
+contributed only the extra mouths to feed with reproachful astonishment
+and weary incapacity.  She had long since grown tired of trying to make
+both ends meet, of which she declared "the Lord had taken one."  During
+her two years' widowhood she had waited on Providence, who by a
+pleasing local fiction had been made responsible for the disused and
+cast-off furniture and clothing which, accompanied with scriptural
+texts, found their way mysteriously into her few habitable rooms.  The
+providential manna was not always fresh; the ravens who fed her and her
+little ones with flour from the Sugar Mills did not always select the
+best quality.  Small wonder that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone,--a
+borrowed stove that supplemented the unfinished fireplace,--surrounded
+by her mismatched furniture and clad in misfitting garments, she had
+contracted a habit of sniffling during her dreary watches.  In her
+weaker moments she attributed it to grief; in her stronger intervals
+she knew that it sprang from damp and draught.
+
+In her apathy the sound of horses' hoofs at her unprotected door even
+at that hour neither surprised nor alarmed her.  She lifted her head as
+the door opened and the pale face of Gideon Deane looked into the room.
+She moved aside the cradle she was rocking, and, taking a saucepan and
+tea-cup from a chair beside her, absently dusted it with her apron, and
+pointing to the vacant seat said, "Take a chair," as quietly as if he
+had stepped from the next room instead of the outer darkness.
+
+"I'll put up my horse first," said Gideon gently.
+
+"So do," responded the widow briefly.
+
+Gideon led his horse across the inclosure, stumbling over the heaps of
+rubbish, dried chips, and weather-beaten shavings with which it was
+strewn, until he reached the unfinished barn, where he temporarily
+bestowed his beast.  Then taking a rusty axe, by the faint light of the
+stars, he attacked one of the fallen trees with such energy that at the
+end of ten minutes he reappeared at the door with an armful of cut
+boughs and chips, which he quietly deposited behind the stove.
+Observing that he was still standing as if looking for something, the
+widow lifted her eyes and said, "Ef it's the bucket, I reckon ye'll
+find it at the spring, where one of them foolish Filgee boys left it.
+I've been that tuckered out sens sundown, I ain't had the ambition to
+go and tote it back." Without a word Gideon repaired to the spring,
+filled the missing bucket, replaced the hoop on the loosened staves of
+another he found lying useless beside it, and again returned to the
+house. The widow once more pointed to the chair, and Gideon sat down.
+"It's quite a spell sens you wos here," said the Widow Hiler, returning
+her foot to the cradle-rocker; "not sens yer was ordained.  Be'n
+practicin', I reckon, at the meetin'."
+
+A slight color came into his cheek.  "My place is not there, Sister
+Hiler," he said gently; "it's for those with the gift o' tongues. I go
+forth only a common laborer in the vineyard."  He stopped and
+hesitated; he might have said more, but the widow, who was familiar
+with that kind of humility as the ordinary perfunctory expression of
+her class, suggested no sympathetic interest in his mission.
+
+"Thar's a deal o' talk over there," she said dryly, "and thar's folks
+ez thinks thar's a deal o' money spent in picnicking the Gospel that
+might be given to them ez wish to spread it, or to their widows and
+children.  But that don't consarn you, Brother Gideon.  Sister Parsons
+hez money enough to settle her darter Meely comfortably on her own
+land; and I've heard tell that you and Meely was only waitin' till you
+was ordained to be jined together. You'll hev an easier time of it,
+Brother Gideon, than poor Marvin Hiler had," she continued, suppressing
+her tears with a certain astringency that took the place of her lost
+pride; "but the Lord wills that some should be tried and some not."
+
+"But I am not going to marry Meely Parsons," said Gideon quietly.
+
+The widow took her foot from the rocker.  "Not marry Meely!" she
+repeated vaguely.  But relapsing into her despondent mood she
+continued: "Then I reckon it's true what other folks sez of Brother
+Silas Braggley makin' up to her and his powerful exhortin' influence
+over her ma.  Folks sez ez Sister Parsons hez just resigned her soul
+inter his keepin'."
+
+"Brother Silas hez a heavenly gift," said the young man, with gentle
+enthusiasm; "and perhaps it may be so.  If it is, it is the Lord's
+will.  But I do not marry Meely because my life and my ways henceforth
+must lie far beyond her sphere of strength.  I oughtn't to drag a young
+inexperienced soul with me to battle and struggle in the thorny paths
+that I must tread."
+
+"I reckon you know your own mind," said Sister Hiler grimly.  "But
+thar's folks ez might allow that Meely Parsons ain't any better than
+others, that she shouldn't have her share o' trials and keers and
+crosses.  Riches and bringin' up don't exempt folks from the shadder.
+I married Marvin Hiler outer a house ez good ez Sister Parsons', and at
+a time when old Cyrus Parsons hadn't a roof to his head but the cover
+of the emigrant wagon he kem across the plains in.  I might say ez
+Marvin knowed pretty well wot it was to have a helpmeet in his
+ministration, if it wasn't vanity of sperit to say it now.  But the
+flesh is weak, Brother Gideon."  Her influenza here resolved itself
+into unmistakable tears, which she wiped away with the first article
+that was accessible in the work-bag before her.  As it chanced to be a
+black silk neckerchief of the deceased Hiler, the result was funereal,
+suggestive, but practically ineffective.
+
+"You were a good wife to Brother Hiler," said the young man gently.
+"Everybody knows that."
+
+"It's suthin' to think of since he's gone," continued the widow,
+bringing her work nearer to her eyes to adjust it to their tear-dimmed
+focus.  "It's suthin' to lay to heart in the lonely days and nights
+when thar's no man round to fetch water and wood and lend a hand to
+doin' chores; it's suthin' to remember, with his three children to
+feed, and little Selby, the eldest, that vain and useless that he can't
+even tote the baby round while I do the work of a hired man."
+
+"It's a hard trial, Sister Hiler," said Gideon, "but the Lord has His
+appointed time."
+
+Familiar as consolation by vague quotation was to Sister Hiler, there
+was an occult sympathy in the tone in which this was offered that
+lifted her for an instant out of her narrower self.  She raised her
+eyes to his.  The personal abstraction of the devotee had no place in
+the deep dark eyes that were lifted from the cradle to hers with a sad,
+discriminating, and almost womanly sympathy. Surprised out of her
+selfish preoccupation, she was reminded of her apparent callousness to
+what might be his present disappointment. Perhaps it seemed strange to
+her, too, that those tender eyes should go a-begging.
+
+"Yer takin' a Christian view of yer own disappointment, Brother
+Gideon," she said, with less astringency of manner; "but every heart
+knoweth its own sorrer.  I'll be gettin' supper now that the baby's
+sleepin' sound, and ye'll sit by and eat."
+
+"If you let me help you, Sister Hiler," said the young man with a
+cheerfulness that belied any overwhelming heart affection, and awakened
+in the widow a feminine curiosity as to his real feelings to Meely.
+But her further questioning was met with a frank, amiable, and simple
+brevity that was as puzzling as the most artful periphrase of tact.
+Accustomed as she was to the loquacity of grief and the confiding
+prolixity of disappointed lovers, she could not understand her guest's
+quiescent attitude.  Her curiosity, however, soon gave way to the
+habitual contemplation of her own sorrows, and she could not forego the
+opportune presence of a sympathizing auditor to whom she could relieve
+her feelings.  The preparations for the evening meal were therefore
+accompanied by a dreary monotone of lamentation.  She bewailed her lost
+youth, her brief courtship, the struggles of her early married life,
+her premature widowhood, her penurious and helpless existence, the
+disruption of all her present ties, the hopelessness of the future. She
+rehearsed the unending plaint of those long evenings, set to the music
+of the restless wind around her bleak dwelling, with something of its
+stridulous reiteration.  The young man listened, and replied with
+softly assenting eyes, but without pausing in the material aid that he
+was quietly giving her.  He had removed the cradle of the sleeping
+child to the bedroom, quieted the sudden wakefulness of "Pinkey,"
+rearranged the straggling furniture of the sitting-room with much order
+and tidiness, repaired the hinges of a rebellious shutter and the lock
+of an unyielding door, and yet had apparently retained an unabated
+interest in her spoken woes. Surprised once more into recognizing this
+devotion, Sister Hiler abruptly arrested her monologue.
+
+"Well, if you ain't the handiest man I ever seed about a house!"
+
+"Am I?" said Gideon, with suddenly sparkling eyes.  "Do you really
+think so?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then you don't know how glad I am."  His frank face so unmistakably
+showed his simple gratification that the widow, after gazing at him for
+a moment, was suddenly seized with a bewildering fancy.  The first
+effect of it was the abrupt withdrawal of her eyes, then a sudden
+effusion of blood to her forehead that finally extended to her
+cheekbones, and then an interval of forgetfulness where she remained
+with a plate held vaguely in her hand.  When she succeeded at last in
+putting it on the table instead of the young man's lap, she said in a
+voice quite unlike her own,--
+
+"Sho!"
+
+"I mean it," said Gideon, cheerfully.  After a pause, in which he
+unostentatiously rearranged the table which the widow was abstractedly
+disorganizing, he said gently, "After tea, when you're not so much
+flustered with work and worry, and more composed in spirit, we'll have
+a little talk, Sister Hiler.  I'm in no hurry to-night, and if you
+don't mind I'll make myself comfortable in the barn with my blanket
+until sun-up to-morrow.  I can get up early enough to do some odd
+chores round the lot before I go."
+
+"You know best, Brother Gideon," said the widow, faintly, "and if you
+think it's the Lord's will, and no speshal trouble to you, so do.  But
+sakes alive! it's time I tidied myself a little," she continued,
+lifting one hand to her hair, while with the other she endeavored to
+fasten a buttonless collar; "leavin' alone the vanities o' dress, it's
+ez much as one can do to keep a clean rag on with the children climbin'
+over ye.  Sit by, and I'll be back in a minit."  She retired to the
+back room, and in a few moments returned with smoothed hair and a
+palm-leaf broche shawl thrown over her shoulders, which not only
+concealed the ravages made by time and maternity on the gown beneath,
+but to some extent gave her the suggestion of being a casual visitor in
+her own household.  It must be confessed that for the rest of the
+evening Sister Hiler rather lent herself to this idea, possibly from
+the fact that it temporarily obliterated the children, and quite
+removed her from any responsibility in the unpicturesque household.
+This effect was only marred by the absence of any impression upon
+Gideon, who scarcely appeared to notice the change, and whose soft eyes
+seemed rather to identify the miserable woman under her forced
+disguise. He prefaced the meal with a fervent grace, to which the widow
+listened with something of the conscious attitude she had adopted at
+church during her late husband's ministration, and during the meal she
+ate with a like consciousness of "company manners."
+
+Later that evening Selby Hiler woke up in his little truckle bed,
+listening to the rising midnight wind, which in his childish fancy he
+confounded with the sound of voices that came through the open door of
+the living-room.  He recognized the deep voice of the young minister,
+Gideon, and the occasional tearful responses of his mother, and he was
+fancying himself again at church when he heard a step, and the young
+preacher seemed to enter the room, and going to the bed leaned over it
+and kissed him on the forehead, and then bent over his little brother
+and sister and kissed them too.  Then he slowly re-entered the
+living-room.  Lifting himself softly on his elbow, Selby saw him go up
+towards his mother, who was crying, with her head on the table, and
+kiss her also on the forehead. Then he said "Good-night," and the front
+door closed, and Selby heard his footsteps crossing the lot towards the
+barn.  His mother was still sitting with her face buried in her hands
+when he fell asleep.
+
+She sat by the dying embers of the fire until the house was still
+again; then she rose and wiped her eyes.  "Et's a good thing," she
+said, going to the bedroom door, and looking in upon her sleeping
+children; "et's a mercy and a blessing for them and--for--me.
+But--but--he might--hev--said--he--loved me!"
+
+
+
+III
+
+Although Gideon Deane contrived to find a nest for his blanket in the
+mouldy straw of the unfinished barn loft, he could not sleep. He
+restlessly watched the stars through the cracks of the boarded roof,
+and listened to the wind that made the half-open structure as vocal as
+a sea-shell, until past midnight.  Once or twice he had fancied he
+heard the tramp of horse-hoofs on the far-off trail, and now it seemed
+to approach nearer, mingled with the sound of voices. Gideon raised his
+head and looked through the doorway of the loft. He was not mistaken:
+two men had halted in the road before the house, and were examining it
+as if uncertain if it were the dwelling they were seeking, and were
+hesitating if they should rouse the inmates.  Thinking he might spare
+the widow this disturbance to her slumbers, and possibly some alarm, he
+rose quickly, and descending to the inclosure walked towards the house.
+As he approached the men advanced to meet him, and by accident or
+design ranged themselves on either side.  A glance showed him they were
+strangers to the locality.
+
+"We're lookin' fer the preacher that lives here," said one, who seemed
+to be the elder.  "A man by the name o' Hiler, I reckon!"
+
+"Brother Hiler has been dead two years," responded Gideon.  "His widow
+and children live here."
+
+The two men looked at each other.  The younger one laughed; the elder
+mumbled something about its being "three years ago," and then turning
+suddenly on Gideon, said:
+
+"P'r'aps YOU'RE a preacher?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Can you come to a dying man?"
+
+"I will."
+
+The two men again looked at each other.  "But," continued Gideon,
+softly, "you'll please keep quiet so as not to disturb the widow and
+her children, while I get my horse."  He turned away; the younger man
+made a movement as if to stop him, but the elder quickly restrained his
+hand.  "He isn't goin' to run away," he whispered.  "Look," he added,
+as Gideon a moment later reappeared mounted and equipped.
+
+"Do you think we'll be in time?" asked the young preacher as they rode
+quickly away in the direction of the tules.
+
+The younger repressed a laugh; the other answered grimly, "I reckon."
+
+"And is he conscious of his danger?"
+
+"I reckon."
+
+Gideon did not speak again.  But as the onus of that silence seemed to
+rest upon the other two, the last speaker, after a few moments' silent
+and rapid riding, continued abruptly, "You don't seem curious?"
+
+"Of what?" said Gideon, lifting his soft eyes to the speaker.  "You
+tell me of a brother at the point of death, who seeks the Lord through
+an humble vessel like myself.  HE will tell me the rest."
+
+A silence still more constrained on the part of the two strangers
+followed, which they endeavored to escape from by furious riding; so
+that in half an hour the party had reached a point where the tules
+began to sap the arid plain, while beyond them broadened the lagoons of
+the distant river.  In the foreground, near a clump of dwarfed willows,
+a camp-fire was burning, around which fifteen or twenty armed men were
+collected, their horses picketed in an outer circle guarded by two
+mounted sentries.  A blasted cotton-wood with a single black arm
+extended over the tules stood ominously against the dark sky.
+
+The circle opened to receive them and closed again.  The elder man
+dismounted and leading Gideon to the blasted cotton-wood, pointed to a
+pinioned man seated at its foot with an armed guard over him. He looked
+up at Gideon with an amused smile.
+
+"You said it was a dying man," said Gideon, recoiling.
+
+"He will be a dead man in half an hour," returned the stranger.
+
+"And you?"
+
+"We are the Vigilantes from Alamo.  This man," pointing to the
+prisoner, "is a gambler who killed a man yesterday.  We hunted him
+here, tried him an hour ago, and found him guilty.  The last man we
+hung here, three years ago, asked for a parson.  We brought him the man
+who used to live where we found you.  So we thought we'd give this man
+the same show, and brought you."
+
+"And if I refuse?" said Gideon.
+
+The leader shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"That's HIS lookout, not ours.  We've given him the chance.  Drive
+ahead, boys," he added, turning to the others; "the parson allows he
+won't take a hand."
+
+"One moment," said Gideon, in desperation, "one moment, for the sake of
+that God you have brought me here to invoke in behalf of this wretched
+man.  One moment, for the sake of Him in whose presence you must stand
+one day as he does now."  With passionate earnestness he pointed out
+the vindictive impulse they were mistaking for Divine justice; with
+pathetic fervency he fell upon his knees and implored their mercy for
+the culprit.  But in vain. As at the camp-meeting of the day before, he
+was chilled to find his words seemed to fall on unheeding and
+unsympathetic ears.  He looked around on their abstracted faces; in
+their gloomy savage enthusiasm for expiatory sacrifice, he was
+horrified to find the same unreasoning exaltation that had checked his
+exhortations then. Only one face looked upon his, half mischievously,
+half compassionately.  It was the prisoner's.
+
+"Yer wastin' time on us," said the leader, dryly; "wastin' HIS time.
+Hadn't you better talk to him?"
+
+Gideon rose to his feet, pale and cold.  "He may have something to
+confess.  May I speak with him alone?" he said gently.
+
+The leader motioned to the sentry to fall back.  Gideon placed himself
+before the prisoner so that in the faint light of the camp-fire the
+man's figure was partly hidden by his own.  "You meant well with your
+little bluff, pardner," said the prisoner, not unkindly, "but they've
+got the cards to win."
+
+"Kneel down with your back to me," said Gideon, in a low voice. The
+prisoner fell on his knees.  At the same time he felt Gideon's hand and
+the gliding of steel behind his back, and the severed cords hung
+loosely on his arms and legs.
+
+"When I lift my voice to God, brother," said Gideon, softly, "drop on
+your face and crawl as far as you can in a straight line in my shadow,
+then break for the tules.  I will stand between you and their first
+fire."
+
+"Are you mad?" said the prisoner.  "Do you think they won't fire lest
+they should hurt you?  Man! they'll kill YOU, the first thing."
+
+"So be it--if your chance is better."
+
+Still on his knees, the man grasped Gideon's two hands in his own and
+devoured him with his eyes.
+
+"You mean it?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"Then," said the prisoner, quietly, "I reckon I'll stop and hear what
+you've got to say about God until they're ready."
+
+"You refuse to fly?"
+
+"I reckon I was never better fitted to die than now," said the
+prisoner, still grasping his hand.  After a pause he added in a lower
+tone, "I can't pray--but--I think," he hesitated, "I think I could
+manage to ring in a hymn."
+
+"Will you try, brother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+With their hands tightly clasped together, Gideon lifted his gentle
+voice.  The air was a common one, familiar in the local religious
+gatherings, and after the first verse one or two of the sullen
+lookers-on joined unkindly in the refrain.  But, as he went on, the air
+and words seemed to offer a vague expression to the dull lowering
+animal emotion of the savage concourse, and at the end of the second
+verse the refrain, augmented in volume and swelled by every voice in
+the camp, swept out over the hollow plain.
+
+It was met in the distance by a far-off cry.  With an oath taking the
+place of his supplication, the leader sprang to his feet.  But too
+late!  The cry was repeated as a nearer slogan of defiance--the plain
+shook--there was the tempestuous onset of furious hoofs--a dozen
+shots--the scattering of the embers of the camp-fire into a thousand
+vanishing sparks even as the lurid gathering of savage humanity was
+dispersed and dissipated over the plain, and Gideon and the prisoner
+stood alone.  But as the sheriff of Contra Costa with his rescuing
+posse swept by, the man they had come to save fell forward in Gideon's
+arms with a bullet in his breast--the Parthian shot of the flying
+Vigilante leader.
+
+The eager crowd that surged around him with outstretched helping hands
+would have hustled Gideon aside.  But the wounded man roused himself,
+and throwing an arm around the young preacher's neck, warned them back
+with the other.  "Stand back!" he gasped.  "He risked his life for
+mine!  Look at him, boys!  Wanted ter stand up 'twixt them hounds and
+me and draw their fire on himself!  Ain't he just hell?" he stopped; an
+apologetic smile crossed his lips.  "I clean forgot, pardner; but it's
+all right.  I said I was ready to go; and I am."  His arm slipped from
+Gideon's neck; he slid to the ground; he had fainted.
+
+A dark, military-looking man pushed his way through the crowd--the
+surgeon, one of the posse, accompanied by a younger man fastidiously
+dressed.  The former bent over the unconscious prisoner, and tore open
+his shirt; the latter followed his movements with a flush of anxious
+inquiry in his handsome, careless face.  After a moment's pause the
+surgeon, without looking up, answered the young man's mute questioning.
+"Better send the sheriff here at once, Jack."
+
+"He is here," responded the official, joining the group.
+
+The surgeon looked up at him.  "I am afraid they've put the case out of
+your jurisdiction, Sheriff," he said grimly.  "It's only a matter of a
+day or two at best--perhaps only a few hours.  But he won't live to be
+taken back to jail."
+
+"Will he live to go as far as Martinez?" asked the young man addressed
+as Jack.
+
+"With care, perhaps."
+
+"Will you be responsible for him, Jack Hamlin?" said the sheriff,
+suddenly.
+
+"I will."
+
+"Then take him.  Stay, he's coming to."
+
+The wounded man slowly opened his eyes.  They fell upon Jack Hamlin
+with a pleased look of recognition, but almost instantly and anxiously
+glanced around as if seeking another.  Leaning over him, Jack said
+gayly, "They've passed you over to me, old man; are you willing?"
+
+The wounded man's eyes assented, but still moved restlessly from side
+to side.
+
+"Is there any one you want to go with you?"
+
+"Yes," said the eyes.
+
+"The doctor, of course?"
+
+The eyes did not answer.  Gideon dropped on his knees beside him. A ray
+of light flashed in the helpless man's eyes and transfigured his whole
+face.
+
+"You want HIM?" said Jack incredulously.
+
+"Yes," said the eyes.
+
+"What--the preacher?"
+
+The lips struggled to speak.  Everybody bent down to hear his reply.
+
+"You bet," he said faintly.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+It was early morning when the wagon containing the wounded man, Gideon,
+Jack Hamlin, and the surgeon crept slowly through the streets of
+Martinez and stopped before the door of the "Palmetto Shades."  The
+upper floor of this saloon and hostelry was occupied by Mr. Hamlin as
+his private lodgings, and was fitted up with the usual luxury and more
+than the usual fastidiousness of his extravagant class.  As the dusty
+and travel-worn party trod the soft carpets and brushed aside their
+silken hangings in their slow progress with their helpless burden to
+the lace-canopied and snowy couch of the young gambler, it seemed
+almost a profanation of some feminine seclusion.  Gideon, to whom such
+luxury was unknown, was profoundly troubled.  The voluptuous ease and
+sensuousness, the refinements of a life of irresponsible indulgence,
+affected him with a physical terror to which in his late moment of real
+peril he had been a stranger; the gilding and mirrors blinded his eyes;
+even the faint perfume seemed to him an unhallowed incense, and turned
+him sick and giddy.  Accustomed as he had been to disease and misery in
+its humblest places and meanest surroundings, the wounded desperado
+lying in laces and fine linen seemed to him monstrous and unnatural.
+It required all his self-abnegation, all his sense of duty, all his
+deep pity, and all the instinctive tact which was born of his gentle
+thoughtfulness for others, to repress a shrinking.  But when the
+miserable cause of all again opened his eyes and sought Gideon's hand,
+he forgot it all.  Happily, Hamlin, who had been watching him with
+wondering but critical eyes, mistook his concern.  "Don't you worry
+about that gin-mill and hash-gymnasium downstairs," he said.  "I've
+given the proprietor a thousand dollars to shut up shop as long as this
+thing lasts." That this was done from some delicate sense of respect to
+the preacher's domiciliary presence, and not entirely to secure
+complete quiet and seclusion for the invalid, was evident from the fact
+that Mr. Hamlin's drawing and dining rooms, and even the hall, were
+filled with eager friends and inquirers.  It was discomposing to Gideon
+to find himself almost an equal subject of interest and curiosity to
+the visitors.  The story of his simple devotion had lost nothing by
+report; hats were doffed in his presence that might have grown to their
+wearers' heads; the boldest eyes dropped as he passed by; he had only
+to put his pale face out of the bedroom door and the loudest
+discussion, heated by drink or affection, fell to a whisper.  The
+surgeon, who had recognized the one dominant wish of the hopelessly
+sinking man, gravely retired, leaving Gideon a few simple instructions
+and directions for their use.  "He'll last as long as he has need of
+you," he said respectfully.  "My art is only second here.  God help you
+both!  When he wakes, make the most of your time."
+
+In a few moments he did waken, and as before turned his fading look
+almost instinctively on the faithful, gentle eyes that were watching
+him.  How Gideon made the most of his time did not transpire, but at
+the end of an hour, when the dying man had again lapsed into
+unconsciousness, he softly opened the door of the sitting-room.
+
+Hamlin started hastily to his feet.  He had cleared the room of his
+visitors, and was alone.  He turned a moment towards the window before
+he faced Gideon with inquiring but curiously-shining eyes.
+
+"Well?" he said, hesitatingly.
+
+"Do you know Kate Somers?" asked Gideon.
+
+Hamlin opened his brown eyes.  "Yes."
+
+"Can you send for her?"
+
+"What, HERE?"
+
+"Yes, here."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To marry him," said Gideon, gently.  "There's no time to lose."
+
+"To MARRY him?"
+
+"He wishes it."
+
+"But say--oh, come, now," said Hamlin confidentially, leaning back with
+his hands on the top of a chair.  "Ain't this playing it a little--just
+a LITTLE--too low down?  Of course you mean well, and all that; but
+come, now, say--couldn't you just let up on him there?  Why,
+she"--Hamlin softly closed the door--"she's got no character."
+
+"The more reason he should give her one."
+
+A cynical knowledge of matrimony imparted to him by the wives of others
+evidently colored Mr. Hamlin's views.  "Well, perhaps it's all the same
+if he's going to die.  But isn't it rather rough on HER?  I don't
+know," he added, reflectively; "she was sniveling round here a little
+while ago, until I sent her away."
+
+"You sent her away!" echoed Gideon.
+
+"I did."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because YOU were here."
