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+Project Gutenberg's A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, 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: A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Posting Date: October 28, 2008 [EBook #2280]
+Release Date: August, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY ***
+
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+A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY
+
+
+by
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+JTABLE 4 7 1
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last!
+
+It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of
+brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding
+enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its
+honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his
+pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.
+
+He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew not
+why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his heart
+foolishly beating, his breath impotently hurried.  Yet he was walking
+slowly and vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at the landscape,
+which no longer looked familiar to him.  He was hoping for some
+instinct or force of habit to recall him to himself; yet when he saw a
+neighbor at work in an adjacent claim, he hesitated, and then turned
+his back upon him.  Yet only a moment before he had thought of running
+to him, saying, "By Jingo!  I've struck it," or "D--n it, old man, I've
+got it"; but that moment had passed, and now it seemed to him that he
+could scarce raise his voice, or, if he did, the ejaculation would
+appear forced and artificial.  Neither could he go over to him coolly
+and tell his good fortune; and, partly from this strange shyness, and
+partly with a hope that another survey of the treasure might restore
+him to natural expression, he walked back to his tunnel.
+
+Yes; it was there!  No mere "pocket" or "deposit," but a part of the
+actual vein he had been so long seeking.  It was there, sure enough,
+lying beside the pick and the debris of the "face" of the vein that he
+had exposed sufficiently, after the first shock of discovery, to assure
+himself of the fact and the permanence of his fortune.  It was there,
+and with it the refutation of his enemies' sneers, the corroboration of
+his friends' belief, the practical demonstration of his own theories,
+the reward of his patient labors.  It was there, sure enough.  But,
+somehow, he not only failed to recall the first joy of discovery, but
+was conscious of a vague sense of responsibility and unrest.  It was,
+no doubt, an enormous fortune to a man in his circumstances: perhaps it
+meant a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or more, judging from the
+value of the old Martin lead, which was not as rich as this, but it
+required to be worked constantly and judiciously.  It was with a
+decided sense of uneasiness that he again sought the open sunlight of
+the hillside.  His neighbor was still visible on the adjacent claim;
+but he had apparently stopped working, and was contemplatively smoking
+a pipe under a large pine-tree.  For an instant he envied him his
+apparent contentment.  He had a sudden fierce and inexplicable desire
+to go over to him and exasperate his easy poverty by a revelation of
+his own new-found treasure.  But even that sensation quickly passed,
+and left him staring blankly at the landscape again.
+
+As soon as he had made his discovery known, and settled its value, he
+would send for his wife and her children in the States.  He would build
+a fine house on the opposite hillside, if she would consent to it,
+unless she preferred, for the children's sake, to live in San
+Francisco.  A sense of a loss of independence--of a change of
+circumstances that left him no longer his own master--began to perplex
+him, in the midst of his brightest projects. Certain other relations
+with other members of his family, which had lapsed by absence and his
+insignificance, must now be taken up anew.  He must do something for
+his sister Jane, for his brother William, for his wife's poor
+connections.  It would be unfair to him to say that he contemplated
+those things with any other instinct than that of generosity; yet he
+was conscious of being already perplexed and puzzled.
+
+Meantime, however, the neighbor had apparently finished his pipe, and,
+knocking the ashes out of it, rose suddenly, and ended any further
+uncertainty of their meeting by walking over directly towards him.  The
+treasure-finder advanced a few steps on his side, and then stopped
+irresolutely.
+
+"Hollo, Slinn!" said the neighbor, confidently.
+
+"Hollo, Masters," responded Slinn, faintly.  From the sound of the two
+voices a stranger might have mistaken their relative condition. "What
+in thunder are you mooning about for?  What's up?"  Then, catching
+sight of Slinn's pale and anxious face, he added abruptly, "Are you
+sick?"
+
+Slinn was on the point of telling him his good fortune, but stopped.
+The unlucky question confirmed his consciousness of his physical and
+mental disturbance, and he dreaded the ready ridicule of his companion.
+He would tell him later; Masters need not know WHEN he had made the
+strike.  Besides, in his present vagueness, he shrank from the brusque,
+practical questioning that would be sure to follow the revelation to a
+man of Masters' temperament.
+
+"I'm a little giddy here," he answered, putting his hand to his head,
+"and I thought I'd knock off until I was better."
+
+Masters examined him with two very critical gray eyes.  "Tell ye what,
+old man!--if you don't quit this dog-goned foolin' of yours in that
+God-forsaken tunnel you'll get loony!  Times you get so tangled up in
+follerin' that blind lead o' yours you ain't sensible!"
+
+Here was the opportunity to tell him all, and vindicate the justice of
+his theories!  But he shrank from it again; and now, adding to the
+confusion, was a singular sense of dread at the mental labor of
+explanation.  He only smiled painfully, and began to move away. "Look
+you!" said Masters, peremptorily, "ye want about three fingers of
+straight whiskey to set you right, and you've got to take it with me.
+D--n it, man, it may be the last drink we take together!  Don't look so
+skeered!  I mean--I made up my mind about ten minutes ago to cut the
+whole d--d thing, and light out for fresh diggings.  I'm sick of
+getting only grub wages out o' this bill.  So that's what I mean by
+saying it's the last drink you and me'll take together.  You know my
+ways: sayin' and doin' with me's the same thing."
+
+It was true.  Slinn had often envied Masters' promptness of decision
+and resolution.  But he only looked at the grim face of his
+interlocutor with a feeble sense of relief.  He was GOING.  And he,
+Slinn, would not have to explain anything!
+
+He murmured something about having to go over to the settlement on
+business.  He dreaded lest Masters should insist upon going into the
+tunnel.
+
+"I suppose you want to mail that letter," said Masters, drily. "The
+mail don't go till to-morrow, so you've got time to finish it, and put
+it in an envelope."
+
+Following the direction of Masters' eyes, Slinn looked down and saw, to
+his utter surprise, that he was holding an unfinished pencilled note in
+his hand.  How it came there, when he had written it, he could not
+tell; he dimly remembered that one of his first impulses was to write
+to his wife, but that he had already done so he had forgotten.  He
+hastily concealed the note in his breast-pocket, with a vacant smile.
+Masters eyed him half contemptuously, half compassionately.
+
+"Don't forget yourself and drop it in some hollow tree for a
+letter-box," he said.  "Well--so long!--since you won't drink. Take
+care of yourself," and, turning on his heel, Masters walked away.
+
+Slinn watched him as he crossed over to his abandoned claim, saw him
+gather his few mining utensils, strap his blanket over his back, lift
+his hat on his long-handled shovel as a token of farewell, and then
+stride light-heartedly over the ridge.
+
+He was alone now with his secret and his treasure.  The only man in the
+world who knew of the exact position of his tunnel had gone away
+forever.  It was not likely that this chance companion of a few weeks
+would ever remember him or the locality again; he would now leave his
+treasure alone--for even a day perhaps--until he had thought out some
+plan and sought out some friend in whom to confide.  His secluded life,
+the singular habits of concentration which had at last proved so
+successful had, at the same time, left him few acquaintances and no
+associates.  And in all his well-laid plans and patiently-digested
+theories for finding the treasure, the means and methods of working it
+and disposing of it had never entered.
+
+And now, at the hour when he most needed his faculties, what was the
+meaning of this strange benumbing of them!
+
+Patience!  He only wanted a little rest--a little time to recover
+himself.  There was a large boulder under a tree in the highway of the
+settlement--a sheltered spot where he had often waited for the coming
+of the stage-coach.  He would go there, and when he was sufficiently
+rested and composed he would go on.
+
+Nevertheless, on his way he diverged and turned into the woods, for no
+other apparent purpose than to find a hollow tree.  "A hollow tree."
+Yes! that was what Masters had said; he remembered it distinctly; and
+something was to be done there, but what it was, or why it should be
+done, he could not tell.  However, it was done, and very luckily, for
+his limbs could scarcely support him further, and reaching that boulder
+he dropped upon it like another stone.
+
+And now, strange to say, the uneasiness and perplexity which had
+possessed him ever since he had stood before his revealed wealth
+dropped from him like a burden laid upon the wayside.  A measureless
+peace stole over him, in which visions of his new-found fortune, no
+longer a trouble and perplexity, but crowned with happiness and
+blessing to all around him, assumed proportions far beyond his own
+weak, selfish plans.  In its even-handed benefaction, his wife and
+children, his friends and relations, even his late poor companion of
+the hillside, met and moved harmoniously together; in its far-reaching
+consequences there was only the influence of good.  It was not strange
+that this poor finite mind should never have conceived the meaning of
+the wealth extended to him; or that conceiving it he should faint and
+falter under the revelation.  Enough that for a few minutes he must
+have tasted a joy of perfect anticipation that years of actual
+possession might never bring.
+
+The sun seemed to go down in a rosy dream of his own happiness, as he
+still sat there.  Later, the shadows of the trees thickened and
+surrounded him, and still later fell the calm of a quiet evening sky
+with far-spaced passionless stars, that seemed as little troubled by
+what they looked upon as he was by the stealthy creeping life in the
+grasses and underbrush at his feet.  The dull patter of soft little
+feet in the soft dust of the road, the gentle gleam of moist and
+wondering little eyes on the branches and in the mossy edges of the
+boulder, did not disturb him.  He sat patiently through it all, as if
+he had not yet made up his mind.
+
+But when the stage came with the flashing sun the next morning, and the
+irresistible clamor of life and action, the driver suddenly laid his
+four spirited horses on their haunches before the quiet spot.  The
+express messenger clambered down from the box, and approached what
+seemed to be a heap of cast-off clothes upon the boulder.
+
+"He don't seem to be drunk," he said, in reply to a querulous
+interrogation from the passengers.  "I can't make him out.  His eyes
+are open, but he cannot speak or move.  Take a look at him, Doc."
+
+A rough unprofessional-looking man here descended from the inside of
+the coach, and, carelessly thrusting aside the other curious
+passengers, suddenly leant over the heap of clothes in a professional
+attitude.
+
+"He is dead," said one of the passengers.
+
+The rough man let the passive head sink softly down again.  "No such
+luck for him," he said curtly, but not unkindly.  "It's a stroke of
+paralysis--and about as big as they make 'em.  It's a toss-up if he
+ever speaks or moves again as long as he lives."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+When Alvin Mulrady announced his intention of growing potatoes and
+garden "truck" on the green slopes of Los Gatos, the mining community
+of that region, and the adjacent hamlet of "Rough-and-Ready," regarded
+it with the contemptuous indifference usually shown by those
+adventurers towards all bucolic pursuits.  There was certainly no
+active objection to the occupation of two hillsides, which gave so
+little promise to the prospector for gold that it was currently
+reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had once gone mad or
+imbecile through repeated failures.  The only opposition came,
+incongruously enough, from the original pastoral owner of the soil, one
+Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven leagues of hill and valley,
+including the now prosperous towns of Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was
+met with simple derision from the squatters and miners.  "Looks ez ef
+we woz goin' to travel three thousand miles to open up his d--d old
+wilderness, and then pay for the increased valoo we give it--don't it?
+Oh, yes, certainly!" was their ironical commentary.  Mulrady might have
+been pardoned for adopting this popular opinion; but by an equally
+incongruous sentiment, peculiar, however, to the man, he called upon
+Don Ramon, and actually offered to purchase the land, or "go shares"
+with him in the agricultural profits.  It was alleged that the Don was
+so struck with this concession that he not only granted the land, but
+struck up a quaint reserved friendship for the simple-minded
+agriculturist and his family.  It is scarcely necessary to add that
+this intimacy was viewed by the miners with the contempt that it
+deserved.  They would have been more contemptuous, however, had they
+known the opinion that Don Ramon entertained of their particular
+vocation, and which he early confided to Mulrady.
+
+"They are savages who expect to reap where they have not sown; to take
+out of the earth without returning anything to it but their precious
+carcasses; heathens, who worship the mere stones they dig up."  "And
+was there no Spaniard who ever dug gold?" asked Mulrady, simply.  "Ah,
+there are Spaniards and Moors," responded Don Ramon, sententiously.
+"Gold has been dug, and by caballeros; but no good ever came of it.
+There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had mines of SILVER, and
+worked them with peons and mules, and lost their money--a gold mine to
+work a silver one--like gentlemen!  But this grubbing in the dirt with
+one's fingers, that a little gold may stick to them, is not for
+caballeros.  And then, one says nothing of the curse."
+
+"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine superstition.
+"What is that?"
+
+"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my
+ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any
+who should desecrate them.  Good!  Let us see!  Of the three Americanos
+who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a
+fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the last got himself
+crazy of aguardiente.  Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago
+and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was afterwards punished for
+his profanation, and died of an accident in other lands.  But," added
+Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this touches not yourself.  Through
+me, YOU are of the soil."
+
+Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was the
+result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage.  The potato patch and market
+garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with magnificent
+vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons at defiance with
+extraordinary and premature crops.  The salt pork and biscuit consuming
+settlers did not allow their contempt of Mulrady's occupation to
+prevent their profiting by this opportunity for changing their diet.
+The gold they had taken from the soil presently began to flow into his
+pockets in exchange for his more modest treasures.  The little cabin,
+which barely sheltered his family--a wife, son, and daughter--was
+enlarged, extended, and refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more
+pretentious house on the opposite hill.  A whitewashed fence replaced
+the rudely-split rails, which had kept out the wilderness.  By degrees,
+the first evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles
+of brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of
+stone--melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green,
+which made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.
+Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was
+necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at great
+expense, and was of insufficient quantity.  In this emergency Mulrady
+thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his
+house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection
+from his Spanish patron.  With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out
+that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an
+indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but
+was a disturbance of vested interests.  "I and my fathers, San Diego
+rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself, "were content with wells
+and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its appointed seasons; the cattle,
+dumb brutes though they were, knew where to find water when they wanted
+it.  But thou sayest truly," he added, with a sigh, "that was before
+streams and rain were choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with
+their spume.  Go on, friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in
+a seemly fashion, and not with impious earthquakes of devilish
+gunpowder."
+
+With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian
+shaft.  Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the work
+went on slowly.  The market garden did not suffer meantime, as Mulrady
+had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder tillage, while he
+superintended the engineering work of the well. This trifling incident
+marked an epoch in the social condition of the family.  Mrs. Mulrady at
+once assumed a conscious importance among her neighbors.  She spoke of
+her husband's "men"; she alluded to the well as "the works"; she
+checked the easy frontier familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary
+Mulrady, her seventeen-year-old daughter.  Simple Alvin Mulrady looked
+with astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all
+feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity.
+"Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys that
+want to be civil to Mamie?  Like as not one of 'em may be makin' up to
+her already."  "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady," responded Mrs.
+Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever thought of givin' your
+daughter to a common miner, or that I'm goin' to allow her to marry out
+of our own set?"  "Our own set!" echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her
+in astonishment, and then glancing hurriedly across at his
+freckle-faced son and the two Chinamen at work in the cabbages.  "Oh,
+you know what I mean," said Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move
+in.  The Alvarados and their friends!  Doesn't the old Don come here
+every day, and ain't his son the right age for Mamie?  And ain't they
+the real first families here--all the same as if they were noblemen?
+No, leave Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft; there never was a man
+yet had the least sabe about these things, or knew what was due to his
+family."  Like most of his larger minded, but feebler equipped sex,
+Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the latter proposition,
+which left the meannesses of life to feminine manipulation, and went
+off to his shaft on the hillside.  But during that afternoon he was
+perplexed and troubled.  He was too loyal a husband not to be pleased
+with this proof of an unexpected and superior foresight in his wife,
+although he was, like all husbands, a little startled by it.  He tried
+to dismiss it from his mind.  But looking down from the hillside upon
+his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity had not been
+beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found himself
+haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate.  From his own
+knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than himself, had
+ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection between the
+families.  He doubted if he would consent to it.  And unfortunately it
+was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a self-made man,
+made him first seriously consider his wife's proposition.  He was as
+good as Don Ramon, any day!  With this subtle feminine poison instilled
+in his veins, carried completely away by the logic of his wife's
+illogical premises, he almost hated his old benefactor.  He looked down
+upon the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted him with
+the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was losing
+its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.
+
+Happily, about this time Don Ramon died.  It is not probable that he
+ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to his son,
+who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly partitioned by
+relatives and lawsuits.  The feminine Mulradys attended the funeral, in
+expensive mourning from Sacramento; even the gentle Alvin was forced
+into ready-made broadcloth, which accented his good-natured but
+unmistakably common presence.  Mrs. Mulrady spoke openly of her "loss";
+declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the wives
+of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own family
+was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was
+far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don
+Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still
+more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness
+of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely availed himself
+of her mother's sympathizing hospitality.  But he carried out the
+intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a small
+sum, the property he had leased.  The idea of purchasing had originated
+with Mrs. Mulrady.
+
+"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's
+better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."
+
+It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her
+husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached
+the house.  Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown, in
+honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs. Mulrady was
+tidying the house in view of the same event. Something in the tone of
+her good man's voice, and the unusual circumstance of his return to the
+house before work was done, caused her, however, to drop her dusting
+cloth, and run to the kitchen door to meet him.  She saw him running
+through the rows of cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and
+excitement, a light in his eyes which she had not seen for years.  She
+recalled, without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had
+called him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at
+the back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her
+parents.  The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw his
+arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow cheek.
