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+Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Trust & Other Stories, by Harte
+#16 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Trent's Trust and Other Stories
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+January, 2001  [Etext #2459]
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Trust & Other Stories, by Harte
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+
+TRENT'S TRUST AND OTHER STORIES
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+TRENT'S TRUST
+
+MR. MACGLOWRIE'S WIDOW
+
+A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE
+
+PROSPER'S "OLD MOTHER"
+
+THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN
+
+A PUPIL OF CHESTNUT RIDGE
+
+DICK BOYLE'S BUSINESS CARD
+
+
+
+TRENT'S TRUST
+
+I
+
+Randolph Trent stepped from the Stockton boat on the San Francisco
+wharf, penniless, friendless, and unknown.  Hunger might have been
+added to his trials, for, having paid his last coin in passage
+money, he had been a day and a half without food.  Yet he knew it
+only by an occasional lapse into weakness as much mental as
+physical.  Nevertheless, he was first on the gangplank to land, and
+hurried feverishly ashore, in that vague desire for action and
+change of scene common to such irritation; yet after mixing for a
+few moments with the departing passengers, each selfishly hurrying
+to some rendezvous of rest or business, he insensibly drew apart
+from them, with the instinct of a vagabond and outcast.  Although
+he was conscious that he was neither, but merely an unsuccessful
+miner suddenly reduced to the point of soliciting work or alms of
+any kind, he took advantage of the first crossing to plunge into a
+side street, with a vague sense of hiding his shame.
+
+A rising wind, which had rocked the boat for the last few hours,
+had now developed into a strong sou'wester, with torrents of rain
+which swept the roadway.  His well-worn working clothes, fitted to
+the warmer Southern mines, gave him more concern from their
+visible, absurd contrast to the climate than from any actual sense
+of discomfort, and his feverishness defied the chill of his soaking
+garments, as he hurriedly faced the blast through the dimly lighted
+street.  At the next corner he paused; he had reached another, and,
+from its dilapidated appearance, apparently an older wharf than
+that where he had landed, but, like the first, it was still a
+straggling avenue leading toward the higher and more animated part
+of the city.  He again mechanically--for a part of his trouble was
+a vague, undefined purpose--turned toward it.
+
+In his feverish exaltation his powers of perception seemed to be
+quickened: he was vividly alive to the incongruous, half-marine,
+half-backwoods character of the warehouses and commercial
+buildings; to the hull of a stranded ship already built into a
+block of rude tenements; to the dark stockaded wall of a house
+framed of corrugated iron, and its weird contiguity to a Swiss
+chalet, whose galleries were used only to bear the signs of the
+shops, and whose frame had been carried across seas in sections to
+be set up at random here.
+
+Moving past these, as in a nightmare dream, of which even the
+turbulency of the weather seemed to be a part, he stumbled,
+blinded, panting, and unexpectedly, with no consciousness of his
+rapid pace beyond his breathlessness, upon the dazzling main
+thoroughfare of the city.  In spite of the weather, the slippery
+pavements were thronged by hurrying crowds of well-dressed people,
+again all intent on their own purposes,--purposes that seemed so
+trifling and unimportant beside his own.  The shops were
+brilliantly lighted, exposing their brightest wares through plate-
+glass windows; a jeweler's glittered with precious stones; a
+fashionable apothecary's next to it almost outrivaled it with its
+gorgeous globes, the gold and green precision of its shelves, and
+the marble and silver soda fountain like a shrine before it.  All
+this specious show of opulence came upon him with the shock of
+contrast, and with it a bitter revulsion of feeling more hopeless
+than his feverish anxiety,--the bitterness of disappointment.
+
+For during his journey he had been buoyed up with the prospect of
+finding work and sympathy in this youthful city,--a prospect
+founded solely on his inexperienced hopes.  For this he had
+exchanged the poverty of the mining district,--a poverty that had
+nothing ignoble about it, that was a part of the economy of nature,
+and shared with his fellow men and the birds and beasts in their
+rude encampments.  He had given up the brotherhood of the miner,
+and that practical help and sympathy which brought no degradation
+with it, for this rude shock of self-interested, self-satisfied
+civilization.  He, who would not have shrunk from asking rest,
+food, or a night's lodging at the cabin of a brother miner or
+woodsman, now recoiled suddenly from these well-dressed citizens.
+What madness had sent him here, an intruder, or, even, as it seemed
+to him in his dripping clothes, an impostor?  And yet these were
+the people to whom he had confidently expected to tell his story,
+and who would cheerfully assist him with work!  He could almost
+anticipate the hard laugh or brutal hurried negative in their
+faces.  In his foolish heart he thanked God he had not tried it.
+Then the apathetic recoil which is apt to follow any keen emotion
+overtook him.  He was dazedly conscious of being rudely shoved once
+or twice, and even heard the epithet "drunken lout" from one who
+had run against him.
+
+He found himself presently staring vacantly in the apothecary's
+window.  How long he stood there he could not tell, for he was
+aroused only by the door opening in front of him, and a young girl
+emerging with some purchase in her hand.  He could see that she was
+handsomely dressed and quite pretty, and as she passed out she
+lifted to his withdrawing figure a pair of calm, inquiring eyes,
+which, however, changed to a look of half-wondering, half-amused
+pity as she gazed.  Yet that look of pity stung his pride more
+deeply than all.  With a deliberate effort he recovered his energy.
+No, he would not beg, he would not ask assistance from these
+people; he would go back--anywhere!  To the steamboat first; they
+might let him sleep there, give him a meal, and allow him to work
+his passage back to Stockton.  He might be refused.  Well, what
+then?  Well, beyond, there was the bay!  He laughed bitterly--his
+mind was sane enough for that--but he kept on repeating it vaguely
+to himself, as he crossed the street again, and once more made his
+way to the wharf.
+
+The wind and rain had increased, but he no longer heeded them in
+his feverish haste and his consciousness that motion could alone
+keep away that dreadful apathy which threatened to overcloud his
+judgment.  And he wished while he was able to reason logically to
+make up his mind to end this unsupportable situation that night.
+He was scarcely twenty, yet it seemed to him that it had already
+been demonstrated that his life was a failure; he was an orphan,
+and when he left college to seek his own fortune in California, he
+believed he had staked his all upon that venture--and lost.
+
+That bitterness which is the sudden recoil of boyish enthusiasm,
+and is none the less terrible for being without experience to
+justify it,--that melancholy we are too apt to look back upon with
+cynical jeers and laughter in middle age,--is more potent than we
+dare to think, and it was in no mere pose of youthful pessimism
+that Randolph Trent now contemplated suicide.  Such scraps of
+philosophy as his education had given him pointed to that one
+conclusion.  And it was the only refuge that pride--real or false--
+offered him from the one supreme terror of youth--shame.
+
+The street was deserted, and the few lights he had previously noted
+in warehouses and shops were extinguished.  It had grown darker
+with the storm; the incongruous buildings on either side had become
+misshapen shadows; the long perspective of the wharf was a strange
+gloom from which the spars of a ship stood out like the cross he
+remembered as a boy to have once seen in a picture of the tempest-
+smitten Calvary.  It was his only fancy connected with the future--
+it might have been his last, for suddenly one of the planks of the
+rotten wharf gave way beneath his feet, and he felt himself
+violently precipitated toward the gurgling and oozing tide below.
+He threw out his arms desperately, caught at a strong girder, drew
+himself up with the energy of desperation, and staggered to his
+feet again, safe--and sane.  For with this terrible automatic
+struggle to avoid that death he was courting came a flash of
+reason.  If he had resolutely thrown himself from the pier head as
+he intended, would he have undergone a hopeless revulsion like
+this?  Was he sure that this might not be, after all, the terrible
+penalty of self-destruction--this inevitable fierce protest of mind
+and body when TOO LATE?  He was momentarily touched with a sense of
+gratitude at his escape, but his reason told him it was not from
+his ACCIDENT, but from his intention.
+
+He was trying carefully to retrace his steps, but as he did so he
+saw the figure of a man dimly lurching toward him out of the
+darkness of the wharf and the crossed yards of the ship.  A gleam
+of hope came over him, for the emotion of the last few minutes had
+rudely displaced his pride and self-love.  He would appeal to this
+stranger, whoever he was; there was more chance that in this rude
+locality he would be a belated sailor or some humbler wayfarer, and
+the darkness and solitude made him feel less ashamed.  By the last
+flickering street lamp he could see that he was a man about his own
+size, with something of the rolling gait of a sailor, which was
+increased by the weight of a traveling portmanteau he was swinging
+in his hand.  As he approached he evidently detected Randolph's
+waiting figure, slackened his speed slightly, and changed his
+portmanteau from his right hand to his left as a precaution for
+defense.
+
+Randolph felt the blood flush his cheek at this significant proof
+of his disreputable appearance, but determined to accost him.  He
+scarcely recognized the sound of his own voice now first breaking
+the silence for hours, but he made his appeal.  The man listened,
+made a slight gesture forward with his disengaged hand, and
+impelled Randolph slowly up to the street lamp until it shone on
+both their faces.  Randolph saw a man a few years his senior, with
+a slightly trimmed beard on his dark, weather-beaten cheeks, well-
+cut features, a quick, observant eye, and a sailor's upward glance
+and bearing.  The stranger saw a thin, youthful, anxious, yet
+refined and handsome face beneath straggling damp curls, and dark
+eyes preternaturally bright with suffering.  Perhaps his
+experienced ear, too, detected some harmony with all this in
+Randolph's voice.
+
+"And you want something to eat, a night's lodging, and a chance of
+work afterward," the stranger repeated with good-humored
+deliberation.
+
+"Yes," said Randolph.
+
+"You look it."
+
+Randolph colored faintly.
+
+"Do you ever drink?"
+
+"Yes," said Randolph wonderingly.
+
+"I thought I'd ask," said the stranger, "as it might play hell with
+you just now if you were not accustomed to it.  Take that.  Just a
+swallow, you know--that's as good as a jugful."
+
+He handed him a heavy flask.  Randolph felt the burning liquor
+scald his throat and fire his empty stomach.  The stranger turned
+and looked down the vacant wharf to the darkness from which he
+came.  Then he turned to Randolph again and said abruptly,--
+
+"Strong enough to carry this bag?"
+
+"Yes," said Randolph.  The whiskey--possibly the relief--had given
+him new strength.  Besides, he might earn his alms.
+
+"Take it up to room 74, Niantic Hotel--top of next street to this,
+one block that way--and wait till I come."
+
+"What name shall I say?" asked Randolph.
+
+"Needn't say any.  I ordered the room a week ago.  Stop; there's
+the key.  Go in; change your togs; you'll find something in that
+bag that'll fit you.  Wait for me.  Stop--no; you'd better get some
+grub there first."  He fumbled in his pockets, but fruitlessly.
+"No matter.  You'll find a buckskin purse, with some scads in it,
+in the bag.  So long."  And before Randolph could thank him, he
+lurched away again into the semi-darkness of the wharf.
+
+Overflowing with gratitude at a hospitality so like that of his
+reckless brethren of the mines, Randolph picked up the portmanteau
+and started for the hotel.  He walked warily now, with a new
+interest in life, and then, suddenly thinking of his own miraculous
+escape, he paused, wondering if he ought not to warn his benefactor
+of the perils of the rotten wharf; but he had already disappeared.
+The bag was not heavy, but he found that in his exhausted state
+this new exertion was telling, and he was glad when he reached the
+hotel.  Equally glad was he in his dripping clothes to slip by the
+porter, and with the key in his pocket ascend unnoticed to 74.
+
+Yet had his experience been larger he might have spared himself
+that sensitiveness.  For the hotel was one of those great
+caravansaries popular with the returning miner.  It received him
+and his gold dust in his worn-out and bedraggled working clothes,
+and returned him the next day as a well-dressed citizen on
+Montgomery Street.  It was hard indeed to recognize the unshaven,
+unwashed, and unkempt "arrival" one met on the principal staircase
+at night in the scrupulously neat stranger one sat opposite to at
+breakfast the next morning.  In this daily whirl of mutation all
+identity was swamped, as Randolph learned to know.
+
+At present, finding himself in a comfortable bedroom, his first act
+was to change his wet clothes, which in the warmer temperature and
+the decline of his feverishness now began to chill him.  He opened
+the portmanteau and found a complete suit of clothing, evidently a
+foreign make, well preserved, as if for "shore-going."  His pride
+would have preferred a humbler suit as lessening his obligation,
+but there was no other.  He discovered the purse, a chamois leather
+bag such as miners and travelers carried, which contained a dozen
+gold pieces and some paper notes.  Taking from it a single coin to
+defray the expenses of a meal, he restrapped the bag, and leaving
+the key in the door lock for the benefit of his returning host,
+made his way to the dining room.
+
+For a moment he was embarrassed when the waiter approached him
+inquisitively, but it was only to learn the number of his room to
+"charge" the meal.  He ate it quickly, but not voraciously, for his
+appetite had not yet returned, and he was eager to get back to the
+room and see the stranger again and return to him the coin which
+was no longer necessary.
+
+But the stranger had not yet arrived when he reached the room.
+Over an hour had elapsed since their strange meeting.  A new fear
+came upon him: was it possible he had mistaken the hotel, and his
+benefactor was awaiting him elsewhere, perhaps even beginning to
+suspect not only his gratitude but his honesty!  The thought made
+him hot again, but he was helpless.  Not knowing the stranger's
+name, he could not inquire without exposing his situation to the
+landlord.  But again, there was the key, and it was scarcely
+possible that it fitted another 74 in another hotel.  He did not
+dare to leave the room, but sat by the window, peering through the
+streaming panes into the storm-swept street below.  Gradually the
+fatigue his excitement had hitherto kept away began to overcome
+him; his eyes once or twice closed during his vigil, his head
+nodded against the pane.  He rose and walked up and down the room
+to shake off his drowsiness.  Another hour passed--nine o'clock,
+blown in fitful, far-off strokes from some wind-rocked steeple.
+Still no stranger.  How inviting the bed looked to his weary eyes!
+The man had told him he wanted rest; he could lie down on the bed
+in his clothes until he came.  He would waken quickly and be ready
+for his benefactor's directions.  It was a great temptation.  He
+yielded to it.  His head had scarcely sunk upon the pillow before
+he slipped into a profound and dreamless sleep.
+
+He awoke with a start, and for a few moments lay vaguely staring at
+the sunbeams that stretched across his bed before he could recall
+himself.  The room was exactly as before, the portmanteau strapped
+and pushed under the table as he had left it.  There came a tap at
+the door--the chambermaid to do up the room.  She had been there
+once already, but seeing him asleep, she had forborne to wake him.
+Apparently the spectacle of a gentleman lying on the bed fully
+dressed, even to his boots, was not an unusual one at that hotel,
+for she made no comment.  It was twelve o'clock, but she would come
+again later.
+
+He was bewildered.  He had slept the round of the clock--that was
+natural after his fatigue--but where was his benefactor?  The
+lateness of the time forbade the conclusion that he had merely
+slept elsewhere; he would assuredly have returned by this time to
+claim his portmanteau.  The portmanteau!  He unstrapped it and
+examined the contents again.  They were undisturbed as he had left
+them the night before.  There was a further change of linen, the
+buckskin bag, which he could see now contained a couple of Bank of
+England notes, with some foreign gold mixed with American half-
+eagles, and a cheap, rough memorandum book clasped with elastic,
+containing a letter in a boyish hand addressed "Dear Daddy" and
+signed "Bobby," and a photograph of a boy taken by a foreign
+photographer at Callao, as the printed back denoted, but nothing
+giving any clue whatever to the name of the owner.
+
+A strange idea seized him: did the portmanteau really belong to the
+man who had given it to him?  Had he been the innocent receiver of
+stolen goods from some one who wished to escape detection?  He
+recalled now that he had heard stories of robbery of luggage by
+thieves "Sydney ducks"--on the deserted wharves, and remembered,
+too,--he could not tell why the thought had escaped him before,--
+that the man had spoken with an English accent.  But the next
+moment he recalled his frank and open manner, and his mind cleared
+of all unworthy suspicion.  It was more than likely that his
+benefactor had taken this delicate way of making a free, permanent
+gift for that temporary service.  Yet he smiled faintly at the
+return of that youthful optimism which had caused him so much
+suffering.
+
+Nevertheless, something must be done: he must try to find the man;
+still more important, he must seek work before this dubious loan
+was further encroached upon.  He restrapped the portmanteau and
+replaced it under the table, locked the door, gave the key to the
+office clerk, saying that any one who called upon him was to await
+his return, and sallied forth.  A fresh wind and a blue sky of
+scudding clouds were all that remained of last night's storm.  As
+he made his way to the fateful wharf, still deserted except by an
+occasional "wharf-rat,"--as the longshore vagrant or petty thief
+was called,--he wondered at his own temerity of last night, and the
+trustfulness of his friend in yielding up his portmanteau to a
+stranger in such a place.  A low drinking saloon, feebly disguised
+as a junk shop, stood at the corner, with slimy green steps leading
+to the water.
+
+The wharf was slowly decaying, and here and there were occasional
+gaps in the planking, as dangerous as the one from which he had
+escaped the night before.  He thought again of the warning he might
+have given to the stranger; but he reflected that as a seafaring
+man he must have been familiar with the locality where he had
+landed.  But had he landed there?  To Randolph's astonishment,
+there was no sign or trace of any late occupation of the wharf, and
+the ship whose crossyards he had seen dimly through the darkness
+the night before was no longer there.  She might have "warped out"
+in the early morning, but there was no trace of her in the stream
+or offing beyond.  A bark and brig quite dismantled at an adjacent
+wharf seemed to accent the loneliness.  Beyond, the open channel
+between him and Verba Buena Island was racing with white-maned seas
+and sparkling in the shifting sunbeams.  The scudding clouds above
+him drove down the steel-blue sky.  The lateen sails of the Italian
+fishing boats were like shreds of cloud, too, blown over the blue
+and distant bay.  His ears sang, his eyes blinked, his pulses
+throbbed, with the untiring, fierce activity of a San Francisco day.
+
+With something of its restlessness he hurried back to the hotel.
+Still the stranger was not there, and no one had called for him.
+The room had been put in order; the portmanteau, that sole
+connecting link with his last night's experience, was under the
+table.  He drew it out again, and again subjected it to a minute
+examination.  A few toilet articles, not of the best quality, which
+he had overlooked at first, the linen, the buckskin purse, the
+memorandum book, and the suit of clothes he stood in, still
+comprised all he knew of his benefactor.  He counted the money in
+the purse; it amounted, with the Bank of England notes, to about
+seventy dollars, as he could roughly guess.  There was a scrap of
+paper, the torn-off margin of a newspaper, lying in the purse, with
+an address hastily scribbled in pencil.  It gave, however, no name,
+only a number: "85 California Street."  It might be a clue.  He put
+it, with the purse, carefully in his pocket, and after hurriedly
+partaking of his forgotten breakfast, again started out.
+
+He presently found himself in the main thoroughfare of last night,
+which he now knew to be Montgomery Street.  It was more thronged
+than then, but he failed to be impressed, as then, with the selfish
+activity of the crowd.  Yet he was half conscious that his own
+brighter fortune, more decent attire, and satisfied hunger had
+something to do with this change, and he glanced hurriedly at the
+druggist's broad plate-glass windows, with a faint hope that the
+young girl whose amused pity he had awakened might be there again.
+He found California Street quickly, and in a few moments he stood
+before No. 85.  He was a little disturbed to find it a rather large
+building, and that it bore the inscription "Bank."  Then came the
+usual shock to his mercurial temperament, and for the first time he
+began to consider the absurd hopelessness of his clue.
+
+He, however, entered desperately, and approaching the window of the
+receiving teller, put the question he had formulated in his mind:
+Could they give him any information concerning a customer or
+correspondent who had just arrived in San Francisco and was putting
+up at the Niantic Hotel, room 74?  He felt his face flushing, but,
+to his astonishment, the clerk manifested no surprise.  "And you
+don't know his name?" said the clerk quietly.  "Wait a moment."  He
+moved away, and Randolph saw him speaking to one of the other
+clerks, who consulted a large register.  In a few minutes he
+returned.  "We don't have many customers," he began politely, "who
+leave only their hotel-room addresses," when he was interrupted by
+a mumbling protest from one of the other clerks.  "That's very
+different," he replied to his fellow clerk, and then turned to
+Randolph.  "I'm afraid we cannot help you; but I'll make other
+inquiries if you'll come back in ten minutes."  Satisfied to be
+relieved from the present perils of his questioning, and doubtful
+of returning, Randolph turned away.  But as he left the building he
+saw a written notice on the swinging door, "Wanted: a Night
+Porter;" and this one chance of employment determined his return.
+
+When he again presented himself at the window the clerk motioned
+him to step inside through a lifted rail.  Here he found himself
+confronted by the clerk and another man, distinguished by a certain
+air of authority, a keen gray eye, and singularly compressed lips
+set in a closely clipped beard.  The clerk indicated him
+deferentially but briefly--everybody was astonishingly brief and
+businesslike there--as the president.  The president absorbed and
+possessed Randolph with eyes that never seemed to leave him.  Then
+leaning back against the counter, which he lightly grasped with
+both hands, he said: "We've sent to the Niantic Hotel to inquire
+about your man.  He ordered his room by letter, giving no name.  He
+arrived there on time last night, slept there, and has occupied the
+room No. 74 ever since.  WE don't know him from Adam, but"--his
+eyes never left Randolph's--"from the description the landlord gave
+our clerk, you're the man himself."
+
+For an instant Randolph flushed crimson.  The natural mistake of
+the landlord flashed upon him, his own stupidity in seeking this
+information, the suspicious predicament in which he was now placed,
+and the necessity of telling the whole truth.  But the president's
+eye was at once a threat and an invitation.  He felt himself
+becoming suddenly cool, and, with a business brevity equal to their
+own, said:--
+
+"I was looking for work last night on the wharf.  He employed me to
+carry his bag to the hotel, saying I was to wait for him.  I have
+waited since nine o'clock last night in his room, and he has not
+come."
+
+"What are you in such a d----d hurry for?  He's trusted you; can't
+you trust him?  You've got his bag?" returned the president.
+
+Randolph was silent for a moment.  "I want to know what to do with
+it," he said.
+
+"Hang on to it.  What's in it?"
+
+"Some clothes and a purse containing about seventy dollars."
+
+"That ought to pay you for carrying it and storage afterward," said
+the president decisively.  "What made you come here?"
+
+"I found this address in the purse," said Randolph, producing it.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that's the only reason you came here, to find an owner for
+that bag?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The president disengaged himself from the counter.
+
+"I'm sorry to have given you so much trouble," said Randolph
+concludingly.  "Thank you and good-morning."
+
+"Good-morning."
+
+As Randolph turned away he remembered the advertisement for the
+night watchman.  He hesitated and turned back.  He was a little
+surprised to find that the president had not gone away, but was
+looking after him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, but I see you want a night watchman.  Could I
+do?" said Randolph resolutely.
+
+"No.  You're a stranger here, and we want some one who knows the
+city,--  Dewslake," he returned to the receiving teller, "who's
+taken Larkin's place?"
+
+"No one yet," returned the teller, "but," he added parenthetically,
+"Judge Boompointer, you know, was speaking to you about his son."
+
+"Yes, I know that."  To Randolph: "Go round to my private room and
+wait for me.  I won't be as long as your friend last night."  Then
+he added to a negro porter, "Show him round there."
+
+He moved away, stopping at one or two desks to give an order to the
+clerks, and once before the railing to speak to a depositor.
+Randolph followed the negro into the hall, through a "board room,"
+and into a handsomely furnished office.  He had not to wait long.
+In a few moments the president appeared with an older man whose
+gray side whiskers, cut with a certain precision, and whose black
+and white checked neckerchief, tied in a formal bow, proclaimed the
+English respectability of the period.  At the president's dictation
+he took down Randolph's name, nativity, length of residence, and
+occupation in California.  This concluded, the president, glancing
+at his companion, said briefly,--
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He had better come to-morrow morning at nine," was the answer.
+
+"And ask for Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager," added the
+president, with a gesture that was at once an introduction and a
+dismissal to both.
+
+Randolph had heard before of this startling brevity of San
+Francisco business detail, yet he lingered until the door closed on
+Mr. Dingwall.  His heart was honestly full.
+
+"You have been very kind, sir," he stammered.
+
+"I haven't run half the risks of that chap last night," said the
+president grimly, the least tremor of a smile on his set mouth.
+
+"If you would only let me know what I can do to thank you,"
+persisted Randolph.
+
+"Trust the man that trusts you, and hang on to your trust," returned
+the president curtly, with a parting nod.
+
+Elated and filled with high hopes as Randolph was, he felt some
+trepidation in returning to his hotel.  He had to face his landlord
+with some explanation of the bank's inquiry.  The landlord might
+consider him an impostor, and request him to leave, or, more
+dreadful still, insist upon keeping the bag.  He thought of the
+parting words of the president, and resolved upon "hanging on to
+his trust," whatever happened.  But he was agreeably surprised to
+find that he was received at the office with a certain respect not
+usually shown to the casual visitor. "Your caller turned up to-
+day"--Randolph started--"from the Eureka bank," continued the
+clerk.  "Sorry we could not give your name, but you know you only
+left a deposit in your letter and sent a messenger for your key
+yesterday afternoon.  When you came you went straight to your room.
+Perhaps you would like to register now."  Randolph no longer
+hesitated, reflecting that he could explain it all later to his
+unknown benefactor, and wrote his name boldly.  But he was still
+more astonished when the clerk continued: "I reckon it was a case
+of identifying you for a draft--it often happens here--and we'd
+have been glad to do it for you.  But the bank clerk seemed
+satisfied with out description of you--you're easily described, you
+know (this in a parenthesis, complimentarily intended)--"so it's
+all right.  We can give you a better room lower down, if you're
+going to stay longer."  Not knowing whether to laugh or to be
+embarrassed at this extraordinary conclusion of the blunder,
+Randolph answered that he had just come from the bank, adding, with
+a pardonable touch of youthful pride, that he was entering the
+bank’s employment the next day.
+
+Another equally agreeable surprise met him on his arrival there the
+next morning.  Without any previous examination or trial he was
+installed at once as a corresponding clerk in the place of one just
+promoted to a sub-agency in the interior.  His handwriting, his
+facility of composition, had all been taken for granted, or perhaps
+predicated upon something the president had discerned in that one
+quick, absorbing glance.  He ventured to express the thought to
+his neighbor.
+
+"The boss," said that gentleman, "can size a man in and out, and
+all through, in about the time it would take you and me to tell the
+color of his hair.  HE don’t make mistakes, you bet; but old Dingy--
+the dep--you settled with your clothes."
+
+"My clothes!" echoed Randolph, with a faint flush.
+
+"Yes, English cut--that fetched him."
+
+And so his work began.  His liberal salary, which seemed to him
+munificent in comparison with his previous earnings in the mines,
+enabled him to keep the contents of the buckskin purse intact, and
+presently to return the borrowed suit of clothes to the
+portmanteau.  The mysterious owner should find everything as when
+he first placed it in his hands.  With the quick mobility of youth
+and his own rather mercurial nature, he had begun to forget, or
+perhaps to be a little ashamed of his keen emotions and sufferings
+the night of his arrival, until that night was recalled to him in a
+singular way.
+
+One Sunday a vague sense of duty to his still missing benefactor
+impelled him to spend part of his holiday upon the wharves.  He had
+rambled away among the shipping at the newer pier slips, and had
+gazed curiously upon decks where a few seamen or officers in their
+Sunday apparel smoked, paced, or idled, trying vainly to recognize
+the face and figure which had once briefly flashed out under the
+flickering wharf lamp.  Was the stranger a shipmaster who had
+suddenly transferred himself to another vessel on another voyage?
+A crowd which had gathered around some landing steps nearer shore
+presently attracted his attention.  He lounged toward it and looked
+over the shoulders of the bystanders down upon the steps.  A boat
+was lying there, which had just towed in the body of a man found
+floating on the water.  Its features were already swollen and
+defaced like a hideous mask; its body distended beyond all
+proportion, even to the bursting of its sodden clothing.  A
+tremulous fascination came over Randolph as he gazed.  The
+bystanders made their brief comments, a few authoritatively and
+with the air of nautical experts.
+
+"Been in the water about a week, I reckon."
+
+"'Bout that time; just rucked up and floated with the tide."
+
+"Not much chance o' spottin' him by his looks, eh?"
+
+"Nor anything else, you bet.  Reg'larly cleaned out.  Look at his
+pockets."
+
+"Wharf-rats or shanghai men?"
+
+"Betwixt and between, I reckon.  Man who found him says he's got an
+ugly cut just back of his head.  Ye can't see it for his floating
+hair."
+
+"Wonder if he got it before or after he got in the water."
+
+"That's for the coroner to say."
+
+"Much he knows or cares," said another cynically.  "It'll just be a
+case of 'Found drowned' and the regular twenty-five dollars to HIM,
+and five to the man who found the body.  That's enough for him to
+know."
+
+Thrilled with a vague anxiety, Randolph edged forward for a nearer
+view of the wretched derelict still gently undulating on the
+towline.  The closer he looked the more he was impressed by the
+idea of some frightful mask that hid a face that refused to be
+recognized.  But his attention became fixed on a man who was giving
+some advice or orders and examining the body scrutinizingly.
+Without knowing why, Randolph felt a sudden aversion to him, which
+was deepened when the man, lifting his head, met Randolph's eyes
+with a pair of shifting yet aggressive ones.  He bore,
+nevertheless, an odd, weird likeness to the missing man Randolph
+was seeking, which strangely troubled him.  As the stranger's eyes
+followed him and lingered with a singular curiosity on Randolph's
+dress, he remembered with a sudden alarm that he was wearing the
+suit of the missing man.  A quick impulse to conceal himself came
+upon him, but he as quickly conquered it, and returned the man's
+cold stare with an anger he could not account for, but which made
+the stranger avert his eyes.  Then the man got into the boat beside
+the boatman, and the two again towed away the corpse.  The head
+rose and fell with the swell, as if nodding a farewell.  But it was
+still defiant, under its shapeless mask, that even wore a smile, as
+if triumphant in its hideous secret.
+
+
+II
+
+
+The opinion of the cynical bystander on the wharf proved to be a
+correct one.  The coroner's jury brought in the usual verdict of
+"Found drowned," which was followed by the usual newspaper comment
+upon the insecurity of the wharves and the inadequate protection of
+the police.
+
+Randolph Trent read it with conflicting emotions.  The possibility
+he had conceived of the corpse being that of his benefactor was
+dismissed when he had seen its face, although he was sometimes
+tortured with doubt, and a wonder if he might not have learned more
+by attending the inquest.  And there was still the suggestion that
+the mysterious disappearance might have been accomplished by
+violence like this.  He was satisfied that if he had attempted
+publicly to identify the corpse as his missing friend he would have
+laid himself open to suspicion with a story he could hardly
+corroborate.
+
+He had once thought of confiding his doubts to Mr. Revelstoke, the
+bank president, but he had a dread of that gentleman's curt
+conclusions and remembered his injunction to "hang on to his
+trust."  Since his installation, Mr. Revelstoke had merely
+acknowledged his presence by a good-humored nod now and then,
+although Randolph had an instinctive feeling that he was perfectly
+informed as to his progress.  It was wiser for Randolph to confine
+himself strictly to his duty and keep his own counsel.