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Hamlin departed, and in half an hour reappeared with
+two brilliantly dressed women.  One, hysterical, tearful, frightened,
+and pallid, was the destined bride; the other, highly colored, excited,
+and pleasedly observant, was her friend.  Two men hastily summoned from
+the anteroom as witnesses completed the group that moved into the
+bedroom and gathered round the bed.
+
+The ceremony was simple and brief.  It was well, for of all who took
+part in it none was more shaken by emotion than the officiating priest.
+The brilliant dresses of the women, the contrast of their painted faces
+with the waxen pallor of the dying man; the terrible incongruity of
+their voices, inflections, expressions, and familiarity; the mingled
+perfume of cosmetics and the faint odor of wine; the eyes of the
+younger woman following his movements with strange absorption, so
+affected him that he was glad when he could fall on his knees at last
+and bury his face in the pillow of the sufferer.  The hand that had
+been placed in the bride's cold fingers slipped from them and
+mechanically sought Gideon's again.  The significance of the
+unconscious act brought the first spontaneous tears into the woman's
+eyes.  It was his last act, for when Gideon's voice was again lifted in
+prayer, the spirit for whom it was offered had risen with it, as it
+were, still lovingly hand in hand, from the earth forever.
+
+The funeral was arranged for two days later, and Gideon found that his
+services had been so seriously yet so humbly counted upon by the
+friends of the dead man that he could scarce find it in his heart to
+tell them that it was the function of the local preacher--an older and
+more experienced man than himself.  "If it is," said Jack Hamlin,
+coolly, "I'm afraid he won't get a yaller dog to come to his church;
+but if you say you'll preach at the grave, there ain't a man, woman, or
+child that will be kept away.  Don't you go back on your luck, now;
+it's something awful and nigger-like. You've got this crowd where the
+hair is short; excuse me, but it's so.  Talk of revivals!  You could
+give that one-horse show in Tasajara a hundred points, and skunk them
+easily."  Indeed, had Gideon been accessible to vanity, the spontaneous
+homage he met with everywhere would have touched him more
+sympathetically and kindly than it did; but in the utter
+unconsciousness of his own power and the quality they worshiped in him,
+he felt alarmed and impatient of what he believed to be their weak
+sympathy with his own human weakness.  In the depth of his unselfish
+heart, lit, it must be confessed, only by the scant, inefficient lamp
+of his youthful experience, he really believed he had failed in his
+apostolic mission because he had been unable to touch the hearts of the
+Vigilantes by oral appeal and argument.  Feeling thus the reverence of
+these irreligious people that surrounded him, the facile yielding of
+their habits and prejudices to his half-uttered wish, appeared to him
+only a temptation of the flesh.  No one had sought him after the manner
+of the camp-meeting; he had converted the wounded man through a common
+weakness of their humanity.  More than that, he was conscious of a
+growing fascination for the truthfulness and sincerity of that class;
+particularly of Mr. Jack Hamlin, whose conversion he felt he could
+never attempt, yet whose strange friendship alternately thrilled and
+frightened him.
+
+It was the evening before the funeral.  The coffin, half smothered in
+wreaths and flowers, stood upon trestles in the anteroom; a large
+silver plate bearing an inscription on which for the second time Gideon
+read the name of the man he had converted.  It was a name associated on
+the frontier so often with reckless hardihood, dissipation, and blood,
+that even now Gideon trembled at his presumption, and was chilled by a
+momentary doubt of the efficiency of his labor.  Drawing unconsciously
+nearer to the mute subject of his thoughts, he threw his arms across
+the coffin and buried his face between them.
+
+A stream of soft music, the echo of some forgotten song, seemed to
+Gideon to suddenly fill and possess the darkened room, and then to
+slowly die away, like the opening and shutting of a door upon a flood
+of golden radiance.  He listened with hushed breath and a beating
+heart.  He had never heard anything like it before.  Again the strain
+arose, the chords swelled round him, until from their midst a tenor
+voice broke high and steadfast, like a star in troubled skies.  Gideon
+scarcely breathed.  It was a hymn--but such a hymn.  He had never
+conceived there could be such beautiful words, joined to such exquisite
+melody, and sung with a grace so tender and true.  What were all other
+hymns to this ineffable yearning for light, for love, and for infinite
+rest?  Thrilled and exalted, Gideon felt his doubts pierced and
+scattered by that illuminating cry.  Suddenly he rose, and with a
+troubled thought pushed open the door to the sitting-room.  It was Mr.
+Jack Hamlin sitting before a parlor organ.  The music ceased.
+
+"It was YOU," stammered Gideon.
+
+Jack nodded, struck a few chords by way of finish, and then wheeled
+round on the music-stool towards Gideon.  His face was slightly
+flushed.  "Yes.  I used to be the organist and tenor in our church in
+the States.  I used to snatch the sinners bald-headed with that. Do you
+know I reckon I'll sing that to-morrow, if you like, and maybe
+afterwards we'll--but"--he stopped--"we'll talk of that after the
+funeral.  It's business."  Seeing Gideon still glancing with a troubled
+air from the organ to himself, he said: "Would you like to try that
+hymn with me?  Come on!"
+
+He again struck the chords.  As the whole room seemed to throb with the
+music, Gideon felt himself again carried away.  Glancing over Jack's
+shoulders, he could read the words but not the notes; yet, having a
+quick ear for rhythm, he presently joined in with a deep but
+uncultivated baritone.  Together they forgot everything else, and at
+the end of an hour were only recalled by the presence of a silently
+admiring concourse of votive-offering friends who had gathered round
+them.
+
+The funeral took place the next day at the grave dug in the public
+cemetery--a green area fenced in by the palisading tules.  The words of
+Gideon were brief but humble; the strongest partisan of the dead man
+could find no fault in a confession of human frailty in which the
+speaker humbly confessed his share; and when the hymn was started by
+Hamlin and taken up by Gideon, the vast multitude, drawn by interest
+and curiosity, joined as in a solemn Amen.
+
+Later, when those two strangely-assorted friends had returned to Mr.
+Hamlin's rooms previous to Gideon's departure, the former, in a manner
+more serious than his habitual cynical good-humor, began: "I said I had
+to talk business with you.  The boys about here want to build a church
+for you, and are ready to plank the money down if you'll say it's a go.
+You understand they aren't asking you to run in opposition to that
+Gospel sharp--excuse me--that's here now, nor do they want you to run a
+side show in connection with it.  They want you to be independent.
+They don't pin you down to any kind of religion, you know; whatever you
+care to give them--Methodist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian---is mighty
+good enough for them, if you'll expound it.  You might give a little of
+each, or one on one day and one another--they'll never know the
+difference if you only mix the drinks yourself.  They'll give you a
+house and guarantee you fifteen hundred dollars the first year."
+
+He stopped and walked towards the window.  The sunlight that fell upon
+his handsome face seemed to call back the careless smile to his lips
+and the reckless fire to his brown eyes.  "I don't suppose there's a
+man among them that wouldn't tell you all this in a great deal better
+way than I do.  But the darned fools--excuse me--would have ME break it
+to you.  Why, I don't know.  I needn't tell you I like you--not only
+for what you did for George--but I like you for your style--for
+yourself.  And I want you to accept.  You could keep these rooms till
+they got a house ready for you.  Together--you and me--we'd make that
+organ howl.  But because I like it--because it's everything to us--and
+nothing to you, it don't seem square for me to ask it.  Does it?"
+
+Gideon replied by taking Hamlin's hand.  His face was perfectly pale,
+but his look collected.  He had not expected this offer, and yet when
+it was made he felt as if he had known it before--as if he had been
+warned of it--as if it was the great temptation of his life.  Watching
+him with an earnestness only slightly overlaid by his usual manner,
+Hamlin went on.
+
+"I know it would be lonely here, and a man like you ought to have a
+wife for--" he slightly lifted his eyebrows--"for example's sake. I
+heard there was a young lady in the case over there in Tasajara--but
+the old people didn't see it on account of your position. They'd jump
+at it now.  Eh?  No?  Well," continued Jack, with a decent attempt to
+conceal his cynical relief, "perhaps those boys have been so eager to
+find out all they could do for you that they've been sold.  Perhaps
+we're making equal fools of ourselves now in asking you to stay.  But
+don't say no just yet--take a day or a week to think of it."
+
+Gideon still pale but calm, cast his eyes around the elegant room, at
+the magic organ, then upon the slight handsome figure before him.  "I
+WILL think of it," he said, in a low voice, as he pressed Jack's hand.
+"And if I accept you will find me here to-morrow afternoon at this
+time; if I do not you will know that I keep with me wherever I go the
+kindness, the brotherly love, and the grace of God that prompts your
+offer, even though He withholds from me His blessed light, which alone
+can make me know His wish."  He stopped and hesitated.  "If you love
+me, Jack, don't ask me to stay, but pray for that light which alone can
+guide my feet back to you, or take me hence for ever."
+
+He once more tightly pressed the hand of the embarrassed man before him
+and was gone.
+
+Passers-by on the Martinez road that night remembered a mute and
+ghostly rider who, heedless of hail or greeting, moved by them as in a
+trance or vision.  But the Widow Hiler the next morning, coming from
+the spring, found no abstraction or preoccupation in the soft eyes of
+Gideon Deane as he suddenly appeared before her, and gently relieved
+her of the bucket she was carrying.  A quick flash of color over her
+brow and cheek-bone, as if a hot iron had passed there, and a certain
+astringent coyness, would have embarrassed any other man than him.
+
+"Sho, it's YOU.  I reck'ned I'd seen the last of you."
+
+"You don't mean that, Sister Hiler?" said Gideon, with a gentle smile.
+
+"Well, what with the report of your goin's on at Martinez and improvin'
+the occasion of that sinner's death, and leadin' a revival, I reckoned
+you'ld hev forgotten low folks at Tasajara. And if your goin' to be
+settled there in a new church, with new hearers, I reckon you'll want
+new surroundings too.  Things change and young folks change with 'em."
+
+They had reached the house.  Her breath was quick and short as if she
+and not Gideon had borne the burden.  He placed the bucket in its
+accustomed place, and then gently took her hand in his.  The act
+precipitated the last drop of feeble coquetry she had retained, and the
+old tears took its place.  Let us hope for the last time. For as Gideon
+stooped and lifted her ailing babe in his strong arms, he said softly,
+"Whatever God has wrought for me since we parted, I know now He has
+called me to but one work."
+
+"And that work?" she asked, tremulously.
+
+"To watch over the widow and fatherless.  And with God's blessing,
+sister, and His holy ordinance, I am here to stay."
+
+
+
+
+SARAH WALKER
+
+It was very hot.  Not a breath of air was stirring throughout the
+western wing of the Greyport Hotel, and the usual feverish life of its
+four hundred inmates had succumbed to the weather.  The great veranda
+was deserted; the corridors were desolated; no footfall echoed in the
+passages; the lazy rustle of a wandering skirt, or a passing sigh that
+was half a pant, seemed to intensify the heated silence.  An
+intoxicated bee, disgracefully unsteady in wing and leg, who had been
+holding an inebriated conversation with himself in the corner of my
+window pane, had gone to sleep at last and was snoring.  The errant
+prince might have entered the slumberous halls unchallenged, and walked
+into any of the darkened rooms whose open doors gaped for more air,
+without awakening the veriest Greyport flirt with his salutation.  At
+times a drowsy voice, a lazily interjected sentence, an incoherent
+protest, a long-drawn phrase of saccharine tenuity suddenly broke off
+with a gasp, came vaguely to the ear, as if indicating a
+half-suspended, half-articulated existence somewhere, but not definite
+enough to indicate conversation.  In the midst of this, there was the
+sudden crying of a child.
+
+I looked up from my work.  Through the camera of my jealously guarded
+window I could catch a glimpse of the vivid, quivering blue of the sky,
+the glittering intensity of the ocean, the long motionless leaves of
+the horse-chestnut in the road,--all utterly inconsistent with anything
+as active as this lamentation.  I stepped to the open door and into the
+silent hall.
+
+Apparently the noise had attracted the equal attention of my neighbors.
+A vague chorus of "Sarah Walker," in querulous recognition, of "O Lord!
+that child again!" in hopeless protest, rose faintly from the different
+rooms.  As the lamentations seemed to approach nearer, the visitors'
+doors were successively shut, swift footsteps hurried along the hall;
+past my open door came a momentary vision of a heated nursemaid
+carrying a tumultuous chaos of frilled skirts, flying sash, rebellious
+slippers, and tossing curls; there was a moment's rallying struggle
+before the room nearly opposite mine, and then a door opened and shut
+upon the vision.  It was Sarah Walker!
+
+Everybody knew her; few had ever seen more of her than this passing
+vision.  In the great hall, in the dining-room, in the vast parlors, in
+the garden, in the avenue, on the beach, a sound of lamentation had
+always been followed by this same brief apparition. Was there a sudden
+pause among the dancers and a subjugation of the loudest bassoons in
+the early evening "hop," the explanation was given in the words "Sarah
+Walker."  Was there a wild confusion among the morning bathers on the
+sands, people whispered "Sarah Walker."  A panic among the waiters at
+dinner, an interruption in the Sunday sacred concert, a disorganization
+of the after-dinner promenade on the veranda, was instantly referred to
+Sarah Walker. Nor were her efforts confined entirely to public life.
+In cozy corners and darkened recesses, bearded lips withheld the
+amorous declaration to mutter "Sarah Walker" between their clenched
+teeth; coy and bashful tongues found speech at last in the rapid
+formulation of "Sarah Walker."  Nobody ever thought of abbreviating her
+full name.  The two people in the hotel, otherwise individualized, but
+known only as "Sarah Walker's father" and "Sarah Walker's mother," and
+never as Mr. and Mrs. Walker, addressed her only as "Sarah Walker"; two
+animals that were occasionally a part of this passing pageant were
+known as "Sarah Walker's dog" and "Sarah Walker's cat," and later it
+was my proud privilege to sink my own individuality under the title of
+"that friend of Sarah Walker's."
+
+It must not be supposed that she had attained this baleful eminence
+without some active criticism.  Every parent in the Greyport Hotel had
+held his or her theory of the particular defects of Sarah Walker's
+education; every virgin and bachelor had openly expressed views of the
+peculiar discipline that was necessary to her subjugation.  It may be
+roughly estimated that she would have spent the entire nine years of
+her active life in a dark cupboard on an exclusive diet of bread and
+water, had this discipline obtained; while, on the other hand, had the
+educational theories of the parental assembly prevailed, she would have
+ere this shone an etherealized essence in the angelic host.  In either
+event she would have "ceased from troubling," which was the general
+Greyport idea of higher education.  A paper read before our Literary
+Society on "Sarah Walker and other infantile diseases," was referred to
+in the catalogue as "Walker, Sarah, Prevention and Cure," while the
+usual burlesque legislation of our summer season culminated in the Act
+entitled "An Act to amend an Act entitled an Act for the abatement of
+Sarah Walker."  As she was hereafter exclusively to be fed "on the
+PROVISIONS of this Act," some idea of its general tone may be gathered.
+It was a singular fact in this point of her history that her natural
+progenitors not only offered no resistance to the doubtful celebrity of
+their offspring, but, by hopelessly accepting the situation, to some
+extent POSED as Sarah Walker's victims.  Mr. and Mrs. Walker were known
+to be rich, respectable, and indulgent to their only child.  They
+themselves had been evolved from a previous generation of promiscuously
+acquired wealth into the repose of inherited property, but it was
+currently accepted that Sarah had "cast back" and reincarnated some
+waif on the deck of an emigrant ship at the beginning of the century.
+
+Such was the child separated from me by this portentous history, a
+narrow passage, and a closed nursery door.  Presently, however, the
+door was partly opened again as if to admit the air.  The crying had
+ceased, but in its place the monotonous Voice of Conscience, for the
+moment personated by Sarah Walker's nursemaid, kept alive a drowsy
+recollection of Sarah Walker's transgressions.
+
+"You see," said the Voice, "what a dreadful thing it is for a little
+girl to go on as you do.  I am astonished at you, Sarah Walker.  So is
+everybody; so is the good ladies next door; so is the kind gentleman
+opposite; so is all!  Where you expect to go to, 'Evin only knows!  How
+you expect to be forgiven, saints alone can tell!  But so it is always,
+and yet you keep it up.  And wouldn't you like it different, Sarah
+Walker?  Wouldn't you like to have everybody love you?  Wouldn't you
+like them good ladies next door, and that nice gentleman opposite, all
+to kinder rise up and say, 'Oh, what a dear good little girl Sarah
+Walker is?'"  The interpolation of a smacking sound of lips, as if in
+unctuous anticipation of Sarah Walker's virtue, here ensued--"Oh, what
+a dear, good, sw-e-et, lovely little girl Sarah Walker is!"
+
+There was a dead silence.  It may have been fancy, but I thought that
+some of the doors in the passage creaked softly as if in listening
+expectation.  Then the silence was broken by a sigh.  Had Sarah Walker
+ingloriously succumbed?  Rash and impotent conclusion!
+
+"I don't," said Sarah Walker's voice, slowly rising until it broke on
+the crest of a mountainous sob, "I--don't--want--'em--to--love me.
+I--don't want--'em--to say--what a--dear--good--little girl--Sarah
+Walker is!"  She caught her breath.  "I--want--'em--to say--what a
+naughty--bad--dirty--horrid--filthy--little girl Sarah Walker is--so I
+do.  There!"
+
+The doors slammed all along the passages.  The dreadful issue was
+joined.  I softly crossed the hall and looked into Sarah Walker's room.
+
+The light from a half-opened shutter fell full upon her rebellious
+little figure.  She had stiffened herself in a large easy-chair into
+the attitude in which she had been evidently deposited there by the
+nurse whose torn-off apron she still held rigidly in one hand.  Her
+shapely legs stood out before her, jointless and inflexible to the
+point of her tiny shoes--a POSE copied with pathetic fidelity by the
+French doll at her feet.  The attitude must have been dreadfully
+uncomfortable, and maintained only as being replete with some vague
+insults to the person who had put her down, as exhibiting a wild
+indecorum of silken stocking.  A mystified kitten--Sarah Walker's
+inseparable--was held as rigidly under one arm with equal dumb
+aggressiveness.  Following the stiff line of her half-recumbent figure,
+her head suddenly appeared perpendicularly erect--yet the only mobile
+part of her body.  A dazzling sunburst of silky hair, the color of
+burnished copper, partly hid her neck and shoulders and the back of the
+chair.  Her eyes were a darker shade of the same color--the orbits
+appearing deeper and larger from the rubbing in of habitual tears from
+long wet lashes.  Nothing so far seemed inconsistent with her infelix
+reputation, but, strange to say, her other features were marked by
+delicacy and refinement, and her mouth--that sorely exercised and
+justly dreaded member--was small and pretty, albeit slightly dropped at
+the corners.
+
+The immediate effect of my intrusion was limited solely to the
+nursemaid.  Swooping suddenly upon Sarah Walker's too evident
+deshabille, she made two or three attempts to pluck her into propriety;
+but the child, recognizing the cause as well as the effect, looked
+askance at me and only stiffened herself the more. "Sarah Walker, I'm
+shocked."
+
+"It ain't HIS room anyway," said Sarah, eying me malevolently. "What's
+he doing here?"
+
+There was so much truth in this that I involuntarily drew back abashed.
+The nurse-maid ejaculated "Sarah!" and lifted her eyes in hopeless
+protest.
+
+"And he needn't come seeing YOU," continued Sarah, lazily rubbing the
+back of her head against the chair; "my papa don't allow it. He warned
+you 'bout the other gentleman, you know."
+
+"Sarah Walker!"
+
+I felt it was necessary to say something.  "Don't you want to come with
+me and look at the sea?" I said with utter feebleness of invention.  To
+my surprise, instead of actively assaulting me Sarah Walker got up,
+shook her hair over her shoulders, and took my hand.
+
+"With your hair in that state?" almost screamed the domestic.  But
+Sarah Walker had already pulled me into the hall.  What particularly
+offensive form of opposition to authority was implied in this prompt
+assent to my proposal I could only darkly guess. For myself I knew I
+must appear to her a weak impostor.  What would there possibly be in
+the sea to interest Sarah Walker?  For the moment I prayed for a
+water-spout, a shipwreck, a whale, or any marine miracle to astound her
+and redeem my character.  I walked guiltily down the hall, holding her
+hand bashfully in mine.  I noticed that her breast began to heave
+convulsively; if she cried I knew I should mingle my tears with hers.
+We reached the veranda in gloomy silence.  As I expected, the sea lay
+before us glittering in the sun--vacant, staring, flat, and hopelessly
+and unquestionably uninteresting.
+
+"I knew it all along," said Sarah Walker, turning down the corners of
+her mouth; "there never was anything to see.  I know why you got me to
+come here.  You want to tell me if I'm a good girl you'll take me to
+sail some day.  You want to say if I'm bad the sea will swallow me up.
+That's all you want, you horrid thing, you!"
+
+"Hush!" I said, pointing to the corner of the veranda.
+
+A desperate idea of escape had just seized me.  Bolt upright in the
+recess of a window sat a nursemaid who had succumbed to sleep equally
+with her helpless charge in the perambulator beside her.  I instantly
+recognized the infant--a popular organism known as "Baby Buckly"--the
+prodigy of the Greyport Hotel, the pet of its enthusiastic womanhood.
+Fat and featureless, pink and pincushiony, it was borrowed by gushing
+maidenhood, exchanged by idiotic maternity, and had grown unctuous and
+tumefacient under the kisses and embraces of half the hotel.  Even in
+its present repose it looked moist and shiny from indiscriminate and
+promiscuous osculation.
+
+"Let's borrow Baby Buckly," I said recklessly.
+
+Sarah Walker at once stopped crying.  I don't know how she did it, but
+the cessation was instantaneous, as if she had turned off a tap
+somewhere.
+
+"And put it in Mr. Peters' bed!" I continued.
+
+Peters being notoriously a grim bachelor, the bare suggestion bristled
+with outrage.  Sarah Walker's eyes sparkled.
+
+"You don't mean it!--go 'way!"--she said with affected coyness.
+
+"But I do!  Come."
+
+We extracted it noiselessly together--that is, Sarah Walker did, with
+deft womanliness--carried it darkly along the hall to No. 27, and
+deposited it in Peters' bed, where it lay like a freshly opened oyster.
+We then returned hand in hand to my room, where we looked out of the
+window on the sea.  It was observable that there was no lack of
+interest in Sarah Walker now.
+
+Before five minutes had elapsed some one breathlessly passed the open
+door while we were still engaged in marine observation.  This was
+followed by return footsteps and a succession of swiftly rustling
+garments, until the majority of the women in our wing had apparently
+passed our room, and we saw an irregular stream of nursemaids and
+mothers converging towards the hotel out of the grateful shadow of
+arbors, trees, and marquees.  In fact we were still engaged in
+observation when Sarah Walker's nurse came to fetch her away, and to
+inform her that "by rights" Baby Buckly's nurse and Mr. Peters should
+both be made to leave the hotel that very night.  Sarah Walker
+permitted herself to be led off with dry but expressive eyes.  That
+evening she did not cry, but, on being taken into the usual custody for
+disturbance, was found to be purple with suppressed laughter.
+
+This was the beginning of my intimacy with Sarah Walker.  But while it
+was evident that whatever influence I obtained over her was due to my
+being particeps criminis, I think it was accepted that a regular
+abduction of infants might become in time monotonous if not dangerous.
+So she was satisfied with the knowledge that I could not now, without
+the most glaring hypocrisy, obtrude a moral superiority upon her.  I do
+not think she would have turned state evidence and accused me, but I
+was by no means assured of her disinterested regard.  She contented
+herself, for a few days afterwards, with meeting me privately and
+mysteriously communicating unctuous reminiscences of our joint crime,
+without suggesting a repetition.  Her intimacy with me did not seem to
+interfere with her general relations to her own species in the other
+children in the hotel.  Perhaps I should have said before that her
+popularity with them was by no means prejudiced by her infelix
+reputation.  But while she was secretly admired by all, she had few
+professed followers and no regular associates.  Whether the few whom
+she selected for that baleful preeminence were either torn from her by
+horrified guardians, or came to grief through her dangerous counsels,
+or whether she really did not care for them, I could not say.  Their
+elevation was brief, their retirement unregretted.  It was however
+permitted me, through felicitous circumstances, to become acquainted
+with the probable explanation of her unsociability.
+
+The very hot weather culminated one afternoon in a dead faint of earth
+and sea and sky.  An Alpine cloudland of snow that had mocked the
+upturned eyes of Greyport for hours, began to darken under the folding
+shadow of a black and velvety wing.  The atmosphere seemed to thicken
+as the gloom increased; the lazy dust, thrown up by hurrying feet that
+sought a refuge, hung almost motionless in the air.  Suddenly it was
+blown to the four quarters in one fierce gust that as quickly dispersed
+the loungers drooping in shade and cover. For a few seconds the long
+avenue was lost in flying clouds of dust, and then was left bare of
+life or motion.  Raindrops in huge stars and rosettes appeared
+noiselessly and magically upon the sidewalks--gouts of moisture
+apparently dropped from mid-air.  And then the ominous hush returned.
+
+A mile away along the rocks, I turned for shelter into a cavernous
+passage of the overhanging cliff, where I could still watch the coming
+storm upon the sea.  A murmur of voices presently attracted my
+attention.  I then observed that the passage ended in a kind of open
+grotto, where I could dimly discern the little figures of several
+children, who, separated from their nurses in the sudden onset of the
+storm, had taken refuge there.  As the gloom deepened they became
+silent again, until the stillness was broken by a familiar voice.
+There was no mistaking it.--It was Sarah Walker's. But it was not
+lifted in lamentation, it was raised only as if resuming a suspended
+narrative.