+
+"Sakes alive!  Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that
+had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what
+are you doin', and company expected every minit?"
+
+"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"
+
+She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and looked at
+him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.
+
+"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have been
+looking fer.  There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands and tens
+of thousands!"
+
+"Wait a minit."
+
+She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs.  He could
+hear her wonderingly and distinctly.  "Ye can take off that new frock,
+Mamie," she called out.
+
+There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.
+
+"I'm speaking," said Mrs. Mulrady, emphatically.
+
+The murmuring ceased.  Mrs. Mulrady returned to her husband.  The
+interruption seemed to have taken off the keen edge of his enjoyment.
+He at once abdicated his momentary elevation as a discoverer, and
+waited for her to speak.
+
+"Ye haven't told any one yet?" she asked.
+
+"No.  I was alone, down in the shaft.  Ye see, Malviny, I wasn't
+expectin' of anything."  He began, with an attempt at fresh enjoyment,
+"I was just clearin' out, and hadn't reckoned on anythin'."
+
+"You see, I was right when I advised you taking the land," she said,
+without heeding him.
+
+Mulrady's face fell.  "I hope Don Caesar won't think"--he began,
+hesitatingly.  "I reckon, perhaps, I oughter make some sorter
+compensation--you know."
+
+"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mulrady, decidedly.  "Don't be a fool.  Any gold
+discovery, anyhow, would have been yours--that's the law.  And you
+bought the land without any restrictions.  Besides, you never had any
+idea of this!"--she stopped, and looked him suddenly in the face--"had
+you?"
+
+Mulrady opened his honest, pale-gray eyes widely.
+
+"Why, Malviny!  You know I hadn't.  I could swear!"
+
+"Don't swear, and don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it was
+there.  Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me."  Her voice here took the
+strident form of action.  "Knock off work at the shaft, and send your
+man away at once.  Put on your things, catch the next stage to
+Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie with you."
+
+"Mamie!" echoed Mulrady, feebly.
+
+"You want to see Lawyer Cole and my brother Jim at once," she went on,
+without heeding him, "and Mamie wants a change and some proper.
+clothes.  Leave the rest to me and Abner.  I'll break it to Mamie, and
+get her ready."
+
+Mulrady passed his hands through his tangled hair, wet with
+perspiration.  He was proud of his wife's energy and action; he did not
+dream of opposing her, but somehow he was disappointed.  The charming
+glamour and joy of his discovery had vanished before he could fairly
+dazzle her with it; or, rather, she was not dazzled with it at all.  It
+had become like business, and the expression "breaking it" to Mamie
+jarred upon him.  He would have preferred to tell her himself; to watch
+the color come into her delicate oval face, to have seen her soft eyes
+light with an innocent joy he had not seen in his wife's; and he felt a
+sinking conviction that his wife was the last one to awaken it.
+
+"You ain't got any time to lose," she said, impatiently, as he
+hesitated.
+
+Perhaps it was her impatience that struck harshly upon him; perhaps, if
+she had not accepted her good fortune so confidently, he would not have
+spoken what was in his mind at the time; but he said gravely, "Wait a
+minit, Malviny; I've suthin' to tell you 'bout this find of mine that's
+sing'lar."
+
+"Go on," she said, quickly.
+
+"Lyin' among the rotten quartz of the vein was a pick," he said,
+constrainedly; "and the face of the vein sorter looked ez if it had
+been worked at.  Follering the line outside to the base of the hill
+there was signs of there having been an old tunnel; but it had fallen
+in, and was blocked up."
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.
+
+"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder
+looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."
+
+"And went away, and left it for others!  That's likely--ain't it?"
+interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance.  "Everybody knows
+the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was abandoned when
+we came here.  It's your property and you've paid for it.  Are you
+goin' to wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin Mulrady, or are you
+going to Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"
+
+Mulrady started.  He had never seriously believed in the possibility of
+a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to
+give it a fair consideration.  She was probably right.  What he might
+have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not
+consider.  "All right," he said simply.  "I reckon we'll go at once."
+
+"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff about
+the pick to yourself.  There's no use of putting queer ideas into other
+people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."
+
+When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr. Mulrady
+and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman, carrying
+their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet the up
+stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into his
+daughter's face.  He had looked forward to those few moments to enjoy
+the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and enthusiasm as
+a relief to his wife's practical, far-sighted realism.  There was a
+pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless happiness
+of a child in her half-opened little mouth, and a beautiful absorption
+in her large gray eyes that augured well for him.
+
+"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress?  How do we like layin'
+over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+She had not heard him.  The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in an
+anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy
+Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks; in
+glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide brogues that
+strode at her side; in looking up the road for the stage-coach; in
+regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but in the loving eyes
+of the man beside her.
+
+He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming
+preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.
+
+"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging
+his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften
+the separation.  "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen.  I
+suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry to
+get away before Don Caesar came."
+
+"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.
+
+"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply. "I
+reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight laugh.
+
+"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said
+Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him NOW,"
+he added, triumphantly.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Mamie.  "He's been rich all the time,
+and his father and grandfather before him; while we've been poor and
+his tenants."
+
+His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had followed
+her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger. "Did he get off
+such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.
+
+"No.  I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly. "There's
+better nor him to be had for the asking now."
+
+They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the Chinaman
+might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen them.  But
+Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips.  "La, pa! it ain't
+that!  He cares everything for me, and I do for him; and if ma hadn't
+got new ideas--"  She stopped suddenly.
+
+"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.
+
+"Oh, nothing!  I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots! Everybody can
+see these are made for the farrows.  And you ain't a market gardener
+any more."
+
+"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy
+laugh.
+
+"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."
+Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the
+Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his
+head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already
+gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.
+Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her
+preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the
+hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach, or
+the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately prompted her.  She
+was so far away at one time that the stage-coach, which finally drew up
+before Mulrady, was obliged to wait for her.
+
+When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to the
+box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,--
+
+"Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."
+
+"Ez how?"
+
+"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at just
+this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your attitude, was
+a man about your build and years.  I pulled up to let him in, when,
+darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without
+speakin'.  I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that
+idiotic stare.  I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong
+English, and drove off, leavin' him there.  The next morning, when I
+came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all
+of a heap on the boulder.  Jim drops down and picks him up.  Doctor
+Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a played-out prospector, with a
+big case of paralysis, and we expressed him through to the County
+Hospital, like so much dead freight.  I've allus been kinder
+superstitious about passin' that rock, and when I saw you jist now,
+sittin' thar, dazed like, with your head down like the other chap, it
+rather threw me off my centre."
+
+In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this
+coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on
+the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to
+prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in time.
+
+"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger.  "Did you
+ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.
+
+With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver
+resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my
+cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then
+afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even."  He
+paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to
+enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally
+taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus
+Imbeciles at Sacramento.  I've heerd it's considered a first-class
+institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk, as for
+them ez is the reverse and is too chipper. Now," he added, languidly
+turning for the first time to his miserable questioners, "how did YOU
+find it?"
+
+
+[1] Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who
+visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an accident
+in the Sandwich Islands.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+When the news of the discovery of gold in Mulrady shaft was finally
+made public, it created an excitement hitherto unknown in the history
+of the country.  Half of Red Dog and all Rough-and-Ready were emptied
+upon the yellow hills surrounding Mulrady's, until their circling camp
+fires looked like a besieging army that had invested his peaceful
+pastoral home, preparatory to carrying it by assault.  Unfortunately
+for them, they found the various points of vantage already garrisoned
+with notices of "preemption" for mining purposes in the name of the
+various members of the Alvarado family. This stroke of business was due
+to Mrs. Mulrady, as a means of mollifying the conscientious scruples of
+her husband and of placating the Alvarados, in view of some remote
+contingency.  It is but fair to say that this degradation of his
+father's Castilian principles was opposed by Don Caesar.  "You needn't
+work them yourself, but sell out to them that will; it's the only way
+to keep the prospectors from taking it without paying for it at all,"
+argued Mrs. Mulrady.  Don Caesar finally assented; perhaps less to the
+business arguments of Mulrady's wife than to the simple suggestion of
+Mamie's mother.  Enough that he realized a sum in money for a few acres
+that exceeded the last ten years' income of Don Ramon's seven leagues.
+
+Equally unprecedented and extravagant was the realization of the
+discovery in Mulrady's shaft.  It was alleged that a company, hastily
+formed in Sacramento, paid him a million of dollars down, leaving him
+still a controlling two-thirds interest in the mine. With an obstinacy,
+however, that amounted almost to a moral conviction, he refused to
+include the house and potato-patch in the property.  When the company
+had yielded the point, he declined, with equal tenacity, to part with
+it to outside speculators on even the most extravagant offers.  In vain
+Mrs. Mulrady protested; in vain she pointed out to him that the
+retention of the evidence of his former humble occupation was a green
+blot upon their social escutcheon.
+
+"If you will keep the land, build on it, and root up the garden." But
+Mulrady was adamant.
+
+"It's the only thing I ever made myself, and got out of the soil with
+my own hands; it's the beginning of my fortune, and it may be the end
+of it.  Mebbee I'll be glad enough to have it to come back to some day,
+and be thankful for the square meal I can dig out of it."
+
+By repeated pressure, however, Mulrady yielded the compromise that a
+portion of it should be made into a vineyard and flower-garden, and by
+a suitable coloring of ornament and luxury obliterate its vulgar part.
+Less successful, however, was that energetic woman in another effort to
+mitigate the austerities of their earlier state. It occurred to her to
+utilize the softer accents of Don Caesar in the pronunciation of their
+family name, and privately had "Mulrade" take the place of Mulrady on
+her visiting card.  "It might be Spanish," she argued with her husband.
+"Lawyer Cole says most American names are corrupted, and how do you
+know that yours ain't?"  Mulrady, who would not swear that his
+ancestors came from Ireland to the Carolinas in '98, was helpless to
+refute the assertion.  But the terrible Nemesis of an un-Spanish,
+American provincial speech avenged the orthographical outrage at once.
+When Mrs. Mulrady began to be addressed orally, as well as by letter,
+as "Mrs. Mulraid," and when simple amatory effusions to her daughter
+rhymed with "lovely maid," she promptly refused the original vowel. But
+she fondly clung to the Spanish courtesy which transformed her
+husband's baptismal name, and usually spoke of him--in his absence--as
+"Don Alvino."  But in the presence of his short, square figure, his
+orange tawny hair, his twinkling gray eyes, and retrousse nose, even
+that dominant woman withheld his title.  It was currently reported at
+Red Dog that a distinguished foreigner had one day approached Mulrady
+with the formula, "I believe I have the honor of addressing Don Alvino
+Mulrady?"  "You kin bet your boots, stranger, that's me," had returned
+that simple hidalgo.
+
+Although Mrs. Mulrady would have preferred that Mamie should remain at
+Sacramento until she could join her, preparatory to a trip to "the
+States" and Europe, she yielded to her daughter's desire to astonish
+Rough-and-Ready, before she left, with her new wardrobe, and unfold in
+the parent nest the delicate and painted wings with which she was to
+fly from them forever.  "I don't want them to remember me afterwards in
+those spotted prints, ma, and like as not say I never had a decent
+frock until I went away."  There was something so like the daughter of
+her mother in this delicate foresight that the touched and gratified
+parent kissed her, and assented.  The result was gratifying beyond her
+expectation.  In that few weeks' sojourn at Sacramento, the young girl
+seemed to have adapted and assimilated herself to the latest modes of
+fashion with even more than the usual American girl's pliancy and
+taste. Equal to all emergencies of style and material, she seemed to
+supply, from some hitherto unknown quality she possessed, the grace and
+manner peculiar to each.  Untrammeled by tradition, education, or
+precedent, she had the Western girl's confidence in all things being
+possible, which made them so often probable.  Mr. Mulrady looked at his
+daughter with mingled sentiments of pride and awe. Was it possible that
+this delicate creature, so superior to him that he seemed like a
+degenerate scion of her remoter race, was his own flesh and blood?  Was
+she the daughter of her mother, who even in her remembered youth was
+never equipped like this?  If the thought brought no pleasure to his
+simple, loving nature, it at least spared him the pain of what might
+have seemed ingratitude in one more akin to himself.  "The fact is, we
+ain't quite up to her style," was his explanation and apology.  A vague
+belief that in another and a better world than this he might
+approximate and understand this perfection somewhat soothed and
+sustained him.
+
+It was quite consistent, therefore, that the embroidered cambric dress
+which Mamie Mulrady wore one summer afternoon on the hillside at Los
+Gatos, while to the critical feminine eye at once artistic and
+expensive, should not seem incongruous to her surroundings or to
+herself in the eyes of a general audience.  It certainly did not seem
+so to one pair of frank, humorous ones that glanced at her from time to
+time, as their owner, a young fellow of five-and-twenty, walked at her
+side.  He was the new editor of the "Rough-and-Ready Record," and,
+having been her fellow-passenger from Sacramento, had already once or
+twice availed himself of her father's invitation to call upon them.
+Mrs. Mulrady had not discouraged this mild flirtation.  Whether she
+wished to disconcert Don Caesar for some occult purpose, or whether,
+like the rest of her sex, she had an overweening confidence in the
+unheroic, unseductive, and purely platonic character of masculine
+humor, did not appear.
+
+"When I say I'm sorry you are going to leave us, Miss Mulrady," said
+the young fellow, lightly, "you will comprehend my unselfishness, since
+I frankly admit your departure would be a positive relief to me as an
+editor and a man.  The pressure in the Poet's Corner of the 'Record'
+since it was mistakingly discovered that a person of your name might be
+induced to seek the 'glade' and 'shade' without being 'afraid,'
+'dismayed,' or 'betrayed,' has been something enormous, and,
+unfortunately, I am debarred from rejecting anything, on the just
+ground that I am myself an interested admirer."
+
+"It's dreadful to be placarded around the country by one's own full
+name, isn't it?" said Mamie, without, however, expressing much horror
+in her face.
+
+"They think it much more respectful than to call you 'Mamie,'" he
+responded, lightly; "and many of your admirers are middle-aged men,
+with a mediaeval style of compliment.  I've discovered that amatory
+versifying wasn't entirely a youthful passion.  Colonel Cash is about
+as fatal with a couplet as with a double-barreled gun, and scatters as
+terribly.  Judge Butts and Dr. Wilson have both discerned the
+resemblance of your gifts to those of Venus, and their own to Apollo.
+But don't undervalue those tributes, Miss Mulrady," he added, more
+seriously.  "You'll have thousands of admirers where you are going; but
+you'll be willing to admit in the end, I think, that none were more
+honest and respectful than your subjects at Rough-and-Ready and Red
+Dog."  He stopped, and added in a graver tone, "Does Don Caesar write
+poetry?"
+
+"He has something better to do," said the young lady, pertly.
+
+"I can easily imagine that," he returned, mischievously; "it must be a
+pallid substitute for other opportunities."
+
+"What did you come here for?" she asked, suddenly.
+
+"To see you."
+
+"Nonsense!  You know what I mean.  Why did you ever leave Sacramento to
+come here?  I should think it would suit you so much better than this
+place."
+
+"I suppose I was fired by your father's example, and wished to find a
+gold mine."
+
+"Men like you never do," she said, simply.
+
+"Is that a compliment, Miss Mulrady?"
+
+"I don't know.  But I think that you think that it is."
+
+He gave her the pleased look of one who had unexpectedly found a
+sympathetic intelligence.  "Do I?  This is interesting.  Let's sit
+down."  In their desultory rambling they had reached, quite
+unconsciously, the large boulder at the roadside.  Mamie hesitated a
+moment, looked up and down the road, and then, with an already opulent
+indifference to the damaging of her spotless skirt, sat herself upon
+it, with her furled parasol held by her two little hands thrown over
+her half-drawn-up knee.  The young editor, half sitting, half leaning,
+against the stone, began to draw figures in the sand with his cane.
+
+"On the contrary, Miss Mulrady, I hope to make some money here. You are
+leaving Rough-and-Ready because you are rich.  We are coming to it
+because we are poor."
+
+"We?" echoed Mamie, lazily, looking up the road.
+
+"Yes.  My father and two sisters."
+
+"I am sorry.  I might have known them if I hadn't been going away." At
+the same moment, it flashed across her mind that, if they were like the
+man before her, they might prove disagreeably independent and critical.
+"Is your father in business?" she asked.
+
+He shook his head.  After a pause, he said, punctuating his sentences
+with the point of his stick in the soft dust, "He is paralyzed, and out
+of his mind, Miss Mulrady.  I came to California to seek him, as all
+news of him ceased three years since; and I found him only two weeks
+ago, alone, friendless--an unrecognized pauper in the county hospital."
+
+"Two weeks ago?  That was when I went to Sacramento."
+
+"Very probably."
+
+"It must have been very shocking to you?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"I should think you'd feel real bad?"
+
+"I do, at times."  He smiled, and laid his stick on the stone. "You now
+see, Miss Mulrady, how necessary to me is this good fortune that you
+don't think me worthy of.  Meantime I must try to make a home for them
+at Rough-and-Ready."