+
+Yet he was young, and it was not strange that in his idle moments
+his thoughts sometimes reverted to the pretty girl he had seen on
+the night of his arrival, nor that he should wish to parade his
+better fortune before her curious eyes.  Neither was it strange
+that in this city, whose day-long sunshine brought every one into
+the public streets, he should presently have that opportunity.  It
+chanced that one afternoon, being in the residential quarter, he
+noticed a well-dressed young girl walking before him in company
+with a delicate looking boy of seven or eight years.  Something in
+the carriage of her graceful figure, something in a certain
+consciousness and ostentation of coquetry toward her youthful
+escort, attracted his attention.  Yet it struck him that she was
+neither related to the child nor accustomed to children's ways, and
+that she somewhat unduly emphasized this to the passers-by,
+particularly those of his own sex, who seemed to be greatly
+attracted by her evident beauty.  Presently she ascended the steps
+of a handsome dwelling, evidently their home, and as she turned he
+saw her face.  It was the girl he remembered.  As her eye caught
+his, he blushed with the consciousness of their former meeting;
+yet, in the very embarrassment of the moment, he lifted his hat in
+recognition.  But the salutation was met only by a cold, critical
+stare.  Randolph bit his lip and passed on.  His reason told him
+she was right, his instinct told him she was unfair; the
+contradiction fascinated him.
+
+Yet he was destined to see her again.  A month later, while seated
+at his desk, which overlooked the teller's counter, he was startled
+to see her enter the bank and approach the counter.  She was
+already withdrawing a glove from her little hand, ready to affix
+her signature to the receipted form to be proffered by the teller.
+As she received the gold in exchange, he could see, by the
+increased politeness of that official, his evident desire to
+prolong the transaction, and the sidelong glances of his fellow
+clerks, that she was apparently no stranger but a recognized object
+of admiration.  Although her face was slightly flushed at the
+moment, Randolph observed that she wore a certain proud reserve,
+which he half hoped was intended as a check to these attentions.
+Her eyes were fixed upon the counter, and this gave him a brief
+opportunity to study her delicate beauty.  For in a few moments she
+was gone; whether she had in her turn observed him he could not
+say.  Presently he rose and sauntered, with what he believed was a
+careless air, toward the paying teller's counter and the receipt,
+which, being the last, was plainly exposed on the file of that
+day's "taking."  He was startled by a titter of laughter from the
+clerks and by the teller ironically lifting the file and placing it
+before him.
+
+"That's her name, sonny, but I didn't think that you'd tumble to it
+quite as quick as the others.  Every new man manages to saunter
+round here to get a sight of that receipt, and I've seen hoary old
+depositors outside edge around inside, pretendin' they wanted to
+see the dep, jest to feast their eyes on that girl's name.  Take a
+good look at it and paste a copy in your hat, for that's all you'll
+know of her, you bet.  Perhaps you think she's put her address and
+her 'at home' days on the receipt.  Look hard and maybe you'll see
+'em."
+
+The instinct of youthful retaliation to say he knew her address
+already stirred Randolph, but he shut his lips in time, and moved
+away.  His desk neighbor informed him that the young lady came
+there once a month and drew a hundred dollars from some deposit to
+her credit, but that was all they knew.  Her name was Caroline
+Avondale, yet there was no one of that name in the San Francisco
+Directory.
+
+But Randolph's romantic curiosity would not allow the incident to
+rest there.  A favorable impression he had produced on Mr. Dingwall
+enabled him to learn more, and precipitated what seemed to him a
+singular discovery.  "You will find," said the deputy manager, "the
+statement of the first deposit to Miss Avondale's credit in letters
+in your own department.  The account was opened two years ago
+through a South American banker.  But I am afraid it will not
+satisfy your curiosity."  Nevertheless, Randolph remained after
+office hours and spent some time in examining the correspondence of
+two years ago.  He was rewarded at last by a banker's letter from
+Callao advising the remittance of one thousand dollars to the
+credit of Miss Avondale of San Francisco.  The letter was written
+in Spanish, of which Randolph had a fair knowledge, but it was made
+plainer by a space having been left in the formal letter for the
+English name, which was written in another hand, together with a
+copy of Miss Avondale's signature for identification--the usual
+proceeding in those early days, when personal identification was
+difficult to travelers, emigrants, and visitors in a land of
+strangers.
+
+But here he was struck by a singular resemblance which he at first
+put down to mere coincidence of names.  The child's photograph
+which he had found in the portmanteau was taken at Callao.  That
+was a mere coincidence, but it suggested to his mind a more
+singular one--that the handwriting of the address was, in some odd
+fashion, familiar to him.  That night when he went home he opened
+the portmanteau and took from the purse the scrap of paper with the
+written address of the bank, and on comparing it with the banker's
+letter the next day he was startled to find that the handwriting of
+the bank's address and that in which the girl's name was introduced
+in the banker's letter were apparently the same.  The letters in
+the words "Caroline" and "California" appeared as if formed by the
+same hand.  How this might have struck a chirographical expert he
+did not know.  He could not consult the paying teller, who was
+supposed to be familiar with signatures, without exposing his
+secret and himself to ridicule.  And, after all, what did it prove?
+Nothing.  Even if this girl were cognizant of the man who supplied
+her address to the Callao banker two years ago, and he was really
+the missing owner of the portmanteau, would she know where he was
+now?  It might make an opening for conversation if he ever met her
+familiarly, but nothing more.  Yet I am afraid another idea
+occasionally took possession of Randolph's romantic fancy.  It was
+pleasant to think that the patron of his own fortunes might be in
+some mysterious way the custodian of hers.  The money was placed to
+her credit--a liberal sum for a girl so young.  The large house in
+which she lived was sufficient to prove to the optimistic Randolph
+that this income was something personal and distinct from her
+family.  That his unknown benefactor was in the habit of
+mysteriously rewarding deserving merit after the fashion of a
+marine fairy godmother, I fear did not strike him as being
+ridiculous.
+
+But an unfortunate query in that direction, addressed to a cynical
+fellow clerk, who had the exhaustive experience with the immature
+mustaches of twenty-three, elicited a reply which shocked him.  To
+his indignant protest the young man continued:--
+
+"Look here; a girl like that who draws money regularly from some
+man who doesn't show up by name, who comes for it herself, and
+hasn't any address, and calls herself 'Avondale'--only an innocent
+from Dutch Flat, like you, would swallow."
+
+"Impossible," said Randolph indignantly.  "Anybody could see she's
+a lady by her dress and bearing."
+
+"Dress and bearing!" echoed the clerk, with the derision of blase
+youth.  "If that's your test, you ought to see Florry ----."
+
+But here one may safely leave the young gentleman as abruptly as
+Randolph did.  Yet a drop of this corrosive criticism irritated his
+sensitiveness, and it was not until he recalled his last meeting
+with her and her innocent escort that he was himself again.
+Fortunately, he did not relate it to the critic, who would in all
+probability have added a precocious motherhood to the young lady's
+possible qualities.
+
+He could now only look forward to her reappearance at the bank, and
+here he was destined to a more serious disappointment.  For when
+she made her customary appearance at the counter, he noticed a
+certain businesslike gravity in the paying teller's reception of
+her, and that he was consulting a small register before him instead
+of handing her the usual receipt form.  "Perhaps you are unaware,
+Miss Avondale, that your account is overdrawn," Randolph distinctly
+heard him say, although in a politely lowered voice.
+
+The young girl stopped in taking off her glove; her delicate face
+expressed her wonder, and paled slightly; she cast a quick and
+apparently involuntary glance in the direction of Randolph, but
+said quietly,--
+
+"I don't think I understand."
+
+"I thought you did not--ladies so seldom do," continued the paying
+teller suavely.  "But there are no funds to your credit.  Has not
+your banker or correspondent advised you?"
+
+The girl evidently did not comprehend.  "I have no correspondent or
+banker," she said.  "I mean--I have heard nothing."
+
+"The original credit was opened from Callao," continued the
+official, "but since then it has been added to by drafts from
+Melbourne.  There may be one nearly due now."
+
+The young girl seemed scarcely to comprehend, yet her face remained
+pale and thoughtful.  It was not until the paying teller resumed
+with suggestive politeness that she roused herself: "If you would
+like to see the president, he might oblige you until you hear from
+your friends.  Of course, my duty is simply to"--
+
+"I don't think I require you to exceed it," returned the young girl
+quietly, "or that I wish to see the president."  Her delicate
+little face was quite set with resolution and a mature dignity,
+albeit it was still pale, as she drew away from the counter.
+
+"If you would leave your address," continued the official with
+persistent politeness, "we could advise you of any later deposit to
+your credit."
+
+"It is hardly necessary," returned the young lady.  "I should learn
+it myself, and call again.  Thank you.  Good-morning."  And
+settling her veil over her face, she quietly passed out.
+
+The pain and indignation with which Randolph overheard this
+colloquy he could with the greatest difficulty conceal.  For one
+wild moment he had thought of calling her back while he made a
+personal appeal to Revelstoke; but the conviction borne in upon him
+by her resolute bearing that she would refuse it, and he would only
+lay himself open to another rebuff, held him to his seat.  Yet he
+could not entirely repress his youthful indignation.
+
+"Where I come from," he said in an audible voice to his neighbor,
+"a young lady like that would have been spared this public
+disappointment.  A dozen men would have made up that sum and let
+her go without knowing anything about her account being overdrawn."
+And he really believed it.
+
+"Nice, comf'able way of doing banking business in Dutch Flat,"
+returned the cynic.  "And I suppose you'd have kept it up every
+month?  Rather a tall price to pay for looking at a pretty girl
+once a month!  But I suppose they're scarcer up there than here.
+All the same, it ain't too late now.  Start up your subscription
+right here, sonny, and we'll all ante up."
+
+But Randolph, who seldom followed his heroics to their ultimate
+prosaic conclusions, regretted he had spoken, although still
+unconvinced.  Happily for his temper, he did not hear the comment
+of the two tellers.
+
+"Won't see HER again, old boy," said one.
+
+"I reckon not," returned the other, "now that she's been chucked by
+her fancy man--until she gets another.  But cheer up; a girl like
+that won't want friends long."
+
+It is not probable that either of these young gentlemen believed
+what they said, or would have been personally disrespectful or
+uncivil to any woman; they were fairly decent young fellows, but
+the rigors of business demanded this appearance of worldly wisdom
+between themselves.  Meantime, for a week after, Randolph indulged
+in wild fancies of taking his benefactor's capital of seventy
+dollars, adding thirty to it from his own hard-earned savings,
+buying a draft with it from the bank for one hundred dollars, and
+in some mysterious way getting it to Miss Avondale as the delayed
+remittance.
+
+The brief wet winter was nearly spent; the long dry season was due,
+although there was still the rare beauty of cloud scenery in the
+steel-blue sky, and the sudden return of quick but transient
+showers.  It was on a Sunday of weather like this that the nature-
+loving Randolph extended his usual holiday excursion as far as
+Contra Costa by the steamer after his dutiful round of the wharves
+and shipping.  It was with a gayety born equally of his youth and
+the weather that he overcame his constitutional shyness, and not
+only mingled without restraint among the pleasure-seekers that
+thronged the crowded boat, but, in the consciousness of his good
+looks and a new suit of clothes, even penetrated into the
+aristocratic seclusion of the "ladies' cabin"--sacred to the fair
+sex and their attendant swains or chaperones.
+
+But he found every seat occupied, and was turning away, when he
+suddenly recognized Miss Avondale sitting beside her little escort.
+She appeared, however, in a somewhat constrained attitude,
+sustaining with one hand the boy, who had clambered on the seat.
+He was looking out of the cabin window, which she was also trying
+to do, with greater difficulty on account of her position.  He
+could see her profile presented with such marked persistency that
+he was satisfied she had seen him and was avoiding him.  He turned
+and left the cabin.
+
+Yet, once on the deck again, he repented his haste.  Perhaps she
+had not actually recognized him; perhaps she wished to avoid him
+only because she was in plainer clothes--a circumstance that, with
+his knowledge of her changed fortunes, struck him to the heart.  It
+seemed to him that even as a humble employee of the bank he was in
+some way responsible for it, and wondered if she associated him
+with her humiliation.  He longed to speak with her and assure her
+of his sympathy, and yet he was equally conscious that she would
+reject it.
+
+When the boat reached the Alameda wharf she slipped away with the
+other passengers.  He wandered about the hotel garden and the main
+street in the hope of meeting her again, although he was
+instinctively conscious that she would not follow the lines of the
+usual Sunday sight-seers, but had her own destination.  He
+penetrated the depths of the Alameda, and lost himself among its
+low, trailing oaks, to no purpose.  The hope of the morning had
+died within him; the fire of adventure was quenched, and when the
+clouds gathered with a rising wind he felt that the promise of that
+day was gone.  He turned to go back to the ferry, but on consulting
+his watch he found that he had already lost so much time in his
+devious wanderings that he must run to catch the last boat.  The
+few drops that spattered through the trees presently increased to a
+shower; he put up his umbrella without lessening his speed, and
+finally dashed into the main street as the last bell was ringing.
+But at the same moment a slight, graceful figure slipped out of the
+woods just ahead of him, with no other protection from the pelting
+storm than a handkerchief tied over her hat, and ran as swiftly
+toward the wharf.  It needed only one glance for Randolph to
+recognize Miss Avondale.  The moment had come, the opportunity was
+here, and the next instant he was panting at her side, with the
+umbrella over her head.
+
+The girl lifted her head quickly, gave a swift look of recognition,
+a brief smile of gratitude, and continued her pace.  She had not
+taken his arm, but had grasped the handle of the umbrella, which
+linked them together.  Not a word was spoken.  Two people cannot be
+conversational or sentimental flying at the top of their speed
+beneath a single umbrella, with a crowd of impatient passengers
+watching and waiting for them.  And I grieve to say that, being a
+happy American crowd, there was some irreverent humor.  "Go it,
+sis!  He's gainin' on you!"  "Keep it up!"  "Steady, sonny!  Don't
+prance!"  "No fancy licks!  You were nearly over the traces that
+time!"  "Keep up to the pole!" (i. e. the umbrella).  "Don't crowd
+her off the track!  Just swing on together; you'll do it."
+
+Randolph had glanced quickly at his companion.  She was laughing,
+yet looking at him shyly as if wondering how HE was taking it.  The
+paddle wheels were beginning to revolve.  Another rush, and they
+were on board as the plank was drawn in.
+
+But they were only on the edge of a packed and seething crowd.
+Randolph managed, however, to force a way for her to an angle of
+the paddle box, where they were comparatively alone although still
+exposed to the rain.  She recognized their enforced companionship
+by dropping her grasp of the umbrella, which she had hitherto been
+holding over him with a singular kind of mature superiority very
+like--as Randolph felt--her manner to the boy.
+
+"You have left your little friend?" he said, grasping at the idea
+for a conversational opening.
+
+"My little cousin?  Yes," she said.  "I left him with friends.  I
+could not bear to make him run any risk in this weather.  But," she
+hesitated half apologetically, half mischievously, "perhaps I
+hurried you."
+
+"Oh, no," said Randolph quickly.  "This is the last boat, and I
+must be at the bank to-morrow morning at nine."
+
+"And I must be at the shop at eight," she said.  She did not speak
+bitterly or pointedly, nor yet with the entire familiarity of
+custom.  He noticed that her dress was indeed plainer, and yet she
+seemed quite concerned over the water-soaked state of that cheap
+thin silk pelerine and merino skirt.  A big lump was in his throat.
+
+"Do you know," he said desperately, yet trying to laugh, "that this
+is not the first time you have seen me dripping?"
+
+"Yes," she returned, looking at him interestedly; "it was outside
+of the druggist's in Montgomery Street, about four months ago.  You
+were wetter then even than you are now."
+
+"I was hungry, friendless, and penniless, Miss Avondale."  He had
+spoken thus abruptly in the faint hope that the revelation might
+equalize their present condition; but somehow his confession, now
+that it was uttered, seemed exceedingly weak and impotent.  Then he
+blundered in a different direction.  "Your eyes were the only kind
+ones I had seen since I landed."  He flushed a little, feeling
+himself on insecure ground, and ended desperately: "Why, when I
+left you, I thought of committing suicide."
+
+"Oh, dear, not so bad as that, I hope!" she said quickly, smiling
+kindly, yet with a certain air of mature toleration, as if she were
+addressing her little cousin.  "You only fancied it.  And it isn't
+very complimentary to my eyes if their kindness drove you to such
+horrid thoughts.  And then what happened?" she pursued smilingly.
+
+"I had a job to carry a man's bag, and it got me a night's lodging
+and a meal," said Randolph, almost brusquely, feeling the utter
+collapse of his story.
+
+"And then?" she said encouragingly.
+
+"I got a situation at the bank."
+
+"When?"
+
+"The next day," faltered Randolph, expecting to hear her laugh.
+But Miss Avondale heaved the faintest sigh.
+
+"You are very lucky," she said.
+
+"Not so very," returned Randolph quickly, "for the next time you
+saw me you cut me dead."
+
+"I believe I did," she said smilingly.
+
+"Would you mind telling me why?"
+
+"Are you sure you won't be angry?"
+
+"I may be pained," said Randolph prudently.
+
+"I apologize for that beforehand.  Well, that first night I saw a
+young man looking very anxious, very uncomfortable, and very weak.
+The second time--and not very long after--I saw him well dressed,
+lounging like any other young man on a Sunday afternoon, and I
+believed that he took the liberty of bowing to me then because I
+had once looked at him under a misapprehension."
+
+"Oh, Miss Avondale!"
+
+"Then I took a more charitable view, and came to the conclusion
+that the first night he had been drinking.  But," she added, with a
+faint smile at Randolph's lugubrious face, "I apologize.  And you
+have had your revenge; for if I cut you on account of your smart
+clothes, you have tried to do me a kindness on account of my plain
+ones."
+
+"Oh, Miss Avondale," burst out Randolph, "if you only knew how
+sorry and indignant I was at the bank--when--you know--the other
+day"--he stammered.  "I wanted to go with you to Mr. Revelstoke,
+you know, who had been so generous to me, and I know he would have
+been proud to befriend you until you heard from your friends."
+
+"And I am very glad you did nothing so foolish," said the young
+lady seriously, "or"--with a smile--"I should have been still more
+aggravating to you when we met.  The bank was quite right.  Nor
+have I any pathetic story like yours.  Some years ago my little
+half-cousin whom you saw lost his mother and was put in my charge
+by his father, with a certain sum to my credit, to be expended for
+myself and the child.  I lived with an uncle, with whom, for some
+family reasons, the child's father was not on good terms, and this
+money and the charge of the child were therefore intrusted entirely
+to me; perhaps, also, because Bobby and I were fond of each other
+and I was a friend of his mother.  The father was a shipmaster,
+always away on long voyages, and has been home but once in the
+three years I have had charge of his son.  I have not heard from
+him since.  He is a good-hearted man, but of a restless, roving
+disposition, with no domestic tastes.  Why he should suddenly cease
+to provide for my little cousin--if he has done so--or if his
+omission means only some temporary disaster to himself or his
+fortunes, I do not know.  My anxiety was more for the poor boy's
+sake than for myself, for as long as I live I can provide for him."
+She said this without the least display of emotion, and with the
+same mature air of also repressing any emotion on the part of
+Randolph.  But for her size and girlish figure, but for the
+dripping tangles of her hair and her soft eyes, he would have
+believed he was talking to a hard, middle-aged matron.
+
+"Then you--he--has no friends here?" asked Randolph.
+
+"No.  We are all from Callao, where Bobby was born.  My uncle was a
+merchant there, who came here lately to establish an agency.  We
+lived with him in Sutter Street--where you remember I was so
+hateful to you," she interpolated, with a mischievous smile--"until
+his enterprise failed and he was obliged to return; but I stayed
+here with Bobby, that he might be educated in his father's own
+tongue.  It was unfortunate, perhaps," she said, with a little
+knitting of her pretty brows, "that the remittances ceased and
+uncle left about the same time; but, like you, I was lucky, and I
+managed to get a place in the Emporium."
+
+"The Emporium!" repeated Randolph in surprise.  It was a popular
+"magasin of fashion" in Montgomery Street.  To connect this refined
+girl with its garish display and vulgar attendants seemed
+impossible.
+
+"The Emporium," reiterated Miss Avondale simply.  "You see, we used
+to dress a good deal in Callao and had the Paris fashions, and that
+experience was of great service to me.  I am now at the head of
+what they call the 'mantle department,' if you please, and am
+looked up to as an authority."  She made him a mischievous bow,
+which had the effect of causing a trickle from the umbrella to fall
+across his budding mustache, and another down her own straight
+little nose--a diversion that made them laugh together, although
+Randolph secretly felt that the young girl's quiet heroism was
+making his own trials appear ridiculous.  But her allusion to
+Callao and the boy's name had again excited his fancy and revived
+his romantic dream of their common benefactor.  As soon as they
+could get a more perfect shelter and furl the umbrella, he plunged
+into the full story of the mysterious portmanteau and its missing
+owner, with the strange discovery that he had made of the
+similarity of the two handwritings.  The young lady listened
+intently, eagerly, checking herself with what might have been a
+half smile at his enthusiasm.
+
+"I remember the banker's letter, certainly," she said, "and Captain
+Dornton--that was the name of Bobby's father--asked me to sign my
+name in the body of it where HE had also written it with my
+address.  But the likeness of the handwriting to your slip of paper
+may be only a fancied one.  Have you shown it to any one," she said
+quickly--"I mean," she corrected herself as quickly, "any one who
+is an expert?"
+
+"Not the two together," said Randolph, explaining how he had shown
+the paper to Mr. Revelstoke.
+
+But Miss Avondale had recovered herself, and laughed.  "That that
+bit of paper should have been the means of getting you a situation
+seems to me the more wonderful occurrence.  Of course it is quite a
+coincidence that there should be a child's photograph and a letter
+signed 'Bobby' in the portmanteau.  But"--she stopped suddenly and
+fixed her dark eyes on his--"you have seen Bobby.  Surely you can
+say if it was his likeness?"
+
+Randolph was embarrassed.  The fact was he had always been so
+absorbed in HER that he had hardly glanced at the child.  He
+ventured to say this, and added a little awkwardly, and coloring,
+that he had seen Bobby only twice.
+
+"And you still have this remarkable photograph and letter?" she
+said, perhaps a little too carelessly.
+
+"Yes.  Would you like to see them?"
+
+"Very much," she returned quickly; and then added, with a laugh,
+"you are making me quite curious."
+
+"If you would allow me to see you home," said Randolph, "we have to
+pass the street where my room is, and," he added timidly, "I could
+show them to you."
+
+"Certainly," she replied, with sublime unconsciousness of the cause
+of his hesitation; "that will be very nice?"
+
+Randolph was happy, albeit he could not help thinking that she was
+treating him like the absent Bobby.
+
+"It's only on Commercial Street, just above Montgomery," he went
+on.  "We go straight up from the wharf"--he stopped short here, for
+the bulk of a bystander, a roughly clad miner, was pressing him so
+closely that he was obliged to resist indignantly--partly from
+discomfort, and partly from a sense that the man was overhearing
+him.  The stranger muttered a kind of apology, and moved away.
+
+"He seems to be perpetually in your way," said Miss Avondale,
+smiling.  "He was right behind you, and you nearly trod on his
+toes, when you bolted out of the cabin this morning."
+
+"Ah, then you DID see me!" said Randolph, forgetting all else in
+his delight at the admission.
+
+But Miss Avondale was not disconcerted.  "Thanks to your collision,
+I saw you both."
+
+It was still raining when they disembarked at the wharf, a little
+behind the other Passengers, who had crowded on the bow of the
+steamboat.  It was only a block or two beyond the place where
+Randolph had landed that eventful night.  He had to pass it now;
+but with Miss Avondale clinging to his arm, with what different
+feelings!  The rain still fell, the day was fading, but he walked
+in an enchanted dream, of which the prosaic umbrella was the mystic
+tent and magic pavilion.  He must needs even stop at the corner of
+the wharf, and show her the exact spot where his unknown benefactor
+appeared.
+
+"Coming out of the shadow like that man there," she added brightly,
+pointing to a figure just emerging from the obscurity of an
+overhanging warehouse.  "Why, it's your friend the miner!"
+
+Randolph looked.  It was indeed the same man, who had probably
+reached the wharf by a cross street.
+
+"Let us go on, do!" said Miss Avondale, suddenly tightening her
+hold of Randolph's arm in some instinctive feminine alarm.  "I
+don't like this place."
+
+But Randolph, with the young girl's arm clinging to his, felt
+supremely daring.  Indeed, I fear he was somewhat disappointed when
+the stranger peacefully turned into the junk shop at the corner and
+left them to pursue their way.
+
+They at last stopped before some business offices on a central
+thoroughfare, where Randolph had a room on the third story.  When
+they had climbed the flight of stairs he unlocked a door and
+disclosed a good-sized apartment which had been intended for an
+office, but which was now neatly furnished as a study and bedroom.
+Miss Avondale smiled at the singular combination.
+
+"I should fancy," she said, "you would never feel as if you had
+quite left the bank behind you."  Yet, with her air of protection
+and mature experience, she at once began to move one or two
+articles of furniture into a more tasteful position, while
+Randolph, nevertheless a little embarrassed at his audacity in
+asking this goddess into his humble abode, hurriedly unlocked a
+closet, brought out the portmanteau, and handed her the letter and
+photograph.
+
+Woman-like, Miss Avondale looked at the picture first.  If she
+experienced any surprise, she repressed it.  "It is LIKE Bobby,"
+she said meditatively, "but he was stouter then; and he's changed
+sadly since he has been in this climate.  I don't wonder you didn't
+recognize him.  His father may have had it taken some day when they
+were alone together.  I didn't know of it, though I know the
+photographer."  She then looked at the letter, knit her pretty
+brows, and with an abstracted air sat down on the edge of
+Randolph's bed, crossed her little feet, and looked puzzled.  But
+he was unable to detect the least emotion.
+
+"You see," she said, "the handwriting of most children who are
+learning to write is very much alike, for this is the stage of
+development when they 'print.'  And their composition is the same:
+they talk only of things that interest all children--pets, toys,
+and their games.  This is only ANY child's letter to ANY father.  I
+couldn't really say it WAS Bobby's.  As to the photograph, they
+have an odd way in South America of selling photographs of anybody,
+principally of pretty women, by the packet, to any one who wants
+them.  So that it does not follow that the owner of this photograph
+had any personal interest in it.  Now, as to your mysterious patron
+himself, can you describe him?"  She looked at Randolph with a
+certain feline intensity.
+
+He became embarrassed.  "You know I only saw him once, under a
+street lamp"--he began.
+
+"And I have only seen Captain Dornton--if it were he--twice in
+three years," she said.  "But go on."
+
+Again Randolph was unpleasantly impressed with her cold, dryly
+practical manner.  He had never seen his benefactor but once, but
+he could not speak of him in that way.
+
+"I think," he went on hesitatingly, "that he had dark, pleasant
+eyes, a thick beard, and the look of a sailor."
+
+"And there were no other papers in the portmanteau?" she said, with
+the same intense look.
+
+"None."
+
+"These are mere coincidences," said Miss Avondale, after a pause,
+"and, after all, they are not as strange as the alternative.  For
+we would have to believe that Captain Dornton arrived here--where
+he knew his son and I were living--without a word of warning, came
+ashore for the purpose of going to a hotel and the bank also, and
+then unaccountably changed his mind and disappeared."
+
+The thought of the rotten wharf, his own escape, and the dead body
+were all in Randolph's mind; but his reasoning was already
+staggered by the girl's conclusions, and he felt that it might only
+pain, without convincing her.  And was he convinced himself?  She
+smiled at his blank face and rose.  "Thank you all the same.  And
+now I must go."
+
+Randolph rose also.  "Would you like to take the photograph and
+letter to show your cousin?"
+
+"Yes.  But I should not place much reliance on his memory."
+Nevertheless, she took up the photograph and letter, and Randolph,
+putting the portmanteau back in the closet, locked it, and stood
+ready to accompany her.
+
+On their way to her house they talked of other things.  Randolph
+learned something of her life in Callao: that she was an orphan
+like himself, and had been brought from the Eastern States when a
+child to live with a rich uncle in Callao who was childless; that
+her aunt had died and her uncle had married again; that the second
+wife had been at variance with his family, and that it was
+consequently some relief to Miss Avondale to be independent as the
+guardian of Bobby, whose mother was a sister of the first wife;
+that her uncle had objected as strongly as a brother-in-law could
+to his wife's sister's marriage with Captain Dornton on account of
+his roving life and unsettled habits, and that consequently there
+would be little sympathy for her or for Bobby in his mysterious
+disappearance.  The wind blew and the rain fell upon these
+confidences, yet Randolph, walking again under that umbrella of
+felicity, parted with her at her own doorstep all too soon,
+although consoled with the permission to come and see her when the
+child returned.
+
+He went back to his room a very hopeful, foolish, but happy youth.
+As he entered he seemed to feel the charm of her presence again in
+the humble apartment she had sanctified.  The furniture she had
+moved with her own little hands, the bed on which she had sat for a
+half moment, was glorified to his youthful fancy.  And even that
+magic portmanteau which had brought him all this happiness, that,
+too,--but he gave a sudden start.  The closet door, which he had
+shut as he went out, was unlocked and open, the portmanteau--his
+"trust"--gone!
+
+
+III
+
+
+Randolph Trent's consternation at the loss of the portmanteau was
+partly superstitious.  For, although it was easy to make up the
+small sum taken, and the papers were safe in Miss Avondale's
+possession, yet this displacement of the only link between him and
+his missing benefactor, and the mystery of its disappearance,
+raised all his old doubts and suspicions.  A vague uneasiness, a
+still more vague sense of some remissness on his own part,
+possessed him.
+
+That the portmanteau was taken from his room during his absence
+with Miss Avondale that afternoon was evident.  The door had been
+opened by a skeleton key, and as the building was deserted on
+Sunday, there had been no chance of interference with the thief.
+If mere booty had been his object, the purse would have satisfied
+him without his burdening himself with a portmanteau which might be
+identified.  Nothing else in the room had been disturbed.  The
+thief must have had some cognizance of its location, and have kept
+some espionage over Randolph's movements--a circumstance which
+added to the mystery and his disquiet.  He placed a description of
+his loss with the police authorities, but their only idea of
+recovering it was by leaving that description with pawnbrokers and
+second-hand dealers, a proceeding that Randolph instinctively felt
+was in vain.
+
+A singular but instinctive reluctance to inform Miss Avondale of
+his loss kept him from calling upon her for the first few days.
+When he did, she seemed concerned at the news, although far from
+participating in his superstition or his suspicions.
+
+"You still have the letter and photograph--whatever they may be
+worth--for identification," she said dryly, "although Bobby cannot
+remember about the letter.  He thinks he went once with his father
+to a photographer and had a picture taken, but he cannot remember
+seeing it afterward."  She was holding them in her hand, and
+Randolph almost mechanically took them from her and put them in his
+pocket.  He would not, perhaps, have noticed his own brusqueness
+had she not looked a little surprised, and, he thought, annoyed.
+"Are you quite sure you won't lose them?" she said gently.
+"Perhaps I had better keep them for you."
+
+"I shall seal them up and put them in the bank safe," he said
+quickly.  He could not tell whether his sudden resolution was an
+instinct or the obstinacy that often comes to an awkward man.
+"But," he added, coloring, "I shall always regret the loss of the
+portmanteau, for it was the means of bringing us together."
+
+"I thought it was the umbrella," said Miss Avondale dryly.