+
+"Her name," said Sarah Walker gloomily, "was Kribbles.  She was the
+only child--of--of orphaned parentage, and fair to see, but she was
+bad, and God did not love her.  And one day she was separated from her
+nurse on a desert island like to this.  And then came a hidgeous
+thunderstorm.  And a great big thunderbolt came galumping after her.
+And it ketched her and rolled all over her--so! and then it came back
+and ketched her and rolled her over--so!  And when they came to pick
+her up there was not so much as THAT left of her.  All burnt up!"
+
+"Wasn't there just a little bit of her shoe?" suggested a cautious
+auditor.
+
+"Not a bit," said Sarah Walker firmly.  All the other children echoed
+"Not a bit," indignantly, in evident gratification at the completeness
+of Kribbles' catastrophe.  At this moment the surrounding darkness was
+suddenly filled with a burst of blue celestial fire; the heavy inky sea
+beyond, the black-edged mourning horizon, the gleaming sands, each nook
+and corner of the dripping cave, with the frightened faces of the
+huddled group of children, started into vivid life for an instant, and
+then fell back with a deafening crash into the darkness.
+
+There was a slight sound of whimpering.  Sarah Walker apparently
+pounced upon the culprit, for it ceased.
+
+"Sniffling 'tracts 'lectricity," she said sententiously.
+
+"But you thaid it wath Dod!" lisped a casuist of seven.
+
+"It's all the same," said Sarah sharply, "and so's asking questions."
+
+This obscure statement was however apparently understood, for the
+casuist lapsed into silent security.  "Lots of things 'tracts it,"
+continued Sarah Walker.  "Gold and silver, and metals and knives and
+rings."
+
+"And pennies?"
+
+"And pennies most of all!  Kribbles was that vain, she used to wear
+jewelry and fly in the face of Providence."
+
+"But you thaid--"
+
+"Will you?--There! you hear that?"  There was another blinding flash
+and bounding roll of thunder along the shore.  "I wonder you didn't
+ketch it.  You would--only I'm here."
+
+All was quiet again, but from certain indications it was evident that a
+collection of those dangerous articles that had proved fatal to the
+unhappy Kribbles was being taken up.  I could hear the clink of coins
+and jingle of ornaments.  That Sarah herself was the custodian was
+presently shown.  "But won't the lightning come to you now?" asked a
+timid voice.
+
+"No," said Sarah, promptly, "'cause I ain't afraid!  Look!"
+
+A frightened protest from the children here ensued, but the next
+instant she appeared at the entrance of the grotto and ran down the
+rocks towards the sea.  Skipping from bowlder to bowlder she reached
+the furthest projection of the ledge, now partly submerged by the
+rising surf, and then turned half triumphantly, half defiantly, towards
+the grotto.  The weird phosphorescence of the storm lit up the resolute
+little figure standing there, gorgeously bedecked with the chains,
+rings, and shiny trinkets of her companions.  With a tiny hand raised
+in mock defiance of the elements, she seemed to lean confidingly
+against the panting breast of the gale, with fluttering skirt and
+flying tresses.  Then the vault behind her cracked with three jagged
+burning fissures, a weird flame leaped upon the sand, there was a cry
+of terror from the grotto, echoed by a scream of nurses on the cliff, a
+deluge of rain, a terrific onset from the gale--and--Sarah Walker was
+gone? Nothing of the kind!  When I reached the ledge, after a severe
+struggle with the storm, I found Sarah on the leeward side, drenched
+but delighted.  I held her tightly, while we waited for a lull to
+regain the cliff, and took advantage of the sympathetic situation.
+
+"But you know you WERE frightened, Sarah," I whispered; "you thought of
+what happened to poor Kribbles."
+
+"Do you know who Kribbles was?" she asked confidentially.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well," she whispered, "I made Kribbles up.  And the hidgeous storm and
+thunderbolt--and the burning!  All out of my own head."
+
+The only immediate effect of this escapade was apparently to
+precipitate and bring into notoriety the growing affection of an
+obscure lover of Sarah Walker's, hitherto unsuspected.  He was a mild
+inoffensive boy of twelve, known as "Warts," solely from an inordinate
+exhibition of these youthful excrescences.  On the day of Sarah
+Walker's adventure his passion culminated in a sudden and illogical
+attack upon Sarah's nurse and parents while they were bewailing her
+conduct, and in assaulting them with his feet and hands.  Whether he
+associated them in some vague way with the cause of her momentary
+peril, or whether he only wished to impress her with the touching
+flattery of a general imitation of her style, I cannot say.  For his
+lovemaking was peculiar.  A day or two afterwards he came to my open
+door and remained for some moments bashfully looking at me.  The next
+day I found him standing by my chair in the piazza with an embarrassed
+air and in utter inability to explain his conduct.  At the end of a
+rapid walk on the sand one morning, I was startled by the sound of
+hurried breath, and looking around, discovered the staggering Warts
+quite exhausted by endeavoring to keep up with me on his short legs.
+At last the daily recurrence of his haunting presence forced a dreadful
+suspicion upon me.  Warts was courting ME for Sarah Walker!  Yet it was
+impossible to actually connect her with these mute attentions. "You
+want me to give them to Sarah Walker," I said cheerfully one afternoon,
+as he laid upon my desk some peculiarly uninviting crustacea which
+looked not unlike a few detached excrescences from his own hands.  He
+shook his head decidedly.  "I understand," I continued, confidently;
+"you want me to keep them for her."  "No," said Warts, doggedly.  "Then
+you only want me to tell her how nice they are?"  The idea was
+apparently so shamelessly true that he blushed himself hastily into the
+passage, and ceased any future contribution.  Naturally still more
+ineffective was the slightest attempt to bring his devotion into the
+physical presence of Sarah Walker.  The most ingenious schemes to lure
+him into my room while she was there failed utterly.  Yet he must have
+at one time basked in her baleful presence.  "Do you like Warts?" I
+asked her one day bluntly.  "Yes," said Sarah Walker with cheerful
+directness; "ain't HE got a lot of 'em?--though he used to have more.
+But," she added reflectively, "do you know the little Ilsey boy?"  I
+was compelled to admit my ignorance.  "Well!" she said with a
+reminiscent sigh of satisfaction, "HE'S got only two toes on his left
+foot--showed 'em to me.  And he was born so."  Need it be said that in
+these few words I read the dismal sequel of Warts' unfortunate
+attachment? His accidental eccentricity was no longer attractive.  What
+were his evanescent accretions, subject to improvement or removal,
+beside the hereditary and settled malformations of his rival?
+
+Once only, in this brief summer episode, did Sarah Walker attract the
+impulsive and general sympathy of Greyport.  It is only just to her
+consistency to say it was through no fault of hers, unless a
+characteristic exposure which brought on a chill and diphtheria could
+be called her own act.  Howbeit, towards the close of the season, when
+a sudden suggestion of the coming autumn had crept, one knew not how,
+into the heart of a perfect day; when even a return of the summer
+warmth had a suspicion of hectic,--on one of these days Sarah Walker
+was missed with the bees and the butterflies.  For two days her voice
+had not been heard in hall or corridor, nor had the sunshine of her
+French marigold head lit up her familiar places.  The two days were
+days of relief, yet mitigated with a certain uneasy apprehension of the
+return of Sarah Walker, or--more alarming thought!--the Sarah Walker
+element in a more appalling form.  So strong was this impression that
+an unhappy infant who unwittingly broke this interval with his maiden
+outcry was nearly lynched.  "We're not going to stand that from YOU,
+you know," was the crystallized sentiment of a brutal bachelor.  In
+fact, it began to be admitted that Greyport had been accustomed to
+Sarah Walker's ways.  In the midst of this, it was suddenly whispered
+that Sarah Walker was lying dangerously ill, and was not expected to
+live.
+
+Then occurred one of those strange revulsions of human sentiment which
+at first seem to point the dawning of a millennium of poetic justice,
+but which, in this case, ended in merely stirring the languid pulses of
+society into a hectic fever, and in making sympathy for Sarah Walker an
+insincere and exaggerated fashion. Morning and afternoon visits to her
+apartment, with extravagant offerings, were de rigueur; bulletins were
+issued three times a day; an allusion to her condition was the
+recognized preliminary to all conversation; advice, suggestions, and
+petitions to restore the baleful existence, flowed readily from the
+same facile invention that had once proposed its banishment; until one
+afternoon the shadow had drawn so close that even Folly withheld its
+careless feet before it, and laid down its feeble tinkling bells and
+gaudy cap tremblingly on the threshold.  But the sequel must be told in
+more vivid words than mine.
+
+"Whin I saw that angel lyin' there," said Sarah Walker's nurse, "as
+white, if ye plaze, as if the whole blessed blood of her body had gone
+to make up the beautiful glory of her hair; speechless as she was, I
+thought I saw a sort of longin' in her eyes.
+
+"'Is it anythin' you'll be wantin', Sarah darlint', sez her mother with
+a thremblin' voice, 'afore it's lavin' us ye are?  Is it the ministher
+yer askin' for, love?' sez she.
+
+"And Sarah looked at me, and if it was the last words I spake, her lips
+moved and she whispered 'Scotty.'
+
+"'Wirra! wirra!' sez the mother, 'it's wanderin' she is, the darlin';'
+for Scotty, don't ye see, was the grand barkeeper of the hotel.
+
+"'Savin' yer presence, ma'am,' sez I, 'and the child's here, ez is half
+a saint already, it's thruth she's spakin'--it's Scotty she wants.'
+And with that my angel blinks wid her black eyes 'yes.'
+
+"'Bring him,' says the docthor, 'at once.'
+
+"And they bring him in wid all the mustachios and moighty fine curls of
+him, and his diamonds, rings, and pins all a-glistening just like his
+eyes when he set 'em on that suffering saint.
+
+"'Is it anythin' you're wantin,' Sarah dear?' sez he, thryin' to spake
+firm.  And Sarah looks at him, and then looks at a tumbler on the table.
+
+"'Is it a bit of a cocktail, the likes of the one I made for ye last
+Sunday unbeknownst?' sez he, looking round mortal afraid of the
+parents.  And Sarah Walker's eyes said, 'It is.'  Then the ministher
+groaned, but the docthor jumps to his feet.
+
+"'Bring it,' sez he, 'and howld your jaw, an ye's a Christian sowl.'
+And he brought it.  An' afther the first sip, the child lifts herself
+up on one arm, and sez, with a swate smile and a toss of the glass:
+
+"'I looks towards you, Scotty,' sez she.
+
+"'I observes you and bows, miss,' sez he, makin' as if he was dhrinkin'
+wid her.
+
+"'Here's another nail in yer coffin, old man,' sez she winkin'.
+
+"'And here's the hair all off your head, miss,' sez he quite aisily,
+tossin' back the joke betwixt 'em.
+
+"And with that she dhrinks it off, and lies down and goes to sleep like
+a lamb, and wakes up wid de rosy dawn in her cheeks, and the morthal
+seekness gone forever."
+
+     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+Thus Sarah Walker recovered.  Whether the fact were essential to the
+moral conveyed in these pages, I leave the reader to judge.
+
+I was leaning on the terrace of the Kronprinzen-Hof at Rolandseck one
+hot summer afternoon, lazily watching the groups of tourists strolling
+along the road that ran between the Hof and the Rhine. There was
+certainly little in the place or its atmosphere to recall the Greyport
+episode of twenty years before, when I was suddenly startled by hearing
+the name of "Sarah Walker."
+
+In the road below me were three figures,--a lady, a gentleman, and a
+little girl.  As the latter turned towards the lady who addressed her,
+I recognized the unmistakable copper-colored tresses, trim figure,
+delicate complexion, and refined features of the friend of my youth!  I
+seized my hat, but by the time I had reached the road, they had
+disappeared.
+
+The utter impossibility of its being Sarah Walker herself, and the
+glaring fact that the very coincidence of name would be inconsistent
+with any conventional descent from the original Sarah, I admit confused
+me.  But I examined the book of the Kronprinzen-Hof and the other
+hotels, and questioned my portier.  There was no "Mees" nor "Madame
+Walkiere" extant in Rolandseck.  Yet might not Monsieur have heard
+incorrectly?  The Czara Walka was evidently Russian, and Rolandseck was
+a resort for Russian princes.  But pardon!  Did Monsieur really mean
+the young demoiselle now approaching?  Ah! that was a different affair.
+She was the daughter of the Italian Prince and Princess Monte Castello
+staying here.  The lady with her was not the Princess, but a foreign
+friend.  The gentleman was the Prince.  Would he present Monsieur's
+card?
+
+They were entering the hotel.  The Prince was a little,
+inoffensive-looking man, the lady an evident countrywoman of my own,
+and the child--was, yet was NOT, Sarah!  There was the face, the
+outline, the figure--but the life, the verve, the audacity, was
+wanting!  I could contain myself no longer.
+
+"Pardon an inquisitive compatriot, madam," I said; "but I heard you a
+few moments ago address this young lady by the name of a very dear
+young friend, whom I knew twenty years ago--Sarah Walker.  Am I right?"
+
+The Prince stopped and gazed at us both with evident affright; then
+suddenly recognizing in my freedom some wild American indecorum,
+doubtless provoked by the presence of another of my species, which he
+really was not expected to countenance, retreated behind the portier.
+The circumstance by no means increased the good-will of the lady, as
+she replied somewhat haughtily:--
+
+"The Principessina is named Sarah Walker, after her mother's maiden
+name."
+
+"Then this IS Sarah Walker's daughter!" I said joyfully.
+
+"She is the daughter of the Prince and Princess of Monte Castello,"
+corrected the lady frigidly.
+
+"I had the pleasure of knowing her mother very well."  I stopped and
+blushed.  Did I really know Sarah Walker very well?  And would Sarah
+Walker know me now?  Or would it not be very like her to go back on me?
+There was certainly anything but promise in the feeble-minded, vacuous
+copy of Sarah before me.  I was yet hesitating, when the Prince, who
+had possibly received some quieting assurance from the portier, himself
+stepped forward, stammered that the Princess would, without doubt, be
+charmed to receive me later, and skipped upstairs, leaving the
+impression on my mind that he contemplated ordering his bill at once.
+There was no excuse for further prolonging the interview.  "Say good-by
+to the strange gentleman, Sarah," suggested Sarah's companion stiffly.
+I looked at the child in the wild hope of recognizing some prompt
+resistance to the suggestion that would have identified her with the
+lost Sarah of my youth--but in vain.  "Good-by, sir," said the affected
+little creature, dropping a mechanical curtsey.  "Thank you very much
+for remembering my mother."  "Good-by, Sarah!"  It was indeed good-by
+forever.
+
+For on my way to my room I came suddenly upon the Prince, in a recess
+of the upper hall, addressing somebody through an open door with a
+querulous protest, whose wild extravagance of statement was grotesquely
+balanced by its utter feeble timidity of manner.  "It is," said the
+Prince, "indeed a grave affair.  We have here hundreds of socialists,
+emissaries from lawless countries and impossible places, who travel
+thousands of miles to fall upon our hearts and embrace us.  They
+establish an espionage over us; they haunt our walks in incredible
+numbers; they hang in droves upon our footsteps; Heaven alone saves us
+from a public osculation at any moment!  They openly allege that they
+have dandled us on their knees at recent periods; washed and dressed
+us, and would do so still.  Our happiness, our security--"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Prince.  Do shut up!"
+
+The Prince collapsed and shrank away, and I hurried past the open door.
+A tall, magnificent-looking woman was standing before a glass,
+arranging her heavy red hair.  The face, which had been impatiently
+turned towards the door, had changed again to profile, with a frown
+still visible on the bent brow.  Our eyes met as I passed.  The next
+moment the door slammed, and I had seen the last of Sarah Walker.
+
+
+
+
+A SHIP OF '49
+
+I
+
+It had rained so persistently in San Francisco during the first week of
+January, 1854, that a certain quagmire in the roadway of Long Wharf had
+become impassable, and a plank was thrown over its dangerous depth.
+Indeed, so treacherous was the spot that it was alleged, on good
+authority, that a hastily embarking traveler had once hopelessly lost
+his portmanteau, and was fain to dispose of his entire interest in it
+for the sum of two dollars and fifty cents to a speculative stranger on
+the wharf.  As the stranger's search was rewarded afterwards only by
+the discovery of the body of a casual Chinaman, who had evidently
+endeavored wickedly to anticipate him, a feeling of commercial
+insecurity was added to the other eccentricities of the locality.
+
+The plank led to the door of a building that was a marvel even in the
+chaotic frontier architecture of the street.  The houses on either
+side--irregular frames of wood or corrugated iron--bore evidence of
+having been quickly thrown together, to meet the requirements of the
+goods and passengers who were once disembarked on what was the muddy
+beach of the infant city.  But the building in question exhibited a
+certain elaboration of form and design utterly inconsistent with this
+idea.  The structure obtruded a bowed front to the street, with a
+curving line of small windows, surmounted by elaborate carvings and
+scroll work of vines and leaves, while below, in faded gilt letters,
+appeared the legend "Pontiac--Marseilles."  The effect of this
+incongruity was startling.  It is related that an inebriated miner,
+impeded by mud and drink before its door, was found gazing at its
+remarkable facade with an expression of the deepest despondency.  "I
+hev lived a free life, pardner," he explained thickly to the Samaritan
+who succored him, "and every time since I've been on this six weeks'
+jamboree might have kalkilated it would come to this.  Snakes I've seen
+afore now, and rats I'm not unfamiliar with, but when it comes to the
+starn of a ship risin' up out of the street, I reckon it's time to pass
+in my checks."  "It IS a ship, you blasted old soaker," said the
+Samaritan curtly.
+
+It was indeed a ship.  A ship run ashore and abandoned on the beach
+years before by her gold-seeking crew, with the debris of her scattered
+stores and cargo, overtaken by the wild growth of the strange city and
+the reclamation of the muddy flat, wherein she lay hopelessly imbedded;
+her retreat cut off by wharves and quays and breakwater, jostled at
+first by sheds, and then impacted in a block of solid warehouses and
+dwellings, her rudder, port, and counter boarded in, and now gazing
+hopelessly through her cabin windows upon the busy street before her.
+But still a ship despite her transformation.  The faintest line of
+contour yet left visible spoke of the buoyancy of another element; the
+balustrade of her roof was unmistakably a taffrail.  The rain slipped
+from her swelling sides with a certain lingering touch of the sea; the
+soil around her was still treacherous with its suggestions, and even
+the wind whistled nautically over her chimney.  If, in the fury of some
+southwesterly gale, she had one night slipped her strange moorings and
+left a shining track through the lower town to the distant sea, no one
+would have been surprised.
+
+Least of all, perhaps, her present owner and possessor, Mr. Abner Nott.
+For by the irony of circumstances, Mr. Nott was a Far Western farmer
+who had never seen a ship before, nor a larger stream of water than a
+tributary of the Missouri River.  In a spirit, half of fascination,
+half of speculation, he had bought her at the time of her abandonment,
+and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma with his live stock, to
+defray the expenses of filling in the land where she stood, and the
+improvements of the vicinity. He had transferred his household goods
+and his only daughter to her cabin, and had divided the space "between
+decks" and her hold into lodging-rooms, and lofts for the storage of
+goods.  It could hardly be said that the investment had been
+profitable.  His tenants vaguely recognized that his occupancy was a
+sentimental rather than a commercial speculation, and often generously
+lent themselves to the illusion by not paying their rent.  Others
+treated their own tenancy as a joke,--a quaint recreation born of the
+childlike familiarity of frontier intercourse.  A few had left
+carelessly abandoning their unsalable goods to their landlord, with
+great cheerfulness and a sense of favor.  Occasionally Mr. Abner Nott,
+in a practical relapse, raged against the derelicts, and talked of
+dispossessing them, or even dismantling his tenement, but he was easily
+placated by a compliment to the "dear old ship," or an effort made by
+some tenant to idealize his apartment.  A photographer who had
+ingeniously utilized the forecastle for a gallery (accessible from the
+bows in the next street), paid no further tribute than a portrait of
+the pretty face of Rosey Nott. The superstitious reverence in which
+Abner Nott held his monstrous fancy was naturally enhanced by his
+purely bucolic exaggeration of its real functions and its native
+element.  "This yer keel has sailed, and sailed, and sailed," he would
+explain with some incongruity of illustration, "in a bee line, makin'
+tracks for days runnin'.  I reckon more storms and blizzards hez
+tackled her then you ken shake a stick at.  She's stampeded whales
+afore now, and sloshed round with pirates and freebooters in and outer
+the Spanish Main, and across lots from Marcelleys where she was rared.
+And yer she sits peaceful-like just ez if she'd never been outer a
+pertater patch, and hadn't ploughed the sea with fo'sails and studdin'
+sails and them things cavortin' round her masts."
+
+Abner Nott's enthusiasm was shared by his daughter, but with more
+imagination, and an intelligence stimulated by the scant literature of
+her father's emigrant wagon and the few books found on the cabin
+shelves.  But to her the strange shell she inhabited suggested more of
+the great world than the rude, chaotic civilization she saw from the
+cabin windows or met in the persons of her father's lodgers. Shut up
+for days in this quaint tenement, she had seen it change from the
+enchanted playground of her childish fancy to the theatre of her active
+maidenhood, but without losing her ideal romance in it.  She had
+translated its history in her own way, read its quaint nautical
+hieroglyphics after her own fashion, and possessed herself of its
+secrets.  She had in fancy made voyages in it to foreign lands; had
+heard the accents of a softer tongue on its decks, and on summer
+nights, from the roof of the quarter-deck, had seen mellower
+constellations take the place of the hard metallic glitter of the
+Californian skies.  Sometimes, in her isolation, the long, cylindrical
+vault she inhabited seemed, like some vast sea-shell, to become musical
+with the murmurings of the distant sea.  So completely had it taken the
+place of the usual instincts of feminine youth that she had forgotten
+she was pretty, or that her dresses were old in fashion and scant in
+quantity.  After the first surprise of admiration her father's lodgers
+ceased to follow the abstracted nymph except with their eyes,--partly
+respecting her spiritual shyness, partly respecting the jealous
+supervision of the paternal Nott.  She seldom penetrated the crowded
+centre of the growing city; her rare excursions were confined to the
+old ranch at Petaluma, whence she brought flowers and plants, and even
+extemporized a hanging-garden on the quarter-deck.
+
+It was still raining, and the wind, which had increased to a gale, was
+dashing the drops against the slanting cabin windows with a sound like
+spray when Mr. Abner Nott sat before a table seriously engaged with his
+accounts.  For it was "steamer night,"--as that momentous day of
+reckoning before the sailing of the regular mail steamer was briefly
+known to commercial San Francisco,--and Mr. Nott was subject at such
+times to severely practical relapses.  A swinging light seemed to bring
+into greater relief that peculiar encased casket-like security of the
+low-timbered, tightly-fitting apartment, with its toy-like utilities of
+space, and made the pretty oval face of Rosey Nott appear a
+characteristic ornament. The sliding door of the cabin communicated
+with the main deck, now roofed in and partitioned off so as to form a
+small passage that led to the open starboard gangway, where a narrow,
+inclosed staircase built on the ship's side took the place of the
+ship's ladder under her counter, and opened in the street.
+
+A dash of rain against the window caused Rosey to lift her eyes from
+her book.
+
+"It's much nicer here than at the ranch, father," she said coaxingly,
+"even leaving alone its being a beautiful ship instead of a shanty; the
+wind don't whistle through the cracks and blow out the candle when
+you're reading, nor the rain spoil your things hung up against the
+wall.  And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own--ship--you
+know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders."
+
+Vague and general as Miss Rosey's compliment was, it had its full
+effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his
+hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings. "Yes," he
+said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude;
+"yes, in course it's more bang-up style, but it don't pay--Rosey--it
+don't pay.  Yer's the Pontiac that oughter be bringin' in, ez rents go,
+at least three hundred a month, don't make her taxes.  I bin thinkin'
+seriously of sellin' her."
+
+As Rosey knew her father had experienced this serious contemplation on
+the first of every month for the last two years, and cheerfully ignored
+it the next day, she only said, "I'm sure the vacant rooms and lofts
+are all rented, father."
+
+"That's it," returned Mr. Nott thoughtfully, plucking at his bushy
+whiskers with his fingers and thumb as if he were removing dead and
+sapless incumbranees in their growth, "that's just what it is--them's
+ez in it themselves don't pay, and them ez haz left their goods--the
+goods don't pay.  The feller ez stored them iron sugar kettles in the
+forehold, after trying to get me to make another advance on 'em, sez he
+believes he'll have to sacrifice 'em to me after all, and only begs I'd
+give him a chance of buying back the half of 'em ten years from now, at
+double what I advanced him.  The chap that left them five hundred cases
+of hair dye 'tween decks and then skipped out to Sacramento, met me the
+other day in the street and advised me to use a bottle ez an
+advertisement, or try it on the starn of the Pontiac for fire-proof
+paint.  That foolishness ez all he's good for.  And yet thar might be
+suthin' in the paint, if a feller had nigger luck.  Ther's that New
+York chap ez bought up them damaged boxes of plug terbaker for fifty
+dollars a thousand, and sold 'em for foundations for that new building
+in Sansome Street at a thousand clear profit.  It's all luck, Rosey."
+
+The girl's eyes had wandered again to the pages of her book. Perhaps
+she was already familiar with the text of her father's monologue.  But
+recognizing an additional querulousness in his voice, she laid the book
+aside and patiently folded her hands in her lap.
+
+"That's right--for I've suthin' to tell ye.  The fact is Sleight wants
+to buy the Pontiac out and out just ez she stands with the two fifty
+vara lots she stands on."
+
+"Sleight wants to buy her?  Sleight?" echoed Rosey incredulously.
+
+"You bet!  Sleight--the big financier, the smartest man in 'Frisco."
+
+"What does he want to buy her for?" asked Rosey, knitting her pretty
+brows.