+
+Miss Mulrady put down her knee and her parasol.  "We mustn't stay here
+much longer, you know."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, the stage-coach comes by at about this time."
+
+"And you think the passengers will observe us sitting here?"
+
+"Of course they will."
+
+"Miss Mulrady, I implore you to stay."
+
+He was leaning over her with such apparent earnestness of voice and
+gesture that the color came into her cheek.  For a moment she scarcely
+dared to lift her conscious eyes to his.  When she did so, she suddenly
+glanced her own aside with a flash of anger.  He was laughing.
+
+"If you have any pity for me, do not leave me now," he repeated. "Stay
+a moment longer, and my fortune is made.  The passengers will report us
+all over Red Dog as engaged.  I shall be supposed to be in your
+father's secrets, and shall be sought after as a director of all the
+new companies.  The 'Record' will double its circulation; poetry will
+drop out of its columns, advertising rush to fill its place, and I
+shall receive five dollars a week more salary, if not seven and a half.
+Never mind the consequences to yourself at such a moment.  I assure you
+there will be none.  You can deny it the next day--I will deny it--nay,
+more, the 'Record' itself will deny it in an extra edition of one
+thousand copies, at ten cents each.  Linger a moment longer, Miss
+Mulrady.  Fly, oh fly not yet.  They're coming--hark! oh!  By Jove,
+it's only Don Caesar!"
+
+It was, indeed, only the young scion of the house of Alvarado,
+blue-eyed, sallow-skinned, and high-shouldered, coming towards them on
+a fiery, half-broken mustang, whose very spontaneous lawlessness seemed
+to accentuate and bring out the grave and decorous ease of his rider.
+Even in his burlesque preoccupation the editor of the "Record" did not
+withhold his admiration of this perfect horsemanship.  Mamie, who, in
+her wounded amour propre, would like to have made much of it to annoy
+her companion, was thus estopped any ostentatious compliment.
+
+Don Caesar lifted his hat with sweet seriousness to the lady, with
+grave courtesy to the gentleman.  While the lower half of this Centaur
+was apparently quivering with fury, and stamping the ground in his
+evident desire to charge upon the pair, the upper half, with natural
+dignity, looked from the one to the other, as if to leave the privilege
+of an explanation with them.  But Mamie was too wise, and her companion
+too indifferent, to offer one.  A slight shade passed over Don Caesar's
+face.  To complicate the situation at that moment, the expected
+stagecoach came rattling by.  With quick feminine intuition, Mamie
+caught in the faces of the driver and the expressman, and reflected in
+the mischievous eyes of her companion, a peculiar interpretation of
+their meeting, that was not removed by the whispered assurance of the
+editor that the passengers were anxiously looking back "to see the
+shooting."
+
+The young Spaniard, equally oblivious of humor or curiosity, remained
+impassive.
+
+"You know Mr. Slinn, of the 'Record," said Mamie, "don't you?"
+
+Don Caesar had never before met the Senor Esslinn.  He was under the
+impression that it was a Senor Robinson that was of the "Record."
+
+"Oh, HE was shot," said Slinn.  "I'm taking his place."
+
+"Bueno!  To be shot too?  I trust not."
+
+Slinn looked quickly and sharply into Don Caesar's grave face.  He
+seemed to be incapable of any double meaning.  However, as he had no
+serious reason for awakening Don Caesar's jealousy, and very little
+desire to become an embarrassing third in this conversation, and
+possibly a burden to the young lady, he proceeded to take his leave of
+her.  From a sudden feminine revulsion of sympathy, or from some
+unintelligible instinct of diplomacy, Mamie said, as she extended her
+hand, "I hope you'll find a home for your family near here.  Mamma
+wants pa to let our old house.  Perhaps it might suit you, if not too
+far from your work.  You might speak to ma about it."
+
+"Thank you; I will," responded the young man, pressing her hand with
+unaffected cordiality.
+
+Don Caesar watched him until he had disappeared behind the wayside
+buckeyes.
+
+"He is a man of family--this one--your countryman?"
+
+It seemed strange to her to have a mere acquaintance spoken of as "her
+countryman"--not the first time nor the last time in her career.  As
+there appeared no trace or sign of jealousy in her questioner's manner,
+she answered briefly but vaguely:
+
+"Yes; it's a shocking story.  His father disappeared some years ago,
+and he has just found him--a helpless paralytic--in the Sacramento
+Hospital.  He'll have to support him--and they're very poor."
+
+"So, then, they are not independent of each other always--these fathers
+and children of Americans!"
+
+"No," said Mamie, shortly.  Without knowing why, she felt inclined to
+resent Don Caesar's manner.  His serious gravity--gentle and high-bred
+as it was, undoubtedly--was somewhat trying to her at times, and seemed
+even more so after Slinn's irreverent humor.  She picked up her
+parasol, a little impatiently, as if to go.
+
+But Don Caesar had already dismounted, and tied his horse to a tree
+with a strong lariat that hung at his saddle-bow.
+
+"Let us walk through the woods towards your home.  I can return alone
+for the horse when you shall dismiss me."
+
+They turned in among the pines that, overcrowding the hollow, crept
+partly up the side of the hill of Mulrady's shaft.  A disused trail,
+almost hidden by the waxen-hued yerba buena, led from the highway, and
+finally lost itself in the undergrowth.  It was a lovers' walk; they
+were lovers, evidently, and yet the man was too self-poised in his
+gravity, the young woman too conscious and critical, to suggest an
+absorbing or oblivious passion.
+
+"I should not have made myself so obtrusive to-day before your friend,"
+said Don Caesar, with proud humility, "but I could not understand from
+your mother whether you were alone or whether my company was desirable.
+It is of this I have now to speak, Mamie. Lately your mother has seemed
+strange to me; avoiding any reference to our affection; treating it
+lightly, and even as to-day, I fancy, putting obstacles in the way of
+our meeting alone.  She was disappointed at your return from Sacramento
+where, I have been told, she intended you to remain until you left the
+country; and since your return I have seen you but twice.  I may be
+wrong. Perhaps I do not comprehend the American mother; I have--who
+knows?--perhaps offended in some point of etiquette, omitted some
+ceremony that was her due.  But when you told me, Mamie, that it was
+not necessary to speak to HER first, that it was not the American
+fashion--"
+
+Mamie started, and blushed slightly.
+
+"Yes," she said hurriedly, "certainly; but ma has been quite queer of
+late, and she may think--you know--that since--since there has been so
+much property to dispose of, she ought to have been consulted."
+
+"Then let us consult her at once, dear child!  And as to the property,
+in Heaven's name, let her dispose of it as she will. Saints forbid that
+an Alvarado should ever interfere.  And what is it to us, my little
+one?  Enough that Dona Mameta Alvarado will never have less state than
+the richest bride that ever came to Los Gatos."
+
+Mamie had not forgotten that, scarcely a month ago, even had she loved
+the man before her no more than she did at present, she would still
+have been thrilled with delight at these words!  Even now she was
+moved--conscious as she had become that the "state" of a bride of the
+Alvarados was not all she had imagined, and that the bare adobe court
+of Los Gatos was open to the sky and the free criticism of Sacramento
+capitalists!
+
+"Yes, dear," she murmured with a half childlike pleasure, that lit up
+her face and eyes so innocently that it stopped any minute
+investigation into its origin and real meaning.  "Yes, dear; but we
+need not have a fuss made about it at present, and perhaps put ma
+against us.  She wouldn't hear of our marrying now; and she might
+forbid our engagement."
+
+"But you are going away."
+
+"I should have to go to New York or Europe FIRST, you know," she
+answered, naively, "even if it were all settled.  I should have to get
+things!  One couldn't be decent here."
+
+With the recollection of the pink cotton gown, in which she had first
+pledged her troth to him, before his eyes, he said, "But you are
+charming now.  You cannot be more so to me.  If I am satisfied, little
+one, with you as you are, let us go together, and then you can get
+dresses to please others."
+
+She had not expected this importunity.  Really, if it came to this, she
+might have engaged herself to some one like Slinn; he at least would
+have understood her.  He was much cleverer, and certainly more of a man
+of the world.  When Slinn had treated her like a child, it was with the
+humorous tolerance of an admiring superior, and not the didactic
+impulse of a guardian.  She did not say this, nor did her pretty eyes
+indicate it, as in the instance of her brief anger with Slinn.  She
+only said gently,--
+
+"I should have thought you, of all men, would have been particular
+about your wife doing the proper thing.  But never mind!  Don't let us
+talk any more about it.  Perhaps as it seems such a great thing to you,
+and so much trouble, there may be no necessity for it at all."
+
+I do not think that the young lady deliberately planned this charmingly
+illogical deduction from Don Caesar's speech, or that she calculated
+its effect upon him; but it was part of her nature to say it, and
+profit by it.  Under the unjust lash of it, his pride gave way.
+
+"Ah, do you not see why I wish to go with you?" he said, with sudden
+and unexpected passion.  "You are beautiful; you are good; it has
+pleased Heaven to make you rich also; but you are a child in
+experience, and know not your own heart.  With your beauty, your
+goodness, and your wealth, you will attract all to you--as you do
+here--because you cannot help it.  But you will be equally helpless,
+little one, if THEY should attract YOU, and you had no tie to fall back
+upon."
+
+It was an unfortunate speech.  The words were Don Caesar's; but the
+thought she had heard before from her mother, although the deduction
+had been of a very different kind.  Mamie followed the speaker with
+bright but visionary eyes.  There must be some truth in all this.  Her
+mother had said it; Mr. Slinn had laughingly admitted it.  She HAD a
+brilliant future before her!  Was she right in making it impossible by
+a rash and foolish tie?  He himself had said she was inexperienced.
+She knew it; and yet, what was he doing now but taking advantage of
+that inexperience?  If he really loved her, he would be willing to
+submit to the test.  She did not ask a similar one from him; and was
+willing, if she came out of it free, to marry him just the same.  There
+was something so noble in this thought that she felt for a moment
+carried away by an impulse of compassionate unselfishness, and smiled
+tenderly as she looked up in his face.
+
+"Then you consent, Mamie?" he said, eagerly, passing his arm around her
+waist.
+
+"Not now, Caesar," she said, gently disengaging herself.  "I must think
+it over; we are both too young to act upon it rashly; it would be
+unfair to you, who are so quiet and have seen so few girls--I mean
+Americans--to tie yourself to the first one you have known.  When I am
+gone you will go more into the world.  There are Mr. Slinn's two
+sisters coming here--I shouldn't wonder if they were far cleverer and
+talked far better than I do--and think how I should feel if I knew that
+only a wretched pledge to me kept you from loving them!"  She stopped,
+and cast down her eyes.
+
+It was her first attempt at coquetry, for, in her usual charming
+selfishness, she was perfectly frank and open; and it might not have
+been her last, but she had gone too far at first, and was not prepared
+for a recoil of her own argument.
+
+"If you admit that it is possible--that it is possible to you!" he
+said, quickly.
+
+She saw her mistake.  "We may not have many opportunities to meet
+alone," she answered, quietly; "and I am sure we would be happier when
+we meet not to accuse each other of impossibilities.  Let us rather see
+how we can communicate together, if anything should prevent our
+meeting.  Remember, it was only by chance that you were able to see me
+now.  If ma has believed that she ought to have been consulted, our
+meeting together in this secret way will only make matters worse.  She
+is even now wondering where I am, and may be suspicious.  I must go
+back at once.  At any moment some one may come here looking for me."
+
+"But I have so much to say," he pleaded.  "Our time has been so short."
+
+"You can write."
+
+"But what will your mother think of that?" he said, in grave
+astonishment.
+
+She colored again as she returned, quickly, "Of course, you must not
+write to the house.  You can leave a letter somewhere for me--say,
+somewhere about here.  Stop!" she added, with a sudden girlish gayety,
+"see, here's the very place.  Look there!"
+
+She pointed to the decayed trunk of a blasted sycamore, a few feet from
+the trail.  A cavity, breast high, half filled with skeleton leaves and
+pine-nuts, showed that it had formerly been a squirrel's hoard, but for
+some reason had been deserted.
+
+"Look! it's a regular letter-box," she continued, gayly, rising on
+tip-toe to peep into its recesses.  Don Caesar looked at her
+admiringly; it seemed like a return to their first idyllic love-making
+in the old days, when she used to steal out of the cabbage rows in her
+brown linen apron and sun-bonnet to walk with him in the woods.  He
+recalled the fact to her with the fatality of a lover already seeking
+to restore in past recollections something that was wanting in the
+present.  She received it with the impatience of youth, to whom the
+present is all sufficient.
+
+"I wonder how you could ever have cared for me in that holland apron,"
+she said, looking down upon her new dress.
+
+"Shall I tell you why?" he said, fondly, passing his arm around her
+waist, and drawing her pretty head nearer his shoulder.
+
+"No--not now!" she said, laughingly, but struggling to free herself.
+"There's not time.  Write it, and put it in the box. There," she added,
+hastily, "listen!--what's that?"
+
+"It's only a squirrel," he whispered reassuringly in her ear.
+
+"No; it's somebody coming!  I must go!  Please!  Caesar, dear! There,
+then--"
+
+She met his kiss half-way, released herself with a lithe movement of
+her wrist and shoulder, and the next moment seemed to slip into the
+woods, and was gone.
+
+Don Caesar listened with a sigh as the last rustling ceased, cast a
+look at the decayed tree as if to fix it in his memory, and then slowly
+retraced his steps towards his tethered mustang.
+
+He was right, however, in his surmise of the cause of that
+interruption.  A pair of bright eyes had been watching them from the
+bough of an adjacent tree.  It was a squirrel, who, having had serious
+and prior intentions of making use of the cavity they had discovered,
+had only withheld examination by an apparent courteous discretion
+towards the intruding pair.  Now that they were gone he slipped down
+the tree and ran towards the decayed stump.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+Apparently dissatisfied with the result of an investigation, which
+proved that the cavity was unfit as a treasure hoard for a discreet
+squirrel, whatever its value as a receptacle for the love-tokens of
+incautious humanity, the little animal at once set about to put things
+in order.  He began by whisking out an immense quantity of dead leaves,
+disturbed a family of tree-spiders, dissipated a drove of patient
+aphides browsing in the bark, as well as their attendant dairymen, the
+ants, and otherwise ruled it with the high hand of dispossession and a
+contemptuous opinion of the previous incumbents.  It must not be
+supposed, however, that his proceedings were altogether free from
+contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above
+him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few
+moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and
+an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice.  Certain
+incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction;
+among them a folded square of paper with sharply defined edges, that
+declined investigation, and, owing to a nauseous smell of tobacco,
+escaped nibbling as it had apparently escaped insect ravages.  This,
+owing to its sharp angles, which persisted in catching in the soft
+decaying wood in his whirlwind of house-cleaning, he allowed to remain.
+Having thus, in a general way, prepared for the coming winter, the
+self-satisfied little rodent dismissed the subject from his active mind.
+
+His rage and indignation a few days later may be readily conceived,
+when he found, on returning to his new-made home, another square of
+paper, folded like the first, but much fresher and whiter, lying within
+the cavity, on top of some moss which had evidently been placed there
+for the purpose.  This he felt was really more than he could bear, but
+it was smaller, and with a few energetic kicks and whisks of his tail
+he managed to finally dislodge it through the opening, where it fell
+ignominiously to the earth.  The eager eyes of the ever-attendant crow,
+however, instantly detected it; he flew to the ground, and, turning it
+over, examined it gravely.  It was certainly not edible, but it was
+exceedingly rare, and, as an old collector of curios, he felt he could
+not pass it by.  He lifted it in his beak, and, with a desperate
+struggle against the superincumbent weight, regained the branch with
+his prize.  Here, by one of those delicious vagaries of animal nature,
+he apparently at once discharged his mind of the whole affair, became
+utterly oblivious of it, allowed it to drop without the least concern,
+and eventually flew away with an abstracted air, as if he had been
+another bird entirely.  The paper got into a manzanita bush, where it
+remained suspended until the evening, when, being dislodged by a
+passing wild-cat on its way to Mulrady's hen-roost, it gave that
+delicately sensitive marauder such a turn that she fled into the
+adjacent county.
+
+But the troubles of the squirrel were not yet over.  On the following
+day the young man who had accompanied the young woman returned to the
+trunk, and the squirrel had barely time to make his escape before the
+impatient visitor approached the opening of the cavity, peered into it,
+and even passed his hand through its recesses.  The delight visible
+upon his anxious and serious face at the disappearance of the letter,
+and the apparent proof that it had been called for, showed him to have
+been its original depositor, and probably awakened a remorseful
+recollection in the dark bosom of the omnipresent crow, who uttered a
+conscious-stricken croak from the bough above him.  But the young man
+quickly disappeared again, and the squirrel was once more left in
+undisputed possession.