+
+She had once before halted him on the perilous edge of sentiment by
+a similar cynicism, but this time it cut him deeply.  For he could
+not be blind to the fact that she treated him like a mere boy, and
+in dispelling the illusions of his instincts and beliefs seemed as
+if intent upon dispelling his illusions of HER; and in her half-
+smiling abstraction he read only the well-bred toleration of one
+who is beginning to be bored.  He made his excuses early and went
+home.  Nevertheless, although regretting he had not left her the
+letter and photograph, he deposited them in the bank safe the next
+day, and tried to feel that he had vindicated his character for
+grown-up wisdom.
+
+Then, in his conflicting emotions, he punished himself, after the
+fashion of youth, by avoiding the beloved one's presence for
+several days.  He did this in the belief that it would enable him
+to make up his mind whether to reveal his real feelings to her, and
+perhaps there was the more alluring hope that his absence might
+provoke some manifestations of sentiment on her part.  But she made
+no sign.  And then came a reaction in his feelings, with a
+heightened sense of loyalty to his benefactor.  For, freed of any
+illusion or youthful fancy now, a purely unselfish gratitude to the
+unknown man filled his heart.  In the lapse of his sentiment he
+clung the more closely to this one honest romance of his life.
+
+One afternoon, at the close of business, he was a little astonished
+to receive a message from Mr. Dingwall, the deputy manager, that he
+wished to see him in his private office.  He was still more
+astonished when Mr. Dingwall, after offering him a chair, stood up
+with his hands under his coat tails before the fireplace, and, with
+a hesitancy half reserved, half courteous, but wholly English,
+said,--
+
+"I--er--would be glad, Mr. Trent, if you would--er--give me the
+pleasure of your company at dinner to-morrow."
+
+Randolph, still amazed, stammered his acceptance.
+
+"There will be--er--a young lady in whom you were--er--interested
+some time ago.  Er--Miss Avondale."
+
+Randolph, feeling he was coloring, and uncertain whether he should
+speak of having met her since, contented himself with expressing
+his delight.
+
+"In fact," continued Mr. Dingwall, clearing his throat as if he
+were also clearing his conscience of a tremendous secret, "she--er--
+mentioned your name.  There is Sir William Dornton coming also.
+Sir William has recently succeeded his elder brother, who--er--it
+seems, was the gentleman you were inquiring about when you first
+came here, and who, it is now ascertained, was drowned in the bay a
+few months ago.  In fact--er--it is probable that you were the last
+one who saw him alive.  I thought I would tell you," continued Mr.
+Dingwall, settling his chin more comfortably in his checked cravat,
+"in case Sir William should speak of him to you."
+
+Randolph was staggered.  The abrupt revelation of his benefactor's
+name and fate, casually coupled with an invitation to dinner,
+shocked and confounded him.  Perhaps Mr. Dingwall noticed it and
+misunderstood the cause, for he added in parenthetical explanation:
+"Yes, the man whose portmanteau you took charge of is dead; but you
+did your duty, Mr. Trent, in the matter, although the recovery of
+the portmanteau was unessential to the case."
+
+"Dead," repeated Randolph, scarcely heeding him.  "But is it true?
+Are they sure?"
+
+Mr. Dingwall elevated his eyebrows.  "The large property at stake
+of course rendered the most satisfactory proofs of it necessary.
+His father had died only a month previous, and of course they were
+seeking the presumptive heir, the so-called 'Captain John Dornton'--
+your man--when they made the discovery of his death."
+
+Randolph thought of the strange body at the wharf, of the coroner's
+vague verdict, and was unconvinced.  "But," he said impulsively,
+"there was a child."  He checked himself as he remembered this was
+one of Miss Avondale's confidences to him.
+
+"Ah--Miss Avondale has spoken of a child?" said Mr. Dingwall dryly.
+
+"I saw her with one which she said was Captain Dornton's, which had
+been left in her care after the death of his wife," said Randolph
+in hurried explanation.
+
+"John Dornton had no WIFE," said Mr. Dingwall severely.  "The boy
+is a natural son.  Captain John lived a wild, rough, and--er--an
+eccentric life."
+
+"I thought--I understood from Miss Avondale that he was married,"
+stammered the young man.
+
+"In your rather slight acquaintance with that young lady I should
+imagine she would have had some delicacy in telling you otherwise,"
+returned Mr. Dingwall primly.
+
+Randolph felt the truth of this, and was momentarily embarrassed.
+Yet he lingered.
+
+"Has Miss Avondale known of this discovery long?" he asked.
+
+"About two weeks, I should say," returned Mr. Dingwall.  "She was
+of some service to Sir William in getting up certain proofs he
+required."
+
+It was three weeks since she had seen Randolph, yet it would have
+been easy for her to communicate the news to him.  In these three
+weeks his romance of their common interest in his benefactor--even
+his own dream of ever seeing him again--had been utterly dispelled.
+
+It was in no social humor that he reached Dingwall's house the next
+evening.  Yet he knew the difficulty of taking an aggressive
+attitude toward his previous idol or of inviting a full explanation
+from her then.
+
+The guests, with the exception of himself and Miss Avondale, were
+all English.  She, self-possessed and charming in evening dress,
+nodded to him with her usual mature patronage, but did not evince
+the least desire to seek him for any confidential aside.  He
+noticed the undoubted resemblance of Sir William Dornton to his
+missing benefactor, and yet it produced a singular repulsion in
+him, rather than any sympathetic predilection.  At table he found
+that Miss Avondale was separated from him, being seated beside the
+distinguished guest, while he was placed next to the young lady he
+had taken down--a Miss Eversleigh, the cousin of Sir William.  She
+was tall, and Randolph's first impression of her was that she was
+stiff and constrained--an impression he quickly corrected at the
+sound of her voice, her frank ingenuousness, and her unmistakable
+youth.  In the habit of being crushed by Miss Avondale's
+unrelenting superiority, he found himself apparently growing up
+beside this tall English girl, who had the naivete of a child.
+After a few commonplaces she suddenly turned her gray eyes on his,
+and said,--
+
+"Didn't you like Jack?  I hope you did.  Oh, say you did--do!"
+
+"You mean Captain John Dornton?" said Randolph, a little confused.
+
+"Yes, of course; HIS brother"--glancing toward Sir William.  "We
+always called him Jack, though I was ever so little when he went
+away.  No one thought of calling him anything else but Jack.  Say
+you liked him!"
+
+"I certainly did," returned Randolph impulsively.  Then checking
+himself, he added, "I only saw him once, but I liked his face and
+manner--and--he was very kind to me."
+
+"Of course he was," said the young girl quickly.  "That was only
+like him, and yet"--lowering her voice slightly--"would you believe
+that they all say he was wild and wicked and dissipated?  And why?
+Fancy!  Just because he didn't care to stay at home and shoot and
+hunt and race and make debts, as heirs usually do.  No, he wanted
+to see the world and do something for himself.  Why, when he was
+quite young, he could manage a boat like any sailor.  Dornton Hall,
+their place, is on the coast, you know, and they say that, just for
+adventure's sake, after he went away, he shipped as first mate
+somewhere over here on the Pacific, and made two or three voyages.
+You know--don't you?--and how every one was shocked at such conduct
+in the heir."
+
+Her face was so girlishly animated, with such sparkle of eye and
+responsive color, that he could hardly reconcile it with her first
+restraint or with his accepted traditions of her unemotional race,
+or, indeed, with her relationship to the principal guest.  His
+latent feeling of gratitude to the dead man warmed under the young
+girl's voice.
+
+"It's so dreadful to think of him as drowned, you know, though even
+that they put against him," she went on hurriedly, "for they say he
+was probably drowned in some drunken fit--fell through the wharf or
+something shocking and awful--worse than suicide.  But"--she turned
+her frank young eyes upon him again--"YOU saw him on the wharf that
+night, and you could tell how he looked."
+
+"He was as sober as I was," returned Randolph indignantly, as he
+recalled the incident of the flask and the dead man's caution.
+From recalling it to repeating it followed naturally, and he
+presently related the whole story of his meeting with Captain
+Dornton to the brightly interested eyes beside him.  When he had
+finished, she leaned toward him in girlish confidence, and said:--
+
+"Yes; but EVEN THAT they tell to show how intoxicated be must have
+been to have given up his portmanteau to an utter stranger like
+you."  She stopped, colored, and yet, reflecting his own half
+smile, she added: "You know what I mean.  For they all agree how
+nice it was of you not to take any advantage of his condition, and
+Dingwall said your honesty and faithfulness struck Revelstoke so
+much that he made a place for you at the bank.  Now I think," she
+continued, with delightful naivete, "it was a proof of poor Jack's
+BEING PERFECTLY SOBER, that he knew whom he was trusting, and saw
+just what you were, at once.  There!  But I suppose you must not
+talk to me any longer, but must make yourself agreeable to some one
+else.  But it was very nice of you to tell me all this.  I wish you
+knew my guardian.  You'd like him.  Do you ever go to England?  Do
+come and see us."
+
+These confidences had not been observed by the others, and Miss
+Avondale appeared to confine her attentions to Sir William, who
+seemed to be equally absorbed, except that once he lifted his eyes
+toward Randolph, as if in answer to some remark from her.  It
+struck Randolph that he was the subject of their conversation, and
+this did not tend to allay the irritation of a mind already wounded
+by the contrast of HER lack of sympathy for the dead man who had
+befriended and trusted her to the simple faith of the girl beside
+him, who was still loyal to a mere childish recollection.
+
+After the ladies had rustled away, Sir William moved his seat
+beside Randolph.  His manner seemed to combine Mr. Dingwall's
+restraint with a certain assumption of the man of the world, more
+notable for its frankness than its tactfulness.
+
+"Sad business this of my brother's, eh," he said, lighting a cigar;
+"any way you take it, eh?  You saw him last, eh?"  The
+interrogating word, however, seemed to be only an exclamation of
+habit, for he seldom waited for an answer.
+
+"I really don't know," said Randolph, "as I saw him only ONCE, and
+he left me on the wharf.  I know no more where he went to then than
+where he came from before.  Of course you must know all the rest,
+and how he came to be drowned."
+
+"Yes; it really did not matter much.  The whole question was
+identification and proof of death, you know.  Beastly job, eh?"
+
+"Was that his body YOU were helping to get ashore at the wharf one
+Sunday?" asked Randolph bluntly, now fully recognizing the likeness
+that had puzzled him in Sir William.  "I didn't see any
+resemblance."
+
+"Precious few would.  I didn't--though it's true I hadn't seen him
+for eight years.  Poor old chap been knocked about so he hadn't a
+feature left, eh?  But his shipmate knew him, and there were his
+traps on the ship."
+
+Then, for the first time, Randolph heard the grim and sordid
+details of John Dornton's mysterious disappearance.  He had arrived
+the morning before that eventful day on an Australian bark as the
+principal passenger.  The vessel itself had an evil repute, and was
+believed to have slipped from the hands of the police at Melbourne.
+John Dornton had evidently amassed a considerable fortune in
+Australia, although an examination of his papers and effects showed
+it to be in drafts and letters of credit and shares, and that he
+had no ready money--a fact borne out by the testimony of his
+shipmates.  The night he arrived was spent in an orgy on board
+ship, which he did not leave until the early evening of the next
+day, although, after his erratic fashion, he had ordered a room at
+a hotel.  That evening he took ashore a portmanteau, evidently
+intending to pass the night at his hotel.  He was never seen again,
+although some of the sailors declared that they had seen him on the
+wharf WITHOUT THE PORTMANTEAU, and they had drunk together at a low
+grog shop on the street corner.  He had evidently fallen through
+some hole in the wharf.  As he was seen only with the sailors, who
+also knew he had no ready money on his person, there was no
+suspicion of foul play.
+
+"For all that, don't you know," continued Sir William, with a
+forced laugh, which struck Randolph as not only discordant, but as
+having an insolent significance, "it might have been a deuced bad
+business for YOU, eh?  Last man who was with him, eh?  In
+possession of his portmanteau, eh?  Wearing his clothes, eh?
+Awfully clever of you to go straight to the bank with it.  'Pon my
+word, my legal man wanted to pounce down on you as 'accessory'
+until I and Dingwall called him off.  But it's all right now."
+
+Randolph's antagonism to the man increased.  "The investigation
+seems to have been peculiar," he said dryly, "for, if I remember
+rightly, at the coroner's inquest on the body I saw you with, the
+verdict returned was of the death of an UNKNOWN man."
+
+"Yes; we hadn't clear proof of identity then," he returned coolly,
+"but we had a reexamination of the body before witnesses afterward,
+and a verdict according to the facts.  That was kept out of the
+papers in deference to the feelings of the family and friends.  I
+fancy you wouldn't have liked to be cross-examined before a stupid
+jury about what you were doing with Jack's portmanteau, even if WE
+were satisfied with it."
+
+"I should have been glad to testify to the kindness of your
+brother, at any risk," returned Randolph stoutly.  "You have heard
+that the portmanteau was stolen from me, but the amount of money it
+contained has been placed in Mr. Dingwall's hands for disposal."
+
+"Its contents were known, and all that's been settled," returned
+Sir William, rising.  "But," he continued, with his forced laugh,
+which to Randolph's fancy masked a certain threatening significance,
+"I say, it would have been a beastly business, don't you know, if
+you HAD been called upon to produce it again--ha, ha!--eh?"
+
+Returning to the dining room, Randolph found Miss Avondale alone on
+a corner of the sofa.  She swept her skirts aside as he approached,
+as an invitation for him to sit beside her.  Still sore from his
+experience, he accepted only in the hope that she was about to
+confide to him her opinion of this strange story.  But, to his
+chagrin, she looked at him over her fan with a mischievous
+tolerance.  "You seemed more interested in the cousin than the
+brother of your patron."
+
+Once Randolph might have been flattered at this.  But her speech
+seemed to him only an echo of the general heartlessness.  "I found
+Miss Eversleigh very sympathetic over the fate of the unfortunate
+man, whom nobody else here seems to care for," said Randolph
+coldly.
+
+"Yes," returned Miss Avondale composedly; "I believe she was a
+great friend of Captain Dornton when she was quite a child, and I
+don't think she can expect much from Sir William, who is very
+different from his brother.  In fact, she was one of the relatives
+who came over here in quest of the captain, when it was believed he
+was living and the heir.  He was quite a patron of hers."
+
+"But was he not also one of yours?" said Randolph bluntly.
+
+"I think I told you I was the friend of the boy and of poor
+Paquita, the boy's mother," said Miss Avondale quietly.  "I never
+saw Captain Dornton but twice."
+
+Randolph noticed that she had not said "wife," although in her
+previous confidences she had so described the mother.  But, as
+Dingwall had said, why should she have exposed the boy's
+illegitimacy to a comparative stranger; and if she herself had been
+deceived about it, why should he expect her to tell him?  And yet--
+he was not satisfied.
+
+He was startled by a little laugh.  "Well, I declare, you look as
+if you resented the fact that your benefactor had turned out to be
+a baronet--just as in some novel--and that you have rendered a
+service to the English aristocracy.  If you are thinking of poor
+Bobby," she continued, without the slightest show of self-
+consciousness, "Sir William will provide for him, and thinks of
+taking him to England to restore his health.  Now"--with her
+smiling, tolerant superiority--"you must go and talk to Miss
+Eversleigh.  I see her looking this way, and I don't think she half
+likes me as it is."
+
+Randolph, who, however, also saw that Sir William was lounging
+toward them, here rose formally, as if permitting the latter to
+take the vacated seat.  This partly imposed on him the necessity of
+seeking Miss Eversleigh, who, having withdrawn to the other end of
+the room, was turning over the leaves of an album.  As Randolph
+joined her, she said, without looking up, "Is Miss Avondale a
+friend of yours?"
+
+The question was so pertinent to his reflections at the moment that
+he answered impulsively, "I really don't know."
+
+"Yes, that's the answer, I think, most of her acquaintances would
+give, if they were asked the same question and replied honestly,"
+said the young girl, as if musing.
+
+"Even Sir William?" suggested Randolph, half smiling, yet wondering
+at her unlooked-for serious shrewdness as he glanced toward the
+sofa.
+
+"Yes; but HE wouldn't care.  You see, there would be a pair of
+them."  She stopped with a slight blush, as if she had gone too
+far, but corrected herself in her former youthful frankness: "You
+don't mind my saying what I did of her?  You're not such a
+PARTICULAR friend?"
+
+"We both owe a debt of gratitude to your cousin Jack," said
+Randolph, in some embarrassment.
+
+"Yes, but YOU feel it and she doesn't.  So that doesn't make you
+friends."
+
+"But she has taken good care of Captain Dornton's child," suggested
+Randolph loyally.
+
+He stopped, however, feeling that he was on dangerous ground.  But
+Miss Eversleigh put her own construction on his reticence, and
+said,--
+
+"I don't think she cares for it much--or for ANY children."
+
+Randolph remembered his own impression the only time he had ever
+seen her with the child, and was struck with the young girl's
+instinct again coinciding with his own.  But, possibly because he
+knew he could never again feel toward Miss Avondale as he had, he
+was the more anxious to be just, and he was about to utter a
+protest against this general assumption, when the voice of Sir
+William broke in upon them.  He was taking his leave--and the
+opportunity of accompanying Miss Avondale to her lodgings on the
+way to his hotel.  He lingered a moment over his handshaking with
+Randolph.
+
+"Awfully glad to have met you, and I fancy you're awfully glad to
+get rid of what they call your 'trust.'  Must have given you a
+beastly lot of bother, eh--might have given you more?"
+
+He nodded familiarly to Miss Eversleigh, and turned away with Miss
+Avondale, who waved her usual smiling patronage to Randolph, even
+including his companion in that half-amused, half-superior
+salutation.  Perhaps it was this that put a sudden hauteur into the
+young girl's expression as she stared at Miss Avondale's departing
+figure.
+
+"If you ever come to England, Mr. Trent," she said, with a pretty
+dignity in her youthful face, "I hope you will find some people not
+quite so rude as my cousin and"--
+
+"Miss Avondale, you would say," returned Randolph quietly.  "As to
+HER, I am quite accustomed to her maturer superiority, which, I am
+afraid, is the effect of my own youth and inexperience; and I
+believe that, in course of time, your cousin's brusqueness might be
+as easily understood by me.  I dare say," he added, with a laugh,
+"that I must seem to them a very romantic visionary with my
+'trust,' and the foolish importance I have put upon a very trivial
+occurrence."
+
+"I don't think so," said the girl quickly, "and I consider Bill
+very rude, and," she added, with a return of her boyish frankness,
+"I shall tell him so.  As for Miss Avondale, she's AT LEAST thirty,
+I understand; perhaps she can't help showing it in that way, too."
+
+But here Randolph, to evade further personal allusions, continued
+laughingly: "And as I've LOST my 'trust,' I haven't even that to
+show in defense.  Indeed, when you all are gone I shall have
+nothing to remind me of my kind benefactor.  It will seem like a
+dream."
+
+Miss Eversleigh was silent for a moment, and then glanced quickly
+around her.  The rest of the company were their elders, and,
+engaged in conversation at the other end of the apartment, had
+evidently left the young people to themselves.
+
+"Wait a moment," she said, with a youthful air of mystery and
+earnestness.  Randolph saw that she had slipped an Indian bracelet,
+profusely hung with small trinkets, from her arm to her wrist, and
+was evidently selecting one.  It proved to be a child's tiny ring
+with a small pearl setting.  "This was given to me by Cousin Jack,"
+said Miss Eversleigh in a low voice, "when I was a child, at some
+frolic or festival, and I have kept it ever since.  I brought it
+with me when we came here as a kind of memento to show him.  You
+know that is impossible now.  You say you have nothing of his to
+keep.  Will you accept this?  I know he would be glad to know you
+had it.  You could wear it on your watch chain.  Don't say no, but
+take it."
+
+Protesting, yet filled with a strange joy and pride, Randolph took
+it from the young girl's hand.  The little color which had deepened
+on her cheek cleared away as he thanked her gratefully, and with a
+quiet dignity she arose and moved toward the others.  Randolph did
+not linger long after this, and presently took his leave of his
+host and hostess.
+
+It seemed to him that he walked home that night in the whirling
+clouds of his dispelled dream.  The airy structure he had built up
+for the last three months had collapsed.  The enchanted canopy
+under which he had stood with Miss Avondale was folded forever.
+The romance he had evolved from his strange fortune had come to an
+end, not prosaically, as such romances are apt to do, but with a
+dramatic termination which, however, was equally fatal to his
+hopes.  At any other time he might have projected the wildest hopes
+from the fancy that he and Miss Avondale were orphaned of a common
+benefactor; but it was plain that her interests were apart from
+his.  And there was an indefinable something he did not understand,
+and did not want to understand, in the story she had told him.  How
+much of it she had withheld, not so much from delicacy or contempt
+for his understanding as a desire to mislead him, he did not know.
+His faith in her had gone with his romance.  It was not strange
+that the young English girl's unsophisticated frankness and simple
+confidences lingered longest in his memory, and that when, a few
+days later, Mr. Dingwall informed him that Miss Avondale had sailed
+for England with the Dornton family, he was more conscious of a
+loss in the stranger girl's departure.
+
+"I suppose Miss Avondale takes charge of--of the boy, sir?" he said
+quietly.
+
+Mr. Dingwall gave him a quick glance.  "Possibly.  Sir William has
+behaved with great--er--consideration," he replied briefly.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Randolph's nature was too hopeful and recuperative to allow him to
+linger idly in the past.  He threw himself into his work at the
+bank with his old earnestness and a certain simple
+conscientiousness which, while it often provoked the raillery of
+his fellow clerks, did not escape the eyes of his employers.  He
+was advanced step by step, and by the end of the year was put in
+charge of the correspondence with banks and agencies.  He had saved
+some money, and had made one or two profitable investments.  He was
+enabled to take better apartments in the same building he had
+occupied.  He had few of the temptations of youth.  His fear of
+poverty and his natural taste kept him from the speculative and
+material excesses of the period.  A distrust of his romantic
+weakness kept him from society and meaner entanglements which might
+have beset his good looks and good nature.  He worked in his rooms
+at night and forbore his old evening rambles.
+
+As the year wore on to the anniversary of his arrival, he thought
+much of the dead man who had inspired his fortunes, and with it a
+sense of his old doubts and suspicions revived.  His reason had
+obliged him to accept the loss of the fateful portmanteau as an
+ordinary theft; his instinct remained unconvinced.  There was no
+superstition connected with his loss.  His own prosperity had not
+been impaired by it.  On the contrary, he reflected bitterly that
+the dead man had apparently died only to benefit others.  At such
+times he recalled, with a pleasure that he knew might become
+perilous, the tall English girl who had defended Dornton's memory
+and echoed his own sympathy.  But that was all over now.
+
+One stormy night, not unlike that eventful one of his past
+experience, Randolph sought his rooms in the teeth of a southwest
+gale.  As he buffeted his way along the rain-washed pavement of
+Montgomery Street, it was not strange that his thoughts reverted to
+that night and the memory of his dead protector.  But reaching his
+apartment, he sternly banished them with the vanished romance they
+revived, and lighting his lamp, laid out his papers in the prospect
+of an evening of uninterrupted work.  He was surprised, however,
+after a little interval, by the sound of uncertain and shuffling
+steps on the half-lighted passage outside, the noise of some heavy
+article set down on the floor, and then a tentative knock at his
+door.  A little impatiently he called, "Come in."
+
+The door opened slowly, and out of the half obscurity of the
+passage a thickset figure lurched toward him into the full light of
+the room.  Randolph half rose, and then sank back into his chair,
+awed, spellbound, and motionless.  He saw the figure standing
+plainly before him; he saw distinctly the familiar furniture of his
+room, the storm-twinkling lights in the windows opposite, the flash
+of passing carriage lamps in the street below.  But the figure
+before him was none other than the dead man of whom he had just
+been thinking.
+
+The figure looked at him intently, and then burst into a fit of
+unmistakable laughter.  It was neither loud nor unpleasant, and yet
+it provoked a disagreeable recollection.  Nevertheless, it
+dissipated Randolph's superstitious tremor, for he had never before
+heard of a ghost who laughed heartily.
+
+"You don't remember me," said the man.  "Belay there, and I'll
+freshen your memory."  He stepped back to the door, opened it, put
+his arm out into the hall, and brought in a portmanteau, closed the
+door, and appeared before Randolph again with the portmanteau in
+his hand.  It was the one that had been stolen.  "There!" he said.
+
+"Captain Dornton," murmured Randolph.
+
+The man laughed again and flung down the portmanteau.  "You've got
+my name pat enough, lad, I see; but I reckoned you'd have spotted
+ME without that portmanteau."
+
+"I see you've got it back," stammered Randolph in his embarrassment.
+"It was--stolen from me."
+
+Captain Dornton laughed again, dropped into a chair, rubbed his
+hands on his knees, and turned his face toward Randolph.  "Yes; I
+stole it--or had it stolen--the same thing, for I'm responsible."
+
+"But I would have given it up to YOU at once," said Randolph
+reproachfully, clinging to the only idea he could understand in his
+utter bewilderment.  "I have religiously and faithfully kept it for
+you, with all its contents, ever since--you disappeared."
+
+"I know it, lad," said Captain Dornton, rising, and extending a
+brown, weather-beaten hand which closed heartily on the young
+man's; "no need to say that.  And you've kept it even better than
+you know.  Look here!"
+
+He lifted the portmanteau to his lap and disclosed BEHIND the usual
+small pouch or pocket in the lid a slit in the lining.  "Between
+the lining and the outer leather," he went on grimly, "I had two or
+three bank notes that came to about a thousand dollars, and some
+papers, lad, that, reckoning by and large, might be worth to me a
+million.  When I got that portmanteau back they were all there,
+gummed in, just as I had left them.  I didn't show up and come for
+them myself, for I was lying low at the time, and--no offense, lad--
+I didn't know how you stood with a party who was no particular
+friend of mine.  An old shipmate whom I set to watch that party
+quite accidentally run across your bows in the ferry boat, and
+heard enough to make him follow in your wake here, where he got the
+portmanteau.  It's all right," he said, with a laugh, waving aside
+with his brown hand Randolph's protesting gesture.  "The old bag's
+only got back to its rightful owner.  It mayn't have been got in
+shipshape 'Frisco style, but when a man's life is at stake, at
+least, when it's a question of his being considered dead or alive,
+he's got to take things as he finds 'em, and I found 'em d--- bad."
+
+In a flash of recollection Randolph remembered the obtruding miner
+on the ferry boat, the same figure on the wharf corner, and the
+advantage taken of his absence with Miss Avondale.  And Miss
+Avondale was the "party" this man's shipmate was watching!  He felt
+his face crimsoning, yet he dared not question him further, nor yet
+defend her.  Captain Dornton noticed it, and with a friendly tact,
+which Randolph had not expected of him, rising again, laid his hand
+gently on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"Look here, lad," he said, with his pleasant smile; "don't you
+worry your head about the ways or doings of the Dornton family, or
+any of their friends.  They're a queer lot--including your humble
+servant.  You've done the square thing accordin' to your lights.
+You've ridden straight from start to finish, with no jockeying, and
+I shan't forget it.  There are only two men who haven't failed me
+when I trusted them.  One was you when I gave you my portmanteau;
+the other was Jack Redhill when he stole it from you."
+
+He dropped back in his chair again, and laughed silently.
+
+"Then you did not fall overboard as they supposed," stammered
+Randolph at last.
+
+"Not much!  But the next thing to it.  It wasn't the water that I
+took in that knocked me out, my lad, but something stronger.  I was
+shanghaied."
+
+"Shanghaied?" repeated Randolph vacantly.
+
+"Yes, shanghaied!  Hocused!  Drugged at that gin mill on the wharf
+by a lot of crimps, who, mistaking me for a better man, shoved me,
+blind drunk and helpless, down the steps into a boat, and out to a
+short-handed brig in the stream.  When I came to I was outside the
+Heads, pointed for Guayaquil.  When they found they'd captured, not
+a poor Jack, but a man who'd trod a quarterdeck, who knew, and was
+known at every port on the trading line, and who could make it hot
+for them, they were glad to compromise and set me ashore at
+Acapulco, and six weeks later I landed in 'Frisco."
+
+"Safe and sound, thank Heaven!" said Randolph joyously.
+
+"Not exactly, lad," said Captain Dornton grimly, "but dead and sat
+upon by the coroner, and my body comfortably boxed up and on its
+way to England."
+
+"But that was nine months ago.  What have you been doing since?
+Why didn't you declare yourself then?" said Randolph impatiently, a
+little irritated by the man's extreme indifference.  He really
+talked like an amused spectator of his own misfortunes.
+
+"Steady, lad.  I know what you're going to say.  I know all that
+happened.  But the first thing I found when I got back was that the
+shanghai business had saved my life; that but for that I would have
+really been occupying that box on its way to England, instead of
+the poor devil who was taken for me."
+
+A cold tremor passed over Randolph.  Captain Dornton, however, was
+tolerantly smiling.
+
+"I don't understand," said Randolph breathlessly.
+
+Captain Dornton rose and, walking to the door, looked out into the
+passage; then he shut the door carefully and returned, glancing
+about the room and at the storm-washed windows.  "I thought I heard
+some one outside.  I'm lying low just now, and only go out at
+night, for I don't want this thing blown before I'm ready.  Got
+anything to drink here?"
+
+Randolph replied by taking a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a
+cupboard.  The captain filled his glass, and continued with the
+same gentle but exasperating nonchalance, "Mind my smoking?"
+
+"Not at all," said Randolph, pushing a cigar toward him.  But the
+captain put it aside, drew from his pocket a short black clay pipe,
+stuffed it with black "Cavendish plug," which he had first chipped
+off in the palm of his hand with a large clasp knife, lighted it,
+and took a few meditative whiffs.  Then, glancing at Randolph's
+papers, he said, "I'm not keeping you from your work, lad?" and
+receiving a reply in the negative, puffed at his pipe and once more
+settled himself comfortably in his chair, with his dark, bearded
+profile toward Randolph.
+
+"You were saying just now you didn't understand," he went on
+slowly, without looking up; "so you must take your own bearings
+from what I'm telling you.  When I met you that night I had just
+arrived from Melbourne.  I had been lucky in some trading
+speculations I had out there, and I had some bills with me, but no
+money except what I had tucked in the skin of that portmanteau and
+a few papers connected with my family at home.  When a man lives
+the roving kind of life I have, he learns to keep all that he cares
+for under his own hat, and isn't apt to blab to friends.  But it
+got out in some way on the voyage that I had money, and as there
+was a mixed lot of 'Sydney ducks' and 'ticket of leave men' on
+board, it seems they hatched a nice little plot to waylay me on the
+wharf on landing, rob me, and drop me into deep water.  To make it
+seem less suspicious, they associated themselves with a lot of
+crimps who were on the lookout for our sailors, who were going
+ashore that night too.  I'd my suspicions that a couple of those
+men might be waiting for me at the end of the wharf.  I left the
+ship just a minute or two before the sailors did.  Then I met you.
+That meeting, my lad, was my first step toward salvation.  For the
+two men let you pass with my portmanteau, which they didn't
+recognize, as I knew they would ME, and supposed you were a
+stranger, and lay low, waiting for me.  I, who went into the gin-
+mill with the other sailors, was foolish enough to drink, and was
+drugged and crimped as they were.  I hadn't thought of that.  A
+poor devil of a ticket of leave man, about my size, was knocked
+down for me, and," he added, suppressing a laugh, "will be buried,
+deeply lamented, in the chancel of Dornton Church.  While the row
+was going on, the skipper, fearing to lose other men, warped out
+into the stream, and so knew nothing of what happened to me.  When
+they found what they thought was my body, he was willing to
+identify it in the hope that the crime might be charged to the
+crimps, and so did the other sailor witnesses.  But my brother
+Bill, who had just arrived here from Callao, where he had been
+hunting for me, hushed it up to prevent a scandal.  All the same,
+Bill might have known the body wasn't mine, even though he hadn't
+seen me for years."