+
+The apparently simple question suddenly puzzled Mr. Nott.  He glanced
+feebly at his daughter's face, and frowned in vacant irritation.
+"That's so," he said, drawing a long breath; "there's suthin' in that."
+
+"What did he SAY?" continued the young girl, impatiently.
+
+"Not much.  'You've got the Pontiac, Nott,' sez he.  'You bet!' sez I.
+'What'll you take for her and the lot she stands on?' sez he, short and
+sharp.  Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would
+hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched.  That ain't my style.  I
+just looked at him.  'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer
+day,' sez he, and off he goes like a shot.  He's awfully sharp, Rosey."
+
+"But if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy the ship,"
+returned Rosey, thoughtfully, "it's only because he knows it's valuable
+property, and not because he likes it as we do.  He can't take that
+value away even if we don't sell it to him, and all the while we have
+the comfort of the dear old Pontiac, don't you see?"
+
+This exhaustive commercial reasoning was so sympathetic to Mr. Nott's
+instincts that he accepted it as conclusive.  He, however, deemed it
+wise to still preserve his practical attitude.  "But that don't make it
+pay by the month, Rosey.  Suthin' must be done.  I'm thinking I'll
+clean out that photographer."
+
+"Not just after he's taken such a pretty view of the cabin front of the
+Pontiac from the street, father!  No! he's going to give us a copy, and
+put the other in a shop window in Montgomery Street."
+
+"That's so," said Mr. Nott, musingly; "it's no slouch of an
+advertisement.  'The Pontiac,' the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St.
+Jo, Missouri.  Send it on to your Aunt Phoebe; sorter make the old
+folks open their eyes--oh?  Well, seein' he's been to some expense
+fittin' up an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide.  But
+as to that d----d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his
+stuck-up airs and high-falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's
+regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation."
+
+"How can you say that, father!" said Rosey, with a slight increase of
+color.  "It was your own offer.  You know those bales of curled
+horsehair were left behind by the late tenant to pay his rent. When Mr.
+de Ferrieres rented the room afterwards, you told him you'd throw them
+in in the place of repairs and furniture.  It was your own offer."
+
+"Yes, but I didn't reckon ther'd ever be a big price per pound paid for
+the darned stuff for sofys and cushions and sich."
+
+"How do you know HE knew it, father?" responded Rosey.
+
+"Then why did he look so silly at first, and then put on airs when I
+joked him about it, eh?"
+
+"Perhaps he didn't understand your joking, father.  He's a foreigner,
+and shy and proud, and--not like the others.  I don't think he knew
+what you meant then, any more than he believed he was making a bargain
+before.  He may be poor, but I think he's been--a--a--gentleman."
+
+The young girl's animation penetrated even Mr. Nott's slow
+comprehension.  Her novel opposition, and even the prettiness it
+enhanced, gave him a dull premonition of pain.  His small round eyes
+became abstracted, his mouth remained partly open, even his fresh color
+slightly paled.
+
+"You seem to have been takin' stock of this yer man, Rosey," he said,
+with a faint attempt at archness; "if he warn't ez old ez a crow, for
+all his young feathers, I'd think he was makin' up to you."
+
+But the passing glow had faded from her young cheeks, and her eyes
+wandered again to her book.  "He pays his rent regularly every steamer
+night," she said, quietly, as if dismissing an exhausted subject, "and
+he'll be here in a moment, I dare say."  She took up her book, and
+leaning her head on her hand, once more became absorbed in its pages.
+
+An uneasy silence followed.  The rain beat against the windows, the
+ticking of a clock became audible, but still Mr. Nott sat with vacant
+eyes fixed on his daughter's face, and the constrained smile on his
+lips.  He was conscious that he had never seen her look so pretty
+before, yet he could not tell why this was no longer an unalloyed
+satisfaction.  Not but that he had always accepted the admiration of
+others for her as a matter of course, but for the first time he became
+conscious that she not only had an interest in others, but apparently a
+superior knowledge of them.  How did she know these things about this
+man, and why had she only now accidentally spoken of them?  HE would
+have done so.  All this passed so vaguely through his unreflective
+mind, that he was unable to retain any decided impression, but the
+far-reaching one that his lodger had obtained some occult influence
+over her through the exhibition of his baleful skill in the horsehair
+speculation. "Them tricks is likely to take a young girl's fancy.  I
+must look arter her," he said to himself softly.
+
+A slow regular step in the gangway interrupted his paternal
+reflections.  Hastily buttoning across his chest the pea-jacket which
+he usually wore at home as a single concession to his nautical
+surroundings, he drew himself up with something of the assumption of a
+ship-master, despite certain bucolic suggestions of his boots and legs.
+The footsteps approached nearer, and a tall figure suddenly stood in
+the doorway.
+
+It was a figure so extraordinary that even in the strange masquerade of
+that early civilization it was remarkable; a figure with whom father
+and daughter were already familiar without abatement of wonder--the
+figure of a rejuvenated old man, padded, powdered, dyed, and painted to
+the verge of caricature, but without a single suggestion of
+ludicrousness or humor.  A face so artificial that it seemed almost a
+mask, but, like a mask, more pathetic than amusing.  He was dressed in
+the extreme of fashion of a dozen years before; his pearl gray trousers
+strapped tightly over his varnished boots, his voluminous satin cravat
+and high collar embraced his rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, his
+closely-buttoned frock coat clinging to a waist that seemed accented by
+stays.
+
+He advanced two steps into the cabin with an upright precision of
+motion that might have hid the infirmities of age, and said
+deliberately with a foreign accent:--
+
+"You-r-r ac-coumpt?"
+
+In the actual presence of the apparition Mr. Nott's dignified
+resistance wavered.  But glancing uneasily at his daughter and seeing
+her calm eyes fixed on the speaker without embarrassment, he folded his
+arms stiffly, and with a lofty simulation of examining the ceiling,
+said,--
+
+"Ahem!  Rosa!  The gentleman's account."
+
+It was an infelicitous action.  For the stranger, who evidently had not
+noticed the presence of the young girl before, started, took a step
+quickly forward, bent stiffly but profoundly over the little hand that
+held the account, raised it to his lips, and with "a thousand pardons,
+mademoiselle," laid a small canvas bag containing the rent before the
+disorganized Mr. Nott and stiffly vanished.
+
+That night was a troubled one to the simple-minded proprietor of the
+good ship Pontiac.  Unable to voice his uneasiness by further
+discussion, but feeling that his late discomposing interview with his
+lodger demanded some marked protest, he absented himself on the plea of
+business during the rest of the evening, happily to his daughter's
+utter obliviousness of the reason.  Lights were burning brilliantly in
+counting-rooms and offices, the feverish life of the mercantile city
+was at its height.  With a vague idea of entering into immediate
+negotiations with Mr. Sleight for the sale of the ship--as a direct way
+out of his present perplexity, he bent his steps towards the
+financier's office, but paused and turned back before reaching the
+door.  He made his way to the wharf and gazed abstractedly at the
+lights reflected in the dark, tremulous, jelly-like water.  But
+wherever he went he was accompanied by the absurd figure of his
+lodger--a figure he had hitherto laughed at or half pitied, but which
+now, to his bewildered comprehension, seemed to have a fateful
+significance.  Here a new idea seized him, and he hurried back to the
+ship, slackening his pace only when he arrived at his own doorway.
+Here he paused a moment and slowly ascended the staircase.  When he
+reached the passage he coughed slightly and paused again.  Then he
+pushed open the door of the darkened cabin and called softly:--
+
+"Rosey!"
+
+"What is it, father?" said Rosey's voice from the little state-room on
+the right--Rosey's own bower.
+
+"Nothing!" said Mr. Nott, with an affectation of languid calmness; "I
+only wanted to know if you was comfortable.  It's an awful busy night
+in town."
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"I reckon thar's tons o' gold goin' to the States tomorrow."
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Pretty comfortable, eh?"
+
+"Yes, father."
+
+"Well, I'll browse round a spell, and turn in myself, soon."
+
+"Yes father."
+
+Mr. Nott took down a hanging lantern, lit it, and passed out into the
+gangway.  Another lamp hung from the companion hatch to light the
+tenants to the lower deck, whence he descended.  This deck was divided
+fore and aft by a partitioned passage,--the lofts or apartments being
+lighted from the ports, and one or two by a door cut through the ship's
+side communicating with an alley on either side.  This was the case
+with the loft occupied by Mr. Nott's strange lodger, which, besides a
+door in the passage, had this independent communication with the alley.
+Nott had never known him to make use of the latter door; on the
+contrary, it was his regular habit to issue from his apartment at three
+o'clock every afternoon, dressed as he has been described, stride
+deliberately through the passage to the upper deck and thence into the
+street, where his strange figure was a feature of the principal
+promenade for two or three hours, returning as regularly at eight
+o'clock to the ship and the seclusion of his loft.  Mr. Nott paused
+before the door, under the pretence of throwing the light before him
+into the shadows of the forecastle; all was silent within.  He was
+turning back when he was impressed by the regular recurrence of a
+peculiar rustling sound which he had at first referred to the rubbing
+of the wires of the swinging lantern against his clothing.  He set down
+the light and listened; the sound was evidently on the other side of
+the partition; the sound of some prolonged, rustling, scraping
+movement, with regular intervals.  Was it due to another of Mr. Nott's
+unprofitable tenants--the rats?  No.  A bright idea flashed upon Mr.
+Nott's troubled mind.  It was de Ferrieres snoring!  He smiled grimly.
+"Wonder if Rosey'd call him a gentleman if she heard that," he chuckled
+to himself as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the small
+state-room opposite to his daughter's. During the rest of the night he
+dreamed of being compelled to give Rosey in marriage to his strange
+lodger, who added insult to the outrage by snoring audibly through the
+marriage service.
+
+Meantime, in her cradle-like nest in her nautical bower, Miss Rosey
+slumbered as lightly.  Waking from a vivid dream of Venice--a child's
+Venice--seen from the swelling deck of the proudly-riding Pontiac, she
+was so impressed as to rise and cross on tiptoe to the little slanting
+porthole.  Morning was already dawning over the flat, straggling city,
+but from every counting-house and magazine the votive tapers of the
+feverish worshipers of trade and mammon were still flaring fiercely.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The day following "steamer night" was usually stale and flat at San
+Francisco.  The reaction from the feverish exaltation of the previous
+twenty-four hours was seen in the listless faces and lounging feet of
+promenaders, and was notable in the deserted offices and warehouses
+still redolent of last night's gas, and strewn with the dead ashes of
+last night's fires.
+
+There was a brief pause before the busy life which ran its course from
+"steamer day" to steamer day was once more taken up.  In that interval
+a few anxious speculators and investors breathed freely, some critical
+situation was relieved, or some impending catastrophe momentarily
+averted.  In particular, a singular stroke of good fortune that morning
+befell Mr. Nott.  He not only secured a new tenant, but, as he
+sagaciously believed, introduced into the Pontiac a counteracting
+influence to the subtle fascinations of de Ferrieres.
+
+The new tenant apparently possessed a combination of business
+shrewdness and brusque frankness that strongly impressed his landlord.
+"You see, Rosey," said Nott, complacently describing the interview to
+his daughter, "when I sorter intimated in a keerless kind o' way that
+sugar kettles and hair dye was about played out ez securities, he just
+planked down the money for two months in advance.  'There,' sez he,
+'that's YOUR SECURITY--now where's MINE?'  'I reckon I don't hitch on,
+pardner,' sez I; 'security what for?'  ''Spose you sell the ship?' sez
+he, 'afore the two months is up.  I've heard that old Sleight wants to
+buy her.'  'Then you gets back your money,' sez I.  'And lose my room,'
+sez he; 'not much, old man.  You sign a paper that whoever buys the
+ship inside o' two months hez to buy ME ez a tenant with it; that's on
+the square.' So I sign the paper.  It was mighty cute in the young
+feller, wasn't it?" he said, scanning his daughter's pretty puzzled
+face a little anxiously; "and don't you see ez I ain't goin' to sell
+the Pontiac, it's just about ez cute in me, eh?  He's a contractor
+somewhere around yer, and wants to be near his work.  So he takes the
+room next to the Frenchman, that that ship captain quit for the mines,
+and succeeds naterally to his chest and things.  He's might
+peart-lookin, that young feller, Rosey--long black moustaches, all his
+own color, Rosey--and he's a regular high-stepper, you bet.  I reckon
+he's not only been a gentleman, but ez NOW.  Some o' them contractors
+are very high-toned!"
+
+"I don't think we have any right to give him the captain's chest,
+father," said Rosey; "there may be some private things in it. There
+were some letters and photographs in the hair-dye man's trunk that you
+gave the photographer."
+
+"That's just it, Rosey," returned Abner Nott with sublime
+unconsciousness, "photographs and love letters you can't sell for cash,
+and I don't mind givin' 'em away, if they kin make a feller creature
+happy."
+
+"But, father, have we the RIGHT to give 'em away?"
+
+"They're collateral security, Rosey," said her father grimly.
+"Co-la-te-ral," he continued, emphasizing each syllable by tapping the
+fist of one hand in the open palm of the other.  "Co-la-te-ral is the
+word the big business sharps yer about call 'em.  You can't get round
+that."  He paused a moment, and then, as a new idea seemed to be
+painfully borne in his round eyes, continued cautiously: "Was that the
+reason why you wouldn't touch any of them dresses from the trunks of
+that opery gal ez skedaddled for Sacramento?  And yet them trunks I
+regularly bought at auction--Rosey--at auction, on spec--and they
+didn't realize the cost of drayage."
+
+A slight color mounted to Rosey's face.  "No," she said, hastily, "not
+that."  Hesitating a moment she then drew softly to his side, and,
+placing her arms around his neck, turned his broad, foolish face
+towards her own.  "Father," she began, "when mother died, would YOU
+have liked anybody to take her trunks and paw around her things and
+wear them?"
+
+"When your mother died, just this side o' Sweetwater, Rosey," said Mr.
+Nott, with beaming unconsciousness, "she hadn't any trunks.  I reckon
+she hadn't even an extra gown hanging up in the wagin, 'cept the
+petticoat ez she had wrapped around yer.  It was about ez much ez we
+could do to skirmish round with Injins, alkali, and cold, and we sorter
+forgot to dress for dinner.  She never thought, Rosey, that you and me
+would live to be inhabitin' a paliss of a real ship.  Ef she had she
+would have died a proud woman."
+
+He turned his small, loving, boar-like eyes upon her as a
+preternaturally innocent and trusting companion of Ulysses might have
+regarded the transforming Circe.  Rosey turned away with the faintest
+sigh.  The habitual look of abstraction returned to her eyes as if she
+had once more taken refuge in her own ideal world. Unfortunately the
+change did not escape either the sensitive observation or the fatuous
+misconception of the sagacious parent. "Ye'll be mountin' a few
+furbelows and fixins, Rosey, I reckon, ez only natural.  Mabbee ye'll
+have to prink up a little now that we've got a gentleman contractor in
+the ship.  I'll see what I kin pick up in Montgomery Street."  And
+indeed he succeeded a few hours later in accomplishing with equal
+infelicity his generous design. When she returned from her household
+tasks she found on her berth a purple velvet bonnet of extraordinary
+make, and a pair of white satin slippers.  "They'll do for a start off,
+Rosey," he explained, "and I got 'em at my figgers."
+
+"But I go out so seldom, father, and a bonnet--"
+
+"That's so," interrupted Mr. Nott, complacently, "it might be jest ez
+well for a young gal like yer to appear ez if she DID go out, or would
+go out if she wanted to.  So you kin be wearin' that ar headstall
+kinder like this evening when the contractor's here, ez if you'd jest
+come in from a pasear."
+
+Miss Rosey did not however immediately avail herself of her father's
+purchase, but contented herself with the usual scarlet ribbon that like
+a snood confined her brown hair, when she returned to her tasks.  The
+space between the galley and the bulwarks had been her favorite resort
+in summer when not actually engaged in household work.  It was now
+lightly roofed over with boards and tarpaulin against the winter rain,
+but still afforded her a veranda-like space before the gallery door,
+where she could read or sew, looking over the bow of the Pontiac to the
+tossing bay or the further range of the Contra Costa hills.
+
+Hither Miss Rosey brought the purple prodigy, partly to please her
+father, partly with a view of subjecting it to violent radical changes.
+But after trying it on before the tiny mirror in the galley once or
+twice, her thoughts wandered away, and she fell into one of her
+habitual reveries seated on a little stool before the galley door.
+
+She was roused from it by the slight shaking and rattling of the doors
+of a small hatch on the deck, not a dozen yards from where she sat.  It
+had been evidently fastened from below during the wet weather, but as
+she gazed, the fastenings were removed, the doors were suddenly lifted,
+and the head and shoulders of a young man emerged from the deck.
+Partly from her father's description, and partly from the impossibility
+of its being anybody else, she at once conceived it to be the new
+lodger.  She had time to note that he was young and good-looking,
+graver perhaps than became his sudden pantomimic appearance, but before
+she could observe him closely, he had turned, closed the hatch with a
+certain familiar dexterity, and walked slowly towards the bows.  Even
+in her slight bewilderment, she observed that his step upon the deck
+seemed different to her father's or the photographer's, and that he
+laid his hand on various objects with a half-caressing ease and habit.
+Presently he paused and turned back, and glancing at the galley door
+for the first time encountered her wondering eyes.
+
+It seemed so evident that she had been a curious spectator of his
+abrupt entrance on deck that he was at first disconcerted and confused.
+But after a second glance at her he appeared to resume his composure,
+and advanced a little defiantly towards the galley.
+
+"I suppose I frightened you, popping up the fore hatch just now?"
+
+"The what?" asked Rosey.
+
+"The fore hatch," he repeated impatiently, indicating it with a gesture.
+
+"And that's the fore hatch?" she said abstractedly.  "You seem to know
+ships."
+
+"Yes--a little," he said quietly.  "I was below, and unfastened the
+hatch to come up the quickest way and take a look round.  I've just
+hired a room here," he added explanatorily.
+
+"I thought so," said Rosey simply; "you're the contractor?"
+
+"The contractor!--oh, yes!  You seem to know it all."
+
+"Father's told me."
+
+"Oh, he's your father--Nott?  Certainly.  I see now," he continued,
+looking at her with a half repressed smile.  "Certainly, Miss Nott,
+good morning," he half added and walked towards the companion way.
+Something in the direction of his eyes as he turned away made Rosey
+lift her hands to her head.  She had forgotten to remove her father's
+baleful gift.
+
+She snatched it off and ran quickly to the companion way.
+
+"Sir!" she called.
+
+The young man turned half way down the steps and looked up.  There was
+a faint color in her cheeks, and her pretty brown hair was slightly
+disheveled from the hasty removal of the bonnet.
+
+"Father's very particular about strangers being on this deck," she said
+a little sharply.
+
+"Oh--ah--I'm sorry I intruded."
+
+"I--I--thought I'd tell you," said Rosey, frightened by her boldness
+into a feeble anti-climax.
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She came back slowly to the galley and picked up the unfortunate bonnet
+with a slight sense of remorse.  Why should she feel angry with her
+poor father's unhappy offering?  And what business had this strange
+young man to use the ship so familiarly?  Yet she was vaguely conscious
+that she and her father, with all their love and their domestic
+experience of it, lacked a certain instinctive ease in its possession
+that the half indifferent stranger had shown on first treading its
+deck.  She walked to the hatchway and examined it with a new interest.
+Succeeding in lifting the hatch, she gazed at the lower deck.  As she
+already knew the ladder had long since been removed to make room for
+one of the partitions, the only way the stranger could have reached it
+was by leaping to one of the rings.  To make sure of this she let
+herself down holding on to the rings, and dropped a couple of feet to
+the deck below.  She was in the narrow passage her father had
+penetrated the previous night. Before her was the door leading to de
+Ferrieres's loft, always locked.  It was silent within; it was the hour
+when the old Frenchman made his habitual promenade in the city.  But
+the light from the newly-opened hatch allowed her to see more of the
+mysterious recesses of the forward bulkhead than she had known before,
+and she was startled by observing another yawning hatch-way at her feet
+from which the closely-fitting door had been lifted, and which the new
+lodger had evidently forgotten to close again. The young girl stooped
+down and peered cautiously into the black abyss.  Nothing was to be
+seen, nothing heard but the distant gurgle and click of water in some
+remoter depth.  She replaced the hatch and returned by way of the
+passage to the cabin.
+
+When her father came home that night she briefly recounted the
+interview with the new lodger, and her discovery of his curiosity. She
+did this with a possible increase of her usual shyness and abstraction,
+and apparently more as a duty than a colloquial recreation.  But it
+pleased Mr. Nott also to give it more than his usual misconception.
+"Looking round the ship, was he--eh, Rosey?" he said with infinite
+archness.  "In course, kinder sweepin' round the galley, and offerin'
+to fetch you wood and water, eh?"  Even when the young girl had picked
+up her book with the usual faint smile of affectionate tolerance, and
+then drifted away in its pages, Mr. Nott chuckled audibly.  "I reckon
+old Frenchy didn't come by when the young one was bedevlin' you there."
+
+"What, father?" said Rosey, lifting her abstracted eyes to his face.
+
+At the moment it seemed impossible that any human intelligence could
+have suspected deceit or duplicity in Rosey's clear gaze. But Mr.
+Nott's intelligence was superhuman.  "I was sayin' that Mr. Ferrieres
+didn't happen in while the young feller was there--eh?"
+
+"No, father," answered Rosey, with an effort to follow him out of the
+pages of her book.  "Why?"
+
+But Mr. Nott did not reply.  Later in the evening he awkwardly waylaid
+the new lodger before the cabin door as that gentleman would have
+passed on to his room.
+
+"I'm afraid," said the young man, glancing at Rosey, "that I intruded
+upon your daughter to-day.  I was a little curious to see the old ship,
+and I didn't know what part of it was private."
+
+"There ain't no private part to this yer ship--that ez, 'cepting the
+rooms and lofts," said Mr. Nott, authoritatively.  Then, subjecting the
+anxious look of his daughter to his usual faculty for misconception, he
+added, "Thar ain't no place whar you haven't as much right to go ez any
+other man; thar ain't any man, furriner or Amerykan, young or old, dyed
+or undyed, ez hev got any better rights.  You hear me, young fellow.
+Mr. Renshaw--my darter.  My darter--Mr. Renshaw.  Rosey, give the
+gentleman a chair.  She's only jest come in from a promeynade, and hez
+jest taken off her bonnet," he added, with an arch look at Rosey, and a
+hurried look around the cabin, as if he hoped to see the missing gift
+visible to the general eye.  "So take a seat a minit, won't ye?"
+
+But Mr. Renshaw, after an observant glance at the young girl's
+abstracted face, brusquely excused himself, "I've got a letter to
+write," he said, with a half bow to Rosey.  "Good night."
+
+He crossed the passage to the room that had been assigned to him, and
+closing the door gave way to some irritability of temper in his efforts
+to light the lamp and adjust his writing materials.  For his excuse to
+Mr. Nott was more truthful than most polite pretexts. He had, indeed, a
+letter to write, and one that, being yet young in duplicity, the near
+presence of his host rendered difficult.  For it ran as follows:--
+
+
+"DEAR SLEIGHT,
+
+"As I found I couldn't get a chance to make any examination of the ship
+except as occasion offered, I just went in to rent lodgings in her from
+the God-forsaken old ass who owns her, and here I am a tenant for two
+months.  I contracted for that time in case the old fool should sell
+out to some one else before.  Except that she's cut up a little between
+decks by the partitions for lofts that that Pike County idiot has put
+into her, she looks but little changed, and her FORE-HOLD, as far as I
+can judge, is intact.  It seems that Nott bought her just as she
+stands, with her cargo half out, but he wasn't here when she broke
+cargo.  If anybody else had bought her but this cursed Missourian, who
+hasn't got the hayseed out of his hair, I might have found out
+something from him, and saved myself this kind of fooling, which isn't
+in my line.  If I could get possession of a loft on the main deck, well
+forward, just over the fore-hold, I could satisfy myself in a few
+hours, but the loft is rented by that crazy Frenchman who parades
+Montgomery Street every afternoon, and though old Pike County wants to
+turn him out, I'm afraid I can't get it for a week to come.
+
+"If anything should happen to me, just you waltz down here and corral
+my things at once, for this old frontier pirate has a way of
+confiscating his lodgers' trunks.
+
+"Yours,
+  DICK."
+
+
+
+III
+
+If Mr. Renshaw indulged in any further curiosity regarding the interior
+of the Pontiac, he did not make his active researches manifest to
+Rosey.  Nor, in spite of her father's invitation, did he again approach
+the galley--a fact which gave her her first vague impression in his
+favor.  He seemed also to avoid the various advances which Mr. Nott
+appeared impelled to make, whenever they met in the passage, but did so
+without seemingly avoiding HER, and marked his half contemptuous
+indifference to the elder Nott by an increase of respect to the young
+girl.  She would have liked to ask him something about ships, and was
+sure his conversation would have been more interesting than that of old
+Captain Bower, to whose cabin he had succeeded, who had once told her a
+ship was the "devil's hen-coop."  She would have liked also to explain
+to him that she was not in the habit of wearing a purple bonnet.  But
+her thoughts were presently engrossed by an experience which
+interrupted the even tenor of her young life.
+
+She had been, as she afterwards remembered, impressed with a nervous
+restlessness one afternoon, which made it impossible for her to perform
+her ordinary household duties, or even to indulge her favorite
+recreation of reading or castle building.  She wandered over the ship,
+and, impelled by the same vague feeling of unrest, descended to the
+lower deck and the forward bulkhead where she had discovered the open
+hatch.  It had not been again disturbed, nor was there any trace of
+further exploration.  A little ashamed, she knew not why, of revisiting
+the scene of Mr. Renshaw's researches, she was turning back when she
+noticed that the door which communicated with de Ferrieres's loft was
+partly open.  The circumstance was so unusual that she stopped before
+it in surprise.  There was no sound from within; it was the hour when
+its queer occupant was always absent; he must have forgotten to lock
+the door or it had been unfastened by other hands.  After a moment of
+hesitation she pushed it further open and stepped into the room.