+
+A week passed.  A weary, anxious interval to Don Caesar, who had
+neither seen nor heard from Mamie since their last meeting.  Too
+conscious of his own self-respect to call at the house after the
+equivocal conduct of Mrs. Mulrady, and too proud to haunt the lanes and
+approaches in the hope of meeting her daughter, like an ordinary lover,
+he hid his gloomy thoughts in the monastic shadows of the courtyard at
+Los Gatos, or found relief in furious riding at night and early morning
+on the highway.  Once or twice the up-stage had been overtaken and
+passed by a rushing figure as shadowy as a phantom horseman, with only
+the star-like point of a cigarette to indicate its humanity.  It was in
+one of these fierce recreations that he was obliged to stop in early
+morning at the blacksmith's shop at Rough-and-Ready, to have a loosened
+horseshoe replaced, and while waiting picked up a newspaper.  Don
+Caesar seldom read the papers, but noticing that this was the "Record,"
+he glanced at its columns.  A familiar name suddenly flashed out of the
+dark type like a spark from the anvil.  With a brain and heart that
+seemed to be beating in unison with the blacksmith's sledge, he read as
+follows:--
+
+"Our distinguished fellow-townsman, Alvin Mulrady, Esq., left town day
+before yesterday to attend an important meeting of directors of the Red
+Dog Ditch Company, in San Francisco.  Society will regret to hear that
+Mrs. Mulrady and her beautiful and accomplished daughter, who are
+expecting to depart for Europe at the end of the month, anticipated the
+event nearly a fortnight, by taking this opportunity of accompanying
+Mr. Mulrady as far as San Francisco, on their way to the East.  Mrs.
+and Miss Mulrady intend to visit London, Paris, and Berlin, and will be
+absent three years.  It is possible that Mr. Mulrady may join them
+later at one or other of those capitals.  Considerable disappointment
+is felt that a more extended leave-taking was not possible, and that,
+under the circumstances, no opportunity was offered for a 'send off'
+suitable to the condition of the parties and the esteem in which they
+are held in Rough-and-Ready."
+
+The paper dropped from his hands.  Gone! and without a word!  No, that
+was impossible!  There must be some mistake; she had written; the
+letter had miscarried; she must have sent word to Los Gatos, and the
+stupid messenger had blundered; she had probably appointed another
+meeting, or expected him to follow to San Francisco.  "The day before
+yesterday!"  It was the morning's paper--she had been gone scarcely two
+days--it was not too late yet to receive a delayed message by post, by
+some forgetful hand--by--ah--the tree!
+
+Of course it was in the tree, and he had not been there for a week! Why
+had he not thought of it before?  The fault was his, not hers. Perhaps
+she had gone away, believing him faithless, or a country boor.
+
+"In the name of the Devil, will you keep me here till eternity!"
+
+The blacksmith stared at him.  Don Caesar suddenly remembered that he
+was speaking, as he was thinking--in Spanish.
+
+"Ten dollars, my friend, if you have done in five minutes!"
+
+The man laughed.  "That's good enough American," he said, beginning to
+quicken his efforts.  Don Caesar again took up the paper.  There was
+another paragraph that recalled his last interview with Mamie:--
+
+"Mr. Harry Slinn, Jr., the editor of this paper, has just moved into
+the pioneer house formerly occupied by Alvin Mulrady, Esq., which has
+already become historic in the annals of the county.  Mr. Slinn brings
+with him his father--H. J. Slinn, Esq.,--and his two sisters.  Mr.
+Slinn, Sen., who has been suffering for many years from complete
+paralysis, we understand is slowly improving; and it is by the advice
+of his physicians that he has chosen the invigorating air of the
+foothills as a change to the debilitating heat of Sacramento."
+
+The affair had been quickly settled, certainly, reflected Don Caesar,
+with a slight chill of jealousy, as he thought of Mamie's interest in
+the young editor.  But the next moment he dismissed it from his mind;
+all except a dull consciousness that, if she really loved him--Don
+Caesar--as he loved her, she could not have assisted in throwing into
+his society the young sisters of the editor, who she expected might be
+so attractive.
+
+Within the five minutes the horse was ready, and Don Caesar in the
+saddle again.  In less than half an hour he was at the wayside boulder.
+Here he picketed his horse, and took the narrow foot-trail through the
+hollow.  It did not take him long to reach their old trysting-place.
+With a beating heart he approached the decaying trunk and looked into
+the cavity.  There was no letter there!
+
+A few blackened nuts and some of the dry moss he had put there were
+lying on the ground at its roots.  He could not remember whether they
+were there when he had last visited the spot.  He began to grope in the
+cavity with both hands.  His fingers struck against the sharp angles of
+a flat paper packet: a thrill of joy ran through them and stopped his
+beating heart; he drew out the hidden object, and was chilled with
+disappointment.
+
+It was an ordinary-sized envelope of yellowish-brown paper, bearing,
+besides the usual government stamp, the official legend of an express
+company, and showing its age as much by this record of a now obsolete
+carrying service as by the discoloration of time and atmosphere.  Its
+weight, which was heavier than that of any ordinary letter of the same
+size and thickness, was evidently due to some loose enclosures, that
+slightly rustled and could be felt by the fingers, like minute pieces
+of metal or grains of gravel. It was within Don Caesar's experience
+that gold specimens were often sent in that manner.  It was in a state
+of singular preservation, except the address, which, being written in
+pencil, was scarcely discernible, and even when deciphered appeared to
+be incoherent and unfinished.  The unknown correspondent had written
+"dear Mary," and then "Mrs. Mary Slinn," with an unintelligible scrawl
+following for the direction.  If Don Caesar's mind had not been lately
+preoccupied with the name of the editor, he would hardly have guessed
+the superscription.
+
+In his cruel disappointment and fully aroused indignation, he at once
+began to suspect a connection of circumstances which at any other
+moment he would have thought purely accidental, or perhaps not have
+considered at all.  The cavity in the tree had evidently been used as a
+secret receptacle for letters before; did Mamie know it at the time,
+and how did she know it?  The apparent age of the letter made it
+preposterous to suppose that it pointed to any secret correspondence of
+hers with young Mr. Slinn; and the address was not in her handwriting.
+Was there any secret previous intimacy between the families?  There was
+but one way in which he could connect this letter with Mamie's
+faithlessness.  It was an infamous, a grotesquely horrible idea, a
+thought which sprang as much from his inexperience of the world and his
+habitual suspiciousness of all humor as anything else!  It was that the
+letter was a brutal joke of Slinn's--a joke perhaps concocted by Mamie
+and himself--a parting insult that should at the last moment proclaim
+their treachery and his own credulity.  Doubtless it contained a
+declaration of their shame, and the reason why she had fled from him
+without a word of explanation.  And the enclosure, of course, was some
+significant and degrading illustration.  Those Americans are full of
+those low conceits; it was their national vulgarity.
+
+He had the letter in his angry hand.  He could break it open if he
+wished and satisfy himself; but it was not addressed to HIM, and the
+instinct of honor, strong even in his rage, was the instinct of an
+adversary as well.  No; Slinn should open the letter before him. Slinn
+should explain everything, and answer for it.  If it was nothing--a
+mere accident--it would lead to some general explanation, and perhaps
+even news of Mamie.  But he would arraign Slinn, and at once.  He put
+the letter in his pocket, quickly retraced his steps to his horse, and,
+putting spurs to the animal, followed the high road to the gate of
+Mulrady's pioneer cabin.
+
+He remembered it well enough.  To a cultivated taste, it was superior
+to the more pretentious "new house."  During the first year of
+Mulrady's tenancy, the plain square log-cabin had received those
+additions and attractions which only a tenant can conceive and actual
+experience suggest; and in this way the hideous right angles were
+broken with sheds, "lean-to" extensions, until a certain
+picturesqueness was given to the irregularity of outline, and a
+home-like security and companionship to the congregated buildings.  It
+typified the former life of the great capitalist, as the tall new house
+illustrated the loneliness and isolation that wealth had given him.
+But the real points of vantage were the years of cultivation and
+habitation that had warmed and enriched the soil, and evoked the
+climbing vines and roses that already hid its unpainted boards, rounded
+its hard outlines, and gave projection and shadow from the pitiless
+glare of a summer's long sun, or broke the steady beating of the winter
+rains.  It was true that pea and bean poles surrounded it on one side,
+and the only access to the house was through the cabbage rows that once
+were the pride and sustenance of the Mulradys.  It was this fact, more
+than any other, that had impelled Mrs. Mulrady to abandon its site; she
+did not like to read the history of their humble origin reflected in
+the faces of their visitors as they entered.
+
+Don Caesar tied his horse to the fence, and hurriedly approached the
+house.  The door, however, hospitably opened when he was a few paces
+from it, and when he reached the threshold he found himself
+unexpectedly in the presence of two pretty girls.  They were evidently
+Slinn's sisters, whom he had neither thought of nor included in the
+meeting he had prepared.  In spite of his preoccupation, he felt
+himself suddenly embarrassed, not only by the actual distinction of
+their beauty, but by a kind of likeness that they seemed to bear to
+Mamie.
+
+"We saw you coming," said the elder, unaffectedly.  "You are Don Caesar
+Alvarado.  My brother has spoken of you."
+
+The words recalled Don Caesar to himself and a sense of courtesy. He
+was not here to quarrel with these fair strangers at their first
+meeting; he must seek Slinn elsewhere, and at another time.  The
+frankness of his reception and the allusion to their brother made it
+appear impossible that they should be either a party to his
+disappointment, or even aware of it.  His excitement melted away before
+a certain lazy ease, which the consciousness of their beauty seemed to
+give them.  He was able to put a few courteous inquiries, and, thanks
+to the paragraph in the "Record," to congratulate them upon their
+father's improvement.
+
+"Oh, pa is a great deal better in his health, and has picked up even in
+the last few days, so that he is able to walk round with crutches,"
+said the elder sister.  "The air here seems to invigorate him
+wonderfully."
+
+"And you know, Esther," said the younger, "I think he begins to take
+more notice of things, especially when he is out-of-doors.  He looks
+around on the scenery, and his eye brightens, as if he knew all about
+it; and sometimes he knits his brows, and looks down so, as if he was
+trying to remember."
+
+"You know, I suppose," exclaimed Esther, "that since his seizure his
+memory has been a blank--that is, three or four years of his life seem
+to have been dropped out of his recollection."
+
+"It might be a mercy sometimes, Senora," said Don Caesar, with a grave
+sigh, as he looked at the delicate features before him, which recalled
+the face of the absent Mamie.
+
+"That's not very complimentary," said the younger girl, laughingly;
+"for pa didn't recognize us, and only remembered us as little girls."
+
+"Vashti!" interrupted Esther, rebukingly; then, turning to Don Caesar,
+she added, "My sister, Vashti, means that father remembers more what
+happened before he came to California, when we were quite young, than
+he does of the interval that elapsed.  Dr. Duchesne says it's a
+singular case.  He thinks that, with his present progress, he will
+recover the perfect use of his limbs; though his memory may never come
+back again."
+
+"Unless--  You forget what the doctor told us this morning,"
+interrupted Vashti again, briskly.
+
+"I was going to say it," said Esther, a little curtly.  "UNLESS he has
+another stroke.  Then he will either die or recover his mind entirely."
+
+Don Caesar glanced at the bright faces, a trifle heightened in color by
+their eager recital and the slight rivalry of narration, and looked
+grave.  He was a little shocked at a certain lack of sympathy and
+tenderness towards their unhappy parent.  They seemed to him not only
+to have caught that dry, curious toleration of helplessness which
+characterizes even relationship in its attendance upon chronic
+suffering and weakness, but to have acquired an unconscious habit of
+turning it to account.  In his present sensitive condition, he even
+fancied that they flirted mildly over their parent's infirmity.
+
+"My brother Harry has gone to Red Dog," continued Esther; "he'll be
+right sorry to have missed you.  Mrs. Mulrady spoke to him about you;
+you seem to have been great friends.  I s'pose you knew her daughter,
+Mamie; I hear she is very pretty."
+
+Although Don Caesar was now satisfied that the Slinns knew nothing of
+Mamie's singular behavior to him, he felt embarrassed by this
+conversation.  "Miss Mulrady is very pretty," he said, with grave
+courtesy; "it is a custom of her race.  She left suddenly," he added
+with affected calmness.
+
+"I reckon she did calculate to stay here longer--so her mother said;
+but the whole thing was settled a week ago.  I know my brother was
+quite surprised to hear from Mr. Mulrady that if we were going to
+decide about this house we must do it at once; he had an idea himself
+about moving out of the big one into this when they left."
+
+"Mamie Mulrady hadn't much to keep her here, considerin' the money and
+the good looks she has, I reckon," said Vashti.  "She isn't the sort of
+girl to throw herself away in the wilderness, when she can pick and
+choose elsewhere.  I only wonder she ever come back from Sacramento.
+They talk about papa Mulrady having BUSINESS at San Francisco, and THAT
+hurrying them off!  Depend upon it, that 'business' was Mamie herself.
+Her wish is gospel to them.  If she'd wanted to stay and have a
+farewell party, old Mulrady's business would have been nowhere."
+
+"Ain't you a little rough on Mamie," said Esther, who had been quietly
+watching the young man's face with her large languid eyes, "considering
+that we don't know her, and haven't even the right of friends to
+criticise?"
+
+"I don't call it rough," returned Vashti, frankly, "for I'd do the same
+if I were in her shoes--and they're four-and-a-halves, for Harry told
+me so.  Give me her money and her looks, and you wouldn't catch me
+hanging round these diggings--goin' to choir meetings Saturdays, church
+Sundays, and buggy-riding once a month--for society!  No--Mamie's head
+was level--you bet!"
+
+Don Caesar rose hurriedly.  They would present his compliments to their
+father, and he would endeavor to find their brother at Red Dog.  He,
+alas! had neither father, mother, nor sister, but if they would receive
+his aunt, the Dona Inez Sepulvida, the next Sunday, when she came from
+mass, she should be honored and he would be delighted.  It required all
+his self-possession to deliver himself of this formal courtesy before
+he could take his leave, and on the back of his mustang give way to the
+rage, disgust and hatred of everything connected with Mamie that filled
+his heart.  Conscious of his disturbance, but not entirely appreciating
+their own share in it, the two girls somewhat wickedly prolonged the
+interview by following him into the garden.
+
+"Well, if you MUST leave now," said Esther, at last, languidly, "it
+ain't much out of your way to go down through the garden and take a
+look at pa as you go.  He's somewhere down there, near the woods, and
+we don't like to leave him alone too long.  You might pass the time of
+day with him; see if he's right side up.  Vashti and I have got a heap
+of things to fix here yet; but if anything's wrong with him, you can
+call us.  So-long."
+
+Don Caesar was about to excuse himself hurriedly; but that sudden and
+acute perception of all kindred sorrow which belongs to refined
+suffering, checked his speech.  The loneliness of the helpless old man
+in this atmosphere of active and youthful selfishness touched him.  He
+bowed assent, and turned aside into one of the long perspectives of
+bean-poles.  The girls watched him until out of sight.
+
+"Well," said Vashti, "don't tell ME.  But if there wasn't something
+between him and that Mamie Mulrady, I don't know a jilted man when I
+see him."
+
+"Well, you needn't have let him SEE that you knew it, so that any
+civility of ours would look as if we were ready to take up with her
+leavings," responded Esther, astutely, as the girls reentered the house.
+
+Meantime, the unconscious object of their criticism walked sadly down
+the old market-garden, whose rude outlines and homely details he once
+clothed with the poetry of a sensitive man's first love. Well, it was a
+common cabbage field and potato patch after all.  In his disgust he
+felt conscious of even the loss of that sense of patronage and
+superiority which had invested his affection for a girl of meaner
+condition.  His self-respect was humiliated with his love.  The soil
+and dirt of those wretched cabbages had clung to him, but not to her.
+It was she who had gone higher; it was he who was left in the vulgar
+ruins of his misplaced passion.
+
+He reached the bottom of the garden without observing any sign of the
+lonely invalid.  He looked up and down the cabbage rows, and through
+the long perspective of pea-vines, without result.  There was a newer
+trail leading from a gap in the pines to the wooded hollow, which
+undoubtedly intersected the little path that he and Mamie had once
+followed from the high road.  If the old man had taken this trail he
+had possibly over-tasked his strength, and there was the more reason
+why he should continue his search, and render any assistance if
+required.  There was another idea that occurred to him, which
+eventually decided him to go on.  It was that both these trails led to
+the decayed sycamore stump, and that the older Slinn might have
+something to do with the mysterious letter.  Quickening his steps
+through the field, he entered the hollow, and reached the intersecting
+trail as he expected.  To the right it lost itself in the dense woods
+in the direction of the ominous stump; to the left it descended in
+nearly a straight line to the highway, now plainly visible, as was
+equally the boulder on which he had last discovered Mamie sitting with
+young Slinn.  If he were not mistaken, there was a figure sitting there
+now; it was surely a man.  And by that half-bowed, helpless attitude,
+the object of his search!
+
+It did not take him long to descend the track to the highway and
+approach the stranger.  He was seated with his hands upon his knees,
+gazing in a vague, absorbed fashion upon the hillside, now crowned with
+the engine-house and chimney that marked the site of Mulrady's shaft.
+He started slightly, and looked up, as Don Caesar paused before him.
+The young man was surprised to see that the unfortunate man was not as
+old as he had expected, and that his expression was one of quiet and
+beatified contentment.
+
+"Your daughters told me you were here," said Don Caesar, with gentle
+respect.  "I am Caesar Alvarado, your not very far neighbor; very happy
+to pay his respects to you as he has to them."