+
+"But it was frightfully disfigured, so that even I, who saw you
+only once, could not have sworn it was NOT you," said Randolph
+quickly.
+
+"Humph!" said Captain Dornton musingly.  "Bill may have acted on
+the square--though he was in a d----d hurry."
+
+"But," said Randolph eagerly, "you will put an end to all this now.
+You will assert yourself.  You have witnesses to prove your
+identity."
+
+"Steady, lad," said the captain, waving his pipe gently.  "Of
+course I have.  But"--he stopped, laid down his pipe, and put his
+hands doggedly in his pockets--"IS IT WORTH IT?"  Seeing the look
+of amazement in Randolph's face, he laughed his low laugh, and
+settled himself back in his chair again.  "No," he said quietly,
+"if it wasn't for my son, and what's due him as my heir, I suppose--
+I reckon I'd just chuck the whole d----d thing."
+
+"What!" said Randolph.  "Give up the property, the title, the
+family honor, the wrong done to your reputation, the punishment"--
+He hesitated, fearing he had gone too far.
+
+Captain Dornton withdrew his pipe from his mouth with a gesture of
+caution, and holding it up, said: "Steady, lad.  We'll come to THAT
+by and by.  As to the property and title, I cut and run from THEM
+ten years ago.  To me they meant only the old thing--the life of a
+country gentleman, the hunting, the shooting, the whole beastly
+business that the land, over there, hangs like a millstone round
+your neck.  They meant all this to me, who loved adventure and the
+sea from my cradle.  I cut the property, for I hated it, and I hate
+it still.  If I went back I should hear the sea calling me day and
+night; I should feel the breath of the southwest trades in every
+wind that blew over that tight little island yonder; I should be
+always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight
+out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas.  Do you think a
+man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the
+long Pacific swell--just ahead of him a reef breaking white into
+the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms--cares to follow
+hounds over gray hedges under a gray November sky?  And the
+society?  A man who's got a speaking acquaintance in every port
+from Acapulco to Melbourne, who knows every den and every
+longshoreman in it from a South American tienda to a Samoan beach-
+comber's hut,--what does he want with society?"  He paused as
+Randolph's eyes were fixed wonderingly on the first sign of emotion
+on his weather-beaten face, which seemed for a moment to glow with
+the strength and freshness of the sea, and then said, with a laugh:
+"You stare, lad.  Well, for all the Dorntons are rather proud of
+their family, like as not there was some beastly old Danish pirate
+among them long ago, and I've got a taste of his blood in me.  But
+I'm not quite as bad as that yet."
+
+He laughed, and carelessly went on: "As to the family honor, I
+don't see that it will be helped by my ripping up the whole thing
+and perhaps showing that Bill was a little too previous in
+identifying me.  As to my reputation, that was gone after I left
+home, and if I hadn't been the legal heir they wouldn't have
+bothered their heads about me.  My father had given me up long ago,
+and there isn't a man, woman, or child that wouldn't now welcome
+Bill in my place."
+
+"There is one who wouldn't," said Randolph impulsively.
+
+"You mean Caroline Avondale?" said Captain Dornton dryly.
+
+Randolph colored.  "No; I mean Miss Eversleigh, who was with your
+brother."
+
+Captain Dornton reflected.  "To be sure!  Sibyl Eversleigh!  I
+haven't seen her since she was so high.  I used to call her my
+little sweetheart.  So Sybby remembered Cousin Jack and came to
+find him?  But when did you meet her?" he asked suddenly, as if
+this was the only detail of the past which had escaped him, fixing
+his frank eyes upon Randolph.
+
+The young man recounted at some length the dinner party at
+Dingwall's, his conversation with Miss Eversleigh, and his
+interview with Sir William, but spoke little of Miss Avondale.  To
+his surprise, the captain listened smilingly, and only said: "That
+was like Billy to take a rise out of you by pretending you were
+suspected.  That's his way--a little rough when you don't know him
+and he's got a little grog amidships.  All the same, I'd have given
+something to have heard him 'running' you, when all the while you
+had the biggest bulge on him, only neither of you knew it."  He
+laughed again, until Randolph, amazed at his levity and
+indifference, lost his patience.
+
+"Do you know," he said bluntly, "that they don't believe you were
+legally married?"
+
+But Captain Dornton only continued to laugh, until, seeing his
+companion's horrified face, he became demure.  "I suppose Bill
+didn't, for Bill had sense enough to know that otherwise he would
+have to take a back seat to Bobby."
+
+"But did Miss Avondale know you were legally married, and that your
+son was the heir?" asked Randolph bluntly.
+
+"She had no reason to suspect otherwise, although we were married
+secretly.  She was an old friend of my wife, not particularly of
+mine."
+
+Randolph sat back amazed and horrified.  Those were HER own words.
+Or was this man deceiving him as the others had?
+
+But the captain, eying him curiously, but still amusedly, added: "I
+even thought of bringing her as one of my witnesses, until"--
+
+"Until what?" asked Randolph quickly, as he saw the captain had
+hesitated.
+
+"Until I found she wasn't to be trusted; until I found she was too
+thick with Bill," said the captain bluntly.  "And now she's gone to
+England with him and the boy, I suppose she'll make him come to
+terms."
+
+"Come to terms?" echoed Randolph.  "I don't understand."  Yet he
+had an instinctive fear that he did.
+
+"Well," said the captain slowly, "suppose she might prefer the
+chance of being the wife of a grown-up baronet to being the
+governess of one who was only a minor?  She's a cute girl," he
+added dryly.
+
+"But," said Randolph indignantly, "you have other witnesses, I
+hope."
+
+"Of course I have.  I've got the Spanish records now from the
+Callao priest, and they're put in a safe place should anything
+happen to me--if anything could happen to a dead man!" he added
+grimly.  "These proofs were all I was waiting for before I made up
+my mind whether I should blow the whole thing, or let it slide."
+
+Randolph looked again with amazement at this strange man who seemed
+so indifferent to the claims of wealth, position, and even to
+revenge.  It seemed inconceivable, and yet he could not help being
+impressed with his perfect sincerity.  He was relieved, however,
+when Captain Dornton rose with apparent reluctance and put away his
+pipe.
+
+"Now look here, my lad, I'm right glad to have overhauled you
+again, whatever happened or is going to happen, and there's my hand
+upon it!  Now, to come to business.  I'm going over to England on
+this job, and I want you to come and help me."
+
+Randolph's heart leaped.  The appeal revived all his old boyish
+enthusiasm, with his secret loyalty to the man before him.  But he
+suddenly remembered his past illusions, and for an instant he
+hesitated.
+
+"But the bank," he stammered, scarce knowing what to say.
+
+The captain smiled.  "I will pay you better than the bank; and at
+the end of four months, in whatever way this job turns out, if you
+still wish to return here, I will see that you are secured from any
+loss.  Perhaps you may be able to get a leave of absence.  But your
+real object must be kept a secret from every one.  Not a word of my
+existence or my purpose must be blown before I am ready.  You and
+Jack Redhill are all that know it now."
+
+"But you have a lawyer?" said the surprised Randolph.
+
+"Not yet.  I'm my own lawyer in this matter until I get fairly
+under way.  I've studied the law enough to know that as soon as I
+prove that I'm alive the case must go on on account of my heir,
+whether I choose to cry quits or not.  And it's just THAT that
+holds my hand."
+
+Randolph stared at the extraordinary man before him.  For a moment,
+as the strange story of his miraculous escape and his still more
+wonderful indifference to it all recurred to his mind, he felt a
+doubt of the narrator's truthfulness or his sanity.  But another
+glance at the sailor's frank eyes dispelled that momentary
+suspicion.  He held out his hand as frankly, and grasping Captain
+Dornton's, said, "I will go."
+
+
+V
+
+
+Randolph's request for a four months' leave of absence was granted
+with little objection and no curiosity.  He had acquired the
+confidence of his employers, and beyond Mr. Revelstoke's curt
+surprise that a young fellow on the road to fortune should
+sacrifice so much time to irrelevant travel, and the remark, "But
+you know your own business best," there was no comment.  It struck
+the young man, however, that Mr. Dingwall's slight coolness on
+receiving the news might be attributed to a suspicion that he was
+following Miss Avondale, whom he had fancied Dingwall disliked, and
+he quickly made certain inquiries in regard to Miss Eversleigh and
+the possibility of his meeting her.  As, without intending it, and
+to his own surprise, he achieved a blush in so doing, which
+Dingwall noted, he received a gracious reply, and the suggestion
+that it was "quite proper" for him, on arriving, to send the young
+lady his card.
+
+Captain Dornton, under the alias of "Captain Johns," was ready to
+catch the next steamer to the Isthmus, and in two days they sailed.
+The voyage was uneventful, and if Randolph had expected any
+enthusiasm on the part of the captain in the mission on which he
+was now fairly launched, he would have been disappointed.  Although
+his frankness was unchanged, he volunteered no confidences.  It was
+evident he was fully acquainted with the legal strength of his
+claim, yet he, as evidently, deferred making any plan of redress
+until he reached England.  Of Miss Eversleigh he was more
+communicative.  "You would have liked her better, my lad, it you
+hadn't been bewitched by the Avondale woman, for she is the whitest
+of the Dorntons."  In vain Randolph protested truthfully, yet with
+an even more convincing color, that it had made no difference, and
+he HAD liked her.  The captain laughed.  "Ay, lad!  But she's a
+poor orphan, with scarcely a hundred pounds a year, who lives with
+her guardian, an old clergyman.  And yet," he added grimly, "there
+are only three lives between her and the property--mine, Bobby's,
+and Bill's--unless HE should marry and have an heir."
+
+"The more reason why you should assert yourself and do what you can
+for her now," said Randolph eagerly.
+
+"Ay," returned the captain, with his usual laugh, "when she was a
+child I used to call her my little sweetheart, and gave her a ring,
+and I reckon I promised to marry her, too, when she grew up."
+
+The truthful Randolph would have told him of Miss Evereleigh's
+gift, but unfortunately he felt himself again blushing, and fearful
+lest the captain would misconstrue his confusion, he said nothing.
+
+Except on this occasion, the captain talked with Randolph chiefly
+of his later past,--of voyages he had made, of places they were
+passing, and ports they visited.  He spent much of the time with
+the officers, and even the crew, over whom he seemed to exercise a
+singular power, and with whom he exhibited an odd freemasonry.  To
+Randolph's eyes he appeared to grow in strength and stature in the
+salt breath of the sea, and although he was uniformly kind, even
+affectionate, to him, he was brusque to the other passengers, and
+at times even with his friends the sailors.  Randolph sometimes
+wondered how he would treat a crew of his own.  He found some
+answer to that question in the captain's manner to Jack Redhill,
+the abstractor of the portmanteau, and his old shipmate, who was
+accompanying the captain in some dependent capacity, but who
+received his master's confidences and orders with respectful
+devotion.
+
+It was a cold, foggy morning, nearly two months later, that they
+landed at Plymouth.  The English coast had been a vague blank all
+night, only pierced, long hours apart, by dim star-points or weird
+yellow beacon flashes against the horizon.  And this vagueness and
+unreality increased on landing, until it seemed to Randolph that
+they had slipped into a land of dreams.  The illusion was kept up
+as they walked in the weird shadows through half-lit streets into a
+murky railway station throbbing with steam and sudden angry flashes
+in the darkness, and then drew away into what ought to have been
+the open country, but was only gray plains of mist against a lost
+horizon.  Sometimes even the vague outlook was obliterated by
+passing trains coming from nowhere and slipping into nothingness.
+As they crept along with the day, without, however, any lightening
+of the opaque vault overhead to mark its meridian, there came at
+times a thinning of the gray wall on either side of the track,
+showing the vague bulk of a distant hill, the battlemented sky line
+of an old-time hall, or the spires of a cathedral, but always
+melting back into the mist again as in a dream.  Then vague
+stretches of gloom again, foggy stations obscured by nebulous light
+and blurred and moving figures, and the black relief of a tunnel.
+Only once the captain, catching sight of Randolph's awed face under
+the lamp of the smoking carriage, gave way to his long, low laugh.
+"Jolly place, England--so very 'Merrie.'"  And then they came to a
+comparatively lighter, broader, and more brilliantly signaled
+tunnel filled with people, and as they remained in it, Randolph was
+told it was London.  With the sensation of being only half awake,
+he was guided and put into a cab by his companion, and seemed to be
+completely roused only at the hotel.
+
+
+It had been arranged that Randolph should first go down to
+Chillingworth rectory and call on Miss Eversleigh, and, without
+disclosing his secret, gather the latest news from Dornton Hall,
+only a few miles from Chillingworth.  For this purpose he had
+telegraphed to her that evening, and had received a cordial
+response.  The next morning he arose early, and, in spite of the
+gloom, in the glow of his youthful optimism entered the bedroom of
+the sleeping Captain Dornton, and shook him by the shoulder in lieu
+of the accolade, saying: "Rise, Sir John Dornton!"
+
+The captain, a light sleeper, awoke quickly.  "Thank you, my lad,
+all the same, though I don't know that I'm quite ready yet to
+tumble up to that kind of piping.  There's a rotten old saying in
+the family that only once in a hundred years the eldest son
+succeeds.  That's why Bill was so cocksure, I reckon.  Well?"
+
+"In an hour I'm off to Chillingworth to begin the campaign," said
+Randolph cheerily.
+
+"Luck to you, my boy, whatever happens.  Clap a stopper on your
+jaws, though, now and then.  I'm glad you like Sybby, but I don't
+want you to like her so much as to forget yourself and give me
+away."
+
+Half an hour out of London the fog grew thinner, breaking into
+lace-like shreds in the woods as the train sped by, or expanding
+into lustrous tenuity above him.  Although the trees were leafless,
+there was some recompense in the glimpses their bare boughs
+afforded of clustering chimneys and gables nestling in ivy.  An
+infinite repose had been laid upon the landscape with the
+withdrawal of the fog, as of a veil lifted from the face of a
+sleeper.  All his boyish dreams of the mother country came back to
+him in the books he had read, and re-peopled the vast silence.
+Even the rotting leaves that lay thick in the crypt-like woods
+seemed to him the dead laurels of its past heroes and sages.
+Quaint old-time villages, thatched roofs, the ever-recurring square
+towers of church or hall, the trim, ordered parks, tiny streams
+crossed by heavy stone bridges much too large for them--all these
+were only pages of those books whose leaves he seemed to be turning
+over.  Two hours of this fancy, and then the train stopped at a
+station within a mile or two of a bleak headland, a beacon, and the
+gray wash of a pewter-colored sea, where a hilly village street
+climbed to a Norman church tower and the ivied gables of a rectory.
+
+Miss Eversleigh, dignifiedly tall, but youthfully frank, as he
+remembered her, was waiting to drive him in a pony trap to the
+rectory.  A little pink, with suppressed consciousness and the
+responsibilities of presenting a stranger guest to her guardian,
+she seemed to Randolph more charming than ever.
+
+But her first word of news shocked and held him breathless.  Bobby,
+the little orphan, a frail exotic, had succumbed to the Northern
+winter.  A cold caught in New York had developed into pneumonia,
+and he died on the passage.  Miss Avondale, although she had
+received marked attention from Sir William, returned to America in
+the same ship.
+
+"I really don't think she was quite as devoted to the poor child as
+all that, you know," she continued with innocent frankness, "and
+Cousin Bill was certainly most kind to them both, yet there really
+seemed to be some coolness between them after the child's death.
+But," she added suddenly, for the first time observing her
+companion's evident distress, and coloring in confusion, "I beg
+your pardon--I've been horribly rude and heartless.  I dare say the
+poor boy was very dear to you, and of course Miss Avondale was your
+friend.  Please forgive me!"
+
+Randolph, intent only on that catastrophe which seemed to wreck all
+Captain Dornton's hopes and blunt his only purpose for declaring
+himself, hurriedly reassured her, yet was not sorry his agitation
+had been misunderstood.  And what was to be done?  There was no
+train back to London for four hours.  He dare not telegraph, and if
+he did, could he trust to his strange patron's wise conduct under
+the first shock of this news to his present vacillating purpose?
+He could only wait.
+
+Luckily for his ungallant abstraction, they were speedily at the
+rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl's guardian,
+and his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that
+the story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from
+Miss Eversleigh's recital.  Distraught and anxious as he was, he
+could not resist the young girl's offer after luncheon to show him
+the church with the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to
+John Dornton, and, later, the Hall, only two miles distant.  But
+here Randolph hesitated.
+
+"I would rather not call on Sir William to-day," he said.
+
+"You need not.  He is over at the horse show at Fern Dyke, and
+won't be back till late.  And if he has been forgathering with his
+boon companions he won't be very pleasant company."
+
+"Sibyl!" said the rector in good-humored protest.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Trent has had a little of Cousin Bill's convivial manners
+before now," said the young girl vivaciously, "and isn't shocked.
+But we can see the Hall from the park on our way to the station."
+
+Even in his anxious preoccupation he could see that the church
+itself was a quaint and wonderful preservation of the past.  For
+four centuries it had been sacred to the tombs of the Dorntons and
+their effigies in brass and marble, yet, as Randolph glanced at the
+stately sarcophagus of the unknown ticket of leave man, its
+complacent absurdity, combined with his nervousness, made him
+almost hysterical.  Yet again, it seemed to him that something of
+the mystery and inviolability of the past now invested that
+degraded dust, and it would be an equal impiety to disturb it.
+Miss Eversleigh, again believing his agitation caused by the memory
+of his old patron, tactfully hurried him away.  Yet it was a more
+bitter thought, I fear, that not only were his lips sealed to his
+charming companion on the subject in which they could sympathize,
+but his anxiety prevented him from availing himself of that
+interview to exchange the lighter confidences he had eagerly looked
+forward to.  It seemed cruel that he was debarred this chance of
+knitting their friendship closer by another of those accidents that
+had brought them together.  And he was aware that his gloomy
+abstraction was noticed by her.  At first she drew herself up in a
+certain proud reserve, and then, perhaps, his own nervousness
+infecting her in turn, he was at last terrified to observe that, as
+she stood before the tomb, her clear gray eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Oh, please don't do that--THERE, Miss Eversleigh," he burst out
+impulsively.
+
+"I was thinking of Cousin Jack," she said, a little startled at his
+abruptness.  "Sometimes it seems so strange that he is dead--I
+scarcely can believe it."
+
+"I meant," stammered Randolph, "that he is much happier--you know"--
+he grew almost hysterical again as he thought of the captain lying
+cheerfully in his bed at the hotel--"much happier than you or I,"
+he added bitterly; "that is--I mean, it grieves me so to see YOU
+grieve, you know."
+
+Miss Eversleigh did NOT know, but there was enough sincerity and
+real feeling in the young fellow's voice and eyes to make her color
+slightly and hurry him away to a locality less fraught with
+emotions.  In a few moments they entered the park, and the old Hall
+rose before them.  It was a great Tudor house of mullioned windows,
+traceries, and battlements; of stately towers, moss-grown
+balustrades, and statues darkening with the fog that was already
+hiding the angles and wings of its huge bulk.  A peacock spread its
+ostentatious tail on the broad stone steps before the portal; a
+flight of rooks from the leafless elms rose above its stacked and
+twisted chimneys.  After all, how little had this stately
+incarnation of the vested rights and sacred tenures of the past in
+common with the laughing rover he had left in London that morning!
+And thinking of the destinies that the captain held so lightly in
+his hand, and perhaps not a little of the absurdity of his own
+position to the confiding young girl beside him, for a moment he
+half hated him.
+
+The fog deepened as they reached the station, and, as it seemed to
+Randolph, made their parting still more vague and indefinite, and
+it was with difficulty that he could respond to the young girl's
+frank hope that he would soon return to them.  Yet he half resolved
+that he would not until he could tell her all.
+
+Nevertheless, as the train crept more and more slowly, with halting
+signals, toward London, he buoyed himself up with the hope that
+Captain Dornton would still try conclusions for his patrimony, or
+at least come to some compromise by which he might be restored to
+his rank and name.  But upon these hopes the vision of that great
+house settled firmly upon its lands, held there in perpetuity by
+the dead and stretched-out hands of those that lay beneath its
+soil, always obtruded itself.  Then the fog deepened, and the
+crawling train came to a dead stop at the next station.  The whole
+line was blocked.  Four precious hours were hopelessly lost.
+
+Yet despite his impatience, he reentered London with the same dazed
+semi-consciousness of feeling as on the night he had first arrived.
+There seemed to have been no interim; his visit to the rectory and
+Hall, and even his fateful news, were only a dream.  He drove
+through the same shadow to the hotel, was received by the same
+halo-encircled lights that had never been put out.  After glancing
+through the halls and reading room he hurriedly made his way to his
+companion's room.  The captain was not there.  He quickly summoned
+the waiter.  The gentleman?  Yes; Captain Dornton had left with his
+servant, Redhill, a few hours after Mr. Trent went away.  He had
+left no message.
+
+Again condemned to wait in inactivity, Randolph tried to resist a
+certain uneasiness that was creeping over him, by attributing the
+captain's absence to some unexpected legal consultation or the
+gathering of evidence, his prolonged detention being due to the
+same fog that had delayed his own train.  But he was somewhat
+surprised to find that the captain had ordered his luggage into the
+porter's care in the hall below before leaving, and that nothing
+remained in his room but a few toilet articles and the fateful
+portmanteau.  The hours passed slowly.  Owing to that perpetual
+twilight in which he had passed the day, there seemed no
+perceptible flight of time, and at eleven o'clock, the captain not
+arriving, he determined to wait in the latter's room so as to be
+sure not to miss him.  Twelve o'clock boomed from an adjacent
+invisible steeple, but still he came not.  Overcome by the fatigue
+and excitement of the day, Randolph concluded to lie down in his
+clothes on the captain's bed, not without a superstitious and
+uncomfortable recollection of that night, about a year before, when
+he had awaited him vainly at the San Francisco hotel.  Even the
+fateful portmanteau was there to assist his gloomy fancy.
+Nevertheless, with the boom of one o'clock in his drowsy ears as
+his last coherent recollection, he sank into a dreamless sleep.
+
+He was awakened by a tapping at his door, and jumped up to realize
+by his watch and the still burning gaslight that it was nine
+o'clock.  But the intruder was only a waiter with a letter which he
+had brought to Randolph's room in obedience to the instructions the
+latter had given overnight.  Not doubting it was from the captain,
+although the handwriting of the address was unfamiliar, he eagerly
+broke the seal.  But he was surprised to read as follows:--
+
+
+DEAR MR. TRENT,--We had such sad news from the Hall after you left.
+Sir William was seized with a kind of fit.  It appears that he had
+just returned from the horse show, and had given his mare to the
+groom while he walked to the garden entrance.  The groom saw him
+turn at the yew hedge, and was driving to the stables when he heard
+a queer kind of cry, and turning back to the garden front, found
+poor Sir William lying on the ground in convulsions.  The doctor
+was sent for, and Mr. Brunton and I went over to the Hall.  The
+doctor thinks it was something like a stroke, but he is not
+certain, and Sir William is quite delirious, and doesn't recognize
+anybody.  I gathered from the groom that he had been DRINKING
+HEAVILY.  Perhaps it was well that you did not see him, but I
+thought you ought to know what had happened in case you came down
+again.  It's all very dreadful, and I wonder if that is why I was
+so nervous all the afternoon.  It may have been a kind of
+presentiment.  Don't you think so?
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.
+
+
+I am afraid Randolph thought more of the simple-minded girl who, in
+the midst of her excitement, turned to him half unconsciously, than
+he did of Sir William.  Had it not been for the necessity of seeing
+the captain, he would probably have taken the next train to the
+rectory.  Perhaps he might later.  He thought little of Sir
+William's illness, and was inclined to accept the young girl's
+naive suggestion of its cause.  He read and reread the letter,
+staring at the large, grave, childlike handwriting--so like
+herself--and obeying a sudden impulse, raised the signature, as
+gravely as if it had been her hand, to his lips.
+
+Still the day advanced and the captain came not.  Randolph found
+the inactivity insupportable.  He knew not where to seek him; he
+had no more clue to his resorts or his friends--if, indeed, he had
+any in London--than he had after their memorable first meeting in
+San Francisco.  He might, indeed, be the dupe of an impostor, who,
+at the eleventh hour, had turned craven and fled.  He might be, in
+the captain's indifference, a mere instrument set aside at his
+pleasure.  Yet he could take advantage of Miss Eversleigh's letter
+and seek her, and confess everything, and ask her advice.  It was a
+great and at the moment it seemed to him an overwhelming
+temptation.  But only for the moment.  He had given his word to the
+captain--more, he had given his youthful FAITH.  And, to his
+credit, he never swerved again.  It seemed to him, too, in his
+youthful superstition, as he looked at the abandoned portmanteau,
+that he had again to take up his burden--his "trust."
+
+It was nearly four o'clock when the spell was broken.  A large
+packet, bearing the printed address of a London and American bank,
+was brought to him by a special messenger; but the written
+direction was in the captain's hand.  Randolph tore it open.  It
+contained one or two inclosures, which he hastily put aside for the
+letter, two pages of foolscap, which he read breathlessly:--
+
+
+DEAR TRENT,--Don't worry your head if I have slipped my cable
+without telling you.  I'm all right, only I got the news you are
+bringing me, JUST AFTER YOU LEFT, by Jack Redhill, whom I had sent
+to Dornton Hall to see how the land lay the night before.  It was
+not that I didn't trust YOU, but HE had ways of getting news that
+you wouldn't stoop to.  You can guess, from what I have told you
+already, that, now Bobby is gone, there's nothing to keep me here,
+and I'm following my own idea of letting the whole blasted thing
+slide.  I only worked this racket for the sake of him.  I'm sorry
+for him, but I suppose the poor little beggar couldn't stand these
+sunless, God-forsaken longitudes any more than I could.  Besides
+that, as I didn't want to trust any lawyer with my secret, I myself
+had hunted up some books on the matter, and found that, by the law
+of entail, I'd have to rip up the whole blessed thing, and Bill
+would have had to pay back every blessed cent of what rents he had
+collected since he took hold--not to ME, but the ESTATE--with
+interest, and that no arrangement I could make with HIM would be
+legal on account of the boy.  At least, that's the way the thing
+seemed to pan out to me.  So that when I heard of Bobby's death I
+was glad to jump the rest, and that's what I made up my mind to do.
+
+But, like a blasted lubber, now that I COULD do it and cut right
+away, I must needs think that I'd like first to see Bill on the
+sly, without letting on to any one else, and tell him what I was
+going to do.  I'd no fear that he'd object, or that he'd hesitate a
+minute to fall in with my plan of dropping my name and my game, and
+giving him full swing, while I stood out to sea and the South
+Pacific, and dropped out of his mess for the rest of my life.
+Perhaps I wanted to set his mind at rest, if he'd ever had any
+doubts; perhaps I wanted to have a little fun out of him for his
+d----d previousness; perhaps, lad, I had a hankering to see the old
+place for the last time.  At any rate, I allowed to go to Dornton
+Hall.  I timed myself to get there about the hour you left, to keep
+out of sight until I knew he was returning from the horse show, and
+to waylay him ALONE and have our little talk without witnesses.  I
+daren't go to the Hall, for some of the old servants might
+recognize me.
+
+I went down there with Jack Redhill, and we separated at the
+station.  I hung around in the fog.  I even saw you pass with Sibyl
+in the dogcart, but you didn't see me.  I knew the place, and just
+where to hide where I could have the chance of seeing him alone.
+But it was a beastly job waiting there.  I felt like a d----d thief
+instead of a man who was simply visiting his own.  Yet, you mayn't
+believe me, lad, but I hated the place and all it meant more than
+ever.  Then, by and by, I heard him coming.  I had arranged it all
+with myself to get into the yew hedge, and step out as he came to
+the garden entrance, and as soon as he recognized me to get him
+round the terrace into the summer house, where we could speak
+without danger.
+
+I heard the groom drive away to the stable with the cart, and, sure
+enough, in a minute he came lurching along toward the garden door.
+He was mighty unsteady on his pins, and I reckon he was more than
+half full, which was a bad lookout for our confab.  But I
+calculated that the sight of me, when I slipped out, would sober
+him.  And, by ---, it did!  For his eyes bulged out of his head and
+got fixed there; his jaw dropped; he tried to strike at me with a
+hunting crop he was carrying, and then he uttered an ungodly yell
+you might have heard at the station, and dropped down in his
+tracks.  I had just time to slip back into the hedge again before
+the groom came driving back, and then all hands were piped, and
+they took him into the house.
+
+And of course the game was up, and I lost my only chance.  I was
+thankful enough to get clean away without discovering myself, and I
+have to trust now to the fact of Bill's being drunk, and thinking
+it was my ghost that he saw, in a touch of the jimjams!  And I'm
+not sorry to have given him that start, for there was that in his
+eye, and that in the stroke he made, my lad, that showed a guilty
+conscience I hadn't reckoned on.  And it cured me of my wish to set
+his mind at ease.  He's welcome to all the rest.
+
+And that's why I'm going away--never to return.  I'm sorry I
+couldn't take you with me, but it's better that I shouldn't see you
+again, and that you didn't even know WHERE I was gone.  When you
+get this I shall be on blue water and heading for the sunshine.
+You'll find two letters inclosed.  One you need not open unless you
+hear that my secret was blown, and you are ever called upon to
+explain your relations with me.  The other is my thanks, my lad, in
+a letter of credit on the bank, for the way you have kept your
+trust, and I believe will continue to keep it, to
+
+JOHN DORNTON.
+
+P.S.  I hope you dropped a tear over my swell tomb at Dornton
+Church.  All the same, I don't begrudge it to the poor devil who
+lost his life instead of me.
+
+J. D.
+
+
+As Randolph read, he seemed to hear the captain's voice throughout
+the letter, and even his low, characteristic laugh in the
+postscript.  Then he suddenly remembered the luggage which the
+porter had said the captain had ordered to be taken below; but on
+asking that functionary he was told a conveyance for the Victoria
+Docks had called with an order, and taken it away at daybreak.  It
+was evident that the captain had intended the letter should be his
+only farewell.  Depressed and a little hurt at his patron's
+abruptness, Randolph returned to his room.  Opening the letter of
+credit, he found it was for a thousand pounds--a munificent
+beneficence, as it seemed to Randolph, for his dubious services,
+and a proof of his patron's frequent declarations that he had money
+enough without touching the Dornton estates.
+
+For a long time he sat with these sole evidences of the reality of
+his experience in his hands, a prey to a thousand surmises and
+conflicting thoughts.  Was he the self-deceived disciple of a
+visionary, a generous, unselfish, but weak man, whose eccentricity
+passed even the bounds of reason?  Who would believe the captain's
+story or the captain's motives?  Who comprehend his strange quest
+and its stranger and almost ridiculous termination?  Even if the
+seal of secrecy were removed in after years, what had he, Randolph,
+to show in corroboration of his patron's claim?