+
+By the dim light of two port-holes she could see that the floor was
+strewn and piled with the contents of a broken bale of curled horse
+hair, of which a few untouched bales still remained against the wall.
+A heap of morocco skins, some already cut in the form of chair cushion
+covers, and a few cushions unfinished and unstuffed lay in the light of
+the ports, and gave the apartment the appearance of a cheap workshop.
+A rude instrument for combing the horse hair, awls, buttons, and thread
+heaped on a small bench showed that active work had been but recently
+interrupted.  A cheap earthenware ewer and basin on the floor, and a
+pallet made of an open bale of horse hair, on which a ragged quilt and
+blanket were flung, indicated that the solitary worker dwelt and slept
+beside his work.
+
+The truth flashed upon the young girl's active brain, quickened by
+seclusion and fed by solitary books.  She read with keen eyes the
+miserable secret of her father's strange guest in the poverty-stricken
+walls, in the mute evidences of menial handicraft performed in
+loneliness and privation, in this piteous adaptation of an accident to
+save the conscious shame of premeditated toil. She knew now why he had
+stammeringly refused to receive her father's offer to buy back the
+goods he had given him; she knew now how hardly gained was the pittance
+that paid his rent and supported his childish vanity and grotesque
+pride.  From a peg in the corner hung the familiar masquerade that hid
+his poverty--the pearl-gray trousers, the black frock coat, the tall
+shining hat--in hideous contrast to the penury of his surroundings.
+But if THEY were here, where was HE, and in what new disguise had he
+escaped from his poverty?  A vague uneasiness caused her to hesitate
+and return to the open door.  She had nearly reached it when her eye
+fell on the pallet which it partly illuminated.  A singular resemblance
+in the ragged heap made her draw closer.  The faded quilt was a
+dressing-gown, and clutching its folds lay a white, wasted hand.
+
+The emigrant childhood of Rose Nott had been more than once shadowed by
+scalping knives, and she was acquainted with Death. She went fearlessly
+to the couch, and found that the dressing-gown was only an enwrapping
+of the emaciated and lifeless body of de Ferrieres.  She did not
+retreat or call for help, but examined him closely.  He was
+unconscious, but not pulseless; he had evidently been strong enough to
+open the door for air or succor, but had afterward fallen in a fit on
+the couch.  She flew to her father's locker and the galley fire,
+returned, and shut the door behind her, and by the skillful use of hot
+water and whisky soon had the satisfaction of seeing a faint color take
+the place of the faded rouge in the ghastly cheeks.  She was still
+chafing his hands when he slowly opened his eyes.  With a start, he
+made a quick attempt to push aside her hands and rise.  But she gently
+restrained him.
+
+"Eh--what!" he stammered, throwing his face back from hers with an
+effort and trying to turn it to the wall.
+
+"You have been ill," she said quietly.  "Drink this."
+
+With his face still turned away he lifted the cup to his chattering
+teeth.  When he had drained it he threw a trembling glance around the
+room and at the door.
+
+"There's no one been here but myself," she said quickly.  "I happened
+to see the door open as I passed.  I didn't think it worth while to
+call any one."
+
+The searching look he gave her turned into an expression of relief,
+which, to her infinite uneasiness, again feebly lightened into one of
+antiquated gallantry.  He drew the dressing-gown around him with an air.
+
+"Ah! it is a goddess, Mademoiselle, that has deigned to enter the cell
+where--where--I--amuse myself.  It is droll--is it not?  I came here to
+make--what you call--the experiment of your father's fabric.  I make
+myself--ha! ha!--like a workman.  Ah, bah! the heat, the darkness, the
+plebeian motion make my head to go round. I stagger, I faint, I cry
+out, I fall.  But what of that?  The great God hears my cry and sends
+me an angel.  Voila!"
+
+He attempted an easy gesture of gallantry, but overbalanced himself and
+fell sideways on the pallet with a gasp.  Yet there was so much genuine
+feeling mixed with his grotesque affectation, so much piteous
+consciousness of the ineffectiveness of his falsehood, that the young
+girl, who had turned away, came back and laid her hand upon his arm.
+
+"You must lie still and try to sleep," she said gently.  "I will return
+again.  Perhaps," she added, "there is some one I can send for?"
+
+He shook his head violently.  Then in his old manner added, "After
+Mademoiselle--no one."
+
+"I mean--" she hesitated--"have you no friends?"
+
+"Friends,--ah! without doubt."  He shrugged his shoulders.  "But
+Mademoiselle will comprehend--"
+
+"You are better now," said Rosey quickly, "and no one need know
+anything if you don't wish it.  Try to sleep.  You need not lock the
+door when I go; I will see that no one comes in."
+
+He flushed faintly and averted his eyes.  "It is too droll,
+Mademoiselle, is it not?"
+
+"Of course it is," said Rosey, glancing round the miserable room.
+
+"And Mademoiselle is an angel."
+
+He carried her hand to his lips humbly--his first purely unaffected
+action.  She slipped through the door, and softly closed it behind her.
+
+Reaching the upper deck she was relieved to find her father had not
+returned, and her absence had been unnoticed.  For she had resolved to
+keep de Ferrieres's secret to herself from the moment that she had
+unwittingly discovered it, and to do this and still be able to watch
+over him without her father's knowledge required some caution.  She was
+conscious of his strange aversion to the unfortunate man without
+understanding the reason, but as she was in the habit of entertaining
+his caprices more from affectionate tolerance of his weakness than
+reverence of his judgment, she saw no disloyalty to him in withholding
+a confidence that might be disloyal to another.  "It won't do father
+any good to know it," she said to herself, "and if it DID it oughtn't
+to," she added with triumphant feminine logic.  But the impression made
+upon her by the spectacle she had just witnessed was stronger than any
+other consideration.  The revelation of de Ferrieres's secret poverty
+seemed a chapter from a romance of her own weaving; for a moment it
+lifted the miserable hero out of the depths of his folly and
+selfishness.  She forgot the weakness of the man in the strength of his
+dramatic surroundings.  It partly satisfied a craving she had felt; it
+was not exactly the story of the ship, as she had dreamed it, but it
+was an episode in her experience of it that broke its monotony.  That
+she should soon learn, perhaps from de Ferrieres's own lips, the true
+reason of his strange seclusion, and that it involved more than
+appeared to her now, she never for a moment doubted.
+
+At the end of an hour she again knocked softly at the door, carrying
+some light nourishment she had prepared for him.  He was asleep, but
+she was astounded to find that in the interval he had managed to dress
+himself completely in his antiquated finery.  It was a momentary shock
+to the illusion she had been fostering, but she forgot it in the
+pitiable contrast between his haggard face and his pomatumed hair and
+beard, the jauntiness of his attire, and the collapse of his invalid
+figure.  When she had satisfied herself that his sleep was natural, she
+busied herself softly in arranging the miserable apartment.  With a few
+feminine touches she removed the slovenliness of misery, and placed the
+loose material and ostentatious evidences of his work on one side.
+Finding that he still slept, and knowing the importance of this natural
+medication, she placed the refreshment she had brought by his side and
+noiselessly quitted the apartment.  Hurrying through the gathering
+darkness between decks, she once or twice thought she had heard
+footsteps, and paused, but encountering no one, attributed the
+impression to her over-consciousness.  Yet she thought it prudent to go
+to the galley first, where she lingered a few moments before returning
+to the cabin.  On entering she was a little startled at observing a
+figure seated at her father's desk, but was relieved at finding it was
+Mr. Renshaw.
+
+He rose and put aside the book he had idly picked up.  "I am afraid I
+am an intentional intruder this time, Miss Nott.  But I found no one
+here, and I was tempted to look into this ship-shape little snuggery.
+You see the temptation got the better of me."
+
+His voice and smile were so frank and pleasant, so free from his
+previous restraint, yet still respectful, so youthful yet manly, that
+Rosey was affected by them even in her preoccupation.  Her eyes
+brightened and then dropped before his admiring glance.  Had she known
+that the excitement of the last few hours had brought a wonderful charm
+into her pretty face, had aroused the slumbering life of her
+half-awakened beauty, she would have been more confused.  As it was,
+she was only glad that the young man should turn out to be "nice."
+Perhaps he might tell her something about ships; perhaps if she had
+only known him longer she might, with de Ferrieres's permission, have
+shared her confidence with him, and enlisted his sympathy and
+assistance.  She contented herself with showing this anticipatory
+gratitude in her face as she begged him, with the timidity of a maiden
+hostess, to resume his seat.
+
+But Mr. Renshaw seemed to talk only to make her talk, and I am forced
+to admit that Rosey found this almost as pleasant.  It was not long
+before he was in possession of her simple history from the day of her
+baby emigration to California to the transfer of her childish life to
+the old ship, and even of much of the romantic fancies she had woven
+into her existence there.  Whatever ulterior purpose he had in view, he
+listened as attentively as if her artless chronicle was filled with
+practical information.  Once, when she had paused for breath, he said
+gravely, "I must ask you to show me over this wonderful ship some day
+that I may see it with your eyes."
+
+"But I think you know it already better than I do," said Rosey with a
+smile.
+
+Mr. Renshaw's brow clouded slightly.  "Ah," he said, with a touch of
+his former restraint; "and why?"
+
+"Well," said Rosey timidly, "I thought you went round and touched
+things in a familiar way as if you had handled them before."
+
+The young man raised his eyes to Rosey's and kept them there long
+enough to bring back his gentler expression.  "Then, because I found
+you trying on a very queer bonnet the first day I saw you," he said,
+mischievously, "I ought to believe you were in the habit of wearing
+one."
+
+In the first flush of mutual admiration young people are apt to find a
+laugh quite as significant as a sigh for an expression of sympathetic
+communion, and this master-stroke of wit convulsed them both.  In the
+midst of it Mr. Nott entered the cabin.  But the complacency with which
+he viewed the evident perfect understanding of the pair was destined to
+suffer some abatement.  Rosey, suddenly conscious that she was in some
+way participating in ridicule of her father through his unhappy gift,
+became embarrassed.  Mr. Renshaw's restraint returned with the presence
+of the old man.  In vain, at first, Abner Nott strove with profound
+levity to indicate his arch comprehension of the situation, and in
+vain, later, becoming alarmed, he endeavored, with cheerful gravity, to
+indicate his utter obliviousness of any but a business significance in
+their tete-a-tete.
+
+"I oughtn't to hev intruded, Rosey," he said, "when you and the
+gentleman were talkin' of contracts, mebbee; but don't mind me. I'm on
+the fly, anyhow, Rosey dear, hevin' to see a man round the corner."
+
+But even the attitude of withdrawing did not prevent the exit of
+Renshaw to his apartment and of Rosey to the galley.  Left alone in the
+cabin, Abner Nott felt in the knots and tangles of his beard for a
+reason.  Glancing down at his prodigious boots which, covered with mud
+and gravel, strongly emphasized his agricultural origin, and gave him a
+general appearance of standing on his own broad acres, he was struck
+with an idea.  "It's them boots," he whispered to himself, softly;
+"they somehow don't seem 'xactly to trump or follow suit in this yer
+cabin; they don't hitch into anythin', but jist slosh round loose, and,
+so to speak, play it alone.  And them young critters nat'rally feels it
+and gets out o' the way."  Acting upon this instinct with his usual
+precipitate caution, he at once proceeded to the nearest second-hand
+shop, and, purchasing a pair of enormous carpet slippers, originally
+the property of a gouty sea-captain, reappeared with a strong
+suggestion of newly upholstering the cabin.  The improvement, however,
+was fraught with a portentous circumstance.  Mr. Nott's footsteps,
+which usually announced his approach all over the ship, became stealthy
+and inaudible.
+
+Meantime Miss Rosey had taken advantage of the absence of her father to
+visit her patient.  To avoid attracting attention she did not take a
+light, but groped her way to the lower deck and rapped softly at the
+door.  It was instantly opened by de Ferrieres.  He had apparently
+appreciated the few changes she had already made in the room, and had
+himself cleared away the pallet from which he had risen to make two low
+seats against the wall.  Two bits of candle placed on the floor
+illuminated the beams above, the dressing-gown was artistically draped
+over the solitary chair, and a pile of cushions formed another seat.
+With elaborate courtesy he handed Miss Rosey to the chair.  He looked
+pale and weak, though the gravity of the attack had evidently passed.
+Yet he persisted in remaining standing.  "If I sit," he explained with
+a gesture, "I shall again disgrace myself by sleeping in Mademoiselle's
+presence. Yes!  I shall sleep--I shall dream--and wake to find her
+gone?"
+
+More embarrassed by his recovery than when he was lying helplessly
+before her, she said hesitatingly that she was glad he was better, and
+that she hoped he liked the broth.
+
+"It was manna from heaven, Mademoiselle.  See, I have taken it
+all--every precious drop.  What else could I have done for
+Mademoiselle's kindness?"
+
+He showed her the empty bowl.  A swift conviction came upon her that
+the man had been suffering from want of food.  The thought restored her
+self-possession even while it brought the tears to her eyes.  "I wish
+you would let me speak to father--or some one," she said impulsively,
+and stopped.
+
+A quick and half insane gleam of terror and suspicion lit up his deep
+eyes.  "For what, Mademoiselle!  For an accident--that is
+nothing--absolutely nothing, for I am strong and well now--see!" he
+said tremblingly.  "Or for a whim--for a folly you may say, that they
+will misunderstand.  No, Mademoiselle is good, is wise.  She will say
+to herself, 'I understand, my friend Monsieur de Ferrieres for the
+moment has a secret.  He would seem poor, he would take the role of
+artisan, he would shut himself up in these walls--perhaps I may guess
+why, but it is his secret.  I think of it no more.'"  He caught her
+hand in his with a gesture that he would have made one of gallantry,
+but that in its tremulous intensity became a piteous supplication.
+
+"I have said nothing, and will say nothing, if you wish it," said Rosey
+hastily; "but others may find out how you live here.  This is not fit
+work for you.  You seem to be a--a gentleman.  You ought to be a
+lawyer, or a doctor, or in a bank," she continued timidly, with a vague
+enumeration of the prevailing degrees of local gentility.
+
+He dropped her hand.  "Ah! does not Mademoiselle comprehend that it is
+BECAUSE I am a gentleman that there is nothing between it and this?
+Look!" he continued almost fiercely.  "What if I told you it is the
+lawyer, it is the doctor, it is the banker that brings me, a gentleman,
+to this, eh?  Ah, bah!  What do I say?  This is honest, what I do!  But
+the lawyer, the banker, the doctor, what are they?" He shrugged his
+shoulders, and pacing the apartment with a furtive glance at the half
+anxious, half frightened girl, suddenly stopped, dragged a small
+portmanteau from behind the heap of bales and opened it.  "Look,
+Mademoiselle," he said, tremulously lifting a handful of worn and
+soiled letters and papers.  "Look--these are the tools of your banker,
+your lawyer, your doctor.  With this the banker will make you poor, the
+lawyer will prove you a thief, the doctor will swear you are crazy, eh?
+What shall you call the work of a gentleman--this"--he dragged the pile
+of cushions forward--"or this?"
+
+To the young girl's observant eyes some of the papers appeared to be of
+a legal or official character, and others like bills of lading, with
+which she was familiar.  Their half-theatrical exhibition reminded her
+of some play she had seen; they might be the clue to some story, or the
+mere worthless hoardings of a diseased fancy.  Whatever they were, de
+Ferrieres did not apparently care to explain further; indeed, the next
+moment his manner changed to his old absurd extravagance.  "But this is
+stupid for Mademoiselle to hear.  What shall we speak of?  Ah, what
+SHOULD we speak of in Mademoiselle's presence?"
+
+"But are not these papers valuable?" asked Rosey, partly to draw her
+host's thoughts back to their former channel.
+
+"Perhaps."  He paused and regarded the young girl fixedly.  "Does
+Mademoiselle think so?"
+
+"I don't know," said Rosey.  "How should I?"
+
+"Ah! if Mademoiselle thought so--if Mademoiselle would deign--"  He
+stopped again and placed his hand upon his forehead.  "It might be so!"
+he muttered.
+
+"I must go now," said Rosey, hurriedly, rising with an awkward sense of
+constraint.  "Father will wonder where I am."
+
+"I shall explain.  I will accompany you, Mademoiselle."
+
+"No, no," said Rosey, quickly; "he must not know I have been here!" She
+stopped.  The honest blush flew to her cheek, and then returned again,
+because she had blushed.
+
+De Ferrieres gazed at her with an exalted look.  Then drawing himself
+to his full height, he said, with an exaggerated and indescribable
+gesture, "Go, my child, go.  Tell your father that you have been alone
+and unprotected in the abode of poverty and suffering, but--that it was
+in the presence of Armand de Ferrieres."
+
+He threw open the door with a bow that nearly swept the ground, but did
+not again offer to take her hand.  At once impressed and embarrassed at
+this crowning incongruity, her pretty lip trembled between a smile and
+a cry as she said, "Good-night," and slipped away into the darkness.
+
+Erect and grotesque de Ferrieres retained the same attitude until the
+sound of her footsteps was lost, when he slowly began to close the
+door.  But a strong arm arrested it from without, and a large carpeted
+foot appeared at the bottom of the narrowing opening.  The door
+yielded, and Mr. Abner Nott entered the room.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+With an exclamation and a hurried glance around him, de Ferrieres threw
+himself before the intruder.  But slowly lifting his large hand, and
+placing it on his lodger's breast, he quietly overbore the sick man's
+feeble resistance with an impact of power that seemed almost as moral
+as it was physical.  He did not appear to take any notice of the room
+or its miserable surroundings; indeed, scarcely of the occupant.  Still
+pushing him, with abstracted eyes and immobile face, to the chair that
+Rosey had just quitted, he made him sit down, and then took up his own
+position on the pile of cushions opposite.  His usually underdone
+complexion was of watery blueness; but his dull, abstracted glance
+appeared to exercise a certain dumb, narcotic fascination on his lodger.
+
+"I mout," said Nott, slowly, "hev laid ye out here on sight, without
+enny warnin', or dropped ye in yer tracks in Montgomery Street,
+wherever ther was room to work a six-shooter in comf'ably? Johnson, of
+Petaluny--him, ye know, ez had a game eye--fetched Flynn comin' outer
+meetin' one Sunday, and it was only on account of his wife, and she a
+second-hand one, so to speak.  There was Walker, of Contra Costa,
+plugged that young Sacramento chap, whose name I disremember, full o'
+holes just ez HE was sayin' 'Good by' to his darter.  I mout hev done
+all this if it had settled things to please me.  For while you and
+Flynn and that Sacramento chap ez all about the same sort o' men,
+Rosey's a different kind from their sort o' women."
+
+"Mademoiselle is an angel!" said de Ferrieres, suddenly rising, with an
+excess of extravagance.  "A saint!  Look!  I cram the lie, ha! down his
+throat who challenges it."
+
+"Ef by mam'selle ye mean my Rosey," said Nott, quietly laying his
+powerful hands on de Ferrieres's shoulders, and slowly pinning him down
+again upon his chair, "ye're about right, though she ain't mam'selle
+yet.  Ez I was sayin', I might hev killed you off-hand if I hed thought
+it would hev been a good thing for Rosey."
+
+"For her?  Ah, well!  Look, I am ready," interrupted de Ferrieres,
+again springing to his feet, and throwing open his coat with both
+hands.  "See! here at my heart--fire!"
+
+"Ez I was sayin'," continued Nott, once more pressing the excited man
+down in his chair, "I might hev wiped ye out--and mebbee ye wouldn't
+hev keered--or YOU might hev wiped ME out, and I mout hev said,
+'Thank'ee,' but I reckon this ain't a case for what's comf'able for you
+and me.  It's what's good for ROSEY.  And the thing to kalkilate is,
+what's to be done."
+
+His small round eyes for the first time rested on de Ferrieres's face,
+and were quickly withdrawn.  It was evident that this abstracted look,
+which had fascinated his lodger, was merely a resolute avoidance of de
+Ferrieres's glance, and it became apparent later that this avoidance
+was due to a ludicrous appreciation of de Ferrieres's attractions.
+
+"And after we've done THAT we must kalkilate what Rosey is, and what
+Rosey wants.  P'raps, ye allow, YOU know what Rosey is? P'raps you've
+seen her prance round in velvet bonnets and white satin slippers, and
+sich.  P'raps you've seen her readin' tracks and v'yages, without
+waitin' to spell a word, or catch her breath. But that ain't the Rosey
+ez I know.  It's a little child ez uster crawl in and out the
+tail-board of a Mizzouri wagon on the alcali pizoned plains, where
+there wasn't another bit of God's mercy on yearth to be seen for miles
+and miles.  It's a little gal as uster hunger and thirst ez quiet and
+mannerly ez she now eats and drinks in plenty; whose voice was ez
+steady with Injins yelling round her nest in the leaves on Sweetwater
+ez in her purty cabin up yonder. THAT'S the gal ez I know!  That's the
+Rosey ez my ole woman puts into my arms one night arter we left Laramie
+when the fever was high, and sez, 'Abner,' sez she, 'the chariot is
+swingin' low for me to-night, but thar ain't room in it for her or you
+to git in or hitch on.  Take her and rare her, so we kin all jine on
+the other shore,' sez she.  And I'd knowed the other shore wasn't no
+Kaliforny.  And that night, p'raps, the chariot swung lower than ever
+before, and my ole woman stepped into it, and left me and Rosey to
+creep on in the old wagon alone.  It's them kind o' things," added Mr.
+Nott thoughtfully, "that seem to pint to my killin' you on sight ez the
+best thing to be done.  And yet Rosey mightn't like it."
+
+He had slipped one of his feet out of his huge carpet slippers, and, as
+he reached down to put it on again, he added calmly: "And ez to yer
+marrying HER it ain't to be done."
+
+The utterly bewildered expression which transfigured de Ferrieres's
+face at this announcement was unobserved by Nott's averted eyes, nor
+did he perceive that his listener the next moment straightened his
+erect figure and adjusted his cravat.
+
+"Ef Rosey," he continued, "hez read in vy'ges and tracks in Eyetalian
+and French countries of such chaps ez you and kalkilates you're the
+right kind to tie to, mebbee it mout hev done if you'd been livin' over
+thar in a pallis, but somehow it don't jibe in over here and agree with
+a ship--and that ship lying comf'able ashore in San Francisco.  You
+don't seem to suit the climate, you see, and your general gait is
+likely to stampede the other cattle. Agin," said Nott, with an
+ostentation of looking at his companion but really gazing on vacancy,
+"this fixed up, antique style of yours goes better with them ivy
+kivered ruins in Rome and Palmyry that Rosey's mixed you up with, than
+it would yere.  I ain't saying," he added as de Ferrieres was about to
+speak, "I ain't sayin' ez that child ain't smitten with ye.  It ain't
+no use to lie and say she don't prefer you to her old father, or young
+chaps of her own age and kind.  I've seed it afor now.  I suspicioned
+it afor I seed her slip out o' this place to-night.  Thar! keep your
+hair on, such ez it is!" he added as de Ferrieres attempted a quick
+deprecatory gesture.  "I ain't askin yer how often she comes here, nor
+what she sez to you nor you to her.  I ain't asked her and I don't ask
+you.  I'll allow ez you've settled all the preliminaries and bought her
+the ring and sich; I'm only askin' you now, kalkilatin you've got all
+the keerds in your own hand, what you'll take to step out and leave the
+board?"
+
+The dazed look of de Ferrieres might have forced itself even upon
+Nott's one-idead fatuity, had it not been a part of that gentleman's
+system delicately to look another way at that moment so as not to
+embarrass his adversary's calculation.  "Pardon," stammered de
+Ferrieres, "but I do not comprehend!"  He raised his hand to his head.
+"I am not well--I am stupid.  Ah, mon Dieu!"
+
+"I ain't sayin'," added Nott more gently, "ez you don't feel bad. It's
+nat'ral.  But it ain't business.  I'm asking you," he continued, taking
+from his breast-pocket a large wallet, "how much you'll take in cash
+now, and the rest next steamer day, to give up Rosey and leave the
+ship."
+
+De Ferrieres staggered to his feet despite Nott's restraining hand. "To
+leave Mademoiselle and leave the ship?" he said huskily, "is it not?"
+
+"In course.  Yer can leave things yer just ez you found 'em when you
+came, you know," continued Nott, for the first time looking around the
+miserable apartment.  "It's a business job.  I'll take the bales back
+ag'in, and you kin reckon up what you're out, countin' Rosey and loss
+o' time."
+
+"He wishes me to go--he has said," repeated de Ferrieres to himself
+thickly.
+
+"Ef you mean ME when you say HIM, and ez thar ain't any other man
+around, I reckon you do--'yes!'"
+
+"And he asks me--he--this man of the feet and the daughter--asks me--de
+Ferrieres--what I will take," continued de Ferrieres, buttoning his
+coat.  "No! it is a dream!"  He walked stiffly to the corner where his
+portmanteau lay, lifted it, and going to the outer door, a cut through
+the ship's side that communicated with the alley, unlocked it and flung
+it open to the night.  A thick mist like the breath of the ocean flowed
+into the room.
+
+"You ask me what I shall take to go," he said as he stood on the
+threshold.  "I shall take what YOU cannot give, Monsieur, but what I
+would not keep if I stood here another moment.  I take my Honor,
+Monsieur, and--I take my leave!"