+
+"My daughters?" said the old man, vaguely.  "Oh, yes! nice little
+girls.  And my boy Harry.  Did you see Harry?  Fine little fellow,
+Harry."
+
+"I am glad to hear that you are better," said Don Caesar, hastily, "and
+that the air of our country does you no harm.  God benefit you, senor,"
+he added, with a profoundly reverential gesture, dropping unconsciously
+into the religious habit of his youth.  "May he protect you, and bring
+you back to health and happiness!"
+
+"Happiness?" said Slinn, amazedly.  "I am happy--very happy!  I have
+everything I want: good air, good food, good clothes, pretty little
+children, kind friends--"  He smiled benignantly at Don Caesar.  "God
+is very good to me!"
+
+Indeed, he seemed very happy; and his face, albeit crowned with white
+hair, unmarked by care and any disturbing impression, had so much of
+satisfied youth in it that the grave features of his questioner made
+him appear the elder.  Nevertheless, Don Caesar noticed that his eyes,
+when withdrawn from him, sought the hillside with the same visionary
+abstraction.
+
+"It is a fine view, Senor Esslinn," said Don Caesar.
+
+"It is a beautiful view, sir," said Slinn, turning his happy eyes upon
+him for a moment, only to rest them again on the green slope opposite.
+
+"Beyond that hill which you are looking at--not far, Senor Esslinn--I
+live.  You shall come and see me there--you and your family."
+
+"You--you--live there?" stammered the invalid, with a troubled
+expression--the first and only change to the complete happiness that
+had hitherto suffused his face.  "You--and your name is--is Ma--"
+
+"Alvarado," said Don Caesar, gently.  "Caesar Alvarado."
+
+"You said Masters," said the old man, with sudden querulousness.
+
+"No, good friend.  I said Alvarado," returned Don Caesar, gravely.
+
+"If you didn't say Masters, how could I say it?  I don't know any
+Masters."
+
+Don Caesar was silent.  In another moment the happy tranquillity
+returned to Slinn's face; and Don Caesar continued:--
+
+"It is not a long walk over the hill, though it is far by the road.
+When you are better you shall try it.  Yonder little trail leads to the
+top of the hill, and then--"
+
+He stopped, for the invalid's face had again assumed its troubled
+expression.  Partly to change his thoughts, and partly for some
+inexplicable idea that had suddenly seized him, Don Caesar continued:--
+
+"There is a strange old stump near the trail, and in it a hole.  In the
+hole I found this letter."  He stopped again--this time in alarm.
+Slinn had staggered to his feet with ashen and distorted features, and
+was glancing at the letter which Don Caesar had drawn from his pocket.
+The muscles of his throat swelled as if he was swallowing; his lips
+moved, but no sound issued from them.  At last, with a convulsive
+effort, he regained a disjointed speech, in a voice scarcely audible.
+
+"My letter! my letter!  It's mine!  Give it me!  It's my fortune--all
+mine!  In the tunnel--hill!  Masters stole it--stole my fortune!  Stole
+it all!  See, see!"
+
+He seized the letter from Don Caesar with trembling hands, and tore it
+open forcibly: a few dull yellow grains fell from it heavily, like
+shot, to the ground.
+
+"See, it's true!  My letter!  My gold!  My strike!  My--my--my God!"
+
+A tremor passed over his face.  The hand that held the letter suddenly
+dropped sheer and heavy as the gold had fallen.  The whole side of his
+face and body nearest Don Caesar seemed to drop and sink into itself as
+suddenly.  At the same moment, and without a word, he slipped through
+Don Caesar's outstretched hands to the ground.  Don Caesar bent quickly
+over him, but no longer than to satisfy himself that he lived and
+breathed, although helpless.  He then caught up the fallen letter, and,
+glancing over it with flashing eyes, thrust it and the few specimens in
+his pocket.  He then sprang to his feet, so transformed with energy and
+intelligence that he seemed to have added the lost vitality of the man
+before him to his own.  He glanced quickly up and down the highway.
+Every moment to him was precious now; but he could not leave the
+stricken man in the dust of the road; nor could he carry him to the
+house; nor, having alarmed his daughters, could he abandon his
+helplessness to their feeble arms.  He remembered that his horse was
+still tied to the garden fence.  He would fetch it, and carry the
+unfortunate man across the saddle to the gate.  He lifted him with
+difficulty to the boulder, and ran rapidly up the road in the direction
+of his tethered steed.  He had not proceeded far when he heard the
+noise of wheels behind him.  It was the up stage coming furiously
+along.  He would have called to the driver for assistance, but even
+through that fast-sweeping cloud of dust and motion he could see that
+the man was utterly oblivious of anything but the speed of his rushing
+chariot, and had even risen in his box to lash the infuriated and
+frightened animals forward.
+
+An hour later, when the coach drew up at the Red Dog Hotel, the driver
+descended from the box, white, but taciturn.  When he had swallowed a
+glass of whiskey at a single gulp, he turned to the astonished express
+agent, who had followed him in.
+
+"One of two things, Jim, hez got to happen," he said, huskily. "Either
+that there rock hez got to get off the road, or I have. I've seed HIM
+on it agin!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+No further particulars of the invalid's second attack were known than
+those furnished by Don Caesar's brief statement, that he had found him
+lying insensible on the boulder.  This seemed perfectly consistent with
+the theory of Dr. Duchesne; and as the young Spaniard left Los Gatos
+the next day, he escaped not only the active reporter of the "Record,"
+but the perusal of a grateful paragraph in the next day's paper
+recording his prompt kindness and courtesy.  Dr. Duchesne's prognosis,
+however, seemed at fault; the elder Slinn did not succumb to this
+second stroke, nor did he recover his reason.  He apparently only
+relapsed into his former physical weakness, losing the little ground he
+had gained during the last month, and exhibiting no change in his
+mental condition, unless the fact that he remembered nothing of his
+seizure and the presence of Don Caesar could be considered as
+favorable.  Dr. Duchesne's gravity seemed to give that significance to
+this symptom, and his cross-questioning of the patient was
+characterized by more than his usual curtness.
+
+"You are sure you don't remember walking in the garden before you were
+ill?" he said.  "Come, think again.  You must remember that." The old
+man's eyes wandered restlessly around the room, but he answered by a
+negative shake of his head.  "And you don't remember sitting down on a
+stone by the road?"
+
+The old man kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the bedclothes before
+him.  "No!" he said, with a certain sharp decision that was new to him.
+
+The doctor's eye brightened.  "All right, old man; then don't."
+
+On his way out he took the eldest Miss Slinn aside.  "He'll do," he
+said, grimly: "he's beginning to lie."
+
+"Why, he only said he didn't remember," responded Esther.
+
+"That was because he didn't want to remember," said the doctor,
+authoritatively.  "The brain is acting on some impression that is
+either painful and unpleasant, or so vague that he can't formulate it;
+he is conscious of it, and won't attempt it yet.  It's a heap better
+than his old self-satisfied incoherency."
+
+A few days later, when the fact of Slinn's identification with the
+paralytic of three years ago by the stage-driver became generally
+known, the doctor came in quite jubilant.
+
+"It's all plain now," he said, decidedly.  "That second stroke was
+caused by the nervous shock of his coming suddenly upon the very spot
+where he had the first one.  It proved that his brain still retained
+old impressions, but as this first act of his memory was a painful one,
+the strain was too great.  It was mighty unlucky; but it was a good
+sign."
+
+"And you think, then--" hesitated Harry Slinn.
+
+"I think," said Dr. Duchesne, "that this activity still exists, and the
+proof of it, as I said before, is that he is trying now to forget it,
+and avoid thinking of it.  You will find that he will fight shy of any
+allusion to it, and will be cunning enough to dodge it every time."
+
+He certainly did.  Whether the doctor's hypothesis was fairly based or
+not, it was a fact that, when he was first taken out to drive with his
+watchful physician, he apparently took no notice of the boulder--which
+still remained on the roadside, thanks to the later practical
+explanation of the stage-driver's vision--and curtly refused to talk
+about it.  But, more significant to Duchesne, and perhaps more
+perplexing, was a certain morose abstraction, which took the place of
+his former vacuity of contentment, and an intolerance of his
+attendants, which supplanted his old habitual trustfulness to their
+care, that had been varied only by the occasional querulousness of an
+invalid.  His daughters sometimes found him regarding them with an
+attention little short of suspicion, and even his son detected a
+half-suppressed aversion in his interviews with him.
+
+Referring this among themselves to his unfortunate malady, his
+children, perhaps, justified this estrangement by paying very little
+attention to it.  They were more pleasantly occupied.  The two girls
+succeeded to the position held by Mamie Mulrady in the society of the
+neighborhood, and divided the attentions of Rough-and-Ready.  The young
+editor of the "Record" had really achieved, through his supposed
+intimacy with the Mulradys, the good fortune he had jestingly
+prophesied.  The disappearance of Don Caesar was regarded as a virtual
+abandonment of the field to his rival: and the general opinion was that
+he was engaged to the millionaire's daughter on a certain probation of
+work and influence in his prospective father-in-law's interests.  He
+became successful in one or two speculations, the magic of the lucky
+Mulrady's name befriending him.  In the superstition of the mining
+community, much of this luck was due to his having secured the old
+cabin.
+
+"To think," remarked one of the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a
+polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where
+the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old
+man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!"  Any doubt, however, of the
+alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up
+between the elder Slinn and the millionaire, after the latter's return
+from San Francisco.
+
+It began in a strange kind of pity for the physical weakness of the
+man, which enlisted the sympathies of Mulrady, whose great strength had
+never been deteriorated by the luxuries of wealth, and who was still
+able to set his workmen an example of hard labor; it was sustained by a
+singular and superstitious reverence for his mental condition, which,
+to the paternal Mulrady, seemed to possess that spiritual quality with
+which popular ignorance invests demented people.
+
+"Then you mean to say that during these three years the vein o' your
+mind, so to speak, was a lost lead, and sorter dropped out o' sight or
+follerin'?" queried Mulrady, with infinite seriousness.
+
+"Yes," returned Slinn, with less impatience than he usually showed to
+questions.
+
+"And durin' that time, when you was dried up and waitin' for rain, I
+reckon you kinder had visions?"
+
+A cloud passed over Slinn's face.
+
+"Of course, of course!" said Mulrady, a little frightened at his
+tenacity in questioning the oracle.  "Nat'rally, this was private, and
+not to be talked about.  I meant, you had plenty of room for 'em
+without crowdin'; you kin tell me some day when you're better, and kin
+sorter select what's points and what ain't."
+
+"Perhaps I may some day," said the invalid, gloomily, glancing in the
+direction of his preoccupied daughters; "when we're alone."
+
+When his physical strength had improved, and his left arm and side had
+regained a feeble but slowly gathering vitality, Alvin Mulrady one day
+surprised the family by bringing the convalescent a pile of letters and
+accounts, and spreading them on a board before Slinn's invalid chair,
+with the suggestion that he should look over, arrange, and docket them.
+The idea seemed preposterous, until it was found that the old man was
+actually able to perform this service, and exhibited a degree of
+intellectual activity and capacity for this kind of work that was
+unsuspected.  Dr. Duchesne was delighted, and divided with admiration
+between his patient's progress and the millionaire's sagacity.  "And
+there are envious people," said the enthusiastic doctor, "who believe
+that a man like him, who could conceive of such a plan for occupying a
+weak intellect without taxing its memory or judgment, is merely a lucky
+fool!  Look here.  May be it didn't require much brains to stumble on a
+gold mine, and it is a gift of Providence.  But, in my experience,
+Providence don't go round buyin' up d--d fools, or investin' in dead
+beats."
+
+When Mr. Slinn, finally, with the aid of crutches, was able to hobble
+every day to the imposing counting-house and the office of Mr. Mulrady,
+which now occupied the lower part of the new house, and contained some
+of its gorgeous furniture, he was installed at a rosewood desk behind
+Mr. Mulrady's chair, as his confidential clerk and private secretary.
+The astonishment of Red Dog and Rough-and-Ready at this singular
+innovation knew no bounds; but the boldness and novelty of the idea
+carried everything before it.  Judge Butts, the oracle of
+Rough-and-Ready, delivered its decision: "He's got a man who's
+physically incapable of running off with his money, and has no memory
+to run off with his ideas.  How could he do better?" Even his own son,
+Harry, coming upon his father thus installed, was for a moment struck
+with a certain filial respect, and for a day or two patronized him.
+
+In this capacity Slinn became the confidant not only of Mulrady's
+business secrets, but of his domestic affairs.  He knew that young
+Mulrady, from a freckle-faced slow country boy, had developed into a
+freckle-faced fast city man, with coarse habits of drink and gambling.
+It was through the old man's hands that extravagant bills and shameful
+claims passed on their way to be cashed by Mulrady; it was he that at
+last laid before the father one day his signature perfectly forged by
+the son.
+
+"Your eyes are not ez good ez mine, you know, Slinn," said Mulrady,
+gravely.  "It's all right.  I sometimes make my Y's like that.  I'd
+clean forgot to cash that check.  You must not think you've got the
+monopoly of disremembering," he added, with a faint laugh.
+
+Equally through Slinn's hands passed the record of the lavish
+expenditure of Mrs. Mulrady and the fair Mamie, as well as the
+chronicle of their movements and fashionable triumphs.  As Mulrady had
+already noticed that Slinn had no confidence with his own family, he
+did not try to withhold from them these domestic details, possibly as
+an offset to the dreary catalogue of his son's misdeeds, but more often
+in the hope of gaining from the taciturn old man some comment that
+might satisfy his innocent vanity as father and husband, and perhaps
+dissipate some doubts that were haunting him.
+
+"Twelve hundred dollars looks to be a good figger for a dress, ain't
+it?  But Malviny knows, I reckon, what ought to be worn at the
+Tooilleries, and she don't want our Mamie to take a back seat before
+them furrin' princesses and gran' dukes.  It's a slap-up affair, I
+kalkilate.  Let's see.  I disremember whether it's an emperor or a king
+that's rulin' over thar now.  It must be suthin' first class and A1,
+for Malviny ain't the woman to throw away twelve hundred dollars on any
+of them small-potato despots!  She says Mamie speaks French already
+like them French Petes.  I don't quite make out what she means here.
+She met Don Caesar in Paris, and she says, 'I think Mamie is nearly off
+with Don Caesar, who has followed her here.  I don't care about her
+dropping him TOO suddenly; the reason I'll tell you hereafter.  I think
+the man might be a dangerous enemy.'  Now, what do you make of this?  I
+allus thought Mamie rather cottoned to him, and it was the old woman
+who fought shy, thinkin' Mamie would do better.  Now, I am agreeable
+that my gal should marry any one she likes, whether it's a dook or a
+poor man, as long as he's on the square.  I was ready to take Don
+Caesar; but now things seem to have shifted round.  As to Don Caesar's
+being a dangerous enemy if Mamie won't have him, that's a little too
+high and mighty for me, and I wonder the old woman don't make him climb
+down.  What do you think?"
+
+"Who is Don Caesar?" asked Slinn.
+
+"The man what picked you up that day.  I mean," continued Mulrady,
+seeing the marks of evident ignorance on the old man's face,--"I mean a
+sort of grave, genteel chap, suthin' between a parson and a
+circus-rider.  You might have seen him round the house talkin' to your
+gals."
+
+But Slinn's entire forgetfulness of Don Caesar was evidently unfeigned.
+Whatever sudden accession of memory he had at the time of his attack,
+the incident that caused it had no part in his recollection.  With the
+exception of these rare intervals of domestic confidences with his
+crippled private secretary, Mulrady gave himself up to money-getting.
+Without any especial faculty for it--an easy prey often to unscrupulous
+financiers--his unfailing luck, however, carried him safely through,
+until his very mistakes seemed to be simply insignificant means to a
+large significant end and a part of his original plan.  He sank another
+shaft, at a great expense, with a view to following the lead he had
+formerly found, against the opinions of the best mining engineers, and
+struck the artesian spring he did NOT find at that time, with a volume
+of water that enabled him not only to work his own mine, but to furnish
+supplies to his less fortunate neighbors at a vast profit. A league of
+tangled forest and canyon behind Rough-and-Ready, for which he had paid
+Don Ramon's heirs an extravagant price in the presumption that it was
+auriferous, furnished the most accessible timber to build the town, at
+prices which amply remunerated him. The practical schemes of
+experienced men, the wildest visions of daring dreams delayed or
+abortive for want of capital, eventually fell into his hands.  Men
+sneered at his methods, but bought his shares.  Some who affected to
+regard him simply as a man of money were content to get only his name
+to any enterprise.  Courted by his superiors, quoted by his equals, and
+admired by his inferiors, he bore his elevation equally without
+ostentation or dignity. Bidden to banquets, and forced by his position
+as director or president into the usual gastronomic feats of that
+civilization and period, he partook of simple food, and continued his
+old habit of taking a cup of coffee with milk and sugar at dinner.
+Without professing temperance, he drank sparingly in a community where
+alcoholic stimulation was a custom.  With neither refinement nor an
+extended vocabulary, he was seldom profane, and never indelicate. With
+nothing of the Puritan in his manner or conversation, he seemed to be
+as strange to the vices of civilization as he was to its virtues.  That
+such a man should offer little to and receive little from the
+companionship of women of any kind was a foregone conclusion.  Without
+the dignity of solitude, he was pathetically alone.