+
+Then it occurred to him that there was no reason why he should not
+go down to the rectory and see Miss Eversleigh again under pretense
+of inquiring after the luckless baronet, whose title and fortune
+had, nevertheless, been so strangely preserved.  He began at once
+his preparations for the journey, and was nearly ready when a
+servant entered with a telegram.  Randolph's heart leaped.  The
+captain had sent him news--perhaps had changed his mind!  He tore
+off the yellow cover, and read,--
+
+
+Sir William died at twelve o'clock without recovering
+consciousness.
+
+S. EVERSLEIGH.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+For a moment Randolph gazed at the dispatch with a half-hysterical
+laugh, and then became as suddenly sane and cool.  One thought
+alone was uppermost in his mind: the captain could not have heard
+this news yet, and if he was still within reach, or accessible by
+any means whatever, however determined his purpose, he must know it
+at once.  The only clue to his whereabouts was the Victoria Docks.
+But that was something.  In another moment Randolph was in the
+lower hall, had learned the quickest way of reaching the docks, and
+plunged into the street.
+
+The fog here swooped down, and to the embarrassment of his mind was
+added the obscurity of light and distance, which halted him after a
+few hurried steps, in utter perplexity.  Indistinct figures were
+here and there approaching him out of nothingness and melting away
+again into the greenish gray chaos.  He was in a busy thoroughfare;
+he could hear the slow trample of hoofs, the dull crawling of
+vehicles, and the warning outcries of a traffic he could not see.
+Trusting rather to his own speed than that of a halting conveyance,
+he blundered on until he reached the railway station.  A short but
+exasperating journey of impulses and hesitations, of detonating
+signals and warning whistles, and he at last stood on the docks,
+beyond him a vague bulk or two, and a soft, opaque flowing wall--
+the river!
+
+But one steamer had left that day--the Dom Pedro, for the River
+Plate--two hours before, but until the fog thickened, a quarter of
+an hour ago, she could be seen, so his informant said, still lying,
+with steam up, in midstream.  Yes, it was still possible to board
+her.  But even as the boatman spoke, and was leading the way toward
+the landing steps, the fog suddenly lightened; a soft salt breath
+stole in from the distant sea, and a veil seemed to be lifted from
+the face of the gray waters.  The outlines of the two shores came
+back; the spars of nearer vessels showed distinctly, but the space
+where the huge hulk had rested was empty and void.  There was a
+trail of something darker and more opaque than fog itself lying
+near the surface of the water, but the Dom Pedro was a mere speck
+in the broadening distance.
+
+
+A bright sun and a keen easterly wind were revealing the curling
+ridges of the sea beyond the headland when Randolph again passed
+the gates of Dornton Hall on his way to the rectory.  Now, for the
+first time, he was able to see clearly the outlines of that spot
+which had seemed to him only a misty dream, and even in his
+preoccupation he was struck by its grave beauty.  The leafless
+limes and elms in the park grouped themselves as part of the
+picturesque details of the Hall they encompassed, and the evergreen
+slope of firs and larches rose as a background to the gray
+battlements, covered with dark green ivy, whose rich shadows were
+brought out by the unwonted sunshine.  With a half-repugnant
+curiosity he had tried to identify the garden entrance and the
+fateful yew hedge the captain had spoken of as he passed.  But as
+quickly he fell back upon the resolution he had taken in coming
+there--to dissociate his secret, his experience, and his
+responsibility to his patron from his relations to Sibyl
+Eversleigh; to enjoy her companionship without an obtruding thought
+of the strange circumstances that had brought them together at
+first, or the stranger fortune that had later renewed their
+acquaintance.  He had resolved to think of her as if she had merely
+passed into his life in the casual ways of society, with only her
+personal charms to set her apart from others.  Why should his
+exclusive possession of a secret--which, even if confided to her,
+would only give her needless and hopeless anxiety--debar them from
+an exchange of those other confidences of youth and sympathy?  Why
+could he not love her and yet withhold from her the knowledge of
+her cousin's existence?  So he had determined to make the most of
+his opportunity during his brief holiday; to avail himself of her
+naive invitation, and even of what he dared sometimes to think was
+her predilection for his companionship.  And if, before he left, he
+had acquired a right to look forward to a time when her future and
+his should be one--but here his glowing fancy was abruptly checked
+by his arrival at the rectory door.
+
+Mr. Brunton received him cordially, yet with a slight business
+preoccupation and a certain air of importance that struck him as
+peculiar.  Sibyl, he informed him, was engaged at that moment with
+some friends who had come over from the Hall.  Mr. Trent would
+understand that there was a great deal for her to do--in her
+present position.  Wondering why SHE should be selected to do it
+instead of older and more experienced persons, Randolph, however,
+contented himself with inquiries regarding the details of Sir
+William's seizure and death.  He learned, as he expected, that
+nothing whatever was known of the captain's visit, nor was there
+the least suspicion that the baronet's attack was the result of any
+predisposing emotion.  Indeed, it seemed more possible that his
+medical attendants, knowing something of his late excesses and
+their effect upon his constitution, preferred, for the sake of
+avoiding scandal, to attribute the attack to long-standing organic
+disease.
+
+Randolph, who had already determined, as a forlorn hope, to write a
+cautious letter to the captain (informing him briefly of the news
+without betraying his secret, and directed to the care of the
+consignees of the Dom Pedro in Brazil, by the next post), was glad
+to be able to add this medical opinion to relieve his patron's mind
+of any fear of having hastened his brother's death by his innocent
+appearance.  But here the entrance of Sibyl Eversleigh with her
+friends drove all else from his mind.
+
+She looked so tall and graceful in her black dress, which set off
+her dazzling skin, and, with her youthful gravity, gave to her
+figure the charming maturity of a young widow, that he was for a
+moment awed and embarrassed.  But he experienced a relief when she
+came eagerly toward him in all her old girlish frankness, and with
+even something of yearning expectation in her gray eyes.
+
+"It was so good of you to come," she said.  "I thought you would
+imagine how I was feeling"--  She stopped, as if she were
+conscious, as Randolph was, of a certain chill of unresponsiveness
+in the company, and said in an undertone, "Wait until we are
+alone."  Then, turning with a slight color and a pretty dignity
+toward her friends, she continued: "Lady Ashbrook, this is Mr.
+Trent, an old friend of both my cousins when they were in America."
+
+In spite of the gracious response of the ladies, Randolph was aware
+of their critical scrutiny of both himself and Miss Eversleigh, of
+the exchange of significant glances, and a certain stiffness in her
+guardian's manner.  It was quite enough to affect Randolph's
+sensitiveness and bring out his own reserve.
+
+Fancying, however, that his reticence disturbed Miss Eversleigh, he
+forced himself to converse with Lady Ashbrook--avoiding many of her
+pointed queries as to himself, his acquaintance with Sibyl, and the
+length of time he expected to stay in England--and even accompanied
+her to her carriage.  And here he was rewarded by Sibyl running out
+with a crape veil twisted round her throat and head, and the usual
+femininely forgotten final message to her visitor.  As the carriage
+drove away, she turned to Randolph, and said quickly,--
+
+"Let us go in by way of the garden."
+
+It was a slight detour, but it gave them a few moments alone.
+
+"It was so awful and sudden," she said, looking gravely at
+Randolph, "and to think that only an hour before I had been saying
+unkind things of him!  Of course," she added naively, "they were
+true, and the groom admitted to me that the mare was overdriven and
+Sir William could hardly stand.  And only to think of it! he never
+recovered complete consciousness, but muttered incoherently all the
+time.  I was with him to the last, and he never said a word I could
+understand--only once."
+
+"What did he say?" asked Randolph uneasily.
+
+"I don't like to say--it was TOO dreadful!"
+
+Randolph did not press her.  Yet, after a pause, she said in a low
+voice, with a naivete impossible to describe, "It was, 'Jack, damn
+you!'"
+
+He did not dare to look at her, even with this grim mingling of
+farce and tragedy which seemed to invest every scene of that sordid
+drama.  Miss Eversleigh continued gravely: "The groom's name was
+Robert, but Jack might have been the name of one of his boon
+companions."
+
+Convinced that she suspected nothing, yet in the hope of changing
+the subject, Randolph said quietly: "I thought your guardian
+perhaps a little less frank and communicative to-day."
+
+"Yes," said the young girl suddenly, with a certain impatience, and
+yet in half apology to her companion, "of course.  He--THEY--all
+and everybody--are much more concerned and anxious about my new
+position than I am.  It's perfectly dreadful--this thinking of it
+all the time, arranging everything, criticising everything in
+reference to it, and the poor man who is the cause of it all not
+yet at rest in his grave!  The whole thing is inhuman and
+unchristian!"
+
+"I don't understand," stammered Randolph vaguely.  "What IS your
+new position?  What do you mean?"
+
+The girl looked up in his face with surprise.  "Why, didn't you
+know?  I'm the next of kin--I'm the heiress--and will succeed to
+the property in six months, when I am of age."
+
+In a flash of recollection Randolph suddenly recalled the captain's
+words, "There are only three lives between her and the property."
+Their meaning had barely touched his comprehension before.  She was
+the heiress.  Yes, save for the captain!
+
+She saw the change, the wonder, even the dismay, in his face, and
+her own brightened frankly.  "It's so good to find one who never
+thought of it, who hadn't it before him as the chief end for which
+I was born!  Yes, I was the next of kin after dear Jack died and
+Bill succeeded, but there was every chance that he would marry and
+have an heir.  And yet the moment he was taken ill that idea was
+uppermost in my guardian's mind, good man as he is, and even forced
+upon me.  If this--this property had come from poor Cousin Jack,
+whom I loved, there would have been something dear in it as a
+memory or a gift, but from HIM, whom I couldn't bear--I know it's
+wicked to talk that way, but it's simply dreadful!"
+
+"And yet," said Randolph, with a sudden seriousness he could not
+control, "I honestly believe that Captain Dornton would be
+perfectly happy--yes, rejoiced!--if he knew the property had come
+to YOU."
+
+There was such an air of conviction, and, it seemed to the simple
+girl, even of spiritual insight, in his manner that her clear,
+handsome eyes rested wonderingly on his.
+
+"Do you really think so?" she said thoughtfully.  "And yet HE knows
+that I am like him.  Yes," she continued, answering Randolph's look
+of surprise, "I am just like HIM in that.  I loathe and despise the
+life that this thing would condemn me to; I hate all that it means,
+and all that it binds me to, as he used to; and if I could, I would
+cut and run from it as HE did."
+
+She spoke with a determined earnestness and warmth, so unlike her
+usual grave naivete that he was astonished.  There was a flush on
+her cheek and a frank fire in her eye that reminded him strangely
+of the captain; and yet she had emphasized her words with a little
+stamp of her narrow foot and a gesture of her hand that was so
+untrained and girlish that he smiled, and said, with perhaps the
+least touch of bitterness in his tone, "But you will get over that
+when you come into the property."
+
+"I suppose I shall," she returned, with an odd lapse to her former
+gravity and submissiveness.  "That's what they all tell me."
+
+"You will be independent and your own mistress," he added.
+
+"Independent," she repeated impatiently, "with Dornton Hall and
+twenty thousand a year!  Independent, with every duty marked out
+for me!  Independent, with every one to criticise my smallest
+actions--every one who would never have given a thought to the
+orphan who was contented and made her own friends on a hundred a
+year!  Of course you, who are a stranger, don't understand; yet I
+thought that you"--she hesitated,--"would have thought differently."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, with your belief that one should make one's own fortune," she
+said.
+
+"That would do for a man, and in that I respected Captain Dornton's
+convictions, as you told them to me.  But for a girl, how could she
+be independent, except with money?"
+
+She shook her head as if unconvinced, but did not reply.  They were
+nearing the garden porch, when she looked up, and said: "And as
+YOU'RE a man, you will be making your way in the world.  Mr.
+Dingwall said you would."
+
+There was something so childishly trustful and confident in her
+assurance that he smiled.  "Mr. Dingwall is too sanguine, but it
+gives me hope to hear YOU say so."
+
+She colored slightly, and said gravely: "We must go in now."  Yet
+she lingered for a moment before the door.  For a long time
+afterward he had a very vivid recollection of her charming face, in
+its childlike gravity and its quaint frame of black crape, standing
+out against the sunset-warmed wall of the rectory.  "Promise me you
+will not mind what these people say or do," she said suddenly.
+
+"I promise," he returned, with a smile, "to mind only what YOU say
+or do."
+
+"But I might not be always quite right, you know," she said naively.
+
+"I'll risk that."
+
+"Then, when we go in now, don't talk much to me, but make yourself
+agreeable to all the others, and then go straight home to the inn,
+and don't come here until after the funeral."
+
+The faintest evasive glint of mischievousness in her withdrawn eyes
+at this moment mitigated the austerity of her command as they both
+passed in.
+
+Randolph had intended not to return to London until after the
+funeral, two days later, and spent the interesting day at the
+neighboring town, whence he dispatched his exploring and perhaps
+hopeless letter to the captain.  The funeral was a large and
+imposing one, and impressed Randolph for the first time with the
+local importance and solid standing of the Dorntons.  All the
+magnates and old county families were represented.  The inn yard
+and the streets of the little village were filled with their quaint
+liveries, crested paneled carriages, and silver-cipher caparisoned
+horses, with a sprinkling of fashion from London.  He could not
+close his ears to the gossip of the villagers regarding the
+suddenness of the late baronet's death, the extinction of the
+title, the accession of the orphaned girl to the property, and
+even, to his greater exasperation, speculations upon her future and
+probable marriage.  "Some o' they gay chaps from Lunnon will be
+lordin' it over the Hall afore long," was the comment of the
+hostler.
+
+It was with some little bitterness that Randolph took his seat in
+the crowded church.  But this feeling, and even his attempts to
+discover Miss Eversleigh's face in the stately family pew fenced
+off from the chancel, presently passed away.  And then his mind
+began to be filled with strange and weird fancies.  What grim and
+ghostly revelations might pass between this dead scion of the
+Dorntons lying on the trestles before them and the obscure,
+nameless ticket of leave man awaiting his entrance in the vault
+below!  The incongruity of this thought, with the smug complacency
+of the worldly minded congregation sitting around him, and the
+probable smiling carelessness of the reckless rover--the cause of
+all--even now idly pacing the deck on the distant sea, touched him
+with horror.  And when added to this was the consciousness that
+Sibyl Eversleigh was forced to become an innocent actor in this
+hideous comedy, it seemed as much as he could bear.  Again he
+questioned himself, Was he right to withhold his secret from her?
+In vain he tried to satisfy his conscience that she was happier in
+her ignorance.  The resolve he had made to keep his relations with
+her apart from his secret, he knew now, was impossible.  But one
+thing was left to him.  Until he could disclose his whole story--
+until his lips were unsealed by Captain Dornton--he must never see
+her again.  And the grim sanctity of the edifice seemed to make
+that resolution a vow.
+
+He did not dare to raise his eyes again toward her pew, lest a
+sight of her sweet, grave face might shake his resolution, and he
+slipped away first among the departing congregation.  He sent her a
+brief note from the inn saying that he was recalled to London by an
+earlier train, and that he would be obliged to return to California
+at once, but hoping that if he could be of any further assistance
+to her she would write to him to the care of the bank.  It was a
+formal letter, and yet he had never written otherwise than formally
+to her.  That night he reached London.  On the following night he
+sailed from Liverpool for America.
+
+
+Six months had passed.  It was difficult, at first, for Randolph to
+pick up his old life again; but his habitual earnestness and
+singleness of purpose stood him in good stead, and a vague rumor
+that he had made some powerful friends abroad, with the nearer fact
+that he had a letter of credit for a thousand pounds, did not
+lessen his reputation.  He was reinstalled and advanced at the
+bank.  Mr. Dingwall was exceptionally gracious, and minute in his
+inquiries regarding Miss Eversleigh's succession to the Dornton
+property, with an occasional shrewdness of eye in his
+interrogations which recalled to Randolph the questioning of Miss
+Eversleigh's friends, and which he responded to as cautiously.  For
+the young fellow remained faithful to his vow even in thinking of
+her, and seemed to be absorbed entirely in his business.  Yet there
+was a vague ambition of purpose in this absorption that would
+probably have startled the more conservative Englishman had he
+known it.
+
+He had not heard from Miss Eversleigh since he left, nor had he
+received any response from the captain.  Indeed, he had indulged in
+little hopes of either.  But he kept stolidly at work, perhaps with
+a larger trust than he knew.  And then, one day, he received a
+letter addressed in a handwriting that made his heart leap, though
+he had seen it but once, when it conveyed the news of Sir William
+Dornton's sudden illness.  It was from Miss Eversleigh, but the
+postmark was Callao!  He tore open the envelope, and for the next
+few moments forgot everything--his business devotion, his lofty
+purpose, even his solemn vow.
+
+It read as follows:--
+
+
+DEAR MR. TRENT,--I should not be writing to you now if I did not
+believe that I NOW understand why you left us so abruptly on the
+day of the funeral, and why you were at times so strange.  You
+might have been a little less hard and cold even if you knew all
+that you did know.  But I must write now, for I shall be in San
+Francisco a few days after this reaches you, and I MUST see you and
+have YOUR help, for I can have no other, as you know.  You are
+wondering what this means, and why I am here.  I know ALL and
+EVERYTHING.  I know HE is alive and never was dead.  I know I have
+no right to what I have, and never had, and I have come here to
+seek him and make him take it back.  I could do no other.  I could
+not live and do anything but that, and YOU might have known it.
+But I have not found him here as I hoped I should, though perhaps
+it was a foolish hope of mine, and I am coming to you to help me
+seek him, for he MUST BE FOUND.  You know I want to keep his and
+your secret, and therefore the only one I can turn to for
+assistance and counsel is YOU.
+
+You are wondering how I know what I do.  Two months ago I GOT A
+LETTER FROM HIM--the strangest, quaintest, and yet THE KINDEST
+LETTER--exactly like himself and the way he used to talk!  He had
+just heard of his brother's death, and congratulated me on coming
+into the property, and said he was now perfectly happy, and should
+KEEP DEAD, and never, never come to life again; that he never
+thought things would turn out as splendidly as they had--for Sir
+William MIGHT have had an heir--and that now he should REALLY DIE
+HAPPY.  He said something about everything being legally right, and
+that I could do what I liked with the property.  As if THAT would
+satisfy me!  Yet it was all so sweet and kind, and so like dear old
+Jack, that I cried all night.  And then I resolved to come here,
+where his letter was dated from.  Luckily I was of age now, and
+could do as I liked, and I said I wanted to travel in South America
+and California; and I suppose they didn't think it very strange
+that I should use my liberty in that way.  Some said it was quite
+like a Dornton!  I knew something of Callao from your friend Miss
+Avondale, and could talk about it, which impressed them.  So I
+started off with only a maid--my old nurse.  I was a little
+frightened at first, when I came to think what I was doing, but
+everybody was very kind, and I really feel quite independent now.
+So, you see, a girl may be INDEPENDENT, after all!  Of course I
+shall see Mr. Dingwall in San Francisco, but he need not know
+anything more than that I am traveling for pleasure.  And I may go
+to the Sandwich Islands or Sydney, if I think HE is there.  Of
+course I have had to use some money--some of HIS rents--but it
+shall be paid back.  I will tell you everything about my plans when
+I see you.
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+SIBYL EVERSLEIGH.
+
+P. S.  Why did you let me cry over that man's tomb in the church?
+
+
+Randolph looked again at the date, and then hurriedly consulted the
+shipping list.  She was due in ten days.  Yet, delighted as he was
+with that prospect, and touched as he had been with her courage and
+naive determination, after his first joy he laid the letter down
+with a sigh.  For whatever was his ultimate ambition, he was still
+a mere salaried clerk; whatever was her self-sacrificing purpose,
+she was still the rich heiress.  The seal of secrecy had been
+broken, yet the situation remained unchanged; their association
+must still be dominated by it.  And he shrank from the thought of
+making her girlish appeal to him for help an opportunity for
+revealing his real feelings.
+
+This instinct was strengthened by the somewhat formal manner in
+which Mr. Dingwall announced her approaching visit.  "Miss
+Eversleigh will stay with Mrs. Dingwall while she is here, on
+account of her--er--position, and the fact that she is without a
+chaperon.  Mrs. Dingwall will, of course, be glad to receive any
+friends Miss Eversleigh would like to see."
+
+Randolph frankly returned that Miss Eversleigh had written to him,
+and that he would be glad to present himself.  Nothing more was
+said, but as the days passed he could not help noticing that, in
+proportion as Mr. Dingwall's manner became more stiff and
+ceremonious, Mr. Revelstoke's usually crisp, good-humored
+suggestions grew more deliberate, and Randolph found himself once
+or twice the subject of the president's penetrating but smiling
+scrutiny.  And the day before Miss Eversleigh's arrival his natural
+excitement was a little heightened by a summons to Mr. Revelstoke's
+private office.
+
+As he entered, the president laid aside his pen and closed the
+door.
+
+"I have never made it my business, Trent," he said, with good-
+humored brusqueness, "to interfere in my employees' private
+affairs, unless they affect their relations to the bank, and I
+haven't had the least occasion to do so with you.  Neither has Mr.
+Dingwall, although it is on HIS behalf that I am now speaking."  As
+Randolph listened with a contracted brow, he went on with a grim
+smile: "But he is an Englishman, you know, and has certain ideas of
+the importance of 'position,' particularly among his own people.
+He wishes me, therefore, to warn you of what HE calls the
+'disparity' of your position and that of a young English lady--Miss
+Eversleigh--with whom you have some acquaintance, and in whom," he
+added with a still grimmer satisfaction, "he fears you are too
+deeply interested."
+
+Randolph blazed.  "If Mr. Dingwall had asked ME, sir," he said
+hotly, "I would have told him that I have never yet had to be
+reminded that Miss Eversleigh is a rich heiress and I only a poor
+clerk, but as to his using her name in such a connection, or
+dictating to me the manner of"--
+
+"Hold hard," said Revelstoke, lifting his hand deprecatingly, yet
+with his unchanged smile.  "I don't agree with Mr. Dingwall, and I
+have every reason to know the value of YOUR services, yet I admit
+something is due to HIS prejudices.  And in this matter, Trent, the
+Bank of Eureka, while I am its president, doesn't take a back seat.
+I have concluded to make you manager of the branch bank at
+Marysville, an independent position with its salary and
+commissions.  And if that doesn't suit Dingwall, why," he added,
+rising from his desk with a short laugh, "he has a bigger idea of
+the value of property than the bank has."
+
+"One moment, sir, I implore you," burst out Randolph breathlessly.
+"if your kind offer is based upon the mistaken belief that I have
+the least claim upon Miss Eversleigh's consideration more than that
+of simple friendship--if anybody has dared to give you the idea
+that I have aspired by word or deed to more, or that the young lady
+has ever countenanced or even suspected such aspirations, it is
+utterly false, and grateful as I am for your kindness, I could not
+accept it."
+
+"Look here, Trent," returned Revelstoke curtly, yet laying his hand
+on the young man's shoulder not unkindly.  "All that is YOUR
+private affair, which, as I told you, I don't interfere with.  The
+other is a question between Mr. Dingwall and myself of your
+comparative value.  It won't hurt you with ANYBODY to know how high
+we've assessed it.  Don't spoil a good thing!"
+
+Grateful even in his uncertainty, Randolph could only thank him and
+withdraw.  Yet this fateful forcing of his hand in a delicate
+question gave him a new courage.  It was with a certain confidence
+now in his capacity as HER friend and qualified to advise HER that
+he called at Mr. Dingwall's the evening she arrived.  It struck him
+that in the Dingwalls' reception of him there was mingled with
+their formality a certain respect.
+
+Thanks to this, perhaps, he found her alone.  She seemed to him
+more beautiful than his recollection had painted her, in the
+development that maturity, freedom from restraint, and time had
+given her.  For a moment his new, fresh courage was staggered.  But
+she had retained her youthful simplicity, and came toward him with
+the same naive and innocent yearning in her clear eyes that he
+remembered at their last meeting.  Their first words were,
+naturally, of their great secret, and Randolph told her the whole
+story of his unexpected and startling meeting with the captain, and
+the captain's strange narrative, of his undertaking the journey
+with him to recover his claim, establish his identity, and, as
+Randolph had hoped, restore to her that member of the family whom
+she had most cared for.  He recounted the captain's hesitation on
+arriving; his own journey to the rectory; the news she had given
+him; the reason of his singular behavior; his return to London; and
+the second disappearance of the captain.  He read to her the letter
+he had received from him, and told her of his hopeless chase to the
+docks only to find him gone.  She listened to him breathlessly,
+with varying color, with an occasional outburst of pity, or a
+strange shining of the eyes, that sometimes became clouded and
+misty, and at the conclusion with a calm and grave paleness.
+
+"But," she said, "you should have told me all."
+
+"It was not my secret," he pleaded.
+
+"You should have trusted me."
+
+"But the captain had trusted ME."
+
+She looked at him with grave wonder, and then said with her old
+directness: "But if I had been told such a secret affecting you, I
+should have told you."  She stopped suddenly, seeing his eyes fixed
+on her, and dropped her own lids with a slight color.  "I mean,"
+she said hesitatingly, "of course you have acted nobly, generously,
+kindly, wisely--but I hate secrets!  Oh, why cannot one be always
+frank?"
+
+A wild idea seized Randolph.  "But I have another secret--you have
+not guessed--and I have not dared to tell you.  Do you wish me to
+be frank now?"
+
+"Why not?" she said simply, but she did not look up.
+
+Then he told her!  But, strangest of all, in spite of his fears and
+convictions, it flowed easily and naturally as a part of his other
+secret, with an eloquence he had not dreamed of before.  But when
+he told her of his late position and his prospects, she raised her
+eyes to his for the first time, yet without withdrawing her hand
+from his, and said reproachfully,--
+
+"Yet but for THAT you would never have told me."
+
+"How could I?" he returned eagerly.  "For but for THAT how could I
+help you to carry out YOUR trust?  How could I devote myself to
+your plans, and enable you to carry them out without touching a
+dollar of that inheritance which you believe to be wrongfully
+yours?"
+
+Then, with his old boyish enthusiasm, he sketched a glowing picture
+of their future: how they would keep the Dornton property intact
+until the captain was found and communicated with; and how they
+would cautiously collect all the information accessible to find him
+until such time as Randolph's fortunes would enable them both to go
+on a voyage of discovery after him.  And in the midst of this
+prophetic forecast, which brought them so closely together that she
+was enabled to examine his watch chain, she said,--
+
+"I see you have kept Cousin Jack's ring.  Did he ever see it?"
+
+"He told me he had given it to you as his little sweetheart, and
+that he"--
+
+There was a singular pause here.
+
+"He never did THAT--at least, not in that way!" said Sybil
+Eversleigh.
+
+
+And, strangely enough, the optimistic Randolph's prophecies came
+true.  He was married a month later to Sibyl Eversleigh, Mr.
+Dingwall giving away the bride.  He and his wife were able to keep
+their trust in regard to the property, for, without investing a
+dollar of it in the bank, the mere reputation of his wife's wealth
+brought him a flood of other investors and a confidence which at
+once secured his success.  In two years he was able to take his
+wife on a six months' holiday to Europe via Australia, but of the
+details of that holiday no one knew.  It is, however, on record
+that ten or twelve years ago Dornton Hall, which had been leased or
+unoccupied for a long time, was refitted for the heiress, her
+husband, and their children during a brief occupancy, and that in
+that period extensive repairs were made to the interior of the old
+Norman church, and much attention given to the redecoration and
+restoration of its ancient tombs.
+
+
+
+MR. MACGLOWRIE'S WIDOW
+
+
+Very little was known of her late husband, yet that little was of a
+sufficiently awe-inspiring character to satisfy the curiosity of
+Laurel Spring.  A man of unswerving animosity and candid
+belligerency, untempered by any human weakness, he had been
+actively engaged as survivor in two or three blood feuds in
+Kentucky, and some desultory dueling, only to succumb, through the
+irony of fate, to an attack of fever and ague in San Francisco.
+Gifted with a fine sense of humor, he is said, in his last moments,
+to have called the simple-minded clergyman to his bedside to assist
+him in putting on his boots.  The kindly divine, although pointing
+out to him that he was too weak to rise, much less walk, could not
+resist the request of a dying man.  When it was fulfilled, Mr.
+MacGlowrie crawled back into bed with the remark that his race had
+always "died with their boots on," and so passed smilingly and
+tranquilly away.
+
+It is probable that this story was invented to soften the ignominy
+of MacGlowrie's peaceful end.  The widow herself was also reported
+to be endowed with relations of equally homicidal eccentricities.
+Her two brothers, Stephen and Hector Boompointer, had Western
+reputations that were quite as lurid and remote.  Her own
+experiences of a frontier life had been rude and startling, and her
+scalp--a singularly beautiful one of blond hair--had been in peril
+from Indians on several occasions.  A pair of scissors, with which
+she had once pinned the intruding hand of a marauder to her cabin
+doorpost, was to be seen in her sitting room at Laurel Spring.  A
+fair-faced woman with eyes the color of pale sherry, a complexion
+sallowed by innutritious food, slight and tall figure, she gave
+little suggestion of this Amazonian feat.  But that it exercised a
+wholesome restraint over the many who would like to have induced
+her to reenter the married state, there is little reason to doubt.
+Laurel Spring was a peaceful agricultural settlement.  Few of its
+citizens dared to aspire to the dangerous eminence of succeeding
+the defunct MacGlowrie; few could hope that the sister of living
+Boompointers would accept an obvious mesalliance with them.
+However sincere their affection, life was still sweet to the rude
+inhabitants of Laurel Spring, and the preservation of the usual
+quantity of limbs necessary to them in their avocations.  With
+their devotion thus chastened by caution, it would seem as if the
+charming mistress of Laurel Spring House was secure from disturbing
+attentions.
+
+It was a pleasant summer afternoon, and the sun was beginning to
+strike under the laurels around the hotel into the little office
+where the widow sat with the housekeeper--a stout spinster of a
+coarser Western type.  Mrs. MacGlowrie was looking wearily over
+some accounts on the desk before her, and absently putting back
+some tumbled sheaves from the stack of her heavy hair.  For the
+widow had a certain indolent Southern negligence, which in a less
+pretty woman would have been untidiness, and a characteristic hook
+and eyeless freedom of attire which on less graceful limbs would
+have been slovenly.  One sleeve cuff was unbuttoned, but it showed
+the blue veins of her delicate wrist; the neck of her dress had
+lost a hook, but the glimpse of a bit of edging round the white
+throat made amends.  Of all which, however, it should be said that
+the widow, in her limp abstraction, was really unconscious.
+
+"I reckon we kin put the new preacher in Kernel Starbottle's room,"
+said Miss Morvin, the housekeeper.  "The kernel's going to-night."
+
+"Oh," said the widow in a tone of relief, but whether at the early
+departure of the gallant colonel or at the successful solution of
+the problem of lodging the preacher, Miss Morvin could not
+determine.  But she went on tentatively:--
+
+"The kernel was talkin' in the bar room, and kind o' wonderin' why
+you hadn't got married agin.  Said you'd make a stir in Sacramento--
+but you was jest berried HERE."
+
+"I suppose he's heard of my husband?" said the widow indifferently.
+
+"Yes--but he said he couldn't PLACE YOU," returned Miss Morvin.
+
+The widow looked up.  "Couldn't place ME?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes--hadn't heard o' MacGlowrie's wife and disremembered your
+brothers."
+
+"The colonel doesn't know everybody, even if he is a fighting man,"
+said Mrs. MacGlowrie with languid scorn.