+
+For a moment his grotesque figure was outlined in the opening, and then
+disappeared as if he had dropped into an invisible ocean below.
+Stupefied and disconcerted at this complete success of his overtures,
+Abner Nott remained speechless, gazing at the vacant space until a cold
+influx of the mist recalled him.  Then he rose and shuffled quickly to
+the door.
+
+"Hi!  Ferrers!  Look yer--Say!  Wot's your hurry, pardner?"
+
+But there was no response.  The thick mist, which hid the surrounding
+objects, seemed to deaden all sound also.  After a moment's pause he
+closed the door, but did not lock it, and retreating to the centre of
+the room remained blinking at the two candles and plucking some
+perplexing problem from his beard. Suddenly an idea seized him.  Rosey!
+Where was she?  Perhaps it had been a preconcerted plan, and she had
+fled with him.  Putting out the lights, he stumbled hurriedly through
+the passage to the gangway above.  The cabin-door was open; there was
+the sound of voices--Renshaw's and Rosey's.  Mr. Nott felt relieved but
+not unembarrassed.  He would have avoided his daughter's presence that
+evening.  But even while making this resolution with characteristic
+infelicity he blundered into the room.  Rosey looked up with a slight
+start; Renshaw's animated face was changed to its former expression of
+inward discontent.
+
+"You came in so like a ghost, father," said Rosey with a slight
+peevishness that was new to her.  "And I thought you were in town.
+Don't go, Mr. Renshaw."
+
+But Mr. Renshaw intimated that he had already trespassed upon Miss
+Nott's time, and that no doubt her father wanted to talk with her. To
+his surprise and annoyance, however, Mr. Nott insisted on accompanying
+him to his room, and without heeding Renshaw's cold "Good-night,"
+entered and closed the door behind him.
+
+"P'rap's," said Mr. Nott with a troubled air, "you disremember that
+when you first kem here you asked me if you could hev that 'er loft
+that the Frenchman had down stairs."
+
+"No, I don't remember it," said Renshaw almost rudely.  "But," he
+added, after a pause, with an air of a man obliged to revive a stale
+and unpleasant memory, "if I did--what about it?"
+
+"Nuthin', only that you kin hev it to-morrow, ez that 'ere Frenchman is
+movin' out," responded Nott.  "I thought you was sorter keen about it
+when you first kem."
+
+"Umph! we'll talk about it to-morrow."  Something in the look of
+wearied perplexity with which Mr. Nott was beginning to regard his own
+mal a propos presence, arrested the young man's attention. "What's the
+reason you didn't sell this old ship long ago, take a decent house in
+the town, and bring up your daughter like a lady?" he asked with a
+sudden blunt good humor.  But even this implied blasphemy against the
+habitation he worshiped did not prevent Mr. Nott from his usual
+misconstruction of the question.
+
+"I reckon, now, Rosey's got high-flown ideas of livin' in a castle with
+ruins, eh?" he said cunningly.
+
+"Haven't heard her say," returned Renshaw abruptly.  "Good-night."
+
+Firmly convinced that Rosey had been unable to conceal from Mr. Renshaw
+the influence of her dreams of a castellated future with de Ferrieres,
+he regained the cabin.  Satisfying himself that his daughter had
+retired, he sought his own couch.  But not to sleep. The figure of de
+Ferrieres, standing in the ship side and melting into the outer
+darkness, haunted him, and compelled him in dreams to rise and follow
+him through the alleys and by-ways of the crowded city.  Again, it was
+a part of his morbid suspicion that he now invested the absent man with
+a potential significance and an unknown power.  What deep-laid plans
+might he not form to possess himself of Rosey, of which he, Abner Nott,
+would be ignorant? Unchecked by the restraint of a father's roof he
+would now give full license to his power.  "Said he'd take his Honor
+with him," muttered Abner to himself in the dim watches of the night;
+"lookin' at that sayin' in its right light, it looks bad."
+
+
+
+V
+
+The elaborately untruthful account which Mr. Nott gave his daughter of
+de Ferrieres's sudden departure was more fortunate than his usual
+equivocations.  While it disappointed and slightly mortified her, it
+did not seem to her inconsistent with what she already knew of him.
+"Said his doctor had ordered him to quit town under an hour, owing to a
+comin' attack of hay fever, and he had a friend from furrin parts
+waitin' him at the Springs, Rosey," explained Nott, hesitating between
+his desire to avoid his daughter's eyes and his wish to observe her
+countenance.
+
+"Was he worse?--I mean did he look badly, father?" inquired Rosey
+thoughtfully.
+
+"I reckon not exackly bad.  Kinder looked ez if he mout be worse soon
+ef he didn't hump hisself."
+
+"Did you see him?--in his room?" asked Rosey anxiously.  Upon the
+answer to this simple question depended the future confidential
+relations of father and daughter.  If her father had himself detected
+the means by which his lodger existed, she felt that her own
+obligations to secrecy had been removed.  But Mr. Nott's answer
+disposed of this vain hope.  It was a response after his usual fashion
+to the question he IMAGINED she artfully wished to ask, i. e. if he had
+discovered their rendezvous of the previous night. This it was part of
+his peculiar delicacy to ignore.  Yet his reply showed that he had been
+unconscious of the one miserable secret that he might have read easily.
+
+"I was there an hour or so--him and me alone--discussin' trade.  I
+reckon he's got a good thing outer that curled horse hair, for I see
+he's got in an invoice o' cushions.  I've stored 'em all in the forrard
+bulkhead until he sends for 'em, ez Mr. Renshaw hez taken the loft."
+
+But although Mr. Renshaw had taken the loft, he did not seem in haste
+to occupy it.  He spent part of the morning in uneasily pacing his
+room, in occasional sallies into the street from which he purposelessly
+returned, and once or twice in distant and furtive contemplation of
+Rosey at work in the galley.  This last observation was not unnoticed
+by the astute Nott, who at once conceiving that he was nourishing a
+secret and hopeless passion for Rosey, began to consider whether it was
+not his duty to warn the young man of her preoccupied affections.  But
+Mr. Renshaw's final disappearance obliged him to withhold his
+confidence till morning.
+
+This time Mr. Renshaw left the ship with the evident determination of
+some settled purpose.  He walked rapidly until he reached the
+counting-house of Mr. Sleight, when he was at once shown into a private
+office.  In a few moments Mr. Sleight, a brusque but passionless man,
+joined him.
+
+"Well," said Sleight, closing the door carefully.  "What news?"
+
+"None," said Renshaw bluntly.  "Look here, Sleight," he added, turning
+to him suddenly.  "Let me out of this game.  I don't like it."
+
+"Does that mean you've found nothing?" asked Sleight, sarcastically.
+
+"It means that I haven't looked for anything, and that I don't intend
+to without the full knowledge of that d----d fool who owns the ship."
+
+"You've changed your mind since you wrote that letter," said Sleight
+coolly, producing from a drawer the note already known to the reader.
+Renshaw mechanically extended his hand to take it. Mr. Sleight dropped
+the letter back into the drawer, which he quietly locked.  The
+apparently simple act dyed Mr. Renshaw's cheek with color, but it
+vanished quickly, and with it any token of his previous embarrassment.
+He looked at Sleight with the convinced air of a resolute man who had
+at last taken a disagreeable step but was willing to stand by the
+consequences.
+
+"I HAVE changed my mind," he said coolly.  "I found out that it was one
+thing to go down there as a skilled prospector might go to examine a
+mine that was to be valued according to his report of the indications,
+but that it was entirely another thing to go and play the spy in a poor
+devil's house in order to buy something he didn't know he was selling
+and wouldn't sell if he did."
+
+"And something that the man HE bought of didn't think of selling;
+something HE himself never paid for, and never expected to buy,"
+sneered Sleight.
+
+"But something that WE expect to buy from our knowledge of all this,
+and it is that which makes all the difference."
+
+"But you knew all this before."
+
+"I never saw it in this light before!  I never thought of it until I
+was living there face to face with the old fool I was intending to
+overreach.  I never was SURE of it until this morning, when he actually
+turned out one of his lodgers that I might have the very room I
+required to play off our little game in comfortably.  When he did that,
+I made up my mind to drop the whole thing, and I'm here to do it."
+
+"And let somebody else take the responsibility--with the
+percentage--unless you've also felt it your duty to warn Nott too,"
+said Sleight with a sneer.
+
+"You only dare say that to me, Sleight," said Renshaw quietly, "because
+you have in that drawer an equal evidence of my folly and my
+confidence; but if you are wise you will not presume too far on either.
+Let us see how we stand.  Through the yarn of a drunken captain and a
+mutinous sailor you became aware of an unclaimed shipment of treasure,
+concealed in an unknown ship that entered this harbor.  You are
+enabled, through me, to corroborate some facts and identify the ship.
+You proposed to me, as a speculation, to identify the treasure if
+possible before you purchased the ship. I accepted the offer without
+consideration; on consideration I now decline it, but without prejudice
+or loss to any one but myself. As to your insinuation I need not remind
+you that my presence here to-day refutes it.  I would not require your
+permission to make a much better bargain with a good natured fool like
+Nott than I could with you.  Or if I did not care for the business I
+could have warned the girl--"
+
+"The girl--what girl?"
+
+Renshaw bit his lip but answered boldly, "The old man's daughter--a
+poor girl--whom this act would rob as well as her father."
+
+Sleight looked at his companion attentively.  "You might have said so
+at first, and let up on this camp-meetin' exhortation.  Well
+then--admitting you've got the old man and the young girl on the same
+string, and that you've played it pretty low down in the short time
+you've been there--I suppose, Dick Renshaw, I've got to see your bluff.
+Well, how much is it!  What's the figure you and she have settled on?"
+
+For an instant Mr. Sleight was in physical danger.  But before he had
+finished speaking Renshaw's quick sense of the ludicrous had so far
+overcome his first indignation as to enable him even to admire the
+perfect moral insensibility of his companion.  As he rose and walked
+towards the door, he half wondered that he had ever treated the affair
+seriously.  With a smile he replied:
+
+"Far from bluffing, Sleight, I am throwing my cards on the table.
+Consider that I've passed out.  Let some other man take my hand. Rake
+down the pot if you like, old man, I leave for Sacramento to-night.
+Adios."
+
+When the door had closed behind him Mr. Sleight summoned his clerk.
+
+"Is that petition for grading Pontiac Street ready?"
+
+"I've seen the largest property holders, sir; they're only waiting for
+you to sign first."  Mr. Sleight paused and then affixed his signature
+to the paper his clerk laid before him.  "Get the other names and send
+it up at once."
+
+"If Mr. Nott doesn't sign, sir?"
+
+"No matter.  He will be assessed all the same."  Mr. Sleight took up
+his hat.
+
+"The Lascar seaman that was here the other day has been wanting to see
+you, sir.  I said you were busy."
+
+Mr. Sleight put down his hat.  "Send him up."
+
+Nevertheless Mr. Sleight sat down and at once abstracted himself so
+completely as to be apparently in utter oblivion of the man who
+entered.  He was lithe and Indian-looking; bearing in dress and manner
+the careless slouch without the easy frankness of a sailor.
+
+"Well!" said Sleight without looking up.
+
+"I was only wantin' to know ef you had any news for me, boss?"
+
+"News?" echoed Sleight as if absently; "news of what?"
+
+"That little matter of the Pontiac we talked about, boss," returned the
+Lascar with an uneasy servility in the whites of his teeth and eyes.
+
+"Oh," said Sleight, "that's played out.  It's a regular fraud. It's an
+old forecastle yarn, my man, that you can't reel off in the cabin."
+
+The sailor's face darkened.
+
+"The man who was looking into it has thrown the whole thing up.  I tell
+you it's played out!" repeated Sleight, without raising his head.
+
+"It's true, boss--every word," said the Lascar, with an appealing
+insinuation that seemed to struggle hard with savage earnestness. "You
+can swear me, boss; I wouldn't lie to a gentleman like you. Your man
+hasn't half looked, or else--it must be there, or--"
+
+"That's just it," said Sleight slowly; "who's to know that your friends
+haven't been there already?--that seems to have been your style."
+
+"But no one knew it but me, until I told you, I swear to God.  I ain't
+lying, boss, and I ain't drunk.  Say--don't give it up, boss. That man
+of yours likely don't believe it, because he don't know anything about
+it.  I DO--I could find it."
+
+A silence followed.  Mr. Sleight remained completely absorbed in his
+papers for some moments.  Then glancing at the Lascar, he took his pen,
+wrote a hurried note, folded it, addressed it, and, holding it between
+his fingers, leaned back in his chair.
+
+"If you choose to take this note to my man, he may give it another
+show.  Mind, I don't say that he WILL.  He's going to Sacramento
+to-night, but you could go down there and find him before he starts.
+He's got a room there, I believe.  While you're waiting for him, you
+might keep your eyes open to satisfy yourself."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the sailor, eagerly endeavoring to catch the eye of
+his employer.  But Mr. Sleight looked straight before him, and he
+turned to go.
+
+"The Sacramento boat goes at nine," said Mr. Sleight quietly.
+
+This time their glances met, and the Lascar's eye glistened with subtle
+intelligence.  The next moment he was gone, and Mr. Sleight again
+became absorbed in his papers.
+
+Meanwhile Renshaw was making his way back to the Pontiac with that
+light-hearted optimism that had characterized his parting with Sleight.
+It was this quality of his nature, fostered perhaps by the easy
+civilization in which he moved, that had originally drawn him into
+relations with the man he had just quitted; a quality that had been
+troubled and darkened by those relations, yet, when they were broken,
+at once returned.  It consequently did not occur to him that he had
+only selfishly compromised with the difficulty; it seemed to him enough
+that he had withdrawn from a compact he thought dishonorable; he was
+not called upon to betray his partner in that compact merely to benefit
+others.  He had been willing to incur suspicion and loss to reinstate
+himself in his self-respect, more he could not do without justifying
+that suspicion.  The view taken by Sleight was, after all, that which
+most business men would take--which even the unbusiness-like Nott would
+take--which the girl herself might be tempted to listen to.  Clearly he
+could do nothing but abandon the Pontiac and her owner to the fate he
+could not in honor avert.  And even that fate was problematical.  It
+did not follow that the treasure was still concealed in the Pontiac,
+nor that Nott would be willing to sell her.  He would make some excuse
+to Nott--he smiled to think he would probably be classed in the long
+line of absconding tenants--he would say good-by to Rosey, and leave
+for Sacramento that night.  He ascended the stairs to the gangway with
+a freer breast than when he first entered the ship.
+
+Mr. Nott was evidently absent, and after a quick glance at the
+half-open cabin door, Renshaw turned towards the galley.  But Miss
+Rosey was not in her accustomed haunt, and with a feeling of
+disappointment, which seemed inconsistent with so slight a cause, he
+crossed the deck impatiently and entered his room.  He was about to
+close the door when the prolonged rustle of a trailing skirt in the
+passage attracted his attention.  The sound was so unlike that made by
+any garment worn by Rosey that he remained motionless, with his hand on
+the door.  The sound approached nearer, and the next moment a white
+veiled figure with a trailing skirt slowly swept past the room.
+Renshaw's pulses halted for an instant in half superstitious awe.  As
+the apparition glided on and vanished in the cabin door he could only
+see that it was the form of a beautiful and graceful woman--but nothing
+more.  Bewildered and curious, he forgot himself so far as to follow
+it, and impulsively entered the cabin.  The figure turned, uttered a
+little cry, threw the veil aside, and showed the half troubled, half
+blushing face of Rosey.
+
+"I--beg--your pardon," stammered Renshaw; "I didn't know it was you."
+
+"I was trying on some things," said Rosey, recovering her composure and
+pointing to an open trunk that seemed to contain a theatrical
+wardrobe--"some things father gave me long ago.  I wanted to see if
+there was anything I could use.  I thought I was all alone in the ship,
+but fancying I heard a noise forward I came out to see what it was.  I
+suppose it must have been you."
+
+She raised her clear eyes to his, with a slight touch of womanly
+reserve that was so incompatible with any vulgar vanity or girlish
+coquetry that he became the more embarrassed.  Her dress, too, of a
+slightly antique shape, rich but simple, seemed to reveal and accent a
+certain repose of gentlewomanliness, that he was now wishing to believe
+he had always noticed.  Conscious of a superiority in her that now
+seemed to change their relations completely, he alone remained silent,
+awkward, and embarrassed before the girl who had taken care of his
+room, and who cooked in the galley!  What he had thoughtlessly
+considered a merely vulgar business intrigue against her stupid father,
+now to his extravagant fancy assumed the proportions of a sacrilege to
+herself.
+
+"You've had your revenge, Miss Nott, for the fright I once gave you,"
+he said a little uneasily, "for you quite startled me just now as you
+passed.  I began to think the Pontiac was haunted.  I thought you were
+a ghost.  I don't know why such a ghost should FRIGHTEN anybody," he
+went on with a desperate attempt to recover his position by gallantry.
+"Let me see--that's Donna Elvira's dress--is it not?"
+
+"I don't think that was the poor woman's name," said Rosey simply; "she
+died of yellow fever at New Orleans as Signora somebody."
+
+Her ignorance seemed to Mr. Renshaw so plainly to partake more of the
+nun than the provincial that he hesitated to explain to her that he
+meant the heroine of an opera.
+
+"It seems dreadful to put on the poor thing's clothes, doesn't it?" she
+added.
+
+Mr. Renshaw's eyes showed so plainly that he thought otherwise, that
+she drew a little austerely towards the door of her state-room.
+
+"I must change these things before any one comes," she said dryly.
+
+"That means I must go, I suppose.  But couldn't you let me wait here or
+in the gangway until then, Miss Nott?  I am going away to-night, and I
+mayn't see you again."  He had not intended to say this, but it slipped
+from his embarrassed tongue.  She stopped with her hand on the door.
+
+"You are going away?"
+
+"I--think--I must leave to-night.  I have some important business in
+Sacramento."
+
+She raised her frank eyes to his.  The unmistakable look of
+disappointment that he saw in them gave his heart a sudden throb and
+sent the quick blood to his cheeks.
+
+"It's too bad," she said, abstractedly.  "Nobody ever seems to stay
+here long.  Captain Bower promised to tell me all about the ship and he
+went away the second week.  The photographer left before he finished
+the picture of the Pontiac; Monsieur de Ferrieres has only just gone,
+and now YOU are going."
+
+"Perhaps, unlike them, I have finished my season of usefulness here,"
+he replied, with a bitterness he would have recalled the next moment.
+But Rosey, with a faint sigh, saying, "I won't be long," entered the
+state-room and closed the door behind her.
+
+Renshaw bit his lip and pulled at the long silken threads of his
+moustache until they smarted.  Why had he not gone at once?  Why was it
+necessary to say he might not see her again--and if he had said it, why
+should he add anything more?  What was he waiting for now?  To endeavor
+to prove to her that he really bore no resemblance to Captain Bower,
+the photographer, the crazy Frenchman de Ferrieres?  Or would he be
+forced to tell her that he was running away from a conspiracy to
+defraud her father--merely for something to say?  Was there ever such
+folly?  Rosey was "not long," as she had said, but he was beginning to
+pace the narrow cabin impatiently when the door opened and she returned.
+
+She had resumed her ordinary calico gown, but such was the impression
+left upon Renshaw's fancy that she seemed to wear it with a new grace.
+At any other time he might have recognized the change as due to a new
+corset, which strict veracity compels me to record Rosey had adopted
+for the first time that morning.  Howbeit, her slight coquetry seemed
+to have passed, for she closed the open trunk with a return of her old
+listless air, and sitting on it rested her elbows on her knees and her
+oval chin in her hands.
+
+"I wish you would do me a favor," she said after a reflective pause.
+
+"Let me know what it is and it shall be done," replied Renshaw quickly.
+
+"If you should come across Monsieur de Ferrieres, or hear of him, I
+wish you would let me know.  He was very poorly when he left here, and
+I should like to know if he was better.  He didn't say where he was
+going.  At least, he didn't tell father; but I fancy he and father
+don't agree."
+
+"I shall be very glad of having even THAT opportunity of making you
+remember me, Miss Nott," returned Renshaw with a faint smile; "I don't
+suppose either that it would be very difficult to get news of your
+friend--everybody seems to know him."
+
+"But not as I did," said Rosey with an abstracted little sigh.
+
+Mr. Renshaw opened his brown eyes upon her.  Was he mistaken? was this
+romantic girl only a little coquette playing her provincial airs on
+him?  "You say he and your father didn't agree?  That means, I suppose,
+that YOU and he agreed?--and that was the result."
+
+"I don't think father knew anything about it," said Rosey simply.
+
+Mr. Renshaw rose.  And this was what he had been waiting to hear!
+"Perhaps," he said grimly, "you would also like news of the
+photographer and Captain Bower, or did your father agree with them
+better?"
+
+"No," said Rosey quietly.  She remained silent for a moment, and
+lifting her lashes said, "Father always seemed to agree with YOU, and
+that--" she hesitated.
+
+"That's why YOU don't."
+
+"I didn't say that," said Rosey with an incongruous increase of
+coldness and color.  "I only meant to say it was that which makes it
+seem so hard you should go now."
+
+Notwithstanding his previous determination Renshaw found himself
+sitting down again.  Confused and pleased, wishing he had said more--or
+less--he said nothing, and Rosey was forced to continue.
+
+"It's strange, isn't it--but father was urging me this morning to make
+a visit to some friends at the old Ranch.  I didn't want to go.  I like
+it much better here."
+
+"But you cannot bury yourself here forever, Miss Nott," said Renshaw
+with a sudden burst of honest enthusiasm.  "Sooner or later you will be
+forced to go where you will be properly appreciated, where you will be
+admired and courted, where your slightest wish will be law.  Believe
+me, without flattery, you don't know your own power."
+
+"It doesn't seem strong enough to keep even the little I like here,"
+said Rosey with a slight glistening of the eyes.  "But," she added
+hastily, "you don't know how much the dear old ship is to me. It's the
+only home I think I ever had."
+
+"But the Ranch?" said Renshaw.
+
+"The Ranch seemed to be only the old wagon halted in the road.  It was
+a very little improvement on outdoors," said Rosey with a little
+shiver.  "But this is so cozy and snug and yet so strange and foreign.
+Do you know I think I began to understand why I like it so since you
+taught me so much about ships and voyages.  Before that I only learned
+from books.  Books deceive you, I think, more than people do.  Don't
+you think so?"
+
+She evidently did not notice the quick flush that covered his cheeks
+and apparently dazzled his troubled eyelid for she went on
+confidentially.
+
+"I was thinking of you yesterday.  I was sitting by the galley door,
+looking forward.  You remember the first day I saw you when you
+startled me by coming up out of the hatch?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't think of that," said Renshaw, with more
+earnestness than he would have made apparent.
+
+"I don't want to either," said Rosey, gravely, "for I've had a strange
+fancy about it.  I saw once when I was younger, a picture in a print
+shop in Montgomery Street that haunted me.  I think it was called 'The
+Pirate.'  There was a number of wicked-looking sailors lying around the
+deck, and coming out of a hatch was one figure with his hands on the
+deck and a cutlass in his mouth."
+
+"Thank you," said Renshaw.
+
+"You don't understand.  He was horrid-looking, not at all like you. I
+never thought of HIM when I first saw you; but the other day I thought
+how dreadful it would have been if some one like him and not like you
+had come up then.  That made me nervous sometimes of being alone.  I
+think father is too.  He often goes about stealthily at night, as if he
+was watching for something."
+
+Renshaw's face grew suddenly dark.  Could it be possible that Sleight
+had always suspected him, and set spies to watch--or was he guilty of
+some double intrigue?
+
+"He thinks," continued Rosey with a faint smile, "that some one is
+looking around the ship, and talks of setting bear-traps.  I hope
+you're not mad, Mr. Renshaw," she added, suddenly catching sight of his
+changed expression, "at my foolishness in saying you reminded me of the
+pirate.  I meant nothing."
+
+"I know you're incapable of meaning anything but good to anybody, Miss
+Nott, perhaps to me more than I deserve," said Renshaw with a sudden
+burst of feeling.  "I wish--I wish--you would do ME a favor. YOU asked
+me one just now."  He had taken her hand.  It seemed so like a mere
+illustration of his earnestness, that she did not withdraw it.  "Your
+father tells you everything.  If he has any offer to dispose of the
+ship, will you write to me at once before anything is concluded?"  He
+winced a little--the sentence of Sleight, "What's the figure you and
+she have settled upon?" flashed across his mind.  He scarcely noticed
+that Rosey had withdrawn her hand coldly.
+
+"Perhaps you had better speak to father, as it is HIS business.
+Besides, I shall not be here.  I shall be at the Ranch."
+
+"But you said you didn't want to go?"
+
+"I've changed my mind," said Rosey listlessly.  "I shall go to-night."
+
+She rose as if to indicate that the interview was ended.  With an
+overpowering instinct that his whole future happiness depended upon his
+next act, he made a step towards her, with eager outstretched hands.
+But she slightly lifted her own with a warning gesture, "I hear father
+coming--you will have a chance to talk BUSINESS with him," she said,
+and vanished into her state-room.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+The heavy tread of Abner Nott echoed in the passage.  Confused and
+embarrassed, Renshaw remained standing at the door that had closed upon
+Rosey as her father entered the cabin.  Providence, which always
+fostered Mr. Nott's characteristic misconceptions, left that
+perspicacious parent but one interpretation of the situation. Rosey had
+evidently just informed Mr. Renshaw that she loved another!
+
+"I was just saying 'good-by' to Miss Nott," said Renshaw, hastily
+regaining his composure with an effort.  "I am going to Sacramento
+to-night, and will not return.  I--"
+
+"In course, in course," interrupted Nott, soothingly; "that's wot you
+say now, and that's what you allow to do.  That's wot they allus do."