+
+Meantime, the days passed; the first six months of his opulence were
+drawing to a close, and in that interval he had more than doubled the
+amount of his discovered fortune.  The rainy season set in early.
+Although it dissipated the clouds of dust under which Nature and Art
+seemed to be slowly disappearing, it brought little beauty to the
+landscape at first, and only appeared to lay bare the crudenesses of
+civilization.  The unpainted wooden buildings of Rough-and-Ready,
+soaked and dripping with rain, took upon themselves a sleek and shining
+ugliness, as of second-hand garments; the absence of cornices or
+projections to break the monotony of the long straight lines of
+downpour made the town appear as if it had been recently submerged,
+every vestige of ornamentation swept away, and only the bare outlines
+left.  Mud was everywhere; the outer soil seemed to have risen and
+invaded the houses even to their most secret recesses, as if outraged
+Nature was trying to revenge herself.  Mud was brought into the saloons
+and barrooms and express offices, on boots, on clothes, on baggage, and
+sometimes appeared mysteriously in splashes of red color on the walls,
+without visible conveyance.  The dust of six months, closely packed in
+cornice and carving, yielded under the steady rain a thin yellow paint,
+that dropped on wayfarers or unexpectedly oozed out of ceilings and
+walls on the wretched inhabitants within.  The outskirts of
+Rough-and-Ready and the dried hills round Los Gatos did not appear to
+fare much better; the new vegetation had not yet made much headway
+against the dead grasses of the summer; the pines in the hollow wept
+lugubriously into a small rivulet that had sprung suddenly into life
+near the old trail; everywhere was the sound of dropping, splashing,
+gurgling, or rushing waters.
+
+More hideous than ever, the new Mulrady house lifted itself against the
+leaden sky, and stared with all its large-framed, shutterless windows
+blankly on the prospect, until they seemed to the wayfarer to become
+mere mirrors set in the walls, reflecting only the watery landscape,
+and unable to give the least indication of light or heat within.
+Nevertheless, there was a fire in Mulrady's private office that
+December afternoon, of a smoky, intermittent variety, that sufficed
+more to record the defects of hasty architecture than to comfort the
+millionaire and his private secretary, who had lingered after the early
+withdrawal of the clerks.  For the next day was Christmas, and, out of
+deference to the near approach of this festivity, a half-holiday had
+been given to the employees. "They'll want, some of them, to spend
+their money before to-morrow; and others would like to be able to rise
+up comfortably drunk Christmas morning," the superintendent had
+suggested.  Mr. Mulrady had just signed a number of checks indicating
+his largess to those devoted adherents with the same unostentatious,
+undemonstrative, matter-of-fact manner that distinguished his ordinary
+business. The men had received it with something of the same manner.  A
+half-humorous "Thank you, sir"--as if to show that, with their patron,
+they tolerated this deference to a popular custom, but were a little
+ashamed of giving way to it--expressed their gratitude and their
+independence.
+
+"I reckon that the old lady and Mamie are having a high old time in
+some of them gilded pallises in St. Petersburg or Berlin about this
+time.  Them diamonds that I ordered at Tiffany ought to have reached
+'em about now, so that Mamie could cut a swell at Christmas with her
+war-paint.  I suppose it's the style to give presents in furrin'
+countries ez it is here, and I allowed to the old lady that whatever
+she orders in that way she is to do in Californy style--no
+dollar-jewelry and galvanized-watches business.  If she wants to make a
+present to any of them nobles ez has been purlite to her, it's got to
+be something that Rough-and-Ready ain't ashamed of.  I showed you that
+pin Mamie bought me in Paris, didn't I?  It's just come for my
+Christmas present.  No!  I reckon I put it in the safe, for them kind
+o' things don't suit my style: but s'pose I orter sport it to-morrow.
+It was mighty thoughtful in Mamie, and it must cost a lump; it's got no
+slouch of a pearl in it.  I wonder what Mamie gave for it?"
+
+"You can easily tell; the bill is here.  You paid it yesterday," said
+Slinn.  There was no satire in the man's voice, nor was there the least
+perception of irony in Mulrady's manner, as he returned quietly,--
+
+"That's so; it was suthin' like a thousand francs; but French money,
+when you pan it out as dollars and cents, don't make so much, after
+all."  There was a few moments' silence, when he continued, in the same
+tone of voice, "Talkin' o' them things, Slinn, I've got suthin' for
+you."  He stopped suddenly.  Ever watchful of any undue excitement in
+the invalid, he had noticed a slight flush of disturbance pass over his
+face, and continued carelessly, "But we'll talk it over to-morrow; a
+day or two don't make much difference to you and me in such things, you
+know. P'raps I'll drop in and see you.  We'll be shut up here."
+
+"Then you're going out somewhere?" asked Slinn, mechanically.
+
+"No," said Mulrady, hesitatingly.  It had suddenly occurred to him that
+he had nowhere to go if he wanted to, and he continued, half in
+explanation, "I ain't reckoned much on Christmas, myself. Abner's at
+the Springs; it wouldn't pay him to come here for a day--even if there
+was anybody here he cared to see.  I reckon I'll hang round the shanty,
+and look after things generally.  I haven't been over the house
+upstairs to put things to rights since the folks left.  But YOU needn't
+come here, you know."
+
+He helped the old man to rise, assisted him in putting on his overcoat,
+and than handed him the cane which had lately replaced his crutches.
+
+"Good-by, old man!  You musn't trouble yourself to say 'Merry
+Christmas' now, but wait until you see me again.  Take care of
+yourself."
+
+He slapped him lightly on the shoulder, and went back into his private
+office.  He worked for some time at his desk, and then laid his pen
+aside, put away his papers methodically, placing a large envelope on
+his private secretary's vacant table.  He then opened the office door
+and ascended the staircase.  He stopped on the first landing to listen
+to the sound of rain on the glass skylight, that seemed to echo through
+the empty hall like the gloomy roll of a drum.  It was evident that the
+searching water had found out the secret sins of the house's
+construction, for there were great fissures of discoloration in the
+white and gold paper in the corners of the wall.  There was a strange
+odor of the dank forest in the mirrored drawing-room, as if the rain
+had brought out the sap again from the unseasoned timbers; the blue and
+white satin furniture looked cold, and the marble mantels and centre
+tables had taken upon themselves the clamminess of tombstones.  Mr.
+Mulrady, who had always retained his old farmer-like habit of taking
+off his coat with his hat on entering his own house, and appearing in
+his shirt-sleeves, to indicate domestic ease and security, was obliged
+to replace it, on account of the chill.  He had never felt at home in
+this room.  Its strangeness had lately been heightened by Mrs.
+Mulrady's purchase of a family portrait of some one she didn't know,
+but who, she had alleged, resembled her "Uncle Bob," which hung on the
+wall beside some paintings in massive frames.  Mr. Mulrady cast a
+hurried glance at the portrait that, on the strength of a high
+coat-collar and high top curl--both rolled with equal precision and
+singular sameness of color--had always glared at Mulrady as if HE was
+the intruder; and, passing through his wife's gorgeous bedroom, entered
+the little dressing-room, where he still slept on the smallest of cots,
+with hastily improvised surroundings, as if he was a bailiff in
+"possession."  He didn't linger here long, but, taking a key from a
+drawer, continued up the staircase, to the ominous funeral marches of
+the beating rain on the skylight, and paused on the landing to glance
+into his son's and daughter's bedrooms, duplicates of the bizarre
+extravagance below.  If he were seeking some characteristic traces of
+his absent family, they certainly were not here in the painted and
+still damp blazoning of their later successes.  He ascended another
+staircase, and, passing to the wing of the house, paused before a small
+door, which was locked.  Already the ostentatious decorations of wall
+and passages were left behind, and the plain lath-and-plaster partition
+of the attic lay before him.  He unlocked the door, and threw it open.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The apartment he entered was really only a lumber-room or loft over the
+wing of the house, which had been left bare and unfinished, and which
+revealed in its meagre skeleton of beams and joints the hollow sham of
+the whole structure.  But in more violent contrast to the fresher
+glories of the other part of the house were its contents, which were
+the heterogeneous collection of old furniture, old luggage, and
+cast-off clothing, left over from the past life in the old cabin.  It
+was a much plainer record of the simple beginnings of the family than
+Mrs. Mulrady cared to have remain in evidence, and for that reason it
+had been relegated to the hidden recesses of the new house, in the hope
+that it might absorb or digest it.  There were old cribs, in which the
+infant limbs of Mamie and Abner had been tucked up; old
+looking-glasses, that had reflected their shining, soapy faces, and
+Mamie's best chip Sunday hat; an old sewing-machine, that had been worn
+out in active service; old patchwork quilts; an old accordion, to whose
+long drawn inspirations Mamie had sung hymns; old pictures, books, and
+old toys.  There were one or two old chromos, and, stuck in an old
+frame, a colored print from the "Illustrated London News" of a
+Christmas gathering in an old English country house.  He stopped and
+picked up this print, which he had often seen before, gazing at it with
+a new and singular interest.  He wondered if Mamie had seen anything of
+this kind in England, and why couldn't he have had something like it
+here, in their own fine house, with themselves and a few friends?  He
+remembered a past Christmas, when he had bought Mamie that now headless
+doll with the few coins that were left him after buying their frugal
+Christmas dinner.  There was an old spotted hobby-horse that another
+Christmas had brought to Abner--Abner, who would be driving a fast
+trotter to-morrow at the Springs!  How everything had changed!  How
+they all had got up in the world, and how far beyond this kind of
+thing--and yet--yet it would have been rather comfortable to have all
+been together again here.  Would THEY have been more comfortable?  No!
+Yet then he might have had something to do, and been less lonely
+to-morrow. What of that?  He HAD something to do: to look after this
+immense fortune.  What more could a man want, or should he want?  It
+was rather mean in him, able to give his wife and children everything
+they wanted, to be wanting anything more.  He laid down the print
+gently, after dusting its glass and frame with his silk handkerchief,
+and slowly left the room.
+
+The drum-beat of the rain followed him down the staircase, but he shut
+it out with his other thoughts, when he again closed the door of his
+office.  He set diligently to work by the declining winter light, until
+he was interrupted by the entrance of his Chinese waiter to tell him
+that supper--which was the meal that Mulrady religiously adhered to in
+place of the late dinner of civilization--was ready in the dining-room.
+Mulrady mechanically obeyed the summons; but on entering the room the
+oasis of a few plates in a desert of white table-cloth which awaited
+him made him hesitate. In its best aspect, the high dark Gothic
+mahogany ecclesiastical sideboard and chairs of this room, which looked
+like the appointments of a mortuary chapel, were not exhilarating; and
+to-day, in the light of the rain-filmed windows and the feeble rays of
+a lamp half-obscured by the dark shining walls, it was most depressing.
+
+"You kin take up supper into my office," said Mulrady, with a sudden
+inspiration.  "I'll eat it there."
+
+He ate it there, with his usual healthy appetite, which did not require
+even the stimulation of company.  He had just finished, when his Irish
+cook--the one female servant of the house--came to ask permission to be
+absent that evening and the next day.
+
+"I suppose the likes of your honor won't be at home on the Christmas
+Day?  And it's me cousins from the old counthry at Rough-and-Ready that
+are invitin' me."
+
+"Why don't you ask them over here?" said Mulrady, with another vague
+inspiration.  "I'll stand treat."
+
+"Lord preserve you for a jinerous gintleman!  But it's the likes of
+them and myself that wouldn't be at home here on such a day."
+
+There was so much truth in this that Mulrady checked a sigh as he gave
+the required permission, without saying that he had intended to remain.
+He could cook his own breakfast: he had done it before; and it would be
+something to occupy him.  As to his dinner, perhaps he could go to the
+hotel at Rough-and-Ready.  He worked on until the night had well
+advanced.  Then, overcome with a certain restlessness that disturbed
+him, he was forced to put his books and papers away.  It had begun to
+blow in fitful gusts, and occasionally the rain was driven softly
+across the panes like the passing of childish fingers.  This disturbed
+him more than the monotony of silence, for he was not a nervous man.
+He seldom read a book, and the county paper furnished him only the
+financial and mercantile news which was part of his business.  He knew
+he could not sleep if he went to bed.  At last he rose, opened the
+window, and looked out from pure idleness of occupation.  A splash of
+wheels in the distant muddy road and fragments of a drunken song showed
+signs of an early wandering reveller.  There were no lights to be seen
+at the closed works; a profound darkness encompassed the house, as if
+the distant pines in the hollow had moved up and round it.  The silence
+was broken now only by the occasional sighing of wind and rain.  It was
+not an inviting night for a perfunctory walk; but an idea struck
+him--he would call upon the Slinns, and anticipate his next day's
+visit!  They would probably have company, and be glad to see him: he
+could tell the girls of Mamie and her success.  That he had not thought
+of this before was a proof of his usual self-contained isolation, that
+he thought of it now was an equal proof that he was becoming at last
+accessible to loneliness. He was angry with himself for what seemed to
+him a selfish weakness.
+
+He returned to his office, and, putting the envelope that had been
+lying on Slinn's desk in his pocket, threw a serape over his shoulders,
+and locked the front door of the house behind him.  It was well that
+the way was a familiar one to him, and that his feet instinctively
+found the trail, for the night was very dark.  At times he was warned
+only by the gurgling of water of little rivulets that descended the
+hill and crossed his path.  Without the slightest fear, and with
+neither imagination nor sensitiveness, he recalled how, the winter
+before, one of Don Caesar's vaqueros, crossing this hill at night, had
+fallen down the chasm of a landslip caused by the rain, and was found
+the next morning with his neck broken in the gully.  Don Caesar had to
+take care of the man's family.  Suppose such an accident should happen
+to him? Well, he had made his will.  His wife and children would be
+provided for, and the work of the mine would go on all the same; he had
+arranged for that.  Would anybody miss him?  Would his wife, or his
+son, or his daughter?  No.  He felt such a sudden and overwhelming
+conviction of the truth of this that he stopped as suddenly as if the
+chasm had opened before him.  No!  It was the truth.  If he were to
+disappear forever in the darkness of the Christmas night there was none
+to feel his loss.  His wife would take care of Mamie; his son would
+take care of himself, as he had before--relieved of even the scant
+paternal authority he rebelled against.  A more imaginative man than
+Mulrady would have combated or have followed out this idea, and then
+dismissed it; to the millionaire's matter-of-fact mind it was a
+deduction that, having once presented itself to his perception, was
+already a recognized fact.  For the first time in his life he felt a
+sudden instinct of something like aversion towards his family, a
+feeling that even his son's dissipation and criminality had never
+provoked.  He hurried on angrily through the darkness.
+
+It was very strange; the old house should be almost before him now,
+across the hollow, yet there were no indications of light!  It was not
+until he actually reached the garden fence, and the black bulk of
+shadow rose out against the sky, that he saw a faint ray of light from
+one of the lean-to windows.  He went to the front door and knocked.
+After waiting in vain for a reply, he knocked again. The second knock
+proving equally futile, he tried the door; it was unlocked, and,
+pushing it open, he walked in.  The narrow passage was quite dark, but
+from his knowledge of the house he knew the "lean-to" was next to the
+kitchen, and, passing through the dining-room into it, he opened the
+door of the little room from which the light proceeded.  It came from a
+single candle on a small table, and beside it, with his eyes moodily
+fixed on the dying embers of the fire, sat old Slinn.  There was no
+other light nor another human being in the whole house.
+
+For the instant Mulrady, forgetting his own feelings in the mute
+picture of the utter desolation of the helpless man, remained
+speechless on the threshold.  Then, recalling himself, he stepped
+forward and laid his hand gayly on the bowed shoulders.
+
+"Rouse up out o' this, old man!  Come! this won't do.  Look!  I've run
+over here in the rain, jist to have a sociable time with you all."
+
+"I knew it," said the old man, without looking up; "I knew you'd come."
+
+"You knew I'd come?" echoed Mulrady, with an uneasy return of the
+strange feeling of awe with which he regarded Slinn's abstraction.
+
+"Yes; you were alone--like myself--all alone!"
+
+"Then, why in thunder didn't you open the door or sing out just now?"
+he said, with an affected brusquerie to cover his uneasiness. "Where's
+your daughters?"
+
+"Gone to Rough-and-Ready to a party."
+
+"And your son?"
+
+"He never comes here when he can amuse himself elsewhere."
+
+"Your children might have stayed home on Christmas Eve."
+
+"So might yours."
+
+He didn't say this impatiently, but with a certain abstracted
+conviction far beyond any suggestion of its being a retort. Mulrady did
+not appear to notice it.
+
+"Well, I don't see why us old folks can't enjoy ourselves without
+them," said Mulrady, with affected cheerfulness.  "Let's have a good
+time, you and me.  Let's see--you haven't any one you can send to my
+house, hev you?"
+
+"They took the servant with them," said Slinn, briefly.  "There is no
+one here."
+
+"All right," said the millionaire, briskly.  "I'll go myself.  Do you
+think you can manage to light up a little more, and build a fire in the
+kitchen while I'm gone?  It used to be mighty comfortable in the old
+times."