+
+"That's just what Dick Blair said," returned Miss Morvin.  "And
+though he's only a doctor, he jest stuck up agin' the kernel, and
+told that story about your jabbin' that man with your scissors--
+beautiful; and how you once fought off a bear with a red-hot iron,
+so that you'd have admired to hear him.  He's awfully gone on you!"
+
+The widow took that opportunity to button her cuff.
+
+"And how long does the preacher calculate to stay?" she added,
+returning to business details.
+
+"Only a day.  They'll have his house fixed up and ready for him
+to-morrow.  They're spendin' a heap o' money on it.  He ought to be
+the pow'ful preacher they say he is--to be worth it."
+
+But here Mrs. MacGlowrie's interest in the conversation ceased, and
+it dropped.
+
+In her anxiety to further the suit of Dick Blair, Miss Morvin had
+scarcely reported the colonel with fairness.
+
+That gentleman, leaning against the bar in the hotel saloon with a
+cocktail in his hand, had expatiated with his usual gallantry upon
+Mrs. MacGlowrie's charms, and on his own "personal" responsibility
+had expressed the opinion that they were thrown away on Laurel
+Spring.  That--blank it all--she reminded him of the blankest
+beautiful woman he had seen even in Washington--old Major
+Beveridge's daughter from Kentucky.  Were they sure she wasn't from
+Kentucky?  Wasn't her name Beveridge--and not Boompointer?
+Becoming more reminiscent over his second drink, the colonel could
+vaguely recall only one Boompointer--a blank skulking hound, sir--a
+mean white shyster--but, of course, he couldn't have been of the
+same breed as such a blank fine woman as the widow!  It was here
+that Dick Blair interrupted with a heightened color and a glowing
+eulogy of the widow's relations and herself, which, however, only
+increased the chivalry of the colonel--who would be the last man,
+sir, to detract from--or suffer any detraction of--a lady's
+reputation.  It was needless to say that all this was intensely
+diverting to the bystanders, and proportionally discomposing to
+Blair, who already experienced some slight jealousy of the colonel
+as a man whose fighting reputation might possibly attract the
+affections of the widow of the belligerent MacGlowrie.  He had
+cursed his folly and relapsed into gloomy silence until the colonel
+left.
+
+For Dick Blair loved the widow with the unselfishness of a generous
+nature and a first passion.  He had admired her from the first day
+his lot was cast in Laurel Spring, where coming from a rude
+frontier practice he had succeeded the district doctor in a more
+peaceful and domestic ministration.  A skillful and gentle surgeon
+rather than a general household practitioner, he was at first
+coldly welcomed by the gloomy dyspeptics and ague-haunted settlers
+from riparian lowlands.  The few bucolic idlers who had relieved
+the monotony of their lives by the stimulus of patent medicines and
+the exaltation of stomach bitters, also looked askance at him.  A
+common-sense way of dealing with their ailments did not naturally
+commend itself to the shopkeepers who vended these nostrums, and he
+was made to feel the opposition of trade.  But he was gentle to
+women and children and animals, and, oddly enough, it was to this
+latter dilection that he owed the widow's interest in him--an
+interest that eventually made him popular elsewhere.
+
+The widow had a pet dog--a beautiful spaniel, who, however, had
+assimilated her graceful languor to his own native love of ease to
+such an extent that he failed in a short leap between a balcony and
+a window, and fell to the ground with a fractured thigh.  The dog
+was supposed to be crippled for life even if that life were worth
+preserving--when Dr. Blair came to the rescue, set the fractured
+limb, put it in splints and plaster after an ingenious design of
+his own, visited him daily, and eventually restored him to his
+mistress's lap sound in wind and limb.  How far this daily
+ministration and the necessary exchange of sympathy between the
+widow and himself heightened his zeal was not known.  There were
+those who believed that the whole thing was an unmanly trick to get
+the better of his rivals in the widow's good graces; there were
+others who averred that his treatment of a brute beast like a human
+being was sinful and unchristian.  "He couldn't have done more for
+a regularly baptized child," said the postmistress.  "And what mo'
+would a regularly baptized child have wanted?" returned Mrs.
+MacGlowrie, with the drawling Southern intonation she fell back
+upon when most contemptuous.
+
+But Dr. Blair's increasing practice and the widow's preoccupation
+presently ended their brief intimacy.  It was well known that she
+encouraged no suitors at the hotel, and his shyness and
+sensitiveness shrank from ostentatious advances.  There seemed to
+be no chance of her becoming, herself, his patient; her sane mind,
+indolent nerves, and calm circulation kept her from feminine
+"vapors" of feminine excesses.  She retained the teeth and
+digestion of a child in her thirty odd years, and abused neither.
+Riding and the cultivation of her little garden gave her sufficient
+exercise.  And yet the unexpected occurred!  The day after
+Starbottle left, Dr. Blair was summoned hastily to the hotel.  Mrs.
+MacGlowrie had been found lying senseless in a dead faint in the
+passage outside the dining room.  In his hurried flight thither
+with the messenger he could learn only that she had seemed to be in
+her usual health that morning, and that no one could assign any
+cause for her fainting.
+
+He could find out little more when he arrived and examined her as
+she lay pale and unconscious on the sofa of her sitting room.  It
+had not been thought necessary to loosen her already loose dress,
+and indeed he could find no organic disturbance.  The case was one
+of sudden nervous shock--but this, with his knowledge of her
+indolent temperament, seemed almost absurd.  They could tell him
+nothing but that she was evidently on the point of entering the
+dining room when she fell unconscious.  Had she been frightened by
+anything?  A snake or a rat?  Miss Morvin was indignant!  The widow
+of MacGlowrie--the repeller of grizzlies--frightened at "sich"!
+Had she been upset by any previous excitement, passion, or the
+receipt of bad news?  No!--she "wasn't that kind," as the doctor
+knew.  And even as they were speaking he felt the widow's healthy
+life returning to the pulse he was holding, and giving a faint
+tinge to her lips.  Her blue-veined eyelids quivered slightly and
+then opened with languid wonder on the doctor and her surroundings.
+Suddenly a quick, startled look contracted the yellow brown pupils
+of her eyes, she lifted herself to a sitting posture with a hurried
+glance around the room and at the door beyond.  Catching the quick,
+observant eyes of Dr. Blair, she collected herself with an effort,
+which Dr. Blair felt in her pulse, and drew away her wrist.
+
+"What is it?  What happened?" she said weakly.
+
+"You had a slight attack of faintness," said the doctor cheerily,
+"and they called me in as I was passing, but you're all right now."
+
+"How pow'ful foolish," she said, with returning color, but her eyes
+still glancing at the door, "slumping off like a green gyrl at
+nothin'."
+
+"Perhaps you were startled?" said the doctor.
+
+Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away.  "No!--Let me
+see!  I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining
+room, when--everything seemed to waltz round me--and I was off!
+Where did they find me?" she said, turning to Miss Morvin.
+
+"I picked you up just outside the door," replied the housekeeper.
+
+"Then they did not see me?" said Mrs. MacGlowrie.
+
+"Who's they?" responded the housekeeper with more directness than
+grammatical accuracy.
+
+"The people in the dining room.  I was just opening the door--and I
+felt this coming on--and--I reckon I had just sense enough to shut
+the door again before I went off."
+
+"Then that accounts for what Jim Slocum said," uttered Miss Morvin
+triumphantly.  "He was in the dining room talkin' with the new
+preacher, when he allowed he heard the door open and shut behind
+him.  Then he heard a kind of slump outside and opened the door
+again just to find you lyin' there, and to rush off and get me.
+And that's why he was so mad at the preacher!--for he says he just
+skurried away without offerin' to help.  He allows the preacher may
+be a pow'ful exhorter--but he ain't worth much at 'works.'"
+
+"Some men can't bear to be around when a woman's up to that sort of
+foolishness," said the widow, with a faint attempt at a smile, but
+a return of her paleness.
+
+"Hadn't you better lie down again?" said the doctor solicitously.
+
+"I'm all right now," returned Mrs. MacGlowrie, struggling to her
+feet; "Morvin will look after me till the shakiness goes.  But it
+was mighty touching and neighborly to come in, Doctor," she
+continued, succeeding at last in bringing up a faint but adorable
+smile, which stirred Blair's pulses.  "If I were my own dog--you
+couldn't have treated me better!"
+
+With no further excuse for staying longer, Blair was obliged to
+depart--yet reluctantly, both as lover and physician.  He was by no
+means satisfied with her condition.  He called to inquire the next
+day--but she was engaged and sent word to say she was "better."
+
+In the excitement attending the advent of the new preacher the
+slight illness of the charming widow was forgotten.  He had taken
+the settlement by storm.  His first sermon at Laurel Spring
+exceeded even the extravagant reputation that had preceded him.
+Known as the "Inspired Cowboy," a common unlettered frontiersman,
+he was said to have developed wonderful powers of exhortatory
+eloquence among the Indians, and scarcely less savage border
+communities where he had lived, half outcast, half missionary.  He
+had just come up from the Southern agricultural districts, where he
+had been, despite his rude antecedents, singularly effective with
+women and young people.  The moody dyspeptics and lazy rustics of
+Laurel Spring were stirred as with a new patent medicine.  Dr.
+Blair went to the first "revival" meeting.  Without undervaluing
+the man's influence, he was instinctively repelled by his
+appearance and methods.  The young physician's trained powers of
+observation not only saw an overwrought emotionalism in the
+speaker's eloquence, but detected the ring of insincerity in his
+more lucid speech and acts.  Nevertheless, the hysteria of the
+preacher was communicated to the congregation, who wept and shouted
+with him.  Tired and discontented housewives found their vague
+sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their
+"unregenerate" state; the lazy country youths felt that the
+frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being
+"convicted of sin."  The mourners' bench was crowded with wildly
+emulating sinners.  Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of
+amusement and contempt.  At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the
+shoulder: "Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don't he, Doctor?"
+said Jim.
+
+"So it seems," said Blair dryly.
+
+"You're one o' them scientific fellers that look inter things--what
+do YOU allow it is?"
+
+The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his
+lips.  He had learned caution in that neighborhood.  "I couldn't
+say," he said indifferently.
+
+"'Tain't no religion," said Slocum emphatically; "it's jest pure
+fas'nation.  Did ye look at his eye?  It's like a rattlesnake's,
+and them wimmin are like birds.  They're frightened of him--but
+they hev to do jest what he 'wills' 'em.  That's how he skeert the
+widder the other day."
+
+The doctor was alert and on fire at once.  "Scared the widow?" he
+repeated indignantly.
+
+"Yes.  You know how she swooned away.  Well, sir, me and that
+preacher, Brown, was the only one in that dinin' room at the time.
+The widder opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that
+thar preacher give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of
+queer light come in his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder
+fluttered and flopped down in the passage outside, like a bird!
+And he crawled away like a snake, and never said a word!  My belief
+is that either he hadn't time to turn on the hull influence, or
+else she, bein' smart, got the door shut betwixt her and it in
+time!  Otherwise, sure as you're born, she'd hev been floppin' and
+crawlin' and sobbin' arter him--jist like them critters we've left."
+
+"Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they'll
+lynch you," said the doctor, with a laugh.  "Mrs. MacGlowrie simply
+had an attack of faintness from some overexertion, that's all."
+
+Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away.  Mrs. MacGlowrie had
+evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in
+spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation
+in his story.  He did not share the man's superstition, although he
+was not a skeptic regarding magnetism.  Yet even then, the widow's
+action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough
+not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger.  A day or two
+later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he
+saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending over one of her
+favorite flower beds.  The high fence partially concealed him from
+view, and she evidently believed herself alone.  Perhaps that was
+why she suddenly raised herself from her task, put back her
+straying hair with a weary, abstracted look, remained for a moment
+quite still staring at the vacant sky, and then, with a little
+catching of her breath, resumed her occupation in a dull,
+mechanical way.  In that brief glimpse of her charming face, Blair
+was shocked at the change; she was pale, the corners of her pretty
+mouth were drawn, there were deeper shades in the orbits of her
+eyes, and in spite of her broad garden hat with its blue ribbon,
+her light flowered frock and frilled apron, she looked as he
+fancied she might have looked in the first crushing grief of her
+widowhood.  Yet he would have passed on, respecting her privacy of
+sorrow, had not her little spaniel detected him with her keener
+senses.  And Fluffy being truthful--as dogs are--and recognizing a
+dear friend in the intruder, barked joyously.
+
+The widow looked up, her eyes met Blair's, and she reddened.  But
+he was too acute a lover to misinterpret what he knew, alas! was
+only confusion at her abstraction being discovered.  Nevertheless,
+there was something else in her brown eyes he had never seen
+before.  A momentary lighting up of RELIEF--of even hopefulness--in
+his presence.  It was enough for Blair; he shook off his old
+shyness like the dust of his ride, and galloped around to the front
+door.
+
+But she met him in the hall with only her usual languid good humor.
+Nevertheless, Blair was not abashed.
+
+"I can't put you in splints and plaster like Fluffy, Mrs.
+MacGlowrie," he said, "but I can forbid you to go into the garden
+unless you're looking better.  It's a positive reflection on my
+professional skill, and Laurel Spring will be shocked, and hold me
+responsible."
+
+Mrs. MacGlowrie had recovered enough of her old spirit to reply
+that she thought Laurel Spring could be in better business than
+looking at her over her garden fence.
+
+"But your dog, who knows you're not well, and doesn't think me
+quite a fool, had the good sense to call me.  You heard him."
+
+But the widow protested that she was as strong as a horse, and that
+Fluffy was like all puppies, conceited to the last degree.
+
+"Well," said Blair cheerfully, "suppose I admit you are all right,
+physically, you'll confess you have some trouble on your mind,
+won't you?  If I can't make you SHOW me your tongue, you'll let me
+hear you USE it to tell me what worries you.  If," he added more
+earnestly, "you won't confide in your physician--you will perhaps--
+to--to--a--FRIEND."
+
+But Mrs. MacGlowrie, evading his earnest eyes as well as his
+appeal, was wondering what good it would do either a doctor, or--
+a--a--she herself seemed to hesitate over the word--"a FRIEND, to
+hear the worriments of a silly, nervous old thing--who had only
+stuck a little too closely to her business."
+
+"You are neither nervous nor old, Mrs. MacGlowrie," said the doctor
+promptly, "though I begin to think you HAVE been too closely
+confined here.  You want more diversion, or--excitement.  You might
+even go to hear this preacher"--he stopped, for the word had
+slipped from his mouth unawares.
+
+But a swift look of scorn swept her pale face.  "And you'd like me
+to follow those skinny old frumps and leggy, limp chits, that
+slobber and cry over that man!" she said contemptuously.  "No!  I
+reckon I only want a change--and I'll go away, or get out of this
+for a while."
+
+The poor doctor had not thought of this possible alternative.  His
+heart sank, but he was brave.  "Yes, perhaps you are right," he
+said sadly, "though it would be a dreadful loss--to Laurel Spring--
+to us all--if you went."
+
+"Do I look so VERY bad, doctor?" she said, with a half-mischievous,
+half-pathetic smile.
+
+The doctor thought her upturned face very adorable, but restrained
+his feelings heroically, and contented himself with replying to the
+pathetic half of her smile.  "You look as if you had been
+suffering," he said gravely, "and I never saw you look so before.
+You seem as if you had experienced some great shock.  Do you know,"
+he went on, in a lower tone and with a half-embarrassed smile,
+"that when I saw you just now in the garden, you looked as I
+imagined you might have looked in the first days of your widowhood--
+when your husband's death was fresh in your heart."
+
+A strange expression crossed her face.  Her eyelids dropped
+instantly, and with both hands she caught up her frilled apron as
+if to meet them and covered her face.  A little shudder seemed to
+pass over her shoulders, and then a cry that ended in an
+uncontrollable and half-hysterical laugh followed from the depths
+of that apron, until shaking her sides, and with her head still
+enveloped in its covering, she fairly ran into the inner room and
+closed the door behind her.
+
+Amazed, shocked, and at first indignant, Dr. Blair remained fixed
+to the spot.  Then his indignation gave way to a burning
+mortification as he recalled his speech.  He had made a frightful
+faux pas!  He had been fool enough to try to recall the most sacred
+memories of that dead husband he was trying to succeed--and her
+quick woman's wit had detected his ridiculous stupidity.  Her laugh
+was hysterical--but that was only natural in her mixed emotions.
+He mounted his horse in confusion and rode away.
+
+For a few days he avoided the house.  But when he next saw her she
+had a charming smile of greeting and an air of entire obliviousness
+of his past blunder.  She said she was better.  She had taken his
+advice and was giving herself some relaxation from business.  She
+had been riding again--oh, so far!  Alone?--of course; she was
+always alone--else what would Laurel Spring say?
+
+"True," said Blair smilingly; "besides, I forgot that you are quite
+able to take care of yourself in an emergency.  And yet," he added,
+admiringly looking at her lithe figure and indolent grace, "do you
+know I never can associate you with the dreadful scenes they say
+you have gone through."
+
+"Then please don't!" she said quickly; "really, I'd rather you
+wouldn't.  I'm sick and tired of hearing of it!"  She was half
+laughing and yet half in earnest, with a slight color on her cheek.
+
+Blair was a little embarrassed.  "Of course, I don't mean your
+heroism--like that story of the intruder and the scissors," he
+stammered.
+
+"Oh, THAT'S the worst of all!  It's too foolish--it's sickening!"
+she went on almost angrily.  "I don't know who started that stuff."
+She paused, and then added shyly, "I really am an awful coward and
+horribly nervous--as you know."
+
+He would have combated this--but she looked really disturbed, and
+he had no desire to commit another imprudence.  And he thought,
+too, that he again had seen in her eyes the same hopeful, wistful
+light he had once seen before, and was happy.
+
+This led him, I fear, to indulge in wilder dreams.  His practice,
+although increasing, barely supported him, and the widow was rich.
+Her business had been profitable, and she had repaid the advances
+made her when she first took the hotel.  But this disparity in
+their fortunes which had frightened him before now had no fears for
+him.  He felt that if he succeeded in winning her affections she
+could afford to wait for him, despite other suitors, until his
+talents had won an equal position.  His rivals had always felt as
+secure in his poverty as they had in his peaceful profession.  How
+could a poor, simple doctor aspire to the hand of the rich widow of
+the redoubtable MacGlowrie?
+
+It was late one afternoon, and the low sun was beginning to strike
+athwart the stark columns and down the long aisles of the redwoods
+on the High Ridge.  The doctor, returning from a patient at the
+loggers' camp in its depths, had just sighted the smaller groves of
+Laurel Springs, two miles away.  He was riding fast, with his
+thoughts filled with the widow, when he heard a joyous bark in the
+underbrush, and Fluffy came bounding towards him.  Blair dismounted
+to caress him, as was his wont, and then, wisely conceiving that
+his mistress was not far away, sauntered forward exploringly,
+leading his horse, the dog hounding before him and barking, as if
+bent upon both leading and announcing him.  But the latter he
+effected first, for as Blair turned from the trail into the deeper
+woods, he saw the figures of a man and woman walking together
+suddenly separate at the dog's warning.  The woman was Mrs.
+MacGlowrie--the man was the revival preacher!
+
+Amazed, mystified, and indignant, Blair nevertheless obeyed his
+first instinct, which was that of a gentleman.  He turned leisurely
+aside as if not recognizing them, led his horse a few paces
+further, mounted him, and galloped away without turning his head.
+But his heart was filled with bitterness and disgust.  This woman--
+who but a few days before had voluntarily declared her scorn and
+contempt for that man and his admirers--had just been giving him a
+clandestine meeting like one of the most infatuated of his
+devotees!  The story of the widow's fainting, the coarse surmises
+and comments of Slocum, came back to him with overwhelming
+significance.  But even then his reason forbade him to believe that
+she had fallen under the preacher's influence--she, with her sane
+mind and indolent temperament.  Yet, whatever her excuse or purpose
+was, she had deceived him wantonly and cruelly!  His abrupt
+avoidance of her had prevented him from knowing if she, on her
+part, had recognized him as he rode away.  If she HAD, she would
+understand why he had avoided her, and any explanation must come
+from her.
+
+Then followed a few days of uncertainty, when his thoughts again
+reverted to the preacher with returning jealousy.  Was she, after
+all, like other women, and had her gratuitous outburst of scorn of
+THEIR infatuation been prompted by unsuccessful rivalry?  He was
+too proud to question Slocum again or breathe a word of his fears.
+Yet he was not strong enough to keep from again seeking the High
+Ridge, to discover any repetition of that rendezvous.  But he saw
+her neither there, nor elsewhere, during his daily rounds.  And one
+night his feverish anxiety getting the better of him, he entered
+the great "Gospel Tent" of the revival preacher.
+
+It chanced to be an extraordinary meeting, and the usual
+enthusiastic audience was reinforced by some sight-seers from the
+neighboring county town--the district judge and officials from the
+court in session, among them Colonel Starbottle.  The impassioned
+revivalist--his eyes ablaze with fever, his lank hair wet with
+perspiration, hanging beside his heavy but weak jaws--was
+concluding a fervent exhortation to his auditors to confess their
+sins, "accept conviction," and regenerate then and there, without
+delay.  They must put off "the old Adam," and put on the flesh of
+righteousness at once!  They were to let no false shame or worldly
+pride keep them from avowing their guilty past before their
+brethren.  Sobs and groans followed the preacher's appeals; his own
+agitation and convulsive efforts seemed to spread in surging waves
+through the congregation, until a dozen men and women arose,
+staggering like drunkards blindly, or led or dragged forward by
+sobbing sympathizers towards the mourners' bench.  And prominent
+among them, but stepping jauntily and airily forward, was the
+redoubtable and worldly Colonel Starbottle!
+
+At this proof of the orator's power the crowd shouted--but stopped
+suddenly, as the colonel halted before the preacher, and ascended
+the rostrum beside him.  Then taking a slight pose with his gold-
+headed cane in one hand and the other thrust in the breast of his
+buttoned coat, he said in his blandest, forensic voice:--
+
+"If I mistake not, sir, you are advising these ladies and gentlemen
+to a free and public confession of their sins and a--er--
+denunciation of their past life--previous to their conversion.  If
+I am mistaken I--er--ask your pardon, and theirs and--er--hold
+myself responsible--er--personally responsible!"
+
+The preacher glanced uneasily at the colonel, but replied, still in
+the hysterical intonation of his exordium:--
+
+"Yes! a complete searching of hearts--a casting out of the seven
+Devils of Pride, Vain Glory"--
+
+"Thank you--that is sufficient," said the colonel blandly.  "But
+might I--er--be permitted to suggest that you--er--er--SET THEM THE
+EXAMPLE!  The statement of the circumstances attending your own
+past life and conversion would be singularly interesting and
+exemplary."
+
+The preacher turned suddenly and glanced at the colonel with
+furious eyes set in an ashy face.
+
+"If this is the flouting and jeering of the Ungodly and Dissolute,"
+he screamed, "woe to you!  I say--woe to you!  What have such as
+YOU to do with my previous state of unregeneracy?"
+
+"Nothing," said the colonel blandly, "unless that state were also
+the STATE OF ARKANSAS!  Then, sir, as a former member of the
+Arkansas BAR--I might be able to assist your memory--and--er--even
+corroborate your confession."
+
+But here the enthusiastic adherents of the preacher, vaguely
+conscious of some danger to their idol, gathered threateningly
+round the platform from which he had promptly leaped into their
+midst, leaving the colonel alone, to face the sea of angry upturned
+faces.  But that gallant warrior never altered his characteristic
+pose.  Behind him loomed the reputation of the dozen duels he had
+fought, the gold-headed stick on which he leaned was believed to
+contain eighteen inches of shining steel--and the people of Laurel
+Spring had discretion.
+
+He smiled suavely, stepped jauntily down, and made his way to the
+entrance without molestation.
+
+But here he was met by Blair and Slocum, and a dozen eager
+questions:--
+
+"What was it?"  "What had he done?"  "WHO was he?"
+
+"A blank shyster, who had swindled the widows and orphans in
+Arkansas and escaped from jail."
+
+"And his name isn't Brown?"
+
+"No," said the colonel curtly.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"That is a matter which concerns only myself and him, sir," said
+the colonel loftily; "but for which I am--er--personally
+responsible."
+
+A wild idea took possession of Blair.
+
+"And you say he was a noted desperado?" he said with nervous
+hesitation.
+
+The colonel glared.
+
+"Desperado, sir!  Never!  Blank it all!--a mean, psalm-singing,
+crawling, sneak thief!"
+
+And Blair felt relieved without knowing exactly why.
+
+The next day it was known that the preacher, Gabriel Brown, had
+left Laurel Spring on an urgent "Gospel call" elsewhere.
+
+Colonel Starbottle returned that night with his friends to the
+county town.  Strange to say, a majority of the audience had not
+grasped the full significance of the colonel's unseemly
+interruption, and those who had, as partisans, kept it quiet.
+Blair, tortured by doubt, had a new delicacy added to his
+hesitation, which left him helpless until the widow should take the
+initiative in explanation.
+
+A sudden summons from his patient at the loggers' camp the next day
+brought him again to the fateful redwoods.  But he was vexed and
+mystified to find, on arriving at the camp, that he had been made
+the victim of some stupid blunder, and that no message had been
+sent from there.  He was returning abstractedly through the woods
+when he was amazed at seeing at a little distance before him the
+flutter of Mrs. MacGlowrie's well-known dark green riding habit and
+the figure of the lady herself.  Her dog was not with her, neither
+was the revival preacher--or he might have thought the whole vision
+a trick of his memory.  But she slackened her pace, and he was
+obliged to rein up abreast of her in some confusion.
+
+"I hope I won't shock you again by riding alone through the woods
+with a man," she said with a light laugh.
+
+Nevertheless, she was quite pale as he answered, somewhat coldly,
+that he had no right to be shocked at anything she might choose to
+do.
+
+"But you WERE shocked, for you rode away the last time without
+speaking," she said; "and yet"--she looked up suddenly into his
+eyes with a smileless face--"that man you saw me with once had a
+better right to ride alone with me than any other man.  He was"--
+
+"Your lover?" said Blair with brutal brevity.
+
+"My husband!" returned Mrs. MacGlowrie slowly.
+
+"Then you are NOT a widow," gasped Blair.
+
+"No.  I am only a divorced woman.  That is why I have had to live a
+lie here.  That man--that hypocrite--whose secret was only half
+exposed the other night, was my husband--divorced from me by the
+law, when, an escaped convict, he fled with another woman from the
+State three years ago."  Her face flushed and whitened again; she
+put up her hand blindly to her straying hair, and for an instant
+seemed to sway in the saddle.
+
+But Blair as quickly leaped from his horse, and was beside her.
+"Let me help you down," he said quickly, "and rest yourself until
+you are better."  Before she could reply, he lifted her tenderly to
+the ground and placed her on a mossy stump a little distance from
+the trail.  Her color and a faint smile returned to her troubled
+face.
+
+"Had we not better go on?" she said, looking around.  "I never went
+so far as to sit down in the woods with HIM that day."
+
+"Forgive me," he said pleadingly, "but, of course, I knew nothing.
+I disliked the man from instinct--I thought he had some power over
+you."
+
+"He has none--except the secret that would also have exposed
+himself."
+
+"But others knew it.  Colonel Starbottle must have known his name?
+And yet"--as he remembered he stammered--"he refused to tell me."
+
+"Yes, but not because he knew he was my husband, but because he
+knew he bore the same name.  He thinks, as every one does, that my
+husband died in San Francisco.  The man who died there was my
+husband's cousin--a desperate man and a noted duelist."
+
+"And YOU assumed to be HIS widow?" said the astounded Blair.
+
+"Yes, but don't blame me too much," she said pathetically.  "It was
+a wild, a silly deceit, but it was partly forced upon me.  For when
+I first arrived across the plains, at the frontier, I was still
+bearing my husband's name, and although I was alone and helpless, I
+found myself strangely welcomed and respected by those rude
+frontiersmen.  It was not long before I saw it was because I was
+presumed to be the widow of ALLEN MacGlowrie--who had just died in
+San Francisco.  I let them think so, for I knew--what they did not--
+that Allen's wife had separated from him and married again, and
+that my taking his name could do no harm.  I accepted their
+kindness; they gave me my first start in business, which brought me
+here.  It was not much of a deceit," she continued, with a slight
+tremble of her pretty lip, "to prefer to pass as the widow of a
+dead desperado than to be known as the divorced wife of a living
+convict.  It has hurt no one, and it has saved me just now."
+
+"You were right!  No one could blame you," said Blair eagerly,
+seizing her hand.
+
+But she disengaged it gently, and went on:--
+
+"And now you wonder why I gave him a meeting here?"
+
+"I wonder at nothing but your courage and patience in all this
+suffering!" said Blair fervently; "and at your forgiving me for so
+cruelly misunderstanding you."
+
+"But you must learn all.  When I first saw MacGlowrie under his
+assumed name, I fainted, for I was terrified and believed he knew I
+was here and had come to expose me even at his own risk.  That was
+why I hesitated between going away or openly defying him.  But it
+appears he was more frightened than I at finding me here--he had
+supposed I had changed my name after the divorce, and that Mrs.
+MacGlowrie, Laurel Spring, was his cousin's widow.  When he found
+out who I was he was eager to see me and agree upon a mutual
+silence while he was here.  He thought only of himself," she added
+scornfully, "and Colonel Starbottle's recognition of him that night
+as the convicted swindler was enough to put him to flight."
+
+"And the colonel never suspected that you were his wife?" said
+Blair.
+
+"Never!  He supposed from the name that he was some relation of my
+husband, and that was why he refused to tell it--for my sake.  The
+colonel is an old fogy--and pompous--but a gentleman--as good as
+they make them!"
+
+A slightly jealous uneasiness and a greater sense of shame came
+over Blair.
+
+"I seem to have been the only one who suspected and did not aid
+you," he said sadly, "and yet God knows"--
+
+The widow had put up her slim hand in half-smiling, half-pathetic
+interruption.
+
+"Wait!  I have not told you everything.  When I took over the
+responsibility of being Allen MacGlowrie's widow, I had to take
+over HER relations and HER history as I gathered it from the
+frontiersmen.  I never frightened any grizzly--I never jabbed
+anybody with the scissors; it was SHE who did it.  I never was
+among the Injins--I never had any fighting relations; my paw was a
+plain farmer.  I was only a peaceful Blue Grass girl--there!  I
+never thought there was any harm in it; it seemed to keep the men
+off, and leave me free--until I knew you!  And you know I didn't
+want you to believe it--don't you?"
+
+She hid her flushed face and dimples in her handkerchief.
+
+"But did you never think there might be another way to keep the men
+off, and sink the name of MacGlowrie forever?" said Blair in a
+lower voice.
+
+"I think we must be going back now," said the widow timidly,
+withdrawing her hand, which Blair had again mysteriously got
+possession of in her confusion.
+
+"But wait just a few minutes longer to keep me company," said Blair
+pleadingly.  "I came here to see a patient, and as there must have
+been some mistake in the message--I must try to discover it."
+
+"Oh!  Is that all?" said the widow quickly.  "Why?"--she flushed
+again and laughed faintly--  "Well!  I am that patient!  I wanted
+to see you alone to explain everything, and I could think of no
+other way.  I'm afraid I've got into the habit of thinking nothing
+of being somebody else."
+
+"I wish you would let me select who you should be," said the doctor
+boldly.
+
+"We really must go back--to the horses," said the widow.
+
+"Agreed--if we will ride home together."
+
+They did.  And before the year was over, although they both
+remained, the name of MacGlowrie had passed out of Laurel Spring.