+
+"I mean," said Renshaw, reddening at what he conceived to be an
+allusion to the absconding propensities of Nott's previous tenants,--"I
+mean that you shall keep the advance to cover any loss you might suffer
+through my giving up the rooms."
+
+"Certingly," said Nott, laying his hand with a large sympathy on
+Renshaw's shoulder; "but we'll drop that just now.  We won't swap
+hosses in the middle of the river.  We'll square up accounts in your
+room," he added, raising his voice that Rosey might overhear him, after
+a preliminary wink at the young man.  "Yes, sir, we'll just square up
+and settle in there.  Come along, Mr. Renshaw." Pushing him with
+paternal gentleness from the cabin, with his hand still upon his
+shoulder, he followed him into the passage.  Half annoyed at his
+familiarity, yet not altogether displeased by this illustration of
+Rosey's belief of his preference, Renshaw wonderingly accompanied him.
+Nott closed the door, and pushing the young man into a chair,
+deliberately seated himself at the table opposite.  "It's just as well
+that Rosey reckons that you and me is settlin' our accounts," he began,
+cunningly, "and mebbee it's just ez well ez she should reckon you're
+goin' away."
+
+"But I AM going," interrupted Renshaw, impatiently.  "I leave to-night."
+
+"Surely, surely," said Nott, gently, "that's wot you kalkilate to do;
+that's just nat'ral in a young feller.  That's about what I reckon I'D
+hev done to her mother if anythin' like this hed ever cropped up, which
+it didn't.  Not but what Almiry Jane had young fellers enough round
+her, but, 'cept ole Judge Peter, ez was lamed in the War of 1812, there
+ain't no similarity ez I kin see," he added, musingly.
+
+"I am afraid I can't see any similarity either, Mr. Nott," said
+Renshaw, struggling between a dawning sense of some impending absurdity
+and his growing passion for Rosey.  "For Heaven's sake speak out if
+you've got anything to say."
+
+Mr. Nott leaned forward, and placed his large hand on the young man's
+shoulder.  "That's it.  That's what I sed to myself when I seed how
+things were pintin'.  'Speak out,' sez I, 'Abner!  Speak out if you've
+got anything to say.  You kin trust this yer Mr. Renshaw.  He ain't the
+kind of man to creep into the bosom of a man's ship for pupposes of his
+own.  He ain't a man that would hunt round until he discovered a poor
+man's treasure, and then try to rob--'"
+
+"Stop!" said Renshaw, with a set face and darkening eyes.  "WHAT
+treasure? WHAT man are you speaking of?"
+
+"Why Rosey and Mr. Ferrers," returned Nott, simply.
+
+Renshaw sank into his seat again.  But the expression of relief which
+here passed swiftly over his face gave way to one of uneasy interest as
+Nott went on.
+
+"P'r'aps it's a little highfalutin talkin' of Rosey ez a treasure. But,
+considerin', Mr. Renshaw, ez she's the only prop'ty I've kept by me for
+seventeen years ez hez paid interest and increased in valooe, it ain't
+sayin' too much to call her so.  And ez Ferrers knows this, he oughter
+been content with gougin' me in that horse-hair spec, without goin' for
+Rosey.  P'r'aps yer surprised at hearing me speak o' my own flesh and
+blood ez if I was talkin' hoss-trade, but you and me is bus'ness men,
+Mr. Renshaw, and we discusses ez such.  We ain't goin' to slosh round
+and slop over in po'try and sentiment," continued Nott, with a
+tremulous voice, and a hand that slightly shook on Renshaw's shoulder.
+"We ain't goin' to git up and sing, 'Thou'st larned to love another
+thou'st broken every vow we've parted from each other and my bozom's
+lonely now oh is it well to sever such hearts as ourn for ever kin I
+forget thee never farewell farewell farewell.'  Ye never happen'd to
+hear Jim Baker sing that at the moosic hall on Dupont Street, Mr.
+Renshaw," continued Mr. Nott, enthusiastically, when he had recovered
+from that complete absence of punctuation which alone suggested verse
+to his intellect.  "He sorter struck water down here," indicating his
+heart, "every time."
+
+"But what has Miss Nott to do with M. de Ferrieres?" asked Renshaw,
+with a faint smile.
+
+Mr. Nott regarded him with dumb, round, astonished eyes.  "Hezn't she
+told yer?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"And she didn't let on anythin' about him?" he continued, feebly.
+
+"She said she'd liked to know where--"  He stopped, with the reflection
+that he was betraying her confidences.
+
+A dim foreboding of some new form of deceit, to which even the man
+before him was a consenting party, almost paralyzed Nott's faculties.
+"Then she didn't tell yer that she and Ferrers was sparkin' and keepin'
+kimpany together; that she and him was engaged, and was kalkilatin' to
+run away to furrin parts; that she cottoned to him more than to the
+ship or her father?"
+
+"She certainly did not, and I shouldn't believe it," said Renshaw,
+quickly.
+
+Nott smiled.  He was amused; he astutely recognized the usual
+trustfulness of love and youth.  There was clearly no deceit here!
+Renshaw's attentive eyes saw the smile, and his brow darkened.
+
+"I like to hear yer say that, Mr. Renshaw," said Nott, "and it's no
+more than Rosey deserves, ez it's suthing onnat'ral and spell-like
+that's come over her through Ferrers.  It ain't my Rosey.  But it's
+Gospel truth, whether she's bewitched or not; whether it's them damn
+fool stories she reads--and it's like ez not he's just the kind o'
+snipe to write 'em hisself, and sorter advertise hisself, don't yer
+see--she's allus stuck up for him.  They've had clandesent interviews,
+and when I taxed him with it he ez much ez allowed it was so, and
+reckoned he must leave, so ez he could run her off, you know--kinder
+stampede her with 'honor.'  Them's his very words."
+
+"But that is all past; he is gone, and Miss Nott does not even know
+where he is!" said Renshaw, with a laugh, which, however, concealed a
+vague uneasiness.
+
+Mr. Nott rose and opened the door carefully.  When he had satisfied
+himself that no one was listening, he came back and said in a whisper,
+"That's a lie.  Not ez Rosey means to lie, but it's a trick he's put
+upon that poor child.  That man, Mr. Renshaw, hez been hangin' round
+the Pontiac ever since.  I've seed him twice with my own eyes pass the
+cabin windys.  More than that, I've heard strange noises at night, and
+seen strange faces in the alley over yer.  And only jist now ez I kem
+in I ketched sight of a furrin lookin' Chinee nigger slinking round the
+back door of what useter be Ferrers's loft."
+
+"Did he look like a sailor?" asked Renshaw quickly, with a return of
+his former suspicion.
+
+"Not more than I do," said Nott, glancing complacently at his
+pea-jacket.  "He had rings on his yeers like a wench."
+
+Mr. Renshaw started.  But seeing Nott's eyes fixed on him, he said
+lightly, "But what have these strange faces and this strange
+man--probably only a Lascar sailor out of a job--to do with Ferrieres?"
+
+"Friends o' his--feller furrin citizens--spies on Rosey, don't you see?
+But they can't play the old man, Mr. Renshaw.  I've told Rosey she must
+make a visit to the old Ranch.  Once I've got her ther safe, I reckon I
+kin manage Mr. Ferrers and any number of Chinee niggers he kin bring
+along."
+
+Renshaw remained for a few moments lost in thought.  Then rising
+suddenly he grasped Mr. Nott's hand with a frank smile but determined
+eyes.  "I haven't got the hang of this, Mr. Nott--the whole thing gets
+me!  I only know that I've changed my mind.  I'm NOT going to
+Sacramento.  I shall stay HERE, old man, until I see you safe through
+the business, or my name's not Dick Renshaw. There's my hand on it!
+Don't say a word.  Maybe it is no more than I ought to do--perhaps not
+half enough.  Only remember, not a word of this to your daughter.  She
+must believe that I leave to-night. And the sooner you get her out of
+this cursed ship the better."
+
+"Deacon Flint's girls are goin' up in to-night's boat.  I'll send Rosey
+with them," said Nott with a cunning twinkle.  Renshaw nodded.  Nott
+seized his hand with a wink of unutterable significance.
+
+Left to himself Renshaw tried to review more calmly the circumstances
+in these strange revelations that had impelled him to change his
+resolution so suddenly.  That the ship was under the surveillance of
+unknown parties, and that the description of them tallied with his own
+knowledge of a certain Lascar sailor, who was one of Sleight's
+informants--seemed to be more than probable.  That this seemed to point
+to Sleight's disloyalty to himself while he was acting as his agent, or
+a double treachery on the part of Sleight's informants was in either
+case a reason and an excuse for his own interference.  But the
+connection of the absurd Frenchman with the case, which at first seemed
+a characteristic imbecility of his landlord, bewildered him the more he
+thought of it.  Rejecting any hypothesis of the girl's affection for
+the antiquated figure whose sanity was a question of public criticism,
+he was forced to the equally alarming theory that Ferrieres was
+cognizant of the treasure, and that his attentions to Rosey were to
+gain possession of it by marrying her.  Might she not be dazzled by a
+picture of this wealth?  Was it not possible that she was already in
+part possession of the secret, and her strange attraction to the ship,
+and what he had deemed her innocent craving for information concerning
+it, a consequence?  Why had he not thought of this before?  Perhaps she
+had detected his purpose from the first, and had deliberately
+checkmated him.  The thought did not increase his complacency as Nott
+softly returned.
+
+"It's all right," he began with a certain satisfaction in this rare
+opportunity for Machiavellian diplomacy, "it's all fixed now. Rosey
+tumbled to it at once, partiklerly when I said you was bound to go.
+'But wot makes Mr. Renshaw go, father,' sez she; 'wot makes everybody
+run away from the ship?' sez she, rather peart like and sassy for her.
+'Mr. Renshaw hez contractin' business,' sez I; 'got a big thing up in
+Sacramento that'll make his fortun',' sez I--for I wasn't goin' to give
+yer away, don't ye see.  'He had some business to talk to you about the
+ship,' sez she, lookin' at me under the corner of her pocket
+handkerchief.  'Lots o' business,' sez I.  'Then I reckon he don't care
+to hev me write to him,' sez she.  'Not a bit,' sez I, 'he wouldn't
+answer ye if ye did.  Ye'll never hear from that chap agin.'"
+
+"But what the devil--" interrupted the young man impetuously.
+
+"Keep yer hair on!" remonstrated the old man with dark intelligence.
+"Ef you'd seen the way she flounced into her stateroom!--she, Rosey, ez
+allus moves ez softly ez a spirit--you'd hev wished I'd hev unloaded a
+little more.  No sir, gals is gals in some things all the time."
+
+Renshaw rose and paced the room rapidly.  "Perhaps I'd better speak to
+her again before she goes," he said, impulsively.
+
+"P'r'aps you'd better not," replied the imperturbable Nott.
+
+Irritated as he was, Renshaw could not avoid the reflection that the
+old man was right.  What, indeed, could he say to her with his present
+imperfect knowledge?  How could she write to him if that knowledge was
+correct?
+
+"Ef," said Nott, kindly, with a laying on of large benedictory and
+paternal hands, "ef yer are willin' to see Rosey agin, without SPEAKIN'
+to her, I reckon I ken fix it for yer.  I'm goin' to take her down to
+the boat in half an hour.  Ef yer should happen--mind, ef yer should
+HAPPEN to be down there, seein' some friends off and sorter promenadin'
+up and down the wharf like them high-toned chaps on Montgomery
+Street--ye might ketch her eye unconscious like.  Or, ye might do
+this!"  He rose after a moment's cogitation and with a face of profound
+mystery opened the door and beckoned Renshaw to follow him.  Leading
+the way cautiously, he brought the young man into an open unpartitioned
+recess beside her stateroom.  It seemed to be used as a storeroom, and
+Renshaw's eye was caught by a trunk the size and shape of the one that
+had provided Rosey with the materials of her masquerade.  Pointing to
+it Mr. Nott said in a grave whisper: "This yer trunk is the companion
+trunk to Rosey's. SHE'S got the things them opery women wears; this yer
+contains the HE things, the duds and fixin's o' the men o' the same
+stripe." Throwing it open he continued: "Now, Mr. Renshaw, gals is
+gals; it's nat'ral they should be took by fancy dress and store clothes
+on young chaps as on theirselves.  That man Ferrers hez got the dead
+wood on all of ye in this sort of thing, and hez been playing, so to
+speak, a lone hand all along.  And ef thar's anythin' in thar," he
+added, lifting part of a theatrical wardrobe, "that you think you'd
+fancy--anythin' you'd like to put on when ye promenade the wharf down
+yonder--it's yours.  Don't ye be bashful, but help yourself."
+
+It was fully a minute before Renshaw fairly grasped the old man's
+meaning.  But when he did--when the suggested spectacle of himself
+arrayed a la Ferrieres, gravely promenading the wharf as a last
+gorgeous appeal to the affections of Rosey, rose before his fancy, he
+gave way to a fit of genuine laughter.  The nervous tension of the past
+few hours relaxed; he laughed until the tears came into his eyes; he
+was still laughing when the door of the cabin was suddenly opened and
+Rosey appeared cold and distant on the threshold.
+
+"I--beg your pardon," stammered Renshaw hastily.  "I didn't mean--to
+disturb you--I--"
+
+Without looking at him Rosey turned to her father.  "I am ready," she
+said coldly, and closed the door again.
+
+A glance of artful intelligence came into Nott's eyes, which had
+remained blankly staring at Renshaw's apparently causeless hilarity.
+Turning to him he winked solemnly.  "That keerless kind o' hoss-laff
+jist fetched her," he whispered, and vanished before his chagrined
+companion could reply.
+
+When Mr. Nott and his daughter departed Renshaw was not in the ship,
+neither did he make a spectacular appearance on the wharf as Mr. Nott
+had fondly expected, nor did he turn up again until after nine o'clock,
+when he found the old man in the cabin awaiting his return with some
+agitation.
+
+"A minit ago," he said, mysteriously closing the door behind Renshaw,
+"I heard a voice in the passage, and goin' out who should I see agin
+but that darned furrin nigger ez I told yer 'bout, kinder hidin' in the
+dark, his eyes shinin like a catamount, I was jist reachin' for my
+weppins when he riz up with a grin and handed me this yer letter.  I
+told him I reckoned you'd gone to Sacramento, but he said he wez sure
+you was in your room, and to prove it I went thar.  But when I kem back
+the d----d skunk had vamoosed--got frightened I reckon--and wasn't
+nowhar to be seen."
+
+Reashaw took the letter hastily.  It contained only a line in Sleight's
+hand.  "If you change your mind, the bearer may be of service to you."
+
+He turned abruptly to Nott.  "You say it was the same Lascar you saw
+before."
+
+"It was."
+
+"Then all I can say is he is no agent of de Ferrieres's," said Renshaw,
+turning away with a disappointed air.  Mr. Nott would have asked
+another question, but with an abrupt "Good-night" the young man entered
+his room, locked the door, and threw himself on his bed to reflect
+without interruption.
+
+But if he was in no mood to stand Nott's fatuous conjectures, he was
+less inclined to be satisfied with his own.  Had he been again carried
+away through his impulses evoked by the caprices of a pretty coquette
+and the absurd theories of her half imbecile father?  Had he broken
+faith with Sleight and remained in the ship for nothing, and would not
+his change of resolution appear to be the result of Sleight's note?
+But why had the Lascar been haunting the ship before?  In the midst of
+these conjectures he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+Between three and four in the morning the clouds broke over the
+Pontiac, and the moon, riding high, picked out in black and silver the
+long hulk that lay cradled between the iron shells of warehouses and
+the wooden frames of tenements on either side.  The galley and covered
+gangway presented a mass of undefined shadow, against which the white
+deck shone brightly, stretching to the forecastle and bows, where the
+tiny glass roof of the photographer glistened like a gem in the
+Pontiac's crest.  So peaceful and motionless she lay that she might
+have been some petrifaction of a past age now first exhumed and laid
+bare to the cold light of the stars.
+
+Nevertheless this calm security was presently invaded by a sense of
+stealthy life and motion.  What had seemed a fixed shadow suddenly
+detached itself from the deck, and began to slip stanchion by stanchion
+along the bulwarks toward the companion way.  At the cabin door it
+halted and crouched motionless.  Then rising, it glided forward with
+the same staccato movement until opposite the slight elevation of the
+forehatch.  Suddenly it darted to the hatch, unfastened and lifted it
+with a swift, familiar dexterity, and disappeared in the opening.  But
+as the moon shone upon its vanishing face, it revealed the whitening
+eyes and teeth of the Lascar seaman.
+
+Dropping to the lower deck lightly, he felt his way through the dark
+passage between the partitions, evidently less familiar to him, halting
+before each door to listen.  Returning forward he reached the second
+hatchway that had attracted Rosey's attention, and noiselessly unclosed
+its fastenings.  A penetrating smell of bilge arose from the opening.
+Drawing a small bull's-eye lantern from his breast he lit it, and
+unhesitatingly let himself down to the further depth.  The moving flash
+of his light revealed the recesses of the upper hold, the abyss of the
+well amidships, and glanced from the shining backs of moving zig-zags
+of rats that seemed to outline the shadowy beams and transoms.
+Disregarding those curious spectators of his movements, he turned his
+attention eagerly to the inner casings of the hold, that seemed in one
+spot to have been strengthened by fresh timbers.  Attacking this
+stealthily with the aid of some tools hidden in his oil-skin clothing,
+in the light of the lantern he bore a fanciful resemblance to the
+predatory animals around him.  The low continuous sound of rasping and
+gnawing of timber which followed heightened the resemblance.  At the
+end of a few minutes he had succeeded in removing enough of the outer
+planking to show that the entire filling of the casing between the
+stanchions was composed of small boxes.  Dragging out one of them with
+feverish eagerness to the light, the Lascar forced it open.  In the
+rays of the bull's-eye, a wedged mass of discolored coins showed with a
+lurid glow. The story of the Pontiac was true--the treasure was there!
+
+But Mr. Sleight had overlooked the logical effect of this discovery on
+the natural villainy of his tool.  In the very moment of his triumphant
+execution of his patron's suggestions the idea of keeping the treasure
+to himself flashed upon his mind.  HE had discovered it--why should he
+give it up to anybody?  HE had run all the risks; if he were detected
+at that moment, who would believe that his purpose there at midnight
+was only to satisfy some one else that the treasure was still intact?
+No.  The circumstances were propitious; he would get the treasure out
+of the ship at once, drop it over her side, hastily conceal it in the
+nearest lot adjacent, and take it away at his convenience.--Who would
+be the wiser for it?
+
+But it was necessary to reconnoitre first.  He knew that the loft
+overhead was empty.  He knew that it communicated with the alley, for
+he had tried the door that morning.  He would convey the treasure
+there, and drop it into the alley.  The boxes were heavy. Each one
+would require a separate journey to the ship's side, but he would at
+least secure something if he were interrupted.  He stripped the casing,
+and gathered the boxes together in a pile.
+
+Ah, yes, it was funny too that he--the Lascar hound--the d----d
+nigger--should get what bigger and bullier men than he had died for!
+The mate's blood was on those boxes, if the salt water had not washed
+it out.  It was a hell of a fight when they dragged the captain--Oh,
+what was that?  Was it the splash of a rat in the bilge, or what?
+
+A superstitious terror had begun to seize him at the thought of blood.
+The stifling hold seemed again filled with struggling figures he had
+known; the air thick with cries and blasphemies that he had forgotten.
+He rose to his feet, and running quickly to the hatchway, leaped to the
+deck above.  All was quiet.  The door leading to the empty loft yielded
+to his touch.  He entered, and, gliding through, unbarred and opened
+the door that gave upon the alley.  The cold air and moonlight flowed
+in silently; the way of escape was clear.  Bah!  He would go back for
+the treasure.
+
+He had reached the passage when the door he had just opened was
+suddenly darkened.  Turning rapidly, he was conscious of a gaunt
+figure, grotesque, silent, and erect, looming on the threshold between
+him and the sky.  Hidden in the shadow, he made a stealthy step towards
+it, with an iron wrench in his uplifted hand.  But the next moment his
+eyes dilated with superstitious horror; the iron fell from this hand,
+and with a scream, like a frightened animal, he turned and fled into
+the passage.  In the first access of his blind terror he tried to reach
+the deck above through the forehatch, but was stopped by the sound of a
+heavy tread overhead. The immediate fear of detection now overcame his
+superstition; he would have even faced the apparition again to escape
+through the loft; but, before he could return there, other footsteps
+approached rapidly from the end of the passage he would have to
+traverse. There was but one chance of escape left now--the forehold he
+had just quitted.  He might hide there until the alarm was over.  He
+glided back to the hatch, lifted it, and it closed softly over his head
+as the upper hatch was simultaneously raised, and the small round eyes
+of Abner Nott peered down upon it.  The other footsteps proved to be
+Renshaw's but, attracted by the open door of the loft, he turned aside
+and entered.  As soon as he disappeared Mr. Nott cautiously dropped
+through the opening to the deck below, and, going to the other hatch
+through which the Lascar had vanished, deliberately refastened it.  In
+a few moments Renshaw returned with a light, and found the old man
+sitting on the hatch.
+
+"The loft door was open," said Renshaw.  "There's little doubt whoever
+was here escaped that way."
+
+"Surely," said Nott.  There was a peculiar look of Machiavellian
+sagacity in his face which irritated Renshaw.
+
+"Then you're sure it was Ferrieres you saw pass by your window before
+you called me?" he asked.
+
+Nott nodded his head with an expression of infinite profundity.
+
+"But you say he was going FROM the ship.  Then it could not have been
+he who made the noise we heard down here."
+
+"Mebbee no, and mebbee yes," returned Nott, cautiously.  "But if he was
+already concealed inside the ship, as that open door, which you say you
+barred from the inside, would indicate, what the devil did he want with
+this?" said Renshaw, producing the monkey-wrench he had picked up.
+
+Mr. Nott examined the tool carefully, and shook his head with momentous
+significance.  Nevertheless, his eyes wandered to the hatch on which he
+was seated.
+
+"Did you find anything disturbed THERE?" said Renshaw, following the
+direction of his eye.  "Was that hatch fastened as it is now?"
+
+"It was," said Nott, calmly.  "But ye wouldn't mind fetchin' me a
+hammer and some o' them big nails from the locker, would yer, while I
+hang round here just so ez to make sure against another attack."
+
+Renshaw complied with his request; but as Nott proceeded to gravely
+nail down the fastenings of the hatch, he turned impatiently away to
+complete his examination of the ship.  The doors of the other lofts and
+their fastenings appeared secure and undisturbed.  Yet it was
+undeniable that a felonious entrance had been made, but by whom or for
+what purpose still remained uncertain.  Even now, Renshaw found it
+difficult to accept Nott's theory that de Ferrieres was the aggressor
+and Rosey the object, nor could he justify his own suspicion that the
+Lascar had obtained a surreptitious entrance under Sleight's
+directions.  With a feeling that if Rosey had been present he would
+have confessed all, and demanded from her an equal confidence, he began
+to hate his feeble, purposeless, and inefficient alliance with her
+father, who believed but dare not tax his daughter with complicity in
+this outrage.  What could be done with a man whose only idea of action
+at such a moment was to nail up an undisturbed entrance in his invaded
+house!  He was so preoccupied with these thoughts that when Nott
+rejoined him in the cabin he scarcely heeded his presence, and was
+entirely oblivious of the furtive looks which the old man from time to
+time cast upon his face.
+
+"I reckon ye wouldn't mind," broke in Nott, suddenly, "ef I asked a
+favor of ye, Mr. Renshaw.  Mebbee ye'll allow it's askin' too much in
+the matter of expense; mebbee ye'll allow it's askin' too much in the
+matter o' time.  But I kalkilate to pay all the expense, and if you'd
+let me know what yer vally yer time at, I reckon I could stand that.
+What I'd be askin' is this.  Would ye mind takin' a letter from me to
+Rosey, and bringin' back an answer?"
+
+Renshaw stared speechlessly at this absurd realization of his wish of a
+moment before.  "I don't think I understand you," he stammered.
+
+"P'r'aps not," returned Nott, with great gravity.  "But that's not so
+much matter to you ez your time and expenses."
+
+"I meant I should be glad to go if I can be of any service to you,"
+said Renshaw, hastily.
+
+"You kin ketch the seven o'clock boat this morning, and you'll reach
+San Rafael at ten--"
+
+"But I thought Miss Rosey went to Petaluma," interrupted Renshaw
+quickly.
+
+Nott regarded him with an expression of patronizing superiority.
+"That's what we ladled out to the public gin'rally, and to Ferrers and
+his gang in partickler.  We SAID Petalumey, but if you go to Madrono
+Cottage, San Rafael, you'll find Rosey thar."
+
+If Mr. Renshaw required anything more to convince him of the necessity
+of coming to some understanding with Rosey at once it would have been
+this last evidence of her father's utterly dark and supremely
+inscrutable designs.  He assented quickly, and Nott handed him a note.
+
+"Ye'll be partickler to give this inter her own hands, and wait for an
+answer," said Nott gravely.
+
+Resisting the proposition to enter then and there into an elaborate
+calculation of the value of his time and the expenses of the trip,
+Renshaw found himself at seven o'clock on the San Rafael boat. Brief as
+was the journey it gave him time to reflect upon his coming interview
+with Rosey.  He had resolved to begin by confessing all; the attempt of
+last night had released him from any sense of duty to Sleight.