+
+He helped the old man to rise from his chair, and seemed to have
+infused into him some of his own energy.  He then added, "Now, don't
+you get yourself down again into that chair until I come back," and
+darted out into the night once more.
+
+In a quarter of an hour he returned with a bag on his broad shoulders,
+which one of his porters would have shrunk from lifting, and laid it
+before the blazing hearth of the now lighted kitchen. "It's something
+the old woman got for her party, that didn't come off," he said,
+apologetically.  "I reckon we can pick out enough for a spread.  That
+darned Chinaman wouldn't come with me," he added, with a laugh,
+"because, he said, he'd knocked off work 'allee same, Mellican man!'
+Look here, Slinn," he said, with a sudden decisiveness, "my pay-roll of
+the men around here don't run short of a hundred and fifty dollars a
+day, and yet I couldn't get a hand to help me bring this truck over for
+my Christmas dinner."
+
+"Of course," said Slinn, gloomily.
+
+"Of course; so it oughter be," returned Mulrady, shortly.  "Why, it's
+only their one day out of 364; and I can have 363 days off, as I am
+their boss.  I don't mind a man's being independent," he continued,
+taking off his coat and beginning to unpack his sack--a common "gunny
+bag"--used for potatoes.  "We're independent ourselves, ain't we,
+Slinn?"
+
+His good spirits, which had been at first labored and affected, had
+become natural.  Slinn, looking at his brightened eye and fresher
+color, could not help thinking he was more like his own real self at
+this moment than in his counting-house and offices--with all his
+simplicity as a capitalist.  A less abstracted and more observant
+critic than Slinn would have seen in this patient aptitude for real
+work, and the recognition of the force of petty detail, the dominance
+of the old market-gardener in his former humble, as well as his later
+more ambitious, successes.
+
+"Heaven keep us from being dependent upon our children!" said Slinn,
+darkly.
+
+"Let the young ones alone to-night; we can get along without them, as
+they can without us," said Mulrady, with a slight twinge as he thought
+of his reflections on the hillside.  "But look here, there's some
+champagne and them sweet cordials that women like; there's jellies and
+such like stuff, about as good as they make 'em, I reckon; and
+preserves, and tongues, and spiced beef--take your pick!  Stop, let's
+spread them out."  He dragged the table to the middle of the floor, and
+piled the provisions upon it.  They certainly were not deficient in
+quality or quantity.  "Now, Slinn, wade in."
+
+"I don't feel hungry," said the invalid, who had lapsed again into a
+chair before the fire.
+
+"No more do I," said Mulrady; "but I reckon it's the right thing to do
+about this time.  Some folks think they can't be happy without they're
+getting outside o' suthin', and my directors down at 'Frisco can't do
+any business without a dinner.  Take some champagne, to begin with."
+
+He opened a bottle, and filled two tumblers.  "It's past twelve
+o'clock, old man, so here's a merry Christmas to you, and both of us ez
+is here.  And here's another to our families--ez isn't."
+
+They both drank their wine stolidly.  The rain beat against the windows
+sharply, but without the hollow echoes of the house on the hill.  "I
+must write to the old woman and Mamie, and say that you and me had a
+high old time on Christmas Eve."
+
+"By ourselves," added the invalid.
+
+Mr. Mulrady coughed.  "Nat'rally--by ourselves.  And her provisions,"
+he added, with a laugh.  "We're really beholden to HER for 'em.  If she
+hadn't thought of having them--"
+
+"For somebody else, you wouldn't have had them--would you?" said Slinn,
+slowly, gazing at the fire.
+
+"No," said Mulrady, dubiously.  After a pause he began more
+vivaciously, and as if to shake off some disagreeable thought that was
+impressing him, "But I mustn't forget to give you YOUR Christmas, old
+man, and I've got it right here with me."  He took the folded envelope
+from his pocket, and, holding it in his hand with his elbow on the
+table, continued, "I don't mind telling you what idea I had in giving
+you what I'm goin' to give you now.  I've been thinking about it for a
+day or two.  A man like you don't want money--you wouldn't spend it.  A
+man like you don't want stocks or fancy investments, for you couldn't
+look after them.  A man like you don't want diamonds and jewellery, nor
+a gold-headed cane, when it's got to be used as a crutch.  No, sir.
+What you want is suthin' that won't run away from you; that is always
+there before you and won't wear out, and will last after you're gone.
+That's land!  And if it wasn't that I have sworn never to sell or give
+away this house and that garden, if it wasn't that I've held out agin
+the old woman and Mamie on that point, you should have THIS house and
+THAT garden.  But, mebbee, for the same reason that I've told you, I
+want that land to keep for myself.  But I've selected four acres of the
+hill this side of my shaft, and here's the deed of it.  As soon as
+you're ready, I'll put you up a house as big as this--that shall be
+yours, with the land, as long as you live, old man; and after that your
+children's."
+
+"No; not theirs!" broke in the old man, passionately.  "Never!"
+
+Mulrady recoiled for an instant in alarm at the sudden and unexpected
+vehemence of his manner, "Go slow, old man; go slow," he said,
+soothingly.  "Of course, you'll do with your own as you like."  Then,
+as if changing the subject, he went on cheerfully: "Perhaps you'll
+wonder why I picked out that spot on the hillside. Well, first, because
+I reserved it after my strike in case the lead should run that way, but
+it didn't.  Next, because when you first came here you seemed to like
+the prospect.  You used to sit there looking at it, as if it reminded
+you of something.  You never said it did.  They say you was sitting on
+that boulder there when you had that last attack, you know; but," he
+added, gently, "you've forgotten all about it."
+
+"I have forgotten nothing," said Slinn, rising, with a choking voice.
+"I wish to God I had; I wish to God I could!"
+
+He was on his feet now, supporting himself by the table.  The subtle
+generous liquor he had drunk had evidently shaken his self-control, and
+burst those voluntary bonds he had put upon himself for the last six
+months; the insidious stimulant had also put a strange vigor into his
+blood and nerves.  His face was flushed, but not distorted; his eyes
+were brilliant, but not fixed; he looked as he might have looked to
+Masters in his strength three years before on that very hillside.
+
+"Listen to me, Alvin Mulrady," he said, leaning over him with burning
+eyes.  "Listen, while I have brain to think and strength to utter, why
+I have learnt to distrust, fear, and hate them!  You think you know my
+story.  Well, hear the truth from ME to-night, Alvin Mulrady, and do
+not wonder if I have cause."
+
+He stopped, and, with pathetic inefficiency, passed the fingers and
+inward-turned thumb of his paralyzed hand across his mouth, as if to
+calm himself.  "Three years ago I was a miner, but not a miner like
+you!  I had experience, I had scientific knowledge, I had a theory, and
+the patience and energy to carry it out.  I selected a spot that had
+all the indications, made a tunnel, and, without aid, counsel or
+assistance of any kind, worked it for six months, without rest or
+cessation, and with scarcely food enough to sustain my body.  Well, I
+made a strike; not like you, Mulrady, not a blunder of good luck, a
+fool's fortune--there, I don't blame you for it--but in perfect
+demonstration of my theory, the reward of my labor.  It was no pocket,
+but a vein, a lead, that I had regularly hunted down and found--a
+fortune!
+
+"I never knew how hard I had worked until that morning; I never knew
+what privations I had undergone until that moment of my success, when I
+found I could scarcely think or move!  I staggered out into the open
+air.  The only human soul near me was a disappointed prospector, a man
+named Masters, who had a tunnel not far away.  I managed to conceal
+from him my good fortune and my feeble state, for I was suspicious of
+him--of any one; and as he was going away that day I thought I could
+keep my secret until he was gone.  I was dizzy and confused, but I
+remember that I managed to write a letter to my wife, telling her of my
+good fortune, and begging her to come to me; and I remember that I saw
+Masters go.  I don't remember anything else.  They picked me up on the
+road, near that boulder, as you know."
+
+"I know," said Mulrady, with a swift recollection of the stage-driver's
+account of his discovery.
+
+"They say," continued Slinn, tremblingly, "that I never recovered my
+senses or consciousness for nearly three years; they say I lost my
+memory completely during my illness, and that by God's mercy, while I
+lay in that hospital, I knew no more than a babe; they say, because I
+could not speak or move, and only had my food as nature required it,
+that I was an imbecile, and that I never really came to my senses until
+after my son found me in the hospital.  They SAY that--but I tell you
+to-night, Alvin Mulrady," he said, raising his voice to a hoarse
+outcry, "I tell you that it is a lie!  I came to my senses a week after
+I lay on that hospital cot; I kept my senses and memory ever after
+during the three years that I was there, until Harry brought his cold,
+hypocritical face to my bedside and recognized me.  Do you understand?
+I, the possessor of millions, lay there a pauper.  Deserted by wife and
+children--a spectacle for the curious, a sport for the doctors--AND I
+KNEW IT!  I heard them speculate on the cause of my helplessness.  I
+heard them talk of excesses and indulgences--I, that never knew wine or
+woman!  I heard a preacher speak of the finger of God, and point to me.
+May God curse him!"
+
+"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, gently.
+
+"I heard them speak of me as a friendless man, an outcast, a
+criminal--a being whom no one would claim.  They were right; no one
+claimed me.  The friends of others visited them; relations came and
+took away their kindred; a few lucky ones got well; a few, equally
+lucky, died!  I alone lived on, uncared for, deserted.
+
+"The first year," he went on more rapidly, "I prayed for their coming.
+I looked for them every day.  I never lost hope.  I said to myself,
+'She has not got my letter; but when the time passes she will be
+alarmed by my silence, and then she will come or send some one to seek
+me.'  A young student got interested in my case, and, by studying my
+eyes, thought that I was not entirely imbecile and unconscious.  With
+the aid of an alphabet, he got me to spell my name and town in
+Illinois, and promised by signs to write to my family.  But in an evil
+moment I told him of my cursed fortune, and in that moment I saw that
+he thought me a fool and an idiot.  He went away, and I saw him no
+more.  Yet I still hoped.  I dreamed of their joy at finding me, and
+the reward that my wealth would give them.  Perhaps I was a little weak
+still, perhaps a little flighty, too, at times; but I was quite happy
+that year, even in my disappointment, for I had still hope!"
+
+He paused, and again composed his face with his paralyzed hand; but his
+manner had become less excited, and his voice was stronger.
+
+"A change must have come over me the second year, for I only dreaded
+their coming now and finding me so altered.  A horrible idea that they
+might, like the student, believe me crazy if I spoke of my fortune made
+me pray to God that they might not reach me until after I had regained
+my health and strength--and found my fortune.  When the third year
+found me still there--I no longer prayed for them--I cursed them!  I
+swore to myself that they should never enjoy my wealth; but I wanted to
+live, and let them know I had it.  I found myself getting stronger; but
+as I had no money, no friends, and nowhere to go, I concealed my real
+condition from the doctors, except to give them my name, and to try to
+get some little work to do to enable me to leave the hospital and seek
+my lost treasure.  One day I found out by accident that it had been
+discovered!  You understand--my treasure!--that had cost me years of
+labor and my reason; had left me a helpless, forgotten pauper. That
+gold I had never enjoyed had been found and taken possession of by
+another!"
+
+He checked an exclamation from Mulrady with his hand.  "They say they
+picked me up senseless from the floor, where I must have fallen when I
+heard the news--I don't remember--I recall nothing until I was
+confronted, nearly three weeks after, by my son, who had called at the
+hospital, as a reporter for a paper, and had accidentally discovered me
+through my name and appearance.  He thought me crazy, or a fool.  I
+didn't undeceive him.  I did not tell him the story of the mine to
+excite his doubts and derision, or, worse (if I could bring proof to
+claim it), have it perhaps pass into his ungrateful hands.  No; I said
+nothing.  I let him bring me here.  He could do no less, and common
+decency obliged him to do that."
+
+"And what proof could you show of your claim?" asked Mulrady, gravely.
+
+"If I had that letter--if I could find Masters," began Slinn, vaguely.
+
+"Have you any idea where the letter is, or what has become of Masters?"
+continued Mulrady, with a matter-of-fact gravity, that seemed to
+increase Slinn's vagueness and excite his irritability.
+
+"I don't know--I sometimes think--"  He stopped, sat down again, and
+passed his hands across his forehead.  "I have seen the letter
+somewhere since.  Yes," he went on, with sudden vehemence, "I know it,
+I have seen it!  I--"  His brows knitted, his features began to work
+convulsively; he suddenly brought his paralyzed hand down, partly
+opened, upon the table.  "I WILL remember where."
+
+"Go slow, old man; go slow."
+
+"You asked me once about my visions.  Well, that is one of them.  I
+remember a man somewhere showing me that letter.  I have taken it from
+his hands and opened it, and knew it was mine by the specimens of gold
+that were in it.  But where--or when--or what became of it, I cannot
+tell.  It will come to me--it MUST come to me soon."
+
+He turned his eyes upon Mulrady, who was regarding him with an
+expression of grave curiosity, and said bitterly, "You think me crazy.
+I know it.  It needed only this."
+
+"Where is this mine," asked Mulrady, without heeding him.
+
+The old man's eyes swiftly sought the ground.
+
+"It is a secret, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You have spoken of it to any one?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not to the man who possesses it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I wouldn't take it from him."
+
+"Why wouldn't you?"
+
+"Because that man is yourself!"
+
+In the instant of complete silence that followed they could hear that
+the monotonous patter of rain on the roof had ceased.
+
+"Then all this was in MY shaft, and the vein I thought I struck there
+was YOUR lead, found three years ago in YOUR tunnel.  Is that your
+idea?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then I don't sabe why you don't want to claim it."
+
+"I have told you why I don't want it for my children.  I go further,
+now, and I tell you, Alvin Mulrady, that I was willing that your
+children should squander it, as they were doing.  It has only been a
+curse to me; it could only be a curse to them; but I thought you were
+happy in seeing it feed selfishness and vanity. You think me bitter and
+hard.  Well, I should have left you in your fool's paradise, but that I
+saw to-night, when you came here, that your eyes had been opened like
+mine.  You, the possessor of my wealth, my treasure, could not buy your
+children's loving care and company with your millions, any more than I
+could keep mine in my poverty.  You were to-night lonely and forsaken,
+as I was.  We were equal, for the first time in our lives.  If that
+cursed gold had dropped down the shaft between us into the hell from
+which it sprang, we might have clasped hands like brothers across the
+chasm."
+
+Mulrady, who in a friendly show of being at his ease had not yet
+resumed his coat, rose in his shirt-sleeves, and, standing before the
+hearth, straightened his square figure by drawing down his waistcoat on
+each side with two powerful thumbs.  After a moment's contemplative
+survey of the floor between him and the speaker, he raised his eyes to
+Slinn.  They were small and colorless; the forehead above them was low,
+and crowned with a shock of tawny reddish hair; even the rude strength
+of his lower features was enfeebled by a long, straggling, goat-like
+beard; but for the first time in his life the whole face was impressed
+and transformed with a strong and simple dignity.
+
+"Ez far ez I kin see, Slinn," he said, gravely, "the pint between you
+and me ain't to be settled by our children, or wot we allow is doo and
+right from them to us.  Afore we preach at them for playing in the
+slumgullion, and gettin' themselves splashed, perhaps we mout ez well
+remember that that thar slumgullion comes from our own sluice-boxes,
+where we wash our gold.  So we'll just put THEM behind us, so," he
+continued, with a backward sweep of his powerful hand towards the
+chimney, "and goes on.  The next thing that crops up ahead of us is
+your three years in the hospital, and wot you went through at that
+time.  I ain't sayin' it wasn't rough on you, and that you didn't have
+it about as big as it's made; but ez you'll allow that you'd hev had
+that for three years, whether I'd found your mine or whether I hadn't,
+I think we can put THAT behind us, too.  There's nothin' now left to
+prospect but your story of your strike.  Well, take your own proofs.
+Masters is not here; and if he was, accordin' to your own story, he
+knows nothin' of your strike that day, and could only prove you were a
+disappointed prospector in a tunnel; your letter--that the person you
+wrote to never got--YOU can't produce; and if you did, would be only
+your own story without proof!  There is not a business man ez would
+look at your claim; there isn't a friend of yours that wouldn't believe
+you were crazy, and dreamed it all; there isn't a rival of yours ez
+wouldn't say ez you'd invented it.  Slinn, I'm a business man--I am
+your friend--I am your rival--but I don't think you're lyin'--I don't
+think you're crazy--and I'm not sure your claim ain't a good one!
+
+"Ef you reckon from that that I'm goin' to hand you over the mine
+to-morrow," he went on, after a pause, raising his hand with a
+deprecating gesture, "you're mistaken.  For your own sake, and the sake
+of my wife and children, you've got to prove it more clearly than you
+hev; but I promise you that from this night forward I will spare
+neither time nor money to help you to do it.  I have more than doubled
+the amount that you would have had, had you taken the mine the day you
+came from the hospital.  When you prove to me that your story is
+true--and we will find some way to prove it, if it IS true--that amount
+will be yours at once, without the need of a word from law or lawyers.
+If you want my name to that in black and white, come to the office
+to-morrow, and you shall have it."