+
+
+
+A WARD OF COLONEL STARBOTTLE'S
+
+
+"The kernel seems a little off color to-day," said the barkeeper as
+he replaced the whiskey decanter, and gazed reflectively after the
+departing figure of Colonel Starbottle.
+
+"I didn't notice anything," said a bystander; "he passed the time
+o' day civil enough to me."
+
+"Oh, he's allus polite enough to strangers and wimmin folk even
+when he is that way; it's only his old chums, or them ez like to be
+thought so, that he's peppery with.  Why, ez to that, after he'd
+had that quo'll with his old partner, Judge Pratt, in one o' them
+spells, I saw him the next minit go half a block out of his way to
+direct an entire stranger; and ez for wimmin!--well, I reckon if
+he'd just got a head drawn on a man, and a woman spoke to him, he'd
+drop his battery and take off his hat to her.  No--ye can't judge
+by that!"
+
+And perhaps in his larger experience the barkeeper was right.  He
+might have added, too, that the colonel, in his general outward
+bearing and jauntiness, gave no indication of his internal
+irritation.  Yet he was undoubtedly in one of his "spells,"
+suffering from a moody cynicism which made him as susceptible of
+affront as he was dangerous in resentment.
+
+Luckily, on this particular morning he reached his office and
+entered his private room without any serious rencontre.  Here he
+opened his desk, and arranging his papers, he at once set to work
+with grim persistency.  He had not been occupied for many minutes
+before the door opened to Mr. Pyecroft--one of a firm of attorneys
+who undertook the colonel's office work.
+
+"I see you are early to work, Colonel," said Mr. Pyecroft
+cheerfully.
+
+"You see, sir," said the colonel, correcting him with a slow
+deliberation that boded no good--"you see a Southern gentleman--
+blank it!--who has stood at the head of his profession for thirty-
+five years, obliged to work like a blank nigger, sir, in the dirty
+squabbles of psalm-singing Yankee traders, instead of--er--
+attending to the affairs of--er--legislation!"
+
+"But you manage to get pretty good fees out of it--Colonel?"
+continued Pyecroft, with a laugh.
+
+"Fees, sir!  Filthy shekels! and barely enough to satisfy a debt of
+honor with one hand, and wipe out a tavern score for the
+entertainment of--er--a few lady friends with the other!"
+
+This allusion to his losses at poker, as well as an oyster supper
+given to the two principal actresses of the "North Star Troupe,"
+then performing in the town, convinced Mr. Pyecroft that the
+colonel was in one of his "moods," and he changed the subject.
+
+"That reminds me of a little joke that happened in Sacramento last
+week.  You remember Dick Stannard, who died a year ago--one of your
+friends?"
+
+"I have yet to learn," interrupted the colonel, with the same
+deadly deliberation, "what right HE--or ANYBODY--had to intimate
+that he held such a relationship with me.  Am I to understand, sir,
+that he--er--publicly boasted of it?"
+
+"Don't know!" resumed Pyecroft hastily; "but it don't matter, for
+if he wasn't a friend it only makes the joke bigger.  Well, his
+widow didn't survive him long, but died in the States t'other day,
+leavin' the property in Sacramento--worth about three thousand
+dollars--to her little girl, who is at school at Santa Clara.  The
+question of guardianship came up, and it appears that the widow--
+who only knew you through her husband--had, some time before her
+death, mentioned YOUR name in that connection!  He! he!"
+
+"What!" said Colonel Starbottle, starting up.
+
+"Hold on!" said Pyecroft hilariously.  "That isn't all!  Neither
+the executors nor the probate judge knew you from Adam, and the
+Sacramento bar, scenting a good joke, lay low and said nothing.
+Then the old fool judge said that 'as you appeared to be a lawyer,
+a man of mature years, and a friend of the family, you were an
+eminently fit person, and ought to be communicated with'--you know
+his hifalutin' style.  Nobody says anything.  So that the next
+thing you'll know you'll get a letter from that executor asking you
+to look after that kid.  Ha! ha!  The boys said they could fancy
+they saw you trotting around with a ten year old girl holding on to
+your hand, and the Senorita Dolores or Miss Bellamont looking on!
+Or your being called away from a poker deal some night by the
+infant, singing, 'Gardy, dear gardy, come home with me now, the
+clock in the steeple strikes one!'  And think of that old fool
+judge not knowing you!  Ha! ha!"
+
+A study of Colonel Starbottle's face during this speech would have
+puzzled a better physiognomist than Mr. Pyecroft.  His first look
+of astonishment gave way to an empurpled confusion, from which a
+single short Silenus-like chuckle escaped, but this quickly changed
+again into a dull coppery indignation, and, as Pyecroft's laugh
+continued, faded out into a sallow rigidity in which his murky eyes
+alone seemed to keep what was left of his previous high color.  But
+what was more singular, in spite of his enforced calm, something of
+his habitual old-fashioned loftiness and oratorical exaltation
+appeared to be returning to him as he placed his hand on his
+inflated breast and faced Pyceroft.
+
+"The ignorance of the executor of Mrs. Stannard and the--er--
+probate judge," he began slowly, "may be pardonable, Mr. Pyecroft,
+since his Honor would imply that, although unknown to HIM
+personally, I am at least amicus curiae in this question of--er--
+guardianship.  But I am grieved--indeed I may say shocked--Mr.
+Pyecroft, that the--er--last sacred trust of a dying widow--perhaps
+the holiest trust that can be conceived by man--the care and
+welfare of her helpless orphaned girl--should be made the subject
+of mirth, sir, by yourself and the members of the Sacramento bar!
+I shall not allude, sir, to my own feelings in regard to Dick
+Stannard, one of my most cherished friends," continued the colonel,
+in a voice charged with emotion, "but I can conceive of no nobler
+trust laid upon the altar of friendship than the care and guidance
+of his orphaned girl!  And if, as you tell me, the utterly
+inadequate sum of three thousand dollars is all that is left for
+her maintenance through life, the selection of a guardian
+sufficiently devoted to the family to be willing to augment that
+pittance out of his own means from time to time would seem to be
+most important."
+
+Before the astounded Pyecroft could recover himself, Colonel
+Starbottle leaned back in his chair, half closing his eyes, and
+abandoned himself, quite after his old manner, to one of his dreamy
+reminiscences.
+
+"Poor Dick Stannard!  I have a vivid recollection, sir, of driving
+out with him on the Shell Road at New Orleans in '54, and of his
+saying, 'Star'--the only man, sir, who ever abbreviated my name--
+'Star, if anything happens to me or her, look after our child!  It
+was during that very drive, sir, that, through his incautious
+neglect to fortify himself against the swampy malaria by a glass of
+straight Bourbon with a pinch of bark in it, he caught that fever
+which undermined his constitution.  Thank you, Mr. Pyecroft, for--
+er--recalling the circumstance.  I shall," continued the colonel,
+suddenly abandoning reminiscence, sitting up, and arranging his
+papers, "look forward with great interest to--er--letter from the
+executor."
+
+The next day it was universally understood that Colonel Starbottle
+had been appointed guardian of Pansy Stannard by the probate judge
+of Sacramento.
+
+
+There are of record two distinct accounts of Colonel Starbottle's
+first meeting with his ward after his appointment as her guardian.
+One, given by himself, varying slightly at times, but always
+bearing unvarying compliment to the grace, beauty, and singular
+accomplishments of this apparently gifted child, was nevertheless
+characterized more by vague, dreamy reminiscences of the departed
+parents than by any personal experience of the daughter.
+
+"I found the young lady, sir," he remarked to Mr. Pyecroft,
+"recalling my cherished friend Stannard in--er--form and features,
+and--although--er--personally unacquainted with her deceased
+mother--who belonged, sir, to one of the first families of
+Virginia--I am told that she is--er--remarkably like her.  Miss
+Stannard is at present a pupil in one of the best educational
+establishments in Santa Clara, where she is receiving tuition in--
+er--the English classics, foreign belles lettres, embroidery, the
+harp, and--er--the use of the--er--globes, and--er--blackboard--
+under the most fastidious care, and my own personal supervision.
+The principal of the school, Miss Eudoxia Tish--associated with--
+er--er--Miss Prinkwell--is--er--remarkably gifted woman; and as I
+was present at one of the school exercises, I had the opportunity
+of testifying to her excellence in--er--short address I made to the
+young ladies."  From such glittering but unsatisfying generalities
+as these I prefer to turn to the real interview, gathered from
+contemporary witnesses.
+
+It was the usual cloudless, dazzling, Californian summer day,
+tempered with the asperity of the northwest trades that Miss Tish,
+looking through her window towards the rose-embowered gateway of
+the seminary, saw an extraordinary figure advancing up the avenue.
+It was that of a man slightly past middle age, yet erect and
+jaunty, whose costume recalled the early water-color portraits of
+her own youthful days.  His tightly buttoned blue frock coat with
+gilt buttons was opened far enough across the chest to allow the
+expanding of a frilled shirt, black stock, and nankeen waistcoat,
+and his immaculate white trousers were smartly strapped over his
+smart varnished boots.  A white bell-crowned hat, carried in his
+hand to permit the wiping of his forehead with a silk handkerchief,
+and a gold-headed walking stick hooked over his arm, completed this
+singular equipment.  He was followed, a few paces in the rear, by a
+negro carrying an enormous bouquet, and a number of small boxes and
+parcels tied up with ribbons.  As the figure paused before the
+door, Miss Tish gasped, and cast a quick restraining glance around
+the classroom.  But it was too late; a dozen pairs of blue, black,
+round, inquiring, or mischievous eyes were already dancing and
+gloating over the bizarre stranger through the window.
+
+"A cirkiss--or nigger minstrels--sure as you're born!" said Mary
+Frost, aged nine, in a fierce whisper.
+
+"No!--a agent from 'The Emporium,' with samples," returned Miss
+Briggs, aged fourteen.
+
+"Young ladies, attend to your studies," said Miss Tish, as the
+servant brought in a card.  Miss Tish glanced at it with some
+nervousness, and read to herself, "Colonel Culpeper Starbottle,"
+engraved in script, and below it in pencil, "To see Miss Pansy
+Stannard, under favor of Miss Tish."  Rising with some
+perturbation, Miss Tish hurriedly intrusted the class to an
+assistant, and descended to the reception room.  She had never seen
+Pansy's guardian before (the executor had brought the child); and
+this extraordinary creature, whose visit she could not deny, might
+be ruinous to school discipline.  It was therefore with an extra
+degree of frigidity of demeanor that she threw open the door of the
+reception room, and entered majestically.  But to her utter
+astonishment, the colonel met her with a bow so stately, so
+ceremonious, and so commanding that she stopped, disarmed and
+speechless.
+
+"I need not ask if I am addressing Miss Tish," said the colonel
+loftily, "for without having the pleasure of--er--previous
+acquaintance, I can at once recognize the--er--Lady Superior and--
+er--chatelaine of this--er--establishment."  Miss Tish here gave
+way to a slight cough and an embarrassed curtsy, as the colonel,
+with a wave of his white hand towards the burden carried by his
+follower, resumed more lightly: "I have brought--er--few trifles
+and gewgaws for my ward--subject, of course, to your rules and
+discretion.  They include some--er--dainties, free from any
+deleterious substance, as I am informed--a sash--a ribbon or two
+for the hair, gloves, mittens, and a nosegay--from which, I trust,
+it will be HER pleasure, as it is my own, to invite you to cull
+such blossoms as may suit your taste.  Boy, you may set them down
+and retire!"
+
+"At the present moment," stammered Miss Tish, "Miss Stannard is
+engaged on her lessons.  But"--  She stopped again, hopelessly.
+
+"I see," said the colonel, with an air of playful, poetical
+reminiscence--"her lessons!  Certainly!
+
+
+     'We will--er--go to our places,
+      With smiles on our faces,
+      And say all our lessons distinctly and slow.'
+
+
+Certainly!  Not for worlds would I interrupt them; until they are
+done, we will--er--walk through the classrooms and inspect"--
+
+"No! no!" interrupted the horrified, principal, with a dreadful
+presentiment of the appalling effect of the colonel's entry upon
+the class.  "No!--that is--I mean--our rules exclude--except on
+days of public examination"--
+
+"Say no more, my dear madam," said the colonel politely.  "Until
+she is free I will stroll outside, through--er--the groves of the
+Academus"--
+
+But Miss Tish, equally alarmed at the diversion this would create
+at the classroom windows, recalled herself with an effort.  "Please
+wait here a moment," she said hurriedly; "I will bring her down;"
+and before the colonel could politely open the door for her, she
+had fled.
+
+Happily unconscious of the sensation he had caused, Colonel
+Starbottle seated himself on the sofa, his white hands resting
+easily on the gold-headed cane.  Once or twice the door behind him
+opened and closed quietly, scarcely disturbing him; or again opened
+more ostentatiously to the words, "Oh, excuse, please," and the
+brief glimpse of a flaxen braid, or a black curly head--to all of
+which the colonel nodded politely--even rising later to the
+apparition of a taller, demure young lady--and her more affected
+"Really, I beg your pardon!"  The only result of this evident
+curiosity was slightly to change the colonel's attitude, so as to
+enable him to put his other hand in his breast in his favorite
+pose.  But presently he was conscious of a more active movement in
+the hall, of the sounds of scuffling, of a high youthful voice
+saying "I won't" and "I shan't!" of the door opening to a momentary
+apparition of Miss Tish dragging a small hand and half of a small
+black-ribboned arm into the room, and her rapid disappearance
+again, apparently pulled back by the little hand and arm; of
+another and longer pause, of a whispered conference outside, and
+then the reappearance of Miss Tish majestically, reinforced and
+supported by the grim presence of her partner, Miss Prinkwell.
+
+"This--er--unexpected visit," began Miss Tish--"not previously
+arranged by letter"--
+
+"Which is an invariable rule of our establishment," supplemented
+Miss Prinkwell--
+
+"And the fact that you are personally unknown to us," continued
+Miss Tish--
+
+"An ignorance shared by the child, who exhibits a distaste for an
+interview," interpolated Miss Prinkwell, in a kind of antiphonal
+response--
+
+"For which we have had no time to prepare her," continued Miss
+Tish--
+
+"Compels us most reluctantly"--  But here she stopped short.
+Colonel Starbottle, who had risen with a deep bow at their entrance
+and remained standing, here walked quietly towards them.  His
+usually high color had faded except from his eyes, but his exalted
+manner was still more pronounced, with a dreadful deliberation
+superadded.
+
+"I believe--er--I had--the honah--to send up my kyard!"  (In his
+supreme moments the colonel's Southern accent was always in
+evidence.)  "I may--er--be mistaken--but--er--that is my
+impression."  The colonel paused, and placed his right hand
+statuesquely on his heart.
+
+The two women trembled--Miss Tish fancied the very shirt frill of
+the colonel was majestically erecting itself--as they stammered in
+one voice,--
+
+"Ye-e-es!"
+
+"That kyard contained my full name--with a request to see my ward--
+Miss Stannard," continued the colonel slowly.  "I believe that is
+the fact."
+
+"Certainly! certainly!" gasped the women feebly.
+
+"Then may I--er--point out to you that I AM--er--WAITING?"
+
+Although nothing could exceed the laborious simplicity and husky
+sweetness of the colonel's utterance, it appeared to demoralize
+utterly his two hearers--Miss Prinkwell seemed to fade into the
+pattern of the wall paper, Miss Tish to droop submissively forward
+like a pink wax candle in the rays of the burning sun.
+
+"We will bring her instantly.  A thousand pardons, sir," they
+uttered in the same breath, backing towards the door.
+
+But here the unexpected intervened.  Unnoticed by the three during
+the colloquy, a little figure in a black dress had peeped through
+the door, and then glided into the room.  It was a girl of about
+ten, who, in all candor, could scarcely be called pretty, although
+the awkward change of adolescence had not destroyed the delicate
+proportions of her hands and feet nor the beauty of her brown eyes.
+These were, just then, round and wondering, and fixed alternately
+on the colonel and the two women.  But like many other round and
+wondering eyes, they had taken in the full meaning of the
+situation, with a quickness the adult mind is not apt to give them
+credit for.  They saw the complete and utter subjugation of the two
+supreme autocrats of the school, and, I grieve to say, they were
+filled with a secret and "fearful joy."  But the casual spectator
+saw none of this; the round and wondering eyes, still rimmed with
+recent and recalcitrant tears, only looked big and innocently
+shining.
+
+The relief of the two women was sudden and unaffected.
+
+"Oh, here you are, dearest, at last!" said Miss Tish eagerly.
+"This is your guardian, Colonel Starbottle.  Come to him, dear!"
+
+She took the hand of the child, who hung back with an odd mingling
+of shamefacedness and resentment of the interference, when the
+voice of Colonel Starbottle, in the same deadly calm deliberation,
+said,--
+
+"I--er--will speak with her--alone."
+
+The round eyes again saw the complete collapse of authority, as the
+two women shrank back from the voice, and said hurriedly,--
+
+"Certainly, Colonel Starbottle; perhaps it would be better," and
+ingloriously quitted the room.
+
+But the colonel's triumph left him helpless.  He was alone with a
+simple child, an unprecedented, unheard-of situation, which left
+him embarrassed and--speechless.  Even his vanity was conscious
+that his oratorical periods, his methods, his very attitude, were
+powerless here.  The perspiration stood out on his forehead; he
+looked at her vaguely, and essayed a feeble smile.  The child saw
+his embarrassment, even as she had seen and understood his triumph,
+and the small woman within her exulted.  She put her little hands
+on her waist, and with the fingers turned downwards and outwards
+pressed them down her hips to her bended knees until they had
+forced her skirts into an egregious fullness before and behind, as
+if she were making a curtsy, and then jumped up and laughed.
+
+"You did it!  Hooray!"
+
+"Did what?" said the colonel, pleased yet mystified.
+
+"Frightened 'em!--the two old cats!  Frightened 'em outen their
+slippers!  Oh, jiminy!  Never, never, NEVER before was they so
+skeert!  Never since school kept did they have to crawl like that!
+They was skeert enough FIRST when you come, but just now!--  Lordy!
+They wasn't a-goin' to let you see me--but they had to! had to! HAD
+TO!" and she emphasized each repetition with a skip.
+
+"I believe--er," said the colonel blandly, "that I--er--intimated
+with some firmness"--
+
+"That's it--just it!" interrupted the child delightedly.  "You--
+you--overdid 'em"
+
+"What?"
+
+"OVERDID 'EM!  Don't you know?  They're always so high and mighty!
+Kinder 'Don't tech me.  My mother's an angel; my father's a king'--
+all that sort of thing.  They did THIS"--she drew herself up in a
+presumable imitation of the two women's majestic entrance--"and
+then," she continued, "you--YOU jest did this"--here she lifted her
+chin, and puffing out her small chest, strode towards the colonel
+in evident simulation of his grandest manner.
+
+A short, deep chuckle escaped him--although the next moment his
+face became serious again.  But Pansy in the mean time had taken
+possession of his coat sleeve and was rubbing her cheek against it
+like a young colt.  At which the colonel succumbed feebly and sat
+down on the sofa, the child standing beside him, leaning over and
+transferring her little hands to the lapels of his frock coat,
+which she essayed to button over his chest as she looked into his
+murky eyes.
+
+"The other girls said," she began, tugging at the button, "that you
+was a 'cirkiss'"--another tug--"'a nigger minstrel'"--and a third
+tug--"'a agent with samples'--but that showed all they knew!"
+
+"Ah," said the colonel with exaggerated blandness, "and--er--what
+did YOU--er--say?"
+
+The child smiled.  "I said you was a Stuffed Donkey--but that was
+BEFORE I knew you.  I was a little skeert too; but NOW"--she
+succeeded in buttoning the coat and making the colonel quite
+apoplectic,--"NOW I ain't frightened one bit--no, not one TINY bit!
+But," she added, after a pause, unbuttoning the coat again and
+smoothing down the lapels between her fingers, "you're to keep on
+frightening the old cats--mind!  Never mind about the GIRLS.  I'll
+tell them."
+
+The colonel would have given worlds to he able to struggle up into
+an upright position with suitable oral expression.  Not that his
+vanity was at all wounded by these irresponsible epithets, which
+only excited an amused wonder, but he was conscious of an
+embarrassed pleasure in the child's caressing familiarity, and her
+perfect trustfulness in him touched his extravagant chivalry.  He
+ought to protect her, and yet correct her.  In the consciousness of
+these duties he laid his white hand upon her head.  Alas! she
+lifted her arm and instantly transferred his hand and part of his
+arm around her neck and shoulders, and comfortably snuggled against
+him.  The colonel gasped.  Nevertheless, something must be said,
+and he began, albeit somewhat crippled in delivery:--
+
+"The--er--use of elegant and precise language by--er--young ladies
+cannot be too sedulously cultivated"--
+
+But here the child laughed, and snuggling still closer, gurgled:
+"That's right!  Give it to her when she comes down!  That's the
+style!" and the colonel stopped, discomfited.  Nevertheless, there
+was a certain wholesome glow in the contact of this nestling little
+figure.
+
+Presently he resumed tentativery: "I have--er--brought you a few
+dainties."
+
+"Yes," said Pansy, "I see; but they're from the wrong shop, you
+dear old silly!  They're from Tomkins's, and we girls just
+abominate his things.  You oughter have gone to Emmons's.  Never
+mind.  I'll show you when we go out.  We're going out, aren't we?"
+she said suddenly, lifting her head anxiously.  "You know it's
+allowed, and it's RIGHTS 'to parents and guardians'!"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," said the colonel.  He knew he would feel a
+little less constrained in the open air.
+
+"Then we'll go now," said Pansy, jumping up.  "I'll just run
+upstairs and put on my things.  I'll say it's 'orders' from you.
+And I'll wear my new frock--it's longer."  (The colonel was
+slightly relieved at this; it had seemed to him, as a guardian,
+that there was perhaps an abnormal display of Pansy's black
+stockings.)  "You wait; I won't be long."
+
+She darted to the door, but reaching it, suddenly stopped, returned
+to the sofa, where the colonel still sat, imprinted a swift kiss on
+his mottled cheek, and fled, leaving him invested with a mingled
+flavor of freshly ironed muslin, wintergreen lozenges, and recent
+bread and butter.  He sat still for some time, staring out of the
+window.  It was very quiet in the room; a bumblebee blundered from
+the jasmine outside into the open window, and snored loudly at the
+panes.  But the colonel heeded it not, and remained abstracted and
+silent until the door opened to Miss Tish and Pansy--in her best
+frock and sash, at which the colonel started and became erect again
+and courtly.
+
+"I am about to take my ward out," he said deliberately, "to--er--
+taste the air in the Alameda, and--er--view the shops.  We may--er--
+also--indulge in--er--slight suitable refreshment;--er--seed cake--
+or--bread and butter--and--a dish of tea."
+
+Miss Tish, now thoroughly subdued, was delighted to grant Miss
+Stannard the half holiday permitted on such occasions.  She begged
+the colonel to suit his own pleasure, and intrusted "the dear
+child" to her guardian "with the greatest confidence."
+
+The colonel made a low bow, and Pansy, demurely slipping her hand
+into his, passed with him into the hall; there was a slight rustle
+of vanishing skirts, and Pansy pressed his hand significantly.
+When they were well outside, she said, in a lower voice:--
+
+"Don't look up until we're under the gymnasium windows."  The
+colonel, mystified but obedient, strutted on.  "Now!" said Pansy.
+He looked up, beheld the windows aglow with bright young faces, and
+bewildering with many handkerchiefs and clapping hands, stopped,
+and then taking off his hat, acknowledged the salute with a
+sweeping bow.  Pansy was delighted.  "I knew they'd be there; I'd
+already fixed 'em.  They're just dyin' to know you."
+
+The colonel felt a certain glow of pleasure, "I--er--had already
+intimated a--er--willingness to--er--inspect the classes; but--I--
+er--understood that the rules"--
+
+"They're sick old rules," interrupted the child.  "Tish and
+Prinkwell are the rules!  You say just right out that you WILL!
+Just overdo her!"
+
+The colonel had a vague sense that he ought to correct both the
+spirit and language of this insurrectionary speech, but Pansy
+pulled him along, and then swept him quite away with a torrent of
+prattle of the school, of her friends, of the teachers, of her life
+and its infinitely small miseries and pleasures.  Pansy was
+voluble; never before had the colonel found himself relegated to
+the place of a passive listener.  Nevertheless, he liked it, and as
+they passed on, under the shade of the Alameda, with Pansy
+alternately swinging from his hand and skipping beside him, there
+was a vague smile of satisfaction on his face.  Passers-by turned
+to look after the strangely assorted pair, or smiled, accepting
+them, as the colonel fancied, as father and daughter.  An odd
+feeling, half of pain and half of pleasure, gripped at the heart of
+the empty and childless man.
+
+And now, as they approached the more crowded thoroughfares, the
+instinct of chivalrous protection was keen in his breast.  He
+piloted her skillfully; he jauntily suited his own to her skipping
+step; he lifted her with scrupulous politeness over obstacles;
+strutting beside her on crowded pavements, he made way for her with
+his swinging stick.  All the while, too, he had taken note of the
+easy carriage of her head and shoulders, and most of all of her
+small, slim feet and hands, that, to his fastidious taste,
+betokened her race.  "Ged, sir," he muttered to himself, "she's
+'Blue Grass' stock, all through."  To admiration succeeded pride,
+with a slight touch of ownership.  When they went into a shop,
+which, thanks to the ingenuous Pansy, they did pretty often, he
+would introduce her with a wave of the hand and the remark, "I am--
+er--seeking nothing to-day, but if you will kindly--er--serve my
+WARD--Miss Stannard!"  Later, when they went into the
+confectioner's for refreshment, and Pansy frankly declared for "ice
+cream and cream cakes," instead of the "dish of tea and bread and
+butter" he had ordered in pursuance of his promise, he heroically
+took it himself--to satisfy his honor.  Indeed, I know of no more
+sublime figure than Colonel Starbottle--rising superior to a long-
+withstood craving for a "cocktail," morbidly conscious also of the
+ridiculousness of his appearance to any of his old associates who
+might see him--drinking luke-warm tea and pecking feebly at his
+bread and butter at a small table, beside his little tyrant.
+
+And this domination of the helpless continued on their way home.
+Although Miss Pansy no longer talked of herself, she was equally
+voluble in inquiry as to the colonel's habits, ways of life,
+friends and acquaintances, happily restricting her interrogations,
+in regard to those of her own sex, to "any LITTLE girls that he
+knew."  Saved by this exonerating adjective, the colonel saw here a
+chance to indulge his postponed monitorial duty, as well as his
+vivid imagination.  He accordingly drew elaborate pictures of
+impossible children he had known--creatures precise in language and
+dress, abstinent of play and confectionery, devoted to lessons and
+duties, and otherwise, in Pansy's own words, "loathsome to the last
+degree!"  As "daughters of oldest and most cherished friends," they
+might perhaps have excited Pansy's childish jealousy but for the
+singular fact that they had all long ago been rewarded by marriage
+with senators, judges, and generals--also associates of the
+colonel.  This remoteness of presence somewhat marred their effect
+as an example, and the colonel was mortified, though not entirely
+displeased, to observe that their surprising virtues did not
+destroy Pansy's voracity for sweets, the recklessness of her
+skipping, nor the freedom of her language.  The colonel was
+remorseful--but happy.
+
+When they reached the seminary again, Pansy retired with her
+various purchases, but reappeared after an interval with Miss Tish.
+
+"I remember," hesitated that lady, trembling under the fascination
+of the colonel's profound bow, "that you were anxious to look over
+the school, and although it was not possible then, I shall be glad
+to show you now through one of the classrooms."
+
+The colonel, glancing at Pansy, was momentarily shocked by a
+distortion of one side of her face, which seemed, however, to end
+in a wink of her innocent brown eyes, but recovering himself,
+gallantly expressed his gratitude.  The next moment he was
+ascending the stairs, side by side with Miss Tish, and had a
+distinct impression that he had been pinched in the calf by Pansy,
+who was following close behind.
+
+It was recess, but the large classroom was quite filled with
+pupils, many of them older and prettier girls, inveigled there, as
+it afterwards appeared, by Pansy, in some precocious presentiment
+of her guardian's taste.  The colonel's apologetic yet gallant bow
+on entering, and his erect, old-fashioned elegance, instantly took
+their delighted attention.  Indeed, all would have gone well had
+not Miss Prinkwell, with the view of impressing the colonel as well
+as her pupils, majestically introduced him as "a distinguished
+jurist deeply interested in the cause of education, as well as
+guardian of their fellow pupil."  That opportunity was not thrown
+away on Colonel Starbottle.
+
+Stepping up to the desk of the astounded principal, he laid the
+points of his fingers delicately upon it, and, with a preparatory
+inclination of his head towards her, placed his other hand in his
+breast, and with an invocatory glance at the ceiling, began.
+
+It was the colonel's habit at such moments to state at first, with
+great care and precision, the things that he "would not say," that
+he "NEED not say," and apparently that it was absolutely
+unnecessary even to allude to.  It was therefore, not strange that
+the colonel informed them that he need not say that he counted his
+present privilege among the highest that had been granted him; for
+besides the privilege of beholding the galaxy of youthful talent
+and excellence before him, besides the privilege of being
+surrounded by a garland of the blossoms of the school in all their
+freshness and beauty, it was well understood that he had the
+greater privilege of--er--standing in loco parentis to one of these
+blossoms.  It was not for him to allude to the high trust imposed
+upon him by--er--deceased and cherished friend, and daughter of one
+of the first families of Virginia, by the side of one who must feel
+that she was the recipient of trusts equally supreme (here the
+colonel paused, and statuesquely regarded the alarmed Miss
+Prinkwell as if he were in doubt of it), but he would say that it
+should be HIS devoted mission to champion the rights of the
+orphaned and innocent whenever and wherever the occasion arose,
+against all odds, and even in the face of misguided authority.
+(Having left the impression that Miss Prinkwell contemplated an
+invasion of those rights, the colonel became more lenient and
+genial.)  He fully recognized her high and noble office; he saw in
+her the worthy successor of those two famous instructresses of
+Athens--those Greek ladies--er--whose names had escaped his memory,
+but which--er--no doubt Miss Prinkwell would be glad to recall to
+her pupils, with some account of their lives.  (Miss Prinkwell
+colored; she had never heard of them before, and even the delight
+of the class in the colonel's triumph was a little dampened by this
+prospect of hearing more about them.)  But the colonel was only too
+content with seeing before him these bright and beautiful faces,
+destined, as he firmly believed, in after years to lend their charm
+and effulgence to the highest places as the happy helpmeets of the
+greatest in the land.  He was--er--leaving a--er--slight
+testimonial of his regard in the form of some--er--innocent
+refreshments in the hands of his ward, who would--er--act as--er--
+his proxy in their distribution; and the colonel sat down to the
+flutter of handkerchiefs, an applause only half restrained, and the
+utter demoralization of Miss Prinkwell.
+
+But the time of his departure had come by this time, and he was too
+experienced a public man to risk the possibility of an anticlimax
+by protracting his leave-taking.  And in an ominous shining of
+Pansy's big eyes as the time approached he felt an embarrassment as
+perplexing as the odd presentiment of loneliness that was creeping
+over him.  But with an elaborate caution as to the dangers of self-
+indulgence, and the private bestowal of a large gold piece slipped
+into her hand, a promise to come again soon, and an exaction that
+she would write to him often, the colonel received in return a wet
+kiss, a great deal of wet cheek pressed against his own, and a
+momentary tender clinging, like that which attends the pulling up
+of some small flower, as he passed out into the porch.  In the
+hall, on the landing above him, there was a close packing of brief
+skirts against the railing, and a voice, apparently proceeding from
+a pair of very small mottled legs protruding through the balusters,
+said distinctly, "Free cheers for Ternel Tarbottle!"  And to this
+benediction the colonel, hat in hand, passed out of this Eden into
+the world again.