+Besides, he did not doubt that Nott's letter contained some reference
+to this affair only known to Nott's dark and tortuous intelligence.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Madrono Cottage lay at the entrance of a little canada already green
+with the early winter rains, and nestled in a thicket of the harlequin
+painted trees that gave it a name.  The young man was a little relieved
+to find that Rosey had gone to the post-office a mile away, and that he
+would probably overtake her or meet her returning--alone.  The
+road--little more than a trail--wound along the crest of the hill
+looking across the canada to the long, dark, heavily-wooded flank of
+Mount Tamalpais that rose from the valley a dozen miles away.  A
+cessation of the warm rain, a rift in the sky, and the rare spectacle
+of cloud scenery, combined with a certain sense of freedom, restored
+that lighthearted gayety that became him most.  At a sudden turn of the
+road he caught sight of Rosey's figure coming towards him, and
+quickened his step with the impulsiveness of a boy.  But she suddenly
+disappeared, and when he again saw her she was on the other side of the
+trail apparently picking the leaves of a manzanita.  She had already
+seen him.
+
+Somehow the frankness of his greeting was checked.  She looked up at
+him with cheeks that retained enough of their color to suggest why she
+had hesitated, and said, "YOU here, Mr. Renshaw?  I thought you were in
+Sacramento."
+
+"And I thought YOU were in Petaluma," he retorted gayly.  "I have a
+letter from your father.  The fact is, one of those gentlemen who has
+been haunting the ship actually made an entry last night.  Who he was,
+and what he came for, nobody knows.  Perhaps your father gives you his
+suspicions."  He could not help looking at her narrowly as he handed
+her the note.  Except that her pretty eyebrows were slightly raised in
+curiosity she seemed undisturbed as she opened the letter.  Presently
+she raised her eyes to his.
+
+"Is this all father gave you?"
+
+"All."
+
+"You're sure you haven't dropped anything?"
+
+"Nothing.  I have given you all he gave me."
+
+"And that is all it is."  She exhibited the missive, a perfectly blank
+sheet of paper folded like a note!
+
+Renshaw felt the angry blood glow in his cheeks.  "This is
+unpardonable!  I assure you, Miss Nott, there must be some mistake. He
+himself has probably forgotten the inclosure," he continued, yet with
+an inward conviction that the act was perfectly premeditated on the
+part of the old man.
+
+The young girl held out her hand frankly.  "Don't think any more of it,
+Mr. Renshaw.  Father is forgetful at times.  But tell me about last
+night."
+
+In a few words Mr. Renshaw briefly but plainly related the details of
+the attempt upon the Pontiac, from the moment that he had been awakened
+by Nott, to his discovery of the unknown trespasser's flight by the
+open door to the loft.  When he had finished, he hesitated, and then
+taking Rosey's hand, said impulsively, "You will not be angry with me
+if I tell you all?  Your father firmly believes that the attempt was
+made by the old Frenchman, de Ferrieres, with a view of carrying you
+off."
+
+A dozen reasons other than the one her father would have attributed it
+to might have called the blood to her face.  But only innocence could
+have brought the look of astonished indignation to her eyes as she
+answered quickly:
+
+"So THAT was what you were laughing at?"
+
+"Not that, Miss Nott," said the young man eagerly: "though I wish to
+God I could accuse myself of nothing more disloyal.  Do not speak, I
+beg," he added impatiently, as Rosey was about to reply. "I have no
+right to hear you; I have no right to even stand in your presence until
+I have confessed everything.  I came to the Pontiac; I made your
+acquaintance, Miss Nott, through a fraud as wicked as anything your
+father charges to de Ferrieres.  I am not a contractor.  I never was an
+honest lodger in the Pontiac.  I was simply a spy."
+
+"But you didn't mean to be--it was some mistake, wasn't it?" said
+Rosey, quite white, but more from sympathy with the offender's emotion
+than horror at the offense.
+
+"I am afraid I did mean it.  But bear with me for a few moments longer
+and you shall know all.  It's a long story.  Will you walk on,
+and--take my arm?  You do not shrink from me, Miss Nott.  Thank you.  I
+scarcely deserve the kindness."
+
+Indeed so little did Rosey shrink that he was conscious of a slight
+reassuring pressure on his arm as they moved forward, and for the
+moment I fear the young man felt like exaggerating his offense for the
+sake of proportionate sympathy.  "Do you remember," he continued, "one
+evening when I told you some sea tales, you said you always thought
+there must be some story about the Pontiac? There was a story of the
+Pontiac, Miss Nott--a wicked story--a terrible story--which I might
+have told you, which I OUGHT to have told you--which was the story that
+brought me there.  You were right, too, in saying that you thought I
+had known the Pontiac before I stepped first on her deck that day.  I
+had."
+
+He laid his disengaged hand across lightly on Rosey's, as if to assure
+himself that she was listening.
+
+"I was at that time a sailor.  I had been fool enough to run away from
+college, thinking it a fine romantic thing to ship before the mast for
+a voyage round the world.  I was a little disappointed, perhaps, but I
+made the best of it, and in two years I was second mate of a whaler
+lying in a little harbor of one of the uncivilized islands of the
+Pacific.  While we were at anchor there a French trading vessel put in,
+apparently for water.  She had the dregs of a mixed crew of Lascars and
+Portuguese, who said they had lost the rest of their men by desertion,
+and that the captain and mate had been carried off by fever.  There was
+something so queer in their story that our skipper took the law in his
+own hands, and put me on board of her with a salvage crew.  But that
+night the French crew mutinied, cut the cables, and would have got to
+sea if we had not been armed and prepared, and managed to drive them
+below.  When we had got them under hatches for a few hours they
+parleyed, and offered to go quietly ashore.  As we were short of hands
+and unable to take them with us, and as we had no evidence against
+them, we let them go, took the ship to Callao, turned her over to the
+authorities, lodged a claim for salvage, and continued our voyage. When
+we returned we found the truth of the story was known.  She had been a
+French trader from Marseilles, owned by her captain; her crew had
+mutinied in the Pacific, killed their officers and the only
+passenger--the owner of the cargo.  They had made away with the cargo
+and a treasure of nearly half a million of Spanish gold for trading
+purposes which belonged to the passenger.  In course of time the ship
+was sold for salvage and put into the South American trade until the
+breaking out of the Californian gold excitement, when she was sent with
+a cargo to San Francisco.  That ship was the Pontiac which your father
+bought."
+
+A slight shudder ran through the girl's frame.  "I wish--I wish you
+hadn't told me," she said.  "I shall never close my eyes again
+comfortably on board of her, I know."
+
+"I would say that you had purified her of ALL stains of her past--but
+there may be one that remains.  And THAT in most people's eyes would be
+no detraction.  You look puzzled, Miss Nott--but I am coming to the
+explanation and the end of my story.  A ship of war was sent to the
+island to punish the mutineers and pirates, for such they were, but
+they could not be found.  A private expedition was sent to discover the
+treasure which they were supposed to have buried, but in vain.  About
+two months ago Mr. Sleight told me one of his shipmates had sent him a
+Lascar sailor who had to dispose of a valuable secret regarding the
+Pontiac for a percentage.  That secret was that the treasure was never
+taken by the mutineers out of the Pontiac!  They were about to land and
+bury it when we boarded them.  They took advantage of their
+imprisonment under hatches to BURY IT IN THE SHIP.  They hid it in the
+hold so securely and safely that it was never detected by us or the
+Callao authorities.  I was then asked, as one who knew the vessel, to
+undertake a private examination of her, with a view of purchasing her
+from your father without awakening his suspicions.  I assented. You
+have my confession now, Miss Nott.  You know my crime.  I am at your
+mercy."
+
+Rosey's arm only tightened around his own.  Her eyes sought his. "And
+you didn't find anything?" she said.
+
+The question sounded so oddly like Sleight's, that Renshaw returned a
+little stiffly--
+
+"I didn't look."
+
+"Why?" asked Rosey simply.
+
+"Because," stammered Renshaw, with an uneasy consciousness of having
+exaggerated his sentiment, "it didn't seem honorable; it didn't seem
+fair to you."
+
+"Oh, you silly! you might have looked and told ME."
+
+"But," said Renshaw, "do you think that would have been fair to
+Sleight?"
+
+"As fair to him as to us.  For, don't you see, it wouldn't belong to
+any of us.  It would belong to the friends or the family of the man who
+lost it."
+
+"But there were no heirs," said Renshaw.  "That was proved by some
+impostor who pretended to be his brother, and libelled the Pontiac at
+Callao, but the courts decided he was a lunatic."
+
+"Then it belongs to the poor pirates who risked their own lives for it,
+rather than to Sleight, who did nothing."  She was silent for a moment,
+and then resumed with energy, "I believe he was at the bottom of that
+attack last night."
+
+"I have thought so too," said Renshaw.
+
+"Then I must go back at once," she continued impulsively.  "Father must
+not be left alone."
+
+"Nor must YOU," said Renshaw, quickly.  "Do let me return with you, and
+share with you and your father the trouble I have brought upon you.  Do
+not," he added in a lower tone, "deprive me of the only chance of
+expiating my offense, of making myself worthy your forgiveness."
+
+"I am sure," said Rosey, lowering her lids and half withdrawing her
+arm, "I am sure I have nothing to forgive.  You did not believe the
+treasure belonged to us any more than to anybody else, until you knew
+ME--"
+
+"That is true," said the young man, attempting to take her hand.
+
+"I mean," said Rosey, blushing, and showing a distracting row of little
+teeth in one of her infrequent laughs, "oh, you know what I mean."  She
+withdrew her arm gently, and became interested in the selection of
+certain wayside bay leaves as they passed along.  "All the same, I
+don't believe in this treasure," she said abruptly, as if to change the
+subject.  "I don't believe it ever was hidden inside the Pontiac."
+
+"That can easily be ascertained now," said Renshaw.
+
+"But it's a pity you didn't find it out while you were about it," said
+Rosey.  "It would have saved so much talk and trouble."
+
+"I have told you why I didn't search the ship," responded Renshaw, with
+a slight bitterness.  "But it seems I could only avoid being a great
+rascal by becoming a great fool."
+
+"You never intended to be a rascal," said Rosey, earnestly, "and you
+couldn't be a fool, except in heeding what a silly girl says. I only
+meant if you had taken me into your confidence it would have been
+better."
+
+"Might I not say the same to you regarding your friend, the old
+Frenchman?" returned Renshaw.  "What if I were to confess to you that I
+lately suspected him of knowing the secret, and of trying to gain your
+assistance?"
+
+Instead of indignantly repudiating the suggestion, to the young man's
+great discomfiture, Rosey only knit her pretty brows, and remained for
+some minutes silent.  Presently she asked timidly,--
+
+"Do you think it wrong to tell another person's secret for their own
+good?"
+
+"No," said Renshaw, promptly.
+
+"Then I'll tell you Monsieur de Ferrieres's!  But only because I
+believe from what you have just said that he will turn out to have some
+right to the treasure."
+
+Then with kindling eyes, and a voice eloquent with sympathy, Rosey told
+the story of her accidental discovery of de Ferrieres's miserable
+existence in the loft.  Clothing it with the unconscious poetry of her
+fresh, young imagination, she lightly passed over his antique gallantry
+and grotesque weakness, exalting only his lonely sufferings and
+mysterious wrongs.  Renshaw listened, lost between shame for his late
+suspicions and admiration for her thoughtful delicacy, until she began
+to speak of de Ferrieres's strange allusions to the foreign papers in
+his portmanteau.  "I think some were law papers, and I am almost
+certain I saw the word Callao printed on one of them."
+
+"It may be so," said Renshaw, thoughtfully.  "The old Frenchman has
+always passed for a harmless, wandering eccentric.  I hardly think
+public curiosity has ever even sought to know his name, much less his
+history.  But had we not better first try to find if there IS any
+property before we examine his claims to it?"
+
+"As you please," said Rosey, with a slight pout; "but you will find it
+much easier to discover him than his treasure.  It's always easier to
+find the thing you're not looking for."
+
+"Until you want it," said Renshaw, with sudden gravity.
+
+"How pretty it looks over there," said Rosey, turning her conscious
+eyes to the opposite mountain.
+
+"Very."
+
+They had reached the top of the hill, and in the near distance the
+chimney of Madrono Cottage was even now visible.  At the expected sight
+they unconsciously stopped--unconsciously disappointed. Rosey broke the
+embarrassing silence.
+
+"There's another way home, but it's a roundabout way," she said timidly.
+
+"Let us take it," said Renshaw.
+
+She hesitated.  "The boat goes at four, and we must return to-night."
+
+"The more reason why we should make the most of our time now," said
+Renshaw with a faint smile.  "To-morrow all things may be changed;
+to-morrow you may find yourself an heiress, Miss Nott.  To-morrow," he
+added, with a slight tremor in his voice, "I may have earned your
+forgiveness, only to say farewell to you forever.  Let me keep this
+sunshine, this picture, this companionship with you long enough to say
+now what perhaps I must not say to-morrow."
+
+They were silent for a moment, and then by a common instinct turned
+together into a narrow trail, scarce wide enough for two, that diverged
+from the straight practical path before them.  It was indeed a
+roundabout way home, so roundabout, in fact, that as they wandered on
+it seemed even to double on its track, occasionally lingering long and
+becoming indistinct under the shadow of madrono and willow; at one time
+stopping blindly before a fallen tree in the hollow, where they had
+quite lost it, and had to sit down to recall it; a rough way, often
+requiring the mutual help of each other's hands and eyes to tread
+together in security; an uncertain way, not to be found without
+whispered consultation and concession, and yet a way eventually
+bringing them hand in hand, happy and hopeful, to the gate of Madrono
+Cottage.  And if there was only just time for Rosey to prepare to take
+the boat, it was due to the deviousness of the way.  If a stray curl
+was lying loose on Rosey's cheek, and a long hair had caught in
+Renshaw's button, it was owing to the roughness of the way; and if in
+the tones of their voices and in the glances of their eyes there was a
+maturer seriousness, it was due to the dim uncertainty of the path they
+had traveled, and would hereafter tread together.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+When Mr. Nott had satisfied himself of Renshaw's departure, he coolly
+bolted the door at the head of the companion way, thus cutting off any
+communication with the lower deck.  Taking a long rifle from the rack
+above his berth, he carefully examined the hammer and cap, and then
+cautiously let himself down through the forehatch to the deck below.
+After a deliberate survey of the still intact fastenings of the hatch
+over the forehold, he proceeded quietly to unloose them again with the
+aid of the tools that still lay there.  When the hatch was once more
+free he lifted it, and, withdrawing a few feet from the opening, sat
+himself down, rifle in hand.  A profound silence reigned throughout the
+lower deck.
+
+"Ye kin rize up out o' that," said Nott gently.
+
+There was a stealthy rustle below that seemed to approach the hatch,
+and then with a sudden bound the Lascar leaped on the deck. But at the
+same instant Nott covered him with his rifle.  A slight shade of
+disappointment and surprise had crossed the old man's face, and clouded
+his small round eyes at the apparition of the Lascar, but his hand was
+none the less firm upon the trigger as the frightened prisoner sank on
+his knees, with his hands clasped in the attitude of supplication for
+mercy.
+
+"Ef you're thinkin' o' skippin' afore I've done with yer," said Nott
+with labored gentleness, "I oughter warn ye that it's my style to drop
+Injins at two hundred yards, and this deck ain't anywhere mor'n fifty.
+It's an uncomfortable style, a nasty style--but it's MY style.  I
+thought I'd tell yer, so yer could take it easy where you air.  Where's
+Ferrers?"
+
+Even in the man's insane terror, his utter bewilderment at the question
+was evident.  "Ferrers?" he gasped; "don't know him, I swear to God,
+boss."
+
+"P'r'aps," said Nott, with infinite cunning, "yer don't know the man ez
+kem into the loft from the alley last night--p'r'aps yer didn't see an
+airy Frenchman with a dyed moustache, eh?  I thought that would fetch
+ye!" he continued, as the man started at the evidence that his vision
+of last night was a living man.  "P'r'aps you and him didn't break into
+this ship last night, jist to run off with my darter Rosey?  P'r'aps
+yer don't know Rosey, eh?  P'r'aps yer don't know ez Ferrers wants to
+marry her, and hez been hangin' round yer ever since he left--eh?"
+
+Scarcely believing the evidence of his senses that the old man whose
+treasure he had been trying to steal was utterly ignorant of his real
+offense, and yet uncertain of the penalty of the other crime of which
+he was accused, the Lascar writhed his body and stammered vaguely,
+"Mercy!  Mercy!"
+
+"Well," said Nott, cautiously, "ez I reckon the hide of a dead Chinee
+nigger ain't any more vallyble than that of a dead Injin, I don't care
+ef I let up on yer--seein' the cussedness ain't yours. But ef I let yer
+off this once, you must take a message to Ferrers from me."
+
+"Let me off this time, boss, and I swear to God I will," said the
+Lascar eagerly.
+
+"Ye kin say to Ferrers--let me see--" deliberated Nott, leaning on his
+rifle with cautious reflection.  "Ye kin say to Ferrers like this--sez
+you, 'Ferrers,' sez you, 'the old man sez that afore you went away you
+sez to him, sez you, "I take my honor with me," sez you'--have you got
+that?" interrupted Nott suddenly.
+
+"Yes, boss."
+
+"'I take my honor with me,' sez you," repeated Nott slowly. "'Now,' sez
+you--'the old man sez, sez he--tell Ferrers, sez he, that his honor
+havin' run away agin, he sends it back to him, and ef he ever ketches
+it around after this, he'll shoot it on sight.' Hev yer got that?"
+
+"Yes," stammered the bewildered captive.
+
+"Then git!"
+
+The Lascar sprang to his feet with the agility of a panther, leaped
+through the hatch above him, and disappeared over the bow of the ship
+with an unhesitating directness that showed that every avenue of escape
+had been already contemplated by him.  Slipping lightly from the
+cutwater to the ground, he continued his flight, only stopping at the
+private office of Mr. Sleight.
+
+When Mr. Renshaw and Rosey Nott arrived on board the Pontiac that
+evening, they were astonished to find the passage before the cabin
+completely occupied with trunks and boxes, and the bulk of their
+household goods apparently in the process of removal.  Mr. Nott, who
+was superintending the work of two Chinamen, betrayed not only no
+surprise at the appearance of the young people, but not the remotest
+recognition of their own bewilderment at his occupation.
+
+"Kalkilatin'," he remarked casually to his daughter, "you'd rather look
+arter your fixin's, Rosey, I've left 'em till the last. P'r'aps yer and
+Mr. Renshaw wouldn't mind sittin' down on that locker until I've
+strapped this yer box."
+
+"But what does it all mean, father?" said Rosey, taking the old man by
+the lapels of his sea-jacket, and slightly emphasizing her question.
+"What in the name of goodness are you doing?"
+
+"Breakin' camp, Rosey dear, breakin' camp, jist ez we uster," replied
+Nott with cheerful philosophy.  "Kinder like old times, ain't it?
+Lord, Rosey," he continued, stopping and following up the reminiscence,
+with the end of the rope in his hand as if it were a clue, "don't ye
+mind that day we started outer Livermore Pass, and seed the hull o' the
+Californy coast stretchin' yonder--eh? But don't ye be skeered, Rosey
+dear," he added quickly, as if in recognition of the alarm expressed in
+her face.  "I ain't turning ye outer house and home; I've jist hired
+that 'ere Madrono Cottage from the Peters ontil we kin look round."
+
+"But you're not leaving the ship, father," continued Rosey,
+impetuously.  "You haven't sold it to that man Sleight?"
+
+Mr. Nott rose and carefully closed the cabin door.  Then drawing a
+large wallet from his pocket, he said, "It's sing'lar ye should hev got
+the name right the first pop, ain't it, Rosey? but it's Sleight, sure
+enough, all the time.  This yer check," he added, producing a paper
+from the depths of the wallet, "this yer check for 25,000 dollars is
+wot he paid for it only two hours ago."
+
+"But," said Renshaw, springing to his feet furiously, "you're duped,
+swindled--betrayed!"
+
+"Young man," said Nott, throwing a certain dignity into his habitual
+gesture of placing his hands on Renshaw's shoulders, "I bought this yer
+ship five years ago jist ez she stood for 8,000 dollars.  Kalkilatin'
+wot she cost me in repairs and taxes, and wot she brought me in since
+then, accordin' to my figgerin', I don't call a clear profit of 15,000
+dollars much of a swindle."
+
+"Tell him all," said Rosey, quickly, more alarmed at Renshaw's
+despairing face than at the news itself.  "Tell him everything,
+Dick--Mr. Renshaw; it may not be too late."
+
+In a voice half choked with passionate indignation Renshaw hurriedly
+repeated the story of the hidden treasure, and the plot to rescue it,
+prompted frequently by Rosey's tenacious memory and assisted by Rosey's
+deft and tactful explanations.  But to their surprise the imperturbable
+countenance of Abner Nott never altered; a slight moisture of kindly
+paternal tolerance of their extravagance glistened in his little eyes,
+but nothing more.
+
+"Ef there was a part o' this ship, a plank or a bolt ez I don't know,
+ez I hevn't touched with my own hand, and looked into with my own eyes,
+thar might be suthin' in that story.  I don't let on to be a sailor
+like YOU, but ez I know the ship ez a boy knows his first hoss, as a
+woman knows her first babby, I reckon thar ain't no treasure yer,
+onless it was brought into the Pontiac last night by them chaps."
+
+"But are you mad!  Sleight would not pay three times the value of the
+ship to-day if he were not positive!  And that positive knowledge was
+gained last night by the villain who broke into the Pontiac--no doubt
+the Lascar."
+
+"Surely," said Nott, meditatively.  "The Lascar!  There's suthin' in
+that.  That Lascar I fastened down in the hold last night unbeknownst
+to you, Mr. Renshaw, and let him out again this morning ekally
+unbeknownst."
+
+"And you let him carry his information to Sleight--without a word!"
+said Renshaw, with a sickening sense of Nott's utter fatuity.
+
+"I sent him back with a message to the man he kem from," said Nott,
+winking both his eyes at Renshaw, significantly, and making signs
+behind his daughter's back.
+
+Rosey, conscious of her lover's irritation, and more eager to soothe
+his impatience than from any faith in her suggestion, interfered.  "Why
+not examine the place where he was concealed? he may have left some
+traces of his search."
+
+The two men looked at each other.  "Seem' ez I've turned the Pontiac
+over to Sleight jist ez it stands, I don't know ez it's 'xactly on the
+square," said Nott doubtfully.
+
+"You've a right to know at least WHAT you deliver to him," interrupted
+Renshaw brusquely: "Bring a lantern."
+
+Followed by Rosey, Renshaw and Nott hurriedly sought the lower deck and
+the open hatch of the forehold.  The two men leaped down first with the
+lantern, and then assisted Rosey to descend.  Renshaw took a step
+forward and uttered a cry.
+
+The rays of the lantern fell on the ship's side.  The Lascar had,
+during his forced seclusion, put back the boxes of treasure and
+replaced the planking, yet not so carefully but that the quick eye of
+Renshaw had discovered it.  The next moment he had stripped away the
+planking again, and the hurriedly-restored box which the Lascar had
+found fell to the deck, scattering part of its ringing contents.  Rosey
+turned pale; Renshaw's eyes flashed fire; only Abner Nott remained
+quiet and impassive.
+
+"Are you satisfied you have been duped?" said Renshaw passionately.
+
+To their surprise Mr. Nott stooped down, and picking up one of the
+coins handed it gravely to Renshaw.  "Would ye mind heftin' that 'ere
+coin in your hand--feelin' it, bitin' it, scrapin' it with a knife, and
+kinder seein' how it compares with other coins?"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Renshaw.
+
+"I mean that that yer coin--that ALL the coins in this yer box, that
+all the coins in them other boxes--and ther's forty on 'em--is all and
+every one of 'em counterfeits!"
+
+The piece dropped unconsciously from Renshaw's hand, and striking
+another that lay on the deck gave out a dull, suspicious ring.
+
+"They waz counterfeits got up by them Dutch supercargo sharps for
+dealin' with the Injins and cannibals and South Sea heathens ez bows
+down to wood and stone.  If satisfied them ez well ez them buttons ye
+puts in missionary boxes, I reckon, and 'cepting ez freight, don't cost
+nothin'.  I found 'em tucked in the ribs o' the old Pontiac when I
+bought her, and I nailed 'em up in thar lest they should fall into
+dishonest hands.  It's a lucky thing, Mr. Renshaw, that they comes into
+the honest fingers of a square man like Sleight--ain't it?"
+
+He turned his small, guileless eyes upon Renshaw with such child-like
+simplicity that it checked the hysterical laugh that was rising to the
+young man's lips.
+
+"But did any one know of this but yourself?"
+
+"I reckon not.  I once suspicioned that old cap'en Bowers, who was
+always foolin' round the hold yer, must hev noticed the bulge in the
+casin', but when he took to axin' questions I axed others--ye know my
+style, Rosey?  Come."
+
+He led the way grimly back to the cabin, the young people following;
+but turning suddenly at the companionway he observed Renshaw's arm
+around the waist of his daughter.
+
+He said nothing until they had reached the cabin, when he closed the
+door softly, and looking at them both gently, said with infinite
+cunning--
+
+"Ef it isn't too late, Rosey, ye kin tell this young man ez how I
+forgive him for havin' diskivered THE TREASURE of the Pontiac."
+
+     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
+
+It was nearly eighteen months afterwards that Mr. Nott one morning
+entered the room of his son-in-law at Madrono Cottage.  Drawing him
+aside, he said with his old air of mystery, "Now ez Rosey's ailin' and
+don't seem to be so eager to diskiver what's become of Mr. Ferrers, I
+don't mind tellin' ye that over a year ago I heard he died suddenly in
+Sacramento.  Thar was suthin' in the paper about his bein' a lunatic
+and claimin' to be a relation to somebody on the Pontiac; but likes ez
+not it's only the way those newspaper fellows got hold of the story of
+his wantin' to marry Rosey."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of By Shore and Sedge, by Bret Harte
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