+
+"And you think I'll take it now?" said the old man passionately. "Do
+you think that your charity will bring back my dead wife, the three
+years of my lost life, the love and respect of my children? Or do you
+think that your own wife and children, who deserted you in your wealth,
+will come back to you in your poverty?  No!  Let the mine stay, with
+its curse, where it is--I'll have none of it!"
+
+"Go slow, old man; go slow," said Mulrady, quietly, putting on his
+coat.  "You will take the mine if it is yours; if it isn't, I'll keep
+it.  If it is yours, you will give your children a chance to sho what
+they can do for you in your sudden prosperity, as I shall give mine a
+chance to show how they can stand reverse and disappointment.  If my
+head is level--and I reckon it is--they'll both pan out all right."
+
+He turned and opened the door.  With a quick revulsion of feeling,
+Slinn suddenly seized Mulrady's hand between both of his own, and
+raised it to his lips.  Mulrady smiled, disengaged his hand gently, and
+saying soothingly, "Go slow, old man; go slow," closed the door behind
+him, and passed out into the clear Christmas dawn.
+
+For the stars, with the exception of one that seemed to sparkle
+brightly over the shaft of his former fortunes, were slowly paling. A
+burden seemed to have fallen from his square shoulders as he stepped
+out sturdily into the morning air.  He had already forgotten the lonely
+man behind him, for he was thinking only of his wife and daughter.  And
+at the same moment they were thinking of him; and in their elaborate
+villa overlooking the blue Mediterranean at Cannes were discussing, in
+the event of Mamie's marriage with Prince Rosso e Negro, the
+possibility of Mr. Mulrady's paying two hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars, the gambling debts of that unfortunate but deeply
+conscientious nobleman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+When Alvin Mulrady reentered his own house, he no longer noticed its
+loneliness.  Whether the events of the last few hours had driven it
+from his mind, or whether his late reflections had repeopled it with
+his family under pleasanter auspices, it would be difficult to
+determine.  Destitute as he was of imagination, and matter-of-fact in
+his judgments, he realized his new situation as calmly as he would have
+considered any business proposition.  While he was decided to act upon
+his moral convictions purely, he was prepared to submit the facts of
+Slinn's claim to the usual patient and laborious investigation of his
+practical mind.  It was the least he could do to justify the ready and
+almost superstitious assent he had given to Slinn's story.
+
+When he had made a few memoranda at his desk by the growing light, he
+again took the key of the attic, and ascended to the loft that held the
+tangible memories of his past life.  If he was still under the
+influence of his reflections, it was with very different sensations
+that he now regarded them.  Was it possible that these ashes might be
+warmed again, and these scattered embers rekindled? His practical sense
+said No! whatever his wish might have been.  A sudden chill came over
+him; he began to realize the terrible change that was probable, more by
+the impossibility of his accepting the old order of things than by his
+voluntarily abandoning the new. His wife and children would never
+submit.  They would go away from this place, far away, where no
+reminiscence of either former wealth or former poverty could obtrude
+itself upon them.  Mamie--his Mamie--should never go back to the cabin,
+since desecrated by Slinn's daughters, and take their places.  No!  Why
+should she?--because of the half-sick, half-crazy dreams of an old
+vindictive man?
+
+He stopped suddenly.  In moodily turning over a heap of mining
+clothing, blankets, and india-rubber boots, he had come upon an old
+pickaxe--the one he had found in the shaft; the one he had carefully
+preserved for a year, and then forgotten!  Why had he not remembered it
+before?  He was frightened, not only at this sudden resurrection of the
+proof he was seeking, but at his own fateful forgetfulness.  Why had he
+never thought of this when Slinn was speaking?  A sense of shame, as if
+he had voluntarily withheld it from the wronged man, swept over him.
+He was turning away, when he was again startled.
+
+This time it was by a voice from below--a voice calling him--Slinn's
+voice.  How had the crippled man got here so soon, and what did he
+want?  He hurriedly laid aside the pick, which, in his first impulse,
+he had taken to the door of the loft with him, and descended the
+stairs.  The old man was standing at the door of his office awaiting
+him.
+
+As Mulrady approached, he trembled violently, and clung to the doorpost
+for support.
+
+"I had to come over, Mulrady," he said, in a choked voice; "I could
+stand it there no longer.  I've come to beg you to forget all that I
+have said; to drive all thought of what passed between us last night
+out of your head and mine forever!  I've come to ask you to swear with
+me that neither of us will ever speak of this again forever.  It is not
+worth the happiness I have had in your friendship for the last
+half-year; it is not worth the agony I have suffered in its loss in the
+last half-hour."
+
+Mulrady grasped his outstretched hand.  "P'raps," he said, gravely,
+"there mayn't be any use for another word, if you can answer one now.
+Come with me.  No matter," he added, as Slinn moved with difficulty; "I
+will help you."
+
+He half supported, half lifted the paralyzed man up the three flights
+of stairs, and opened the door of the loft.  The pick was leaning
+against the wall, where he had left it.  "Look around, and see if you
+recognize anything."
+
+The old man's eyes fell upon the implement in a half-frightened way,
+and then lifted themselves interrogatively to Mulrady's face.
+
+"Do you know that pick?"
+
+Slinn raised it in his trembling hands.  "I think I do; and yet--"
+
+"Slinn! is it yours?"
+
+"No," he said hurriedly.
+
+"Then what makes you think you know it?"
+
+"It has a short handle like one I've seen."
+
+"And is isn't yours?"
+
+"No.  The handle of mine was broken and spliced.  I was too poor to buy
+a new one."
+
+"Then you say that this pick which I found in my shaft is not yours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Slinn!"
+
+The old man passed his hand across his forehead, looked at Mulrady, and
+dropped his eyes.  "It is not mine," he said simply.
+
+"That will do," said Mulrady, gravely.
+
+"And you will not speak of this again?" said the old man, timidly.
+
+"I promise you--not until I have some more evidence."
+
+He kept his word, but not before he had extorted from Slinn as full a
+description of Masters as his imperfect memory and still more imperfect
+knowledge of his former neighbor could furnish.  He placed this, with a
+large sum of money and the promise of a still larger reward, in the
+hands of a trustworthy agent.  When this was done he resumed his old
+relations with Slinn, with the exception that the domestic letters of
+Mrs. Mulrady and Mamie were no longer a subject of comment, and their
+bills no longer passed through his private secretary's hands.
+
+Three months passed; the rainy season had ceased, the hillsides around
+Mulrady's shaft were bridal-like with flowers; indeed, there were
+rumors of an approaching fashionable marriage in the air, and vague
+hints in the "Record" that the presence of a distinguished capitalist
+might soon be required abroad.  The face of that distinguished man did
+not, however, reflect the gayety of nature nor the anticipation of
+happiness; on the contrary, for the past few weeks, he had appeared
+disturbed and anxious, and that rude tranquillity which had
+characterized him was wanting.  People shook their heads; a few
+suggested speculations; all agreed on extravagance.
+
+One morning, after office hours, Slinn, who had been watching the
+careworn face of his employer, suddenly rose and limped to his side.
+
+"We promised each other," he said, in a voice trembling with emotion;
+"never to allude to our talk of Christmas Eve again unless we had other
+proofs of what I told you then.  We have none; I don't believe we'll
+ever have any more.  I don't care if we ever do, and I break that
+promise now because I cannot bear to see you unhappy and know that this
+is the cause."
+
+Mulrady made a motion of deprecation, but the old man continued--
+
+"You are unhappy, Alvin Mulrady.  You are unhappy because you want to
+give your daughter a dowry of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
+and you will not use the fortune that you think may be mine."
+
+"Who's been talking about a dowry?" asked Mulrady, with an angry flush.
+
+"Don Caesar Alvarado told my daughter."
+
+"Then that is why he has thrown off on me since he returned," said
+Mulrady, with sudden small malevolence, "just that he might unload his
+gossip because Mamie wouldn't have him.  The old woman was right in
+warnin' me agin him."
+
+The outburst was so unlike him, and so dwarfed his large though common
+nature with its littleness, that it was easy to detect its feminine
+origin, although it filled Slinn with vague alarm.
+
+"Never mind him," said the old man, hastily; "what I wanted to say now
+is that I abandon everything to you and yours.  There are no proofs;
+there never will be any more than what we know, than what we have
+tested and found wanting.  I swear to you that, except to show you that
+I have not lied and am not crazy, I would destroy them on their way to
+your hands.  Keep the money, and spend it as you will.  Make your
+daughter happy, and, through her, yourself. You have made me happy
+through your liberality; don't make me suffer through your privation."
+
+"I tell you what, old man," said Mulrady, rising to his feet, with an
+awkward mingling of frankness and shame in his manner and accent, "I
+should like to pay that money for Mamie, and let her be a princess, if
+it would make her happy.  I should like to shut the lantern jaws of
+that Don Caesar, who'd be too glad if anything happened to break off
+Mamie's match.  But I shouldn't touch that capital--unless you'd lend
+it to me.  If you'll take a note from me, payable if the property ever
+becomes yours, I'd thank you.  A mortgage on the old house and garden,
+and the lands I bought of Don Caesar, outside the mine, will screen
+you."
+
+"If that pleases you," said the old man, with a smile, "have your way;
+and if I tear up the note, it does not concern you."
+
+It did please the distinguished capitalist of Rough-and-Ready; for the
+next few days his face wore a brightened expression, and he seemed to
+have recovered his old tranquillity.  There was, in fact, a slight
+touch of consequence in his manner, the first ostentation he had ever
+indulged in, when he was informed one morning at his private office
+that Don Caesar Alvarado was in the counting-house, desiring a few
+moments' conference.  "Tell him to come in," said Mulrady, shortly.
+The door opened upon Don Caesar--erect, sallow, and grave.  Mulrady had
+not seen him since his return from Europe, and even his inexperienced
+eyes were struck with the undeniable ease and grace with which the
+young Spanish-American had assimilated the style and fashion of an
+older civilization.  It seemed rather as if he had returned to a
+familiar condition than adopted a new one.
+
+"Take a cheer," said Mulrady.
+
+The young man looked at Slinn with quietly persistent significance.
+
+"You can talk all the same," said Mulrady, accepting the significance.
+"He's my private secretary."
+
+"It seems that for that reason we might choose another moment for our
+conversation," returned Don Caesar, haughtily.  "Do I understand you
+cannot see me now?"
+
+Mulrady hesitated, he had always revered and recognized a certain
+social superiority in Don Ramon Alvarado; somehow his son--a young man
+of half his age, and once a possible son-in-law--appeared to claim that
+recognition also.  He rose, without a word, and preceded Don Caesar
+up-stairs into the drawing-room.  The alien portrait on the wall seemed
+to evidently take sides with Don Caesar, as against the common
+intruder, Mulrady.
+
+"I hoped the Senora Mulrady might have saved me this interview," said
+the young man, stiffly; "or at least have given you some intimation of
+the reason why I seek it.  As you just now proposed my talking to you
+in the presence of the unfortunate Senor Esslinn himself, it appears
+she has not."
+
+"I don't know what you're driving at, or what Mrs. Mulrady's got to do
+with Slinn or you," said Mulrady, in angry uneasiness.
+
+"Do I understand," said Don Caesar, sternly, "that Senora Mulrady has
+not told you that I entrusted to her an important letter, belonging to
+Senor Esslinn, which I had the honor to discover in the wood six months
+ago, and which she said she would refer to you?"
+
+"Letter?" echoed Mulrady, slowly; "my wife had a letter of Slinn's?"
+
+Don Caesar regarded the millionaire attentively.  "It is as I feared,"
+he said, gravely.  "You do not know or you would not have remained
+silent."  He then briefly recounted the story of his finding Slinn's
+letter, his exhibition of it to the invalid, its disastrous effect upon
+him, and his innocent discovery of the contents.  "I believed myself at
+that time on the eve of being allied with your family, Senor Mulrady,"
+he said, haughtily; "and when I found myself in the possession of a
+secret which affected its integrity and good name, I did not choose to
+leave it in the helpless hands of its imbecile owner, or his sillier
+children, but proposed to trust it to the care of the Senora, that she
+and you might deal with it as became your honor and mine.  I followed
+her to Paris, and gave her the letter there.  She affected to laugh at
+any pretension of the writer, or any claim he might have on your
+bounty; but she kept the letter, and, I fear, destroyed it.  You will
+understand, Senor Mulrady, that when I found that my attentions were no
+longer agreeable to your daughter, I had no longer the right to speak
+to you on the subject, nor could I, without misapprehension, force her
+to return it.  I should have still kept the secret to myself, if I had
+not since my return here made the nearer acquaintance of Senor
+Esslinn's daughters.  I cannot present myself at his house, as a suitor
+for the hand of the Senorita Vashti, until I have asked his absolution
+for my complicity in the wrong that has been done to him.  I cannot, as
+a caballero, do that without your permission.  It is for that purpose I
+am here."
+
+It needed only this last blow to complete the humiliation that whitened
+Mulrady's face.  But his eye was none the less clear and his voice none
+the less steady as he turned to Don Caesar.
+
+"You know perfectly the contents of that letter?"
+
+"I have kept a copy of it."
+
+"Come with me."
+
+He preceded his visitor down the staircase and back into his private
+office.  Slinn looked up at his employer's face in unrestrained
+anxiety.  Mulrady sat down at his desk, wrote a few hurried lines, and
+rang a bell.  A manager appeared from the counting-room.
+
+"Send that to the bank."
+
+He wiped his pen as methodically as if he had not at that moment
+countermanded the order to pay his daughter's dowry, and turned quietly
+to Slinn.
+
+"Don Caesar Alvarado has found the letter you wrote your wife on the
+day you made your strike in the tunnel that is now my shaft. He gave
+the letter to Mrs. Mulrady; but he has kept a copy."
+
+Unheeding the frightened gesture of entreaty from Slinn, equally with
+the unfeigned astonishment of Don Caesar, who was entirely unprepared
+for this revelation of Mulrady's and Slinn's confidences, he continued,
+"He has brought the copy with him.  I reckon it would be only square
+for you to compare it with what you remember of the original."
+
+In obedience to a gesture from Mulrady, Don Caesar mechanically took
+from his pocket a folded paper, and handed it to the paralytic.  But
+Slinn's trembling fingers could scarcely unfold the paper; and as his
+eyes fell upon its contents, his convulsive lips could not articulate a
+word.
+
+"P'raps I'd better read it for you," said Mulrady, gently.  "You kin
+follow me and stop me when I go wrong."
+
+He took the paper, and, in dead silence, read as follows:--
+
+"DEAR WIFE,--I've just struck gold in my tunnel, and you must get ready
+to come here with the children, at once.  It was after six months' hard
+work; and I'm so weak I . . .  It's a fortune for us all.  We should be
+rich even if it were only a branch vein dipping west towards the next
+tunnel, instead of dipping east, according to my theory--"
+
+"Stop!" said Slinn, in a voice that shook the room.
+
+Mulrady looked up.
+
+"It's wrong, ain't it?" he asked, anxiously; "it should be EAST towards
+the next tunnel."
+
+"No!  IT'S RIGHT!  I am wrong!  We're all wrong!"
+
+Slinn had risen to his feet, erect and inspired.  "Don't you see," he
+almost screamed, with passionate vehemence, "it's MASTERS' ABANDONED
+TUNNEL your shaft has struck?  Not mine!  It was Masters' pick you
+found!  I know it now!"
+
+"And your own tunnel?" said Mulrady, springing to his feet in
+excitement.  "And YOUR strike?"
+
+"Is still there!"
+
+The next instant, and before another question could be asked, Slinn had
+darted from the room.  In the exaltation of that supreme discovery he
+regained the full control of his mind and body. Mulrady and Don Caesar,
+no less excited, followed him precipitately, and with difficulty kept
+up with his feverish speed.  Their way lay along the base of the hill
+below Mulrady's shaft, and on a line with Masters' abandoned tunnel.
+Only once he stopped to snatch a pick from the hand of an astonished
+Chinaman at work in a ditch, as he still kept on his way, a quarter of
+a mile beyond the shaft.  Here he stopped before a jagged hole in the
+hillside.  Bared to the sky and air, the very openness of its
+abandonment, its unpropitious position, and distance from the strike in
+Mulrady's shaft had no doubt preserved its integrity from wayfarer or
+prospector.
+
+"You can't go in there alone, and without a light," said Mulrady,
+laying his hand on the arm of the excited man.  "Let me get more help
+and proper tools."
+
+"I know every step in the dark as in the daylight," returned Slinn,
+struggling.  "Let me go, while I have yet strength and reason! Stand
+aside!"
+
+He broke from them, and the next moment was swallowed up in the yawning
+blackness.  They waited with bated breath until, after a seeming
+eternity of night and silence, they heard his returning footsteps, and
+ran forward to meet him.  As he was carrying something clasped to his
+breast, they supported him to the opening. But at the same moment the
+object of his search and his burden, a misshapen wedge of gold and
+quartz, dropped with him, and both fell together with equal immobility
+to the ground.  He had still strength to turn his fading eyes to the
+other millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, who leaned over him.
+
+"You--see," he gasped, brokenly, "I was not--crazy!"
+
+No.  He was dead!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready, by Bret Harte
+
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