+
+
+The colonel's next visit to the seminary did not produce the same
+sensation as the first, although it was accompanied with equal
+disturbance to the fair principals.  Had he been a less conceited
+man he might have noticed that their antagonism, although held in
+restraint by their wholesome fear of him, was in danger of becoming
+more a conviction than a mere suspicion.  He was made aware of it
+through Pansy's resentment towards them, and her revelation of a
+certain inquisition that she had been subjected to in regard to his
+occupation, habits, and acquaintances.  Naturally of these things
+Pansy knew very little, but this had not prevented her from saying
+a great deal.  There had been enough in her questioners' manner to
+make her suspect that her guardian was being attacked, and to his
+defense she brought the mendacity and imagination of a clever
+child.  What she had really said did not transpire except through
+her own comments to the colonel: "And of course you've killed
+people--for you're a kernel, you know?"  (Here the colonel
+admitted, as a point of fact, that he had served in the Mexican
+war.)  "And you kin PREACH, for they heard you do it when you was
+here before," she added confidently; "and of course you own
+niggers--for there's 'Jim.'"  (The colonel here attempted to
+explain that Jim, being in a free State, was now a free man, but
+Pansy swept away such fine distinctions.)  "And you're rich, you
+know, for you gave me that ten-dollar gold piece all for myself.
+So I jest gave 'em as good as they sent--the old spies and
+curiosity shops!"  The colonel, more pleased at Pansy's devotion
+than concerned over the incident itself, accepted this
+interpretation of his character as a munificent, militant priest
+with a smiling protest.  But a later incident caused him to
+remember it more seriously.
+
+They had taken their usual stroll through the Alameda, and had made
+the round of the shops, where the colonel had exhibited his usual
+liberality of purchase and his exalted parental protection, and so
+had passed on to their usual refreshment at the confectioner's, the
+usual ices and cakes for Pansy, but this time--a concession also to
+the tyrant Pansy--a glass of lemon soda and a biscuit for the
+colonel.  He was coughing over his unaccustomed beverage, and
+Pansy, her equanimity and volubility restored by sweets, was
+chirruping at his side; the large saloon was filling up with
+customers--mainly ladies and children, embarrassing to him as the
+only man present, when suddenly Pansy's attention was diverted by
+another arrival.  It was a good-looking young woman, overdressed,
+striking, and self-conscious, who, with an air of one who was in
+the habit of challenging attention, affectedly seated herself with
+a male companion at an empty table, and began to pull off an
+overtight glove.
+
+"My!" said Pansy in admiring wonder, "ain't she fine?"
+
+Colonel Starbottle looked up abstractedly, but at the first glance
+his face flushed redly, deepened to a purple, and then became gray
+and stern.  He had recognized in the garish fair one Miss Flora
+Montague, the "Western Star of Terpsichore and Song," with whom he
+had supped a few days before at Sacramento.  The lady was "on tour"
+with her "Combination troupe."
+
+The colonel leaned over and fixed his murky eyes on Pansy.  "The
+room is filling up; the place is stifling; I must--er--request you
+to--er--hurry."
+
+There was a change in the colonel's manner, which the quick-witted
+child heeded.  But she had not associated it with the entrance of
+the strangers, and as she obediently gulped down her ice, she went
+on innocently,--
+
+"That fine lady's smilin' and lookin' over here.  Seems to know
+you; so does the man with her."
+
+"I--er--must request you," said the colonel, with husky precision,
+"NOT to look that way, but finish your--er--repast."
+
+His tone was so decided that the child's lips pouted, but before
+she could speak a shadow leaned over their table.  It was the
+companion of the "fine lady."
+
+"Don't seem to see us, Colonel," he said with coarse familiarity,
+laying his hand on the colonel's shoulder.  "Florry wants to know
+what's up."
+
+The colonel rose at the touch.  "Tell her, sir," he said huskily,
+but with slow deliberation, "that I 'am up' and leaving this place
+with my ward, Miss Stannard.  Good-morning."  He lifted Pansy with
+infinite courtesy from her chair, took her hand, strolled to the
+counter, threw down a gold piece, and passing the table of the
+astonished fair one with an inflated breast, swept with Pansy out
+of the shop.  In the street he paused, bidding the child go on; and
+then, finding he was not followed by the woman's escort, rejoined
+his little companion.
+
+For a few moments they walked silently side by side.  Then Pansy's
+curiosity, getting the better of her pout, demanded information.
+She had applied a child's swift logic to the scene.  The colonel
+was angry, and had punished the woman for something.  She drew
+closer to his side, and looking up with her big eyes, said
+confidentially.
+
+"What had she been a-doing?"
+
+The colonel was amazed, embarrassed, and speechless.  He was
+totally unprepared for the question, and as unable to answer it.
+His abrupt departure from the shop had been to evade the very truth
+now demanded of him.  Only a supreme effort of mendacity was left
+him.  He wiped his brow with his handkerchief, coughed, and began
+deliberately:--
+
+"The--er--lady in question is in the habit of using a scent called--
+er--patchouli, a--er--perfume exceedingly distressing to me.  I
+detected it instantly on her entrance.  I wished to avoid it--
+without further contact.  It is--er--singular but accepted fact
+that some people are--er--peculiarly affected by odors.  I had--er--
+old cherished friend who always--er--fainted at the odor of
+jasmine; and I was intimately acquainted with General Bludyer, who--
+er--dropped like a shot on the presentation of a simple violet.
+The--er--habit of using such perfumes excessively in public,"
+continued the colonel, looking down upon the innocent Pansy, and
+speaking in tones of deadly deliberation, "cannot be too greatly
+condemned, as well as the habit of--er--frequenting places of
+public resort in extravagant costumes, with--er--individuals who--
+er--intrude upon domestic privacy.  I trust you will eschew such
+perfumes, places, costumes, and--er--companions FOREVER and--ON ALL
+OCCASIONS!"  The colonel had raised his voice to his forensic
+emphasis, and Pansy, somewhat alarmed, assented.  Whether she
+entirely accepted the colonel's explanation was another matter.
+
+The incident, although not again alluded to, seemed to shadow the
+rest of their brief afternoon holiday, and the colonel's manner was
+unmistakably graver.  But it seemed to the child more affectionate
+and thoughtful.  He had previously at parting submitted to be
+kissed by Pansy with stately tolerance and an immediate resumption
+of his loftiest manner.  On this present leave-taking he laid his
+straight closely shaven lips on the crown of her dark head, and as
+her small arms clipped his neck, drew her closely to his side.  The
+child uttered a slight cry; the colonel hurriedly put his hand to
+his breast.  Her round cheek had come in contact with his
+derringer--a small weapon of beauty and precision--which invariably
+nestled also at his side, in his waistcoat pocket.  The child
+laughed; so did the colonel, but his cheek flushed mightily.
+
+
+It was four months later, and a turbulent night.  The early rains,
+driven by a strong southwester against the upper windows of the
+Magnolia Restaurant, sometimes blurred the radiance of the bright
+lights within, and the roar of the encompassing pines at times
+drowned the sounds of song and laughter that rose from a private
+supper room.  Even the clattering arrival and departure of the
+Sacramento stage coach, which disturbed the depths below, did not
+affect these upper revelers.  For Colonel Starbottle, Jack Hamlin,
+Judge Beeswinger, and Jo Wynyard, assisted by Mesdames Montague,
+Montmorency, Bellefield, and "Tinky" Clifford, of the "Western Star
+Combination Troupe," then performing "on tour," were holding "high
+jinks" in the supper room.  The colonel had been of late moody,
+irritable, and easily upset.  In the words of a friend and admirer,
+"he was kam only at twelve paces."
+
+In a lull in the general tumult a Chinese waiter was seen at the
+door vainly endeavoring to attract the attention of the colonel by
+signs and interjections.  Mr. Hamlin's quick eye first caught sight
+of the intruder.  "Come in, Confucius," said Jack pleasantly;
+"you're a trifle late for a regular turn, but any little thing in
+the way of knife swallowing"--
+
+"Lill missee to see connle!  Waitee waitee, bottom side housee,"
+interrupted the Chinaman, dividing his speech between Jack and the
+colonel.
+
+"What!  ANOTHER lady?  This is no place for me!" said Jack, rising
+with finely simulated decorum.
+
+"Ask her up," chirped "Tinky" Clifford.
+
+But at this moment the door opened against the Chinaman, and a
+small figure in a cloak and hat, dripping with raindrops, glided
+swiftly in.  After a moment's half-frightened, half-admiring glance
+at the party, she darted forward with a little cry and threw her
+wet arms round the colonel.  The rest of the company, arrested in
+their festivity, gasped with vague and smiling wonder; the colonel
+became purple and gasped.  But only for a moment.  The next instant
+he was on his legs, holding the child with one hand, while with the
+other he described a stately sweep of the table.
+
+"My ward--Miss Pansy Stannard," he said with husky brevity.  But
+drawing the child aside, he whispered quickly, "What has happened?
+Why are you here?"
+
+But Pansy, child-like, already diverted by the lights, the table
+piled with delicacies, the gayly dressed women, and the air of
+festivity, answered half abstractedly, and as much, perhaps, to the
+curious eyes about her as to the colonel's voice,--
+
+"I runned away!"
+
+"Hush!" whispered the colonel, aghast.
+
+But Pansy, responding again to the company rather than her
+guardian's counsel, and as if appealing to them, went on half
+poutingly: "Yes!  I runned away because they teased me!  Because
+they didn't like you and said horrid things.  Because they told
+awful, dreadful lies!  Because they said I wasn't no orphan!--that
+my name wasn't Stannard, and that you'd made it all up.  Because
+they said I was a liar--and YOU WAS MY FATHER!"
+
+A sudden outbreak of laughter here shook the room, and even drowned
+the storm outside; again and again it rose, as the colonel
+staggered gaspingly to his feet.  For an instant it seemed as if
+his struggles to restrain himself would end in an apoplectic fit.
+Perhaps it was for this reason that Jack Hamlin checked his own
+light laugh and became alert and grave.  Yet the next moment
+Colonel Starbottle went as suddenly dead white, as leaning over the
+table he said huskily, but deliberately, "I must request the ladies
+present to withdraw."
+
+"Don't mind US, Colonel," said Judge Beeswinger, "it's all in the
+family here, you know!  And now I look at the girl--hang it all!
+she DOES favor you, old man.  Ha! ha!"
+
+"And as for the ladies," said Wynyard with a weak, vinous laugh,
+"unless any of 'em is inclined to take the matter as PERSONAL--eh?"
+
+"Stop!" roared the colonel.
+
+There was no mistaking his voice nor his intent now.  The two men,
+insulted and instantly sobered, were silent.  Mr. Hamlin rose,
+playfully but determinedly tapped his fair companions on the
+shoulders, saying, "Run away and play, girls," actually bundled
+them, giggling and protesting, from the room, closed the door, and
+stood with his back against it.  Then it was seen that the colonel,
+still very white, was holding the child by the hand, as she shrank
+back wonderingly and a little frightened against him.
+
+"I thank YOU, Mr. Hamlin," said the colonel in a lower voice--yet
+with a slight touch of his habitual stateliness in it, "for being
+here to bear witness, in the presence of this child, to my
+unqualified statement that a more foul, vile, and iniquitous
+falsehood never was uttered than that which has been poured into
+her innocent ears!"  He paused, walked to the door, still holding
+her hand, and, as Mr. Hamlin stepped aside, opened it, told her to
+await him in the public parlor, closed the door again, and once
+more faced the two men.  "And," he continued more deliberately,
+"for the infamous jests that you, Judge Beeswinger, and you, Mr.
+Wynyard, have dared to pass in her presence and mine, I shall
+expect from each of you the fullest satisfaction--personal
+satisfaction.  My seconds will wait on you in the morning!"
+
+The two men stood up sobered--yet belligerent.
+
+"As you like, sir," said Beeswinger, flashing.
+
+"The sooner the better for me," added Wynyard curtly.
+
+They passed the unruffled Jack Hamlin with a smile and a vaguely
+significant air, as if calling him as a witness to the colonel's
+madness, and strode out of the room.
+
+As the door closed behind them, Mr. Hamlin lightly settled his
+white waistcoat, and, with his hands on his hips, lounged towards
+the colonel.  "And THEN?" he said quietly.
+
+"Eh?" said the colonel.
+
+"After you've shot one or both of these men, or one of 'em has
+knocked you out, what's to become of that child?"
+
+"If--I am--er--spared, sir," said the colonel huskily, "I shall
+continue to defend her--against calumny and sneers"--
+
+"In this style, eh?  After her life has been made a hell by her
+association with a man of your reputation, you propose to whitewash
+it by a quarrel with a couple of drunken scallawags like Beeswinger
+and Wynyard, in the presence of three painted trollops and a d----d
+scamp like myself!  Do you suppose this won't be blown all over
+California before she can be sent back to school?  Do you suppose
+those cackling hussies in the next room won't give the whole story
+away to the next man who stands treat?"  (A fine contempt for the
+sex in general was one of Mr. Hamlin's most subtle attractions for
+them.)
+
+"Nevertheless, sir," stammered the colonel, "the prompt punishment
+of the man who has dared"--
+
+"Punishment!" interrupted Hamlin, "who's to punish the man who has
+dared most?  The one man who is responsible for the whole thing?
+Who's to punish YOU?"
+
+"Mr. Hamlin--sir!" gasped the colonel, falling back, as his hand
+involuntarily rose to the level of his waistcoat pocket and his
+derringer.
+
+But Mr. Hamlin only put down the wine glass he had lifted from the
+table and was delicately twirling between his fingers, and looked
+fixedly at the colonel.
+
+"Look here," he said slowly.  "When the boys said that you accepted
+the guardianship of that child NOT on account of Dick Stannard, but
+only as a bluff against the joke they'd set up at you, I didn't
+believe them!  When these men and women to-night tumbled to that
+story of the child being YOURS, I didn't believe that!  When it was
+said by others that you were serious about making her your ward,
+and giving her your property, because you doted on her like a
+father, I didn't believe that."
+
+"And--why not THAT?" said the colonel quickly, yet with an odd
+tremor in his voice.
+
+"Because," said Hamlin, becoming suddenly as grave as the colonel,
+"I could not believe that any one who cared a picayune for the
+child could undertake a trust that might bring her into contact
+with a life and company as rotten as ours.  I could not believe
+that even the most God-forsaken, conceited fool would, for the sake
+of a little sentimental parade and splurge among people outside his
+regular walk, allow the prospects of that child to be blasted.  I
+couldn't believe it, even if he thought he was acting like a
+father.  I didn't believe it--but I'm beginning to believe it now!"
+
+There was little to choose between the attitudes and expressions of
+the two set stern faces now regarding each other, silently, a foot
+apart.  But the colonel was the first to speak:--
+
+"Mr. Hamlin--sir!  You said a moment ago that I was--er--ahem--
+responsible for this evening's affair--but you expressed a doubt as
+to who could--er--punish me for it.  I accept the responsibility
+you have indicated, sir, and offer you that chance.  But as this
+matter between us must have precedence over--my engagements with
+that canaille, I shall expect you with your seconds at sunrise on
+Burnt Ridge.  Good-evening, sir."
+
+With head erect the colonel left the room.  Mr. Hamlin slightly
+shrugged his shoulders, turned to the door of the room whither he
+had just banished the ladies, and in a few minutes his voice was
+heard melodiously among the gayest.
+
+For all that he managed to get them away early.  When he had
+bundled them into a large carryall, and watched them drive away
+through the storm, he returned for a minute to the waiting room for
+his overcoat.  He was surprised to hear the sound of the child's
+voice in the supper room, and the door being ajar, he could see
+quite distinctly that she was seated at the table, with a plate
+full of sweets before her, while Colonel Starbottle, with his back
+to the door, was sitting opposite to her, his shoulders slightly
+bowed as he eagerly watched her.  It seemed to Mr. Hamlin that it
+was the close of an emotional interview, for Pansy's voice was
+broken, partly by sobs, and partly, I grieve to say, by the hurried
+swallowing of the delicacies before her.  Yet, above the beating of
+the storm outside, he could hear her saying,--
+
+"Yes!  I promise to be good--(sob)--and to go with Mrs. Pyecroft--
+(sob)--and to try to like another guardian--(sob)--and not to cry
+any more--(sob)--and--oh, please, DON'T YOU DO IT EITHER!"
+
+But here Mr. Hamlin slipped out of the room and out of the house,
+with a rather grave face.  An hour later, when the colonel drove up
+to the Pyecrofts' door with Pansy, he found that Mr. Pyecroft was
+slightly embarrassed, and a figure, which, in the darkness, seemed
+to resemble Mr. Hamlin's, had just emerged from the door as he
+entered.
+
+Yet the sun was not up on Burnt Ridge earlier than Mr. Hamlin.  The
+storm of the night before had blown itself out; a few shreds of
+mist hung in the valleys from the Ridge, that lay above coldly
+reddening.  Then a breeze swept over it, and out of the dissipating
+mist fringe Mr. Hamlin saw two black figures, closely buttoned up
+like himself, emerge, which he recognized as Beeswinger and
+Wynyard, followed by their seconds.  But the colonel came not,
+Hamlin joined the others in an animated confidential conversation,
+attended by a watchful outlook for the missing adversary.  Five,
+ten minutes elapsed, and yet the usually prompt colonel was not
+there.  Mr. Hamlin looked grave; Wynyard and Beeswinger exchanged
+interrogatory glances.  Then a buggy was seen driving furiously up
+the grade, and from it leaped Colonel Starbottle, accompanied by
+Dick MacKinstry, his second, carrying his pistol case.  And then--
+strangely enough for men who were waiting the coming of an
+antagonist who was a dead shot--they drew a breath of relief!
+
+MacKinstry slightly preceded his principal, and the others could
+see that Starbottle, though erect, was walking slowly.  They were
+surprised also to observe that he was haggard and hollow eyed, and
+seemed, in the few hours that had elapsed since they last saw him,
+to have aged ten years.  MacKinstry, a tall Kentuckian, saluted,
+and was the first one to speak.
+
+"Colonel Starbottle," he said formally, "desires to express his
+regrets at this delay, which was unavoidable, as he was obliged to
+attend his ward, who was leaving by the down coach for Sacramento
+with Mrs. Pyecroft, this morning."  Hamlin, Wynyard, and Beeswinger
+exchanged glances.  "Colonel Starbottle," continued MacKinstry,
+turning to his principal, "desires to say a word to Mr. Hamlin."
+
+As Mr. Hamlin would have advanced from the group, Colonel
+Starbottle lifted his hand deprecatingly.  "What I have to say must
+be said before these gentlemen," he began slowly.  "Mr. Hamlin--
+sir! when I solicited the honor of this meeting I was under a
+grievous misapprehension of the intent and purpose of your comments
+on my action last evening.  I think," he added, slightly inflating
+his buttoned-up figure, "that the reputation I have always borne
+in--er--meetings of this kind will prevent any--er--misunderstanding
+of my present action--which is to--er--ask permission to withdraw
+my challenge--and to humbly beg your pardon."
+
+The astonishment produced by this unexpected apology, and Mr.
+Hamlin's prompt grasp of the colonel's hand, had scarcely passed
+before the colonel drew himself up again, and turning to his second
+said, "And now I am at the service of Judge Beeswinger and Mr.
+Wynyard--whichever may elect to honor me first."
+
+But the two men thus addressed looked for a moment strangely
+foolish and embarrassed.  Yet the awkwardness was at last broken by
+Judge Beeswinger frankly advancing towards the colonel with an
+outstretched hand.  "We came here only to apologize, Colonel
+Starbottle.  Without possessing your reputation and experience in
+these matters, we still think we can claim, as you have, an equal
+exemption from any misunderstanding when we say that we deeply
+regret our foolish and discourteous conduct last evening."
+
+A quick flush mounted to the colonel's haggard cheek as he drew
+back with a suspicious glance at Hamlin.
+
+"Mr. Hamlin!--gentlemen!--if this is--er--!"
+
+But before he could finish his sentence Hamlin had clapped his hand
+on the colonel's shoulder.  "You'll take my word, colonel, that
+these gentlemen honestly intended to apologize, and came here for
+that purpose;--and--SO DID I--only you anticipated me!"
+
+In the laughter that followed Mr. Hamlin's frankness the colonel's
+features relaxed grimly, and he shook the hands of his late
+possible antagonists.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Hamlin gayly, "you'll all adjourn to breakfast
+with me--and try to make up for the supper we left unfinished last
+night."
+
+It was the only allusion to that interruption and its consequences,
+for during the breakfast the colonel said nothing in regard to his
+ward, and the other guests were discreetly reticent.  But Mr.
+Hamlin was not satisfied.  He managed to get the colonel's servant,
+Jim, aside, and extracted from the negro that Colonel Starbottle
+had taken the child that night to Pyecroft's; that he had had a
+long interview with Pyecroft; had written letters and 'walked de
+flo'" all night; that he (Jim) was glad the child was gone!
+
+"Why?" asked Hamlin, with affected carelessness.
+
+"She was just makin' de kernel like any o' de low-down No'th'n
+folks--keerful, and stingy, and mighty 'fraid o' de opinions o' de
+biggety people.  And fo' what?  Jess to strut round wid dat child
+like he was her 'spectable go to meeting fader!"
+
+"And was the child sorry to leave him?" asked Hamlin.
+
+"Wull--no, sah.  De mighty curos thing, Marse Jack, about the gals--
+big and little--is dey just USE de kernel--dat's all!  Dey just
+use de ole man like a pole to bring down deir persimmons--see?"
+
+But Mr. Hamlin did not smile.
+
+Later it was known that Colonel Starbottle had resigned his
+guardianship with the consent of the court.  Whether he ever again
+saw his late ward was not known, nor if he remained loyal to his
+memories of her.
+
+Readers of these chronicles may, however, remember that years
+after, when the colonel married the widow of a certain Mr.
+Tretherick, both in his courtship and his short married life he was
+singularly indifferent to the childish graces of Carrie Tretherick,
+her beloved little daughter, and that his obtuseness in that
+respect provoked the widow's ire.
+
+
+
+PROSPER'S "OLD MOTHER"
+
+
+"It's all very well," said Joe Wynbrook, "for us to be sittin'
+here, slingin' lies easy and comfortable, with the wind whistlin'
+in the pines outside, and the rain just liftin' the ditches to fill
+our sluice boxes with gold ez we're smokin' and waitin', but I tell
+you what, boys--it ain't home!  No, sir, it ain't HOME!"
+
+The speaker paused, glanced around the bright, comfortable barroom,
+the shining array of glasses beyond, and the circle of complacent
+faces fronting the stove, on which his own boots were cheerfully
+steaming, lifted a glass of whiskey from the floor under his chair,
+and in spite of his deprecating remark, took a long draught of the
+spirits with every symptom of satisfaction.
+
+"If ye mean," returned Cyrus Brewster, "that it ain't the old
+farmhouse of our boyhood, 'way back in the woods, I'll agree with
+you; but ye'll just remember that there wasn't any gold placers
+lying round on the medder on that farm.  Not much!  Ef thar had
+been, we wouldn't have left it."
+
+"I don't mean that," said Joe Wynbrook, settling himself
+comfortably back in his chair; "it's the family hearth I'm talkin'
+of.  The soothin' influence, ye know--the tidiness of the women
+folks."
+
+"Ez to the soothin' influence," remarked the barkeeper, leaning his
+elbows meditatively on his counter, 'afore I struck these diggin's
+I had a grocery and bar, 'way back in Mizzoori, where there was
+five old-fashioned farms jined.  Blame my skin ef the men folks
+weren't a darned sight oftener over in my grocery, sittin' on
+barrils and histin' in their reg'lar corn-juice, than ever any of
+you be here--with all these modern improvements."
+
+"Ye don't catch on, any of you," returned Wynbrook impatiently.
+"Ef it was a mere matter o' buildin' houses and becomin' family
+men, I reckon that this yer camp is about prosperous enough to do
+it, and able to get gals enough to marry us, but that would be only
+borryin' trouble and lettin' loose a lot of jabberin' women to
+gossip agin' each other and spile all our friendships.  No,
+gentlemen!  What we want here--each of us--is a good old mother!
+Nothin' new-fangled or fancy, but the reg'lar old-fashioned mother
+we was used to when we was boys!"
+
+The speaker struck a well-worn chord--rather the worse for wear,
+and one that had jangled falsely ere now, but which still produced
+its effect.  The men were silent.  Thus encouraged, Wynbrook
+proceeded:--
+
+"Think o' comin' home from the gulch a night like this and findin'
+yer old mother a-waitin' ye!  No fumblin' around for the matches
+ye'd left in the gulch; no high old cussin' because the wood was
+wet or you forgot to bring it in; no bustlin' around for your dry
+things and findin' you forgot to dry 'em that mornin'--but
+everything waitin' for ye and ready.  And then, mebbe, she brings
+ye in some doughnuts she's just cooked for ye--cooked ez only SHE
+kin cook 'em!  Take Prossy Riggs--alongside of me here--for
+instance!  HE'S made the biggest strike yet, and is puttin' up a
+high-toned house on the hill.  Well! he'll hev it finished off and
+furnished slap-up style, you bet! with a Chinese cook, and a Biddy,
+and a Mexican vaquero to look after his horse--but he won't have no
+mother to housekeep!  That is," he corrected himself perfunctorily,
+turning to his companion, "you've never spoke o' your mother, so I
+reckon you're about fixed up like us."
+
+The young man thus addressed flushed slightly, and then nodded his
+head with a sheepish smile.  He had, however, listened to the
+conversation with an interest almost childish, and a reverent
+admiration of his comrades--qualities which, combined with an
+intellect not particularly brilliant, made him alternately the butt
+and the favorite of the camp.  Indeed, he was supposed to possess
+that proportion of stupidity and inexperience which, in mining
+superstition, gives "luck" to its possessor.  And this had been
+singularly proven in the fact that he had made the biggest "strike"
+of the season.
+
+Joe Wynbrook's sentimentalism, albeit only argumentative and half
+serious, had unwittingly touched a chord of simple history, and the
+flush which had risen to his cheek was not entirely bashfulness.
+The home and relationship of which they spoke so glibly, HE had
+never known; he was a foundling!  As he lay awake that night he
+remembered the charitable institution which had protected his
+infancy, the master to whom he had later been apprenticed; that was
+all he knew of his childhood.  In his simple way he had been
+greatly impressed by the strange value placed by his companions
+upon the family influence, and he had received their extravagance
+with perfect credulity.  In his absolute ignorance and his lack of
+humor he had detected no false quality in their sentiment.  And a
+vague sense of his responsibility, as one who had been the
+luckiest, and who was building the first "house" in the camp,
+troubled him.  He lay staringly wide awake, hearing the mountain
+wind, and feeling warm puffs of it on his face through the crevices
+of the log cabin, as he thought of the new house on the hill that
+was to be lathed and plastered and clapboarded, and yet void and
+vacant of that mysterious "mother"!  And then, out of the solitude
+and darkness, a tremendous idea struck him that made him sit up in
+his bunk!
+
+A day or two later "Prossy" Riggs stood on a sand-blown, wind-swept
+suburb of San Francisco, before a large building whom forbidding
+exterior proclaimed that it was an institution of formal charity.
+It was, in fact, a refuge for the various waifs and strays of ill-
+advised or hopeless immigration.  As Prosper paused before the
+door, certain told recollections of a similar refuge were creeping
+over him, and, oddly enough, he felt as embarrassed as if he had
+been seeking relief for himself.  The perspiration stood out on his
+forehead as he entered the room of the manager.
+
+It chanced, however, that this official, besides being a man of
+shrewd experience of human weakness, was also kindly hearted, and
+having, after his first official scrutiny of his visitor and his
+resplendent watch chain, assured himself that he was not seeking
+personal relief, courteously assisted him in his stammering
+request.
+
+"If I understand you, you want some one to act as your housekeeper?"
+
+"That's it!  Somebody to kinder look arter things--and me--
+ginrally," returned Prosper, greatly relieved.
+
+"Of what age?" continued the manager, with a cautious glance at the
+robust youth and good-looking, simple face of Prosper.
+
+"I ain't nowise partickler--ez long ez she's old--ye know.  Ye
+follow me?  Old--ez of--betwixt you an' me, she might be my own
+mother."
+
+The manager smiled inwardly.  A certain degree of discretion was
+noticeable in this rustic youth!  "You are quite right," he
+answered gravely, "as yours is a mining camp where there are no
+other women, Still, you don't want any one TOO old or decrepit.
+There is an elderly maiden lady"--  But a change was transparently
+visible on Prosper's simple face, and the manager paused.
+
+"She oughter be kinder married, you know--ter be like a mother,"
+stammered Prosper.
+
+"Oh, ay.  I see," returned the manager, again illuminated by
+Prosper's unexpected wisdom.
+
+He mused for a moment.  "There is," he began tentatively, "a lady
+in reduced circumstances--not an inmate of this house, but who has
+received some relief from us.  She was the wife of a whaling
+captain who died some years ago, and broke up her home.  She was
+not brought up to work, and this, with her delicate health, has
+prevented her from seeking active employment.  As you don't seem to
+require that of her, but rather want an overseer, and as your
+purpose, I gather, is somewhat philanthropical, you might induce
+her to accept a 'home' with you.  Having seen better days, she is
+rather particular," he added, with a shrewd smile.
+
+Simple Prosper's face was radiant.  "She'll have a Chinaman and a
+Biddy to help her," he said quickly.  Then recollecting the tastes
+of his comrades, he added, half apologetically, half cautiously,
+"Ef she could, now and then, throw herself into a lemming pie or a
+pot of doughnuts, jest in a motherly kind o' way, it would please
+the boys."
+
+"Perhaps you can arrange that, too," returned the manager, "but I
+shall have to broach the whole subject to her, and you had better
+call again to-morrow, when I will give you her answer."
+
+"Ye kin say," said Prosper, lightly fingering his massive gold
+chain and somewhat vaguely recalling the language of advertisement,
+"that she kin have the comforts of a home and no questions asked,
+and fifty dollars a month."
+
+Rejoiced at the easy progress of his plan, and half inclined to
+believe himself a miracle of cautious diplomacy, Prosper, two days
+later, accompanied the manager to the cottage on Telegraph Hill
+where the relict of the late Captain Pottinger lamented the loss of
+her spouse, in full view of the sea he had so often tempted.  On
+their way thither the manager imparted to Prosper how, according to
+hearsay, that lamented seaman had carried into the domestic circle
+those severe habits of discipline which had earned for him the
+prefix of "Bully" and "Belaying-pin" Pottinger during his strenuous
+life.  "They say that though she is very quiet and resigned, she
+once or twice stood up to the captain; but that's not a bad quality
+to have, in a rough community, as I presume yours is, and would
+insure her respect."
+
+Ushered at last into a small tank-like sitting room, whose chief
+decorations consisted of large abelone shells, dried marine algae,
+coral, and a swordfish's broken weapon, Prosper's disturbed fancy
+discovered the widow, sitting, apparently, as if among her
+husband's remains at the bottom of the sea.  She had a dejected yet
+somewhat ruddy face; her hair was streaked with white, but primly
+disposed over her ears like lappets, and her garb was cleanly but
+sombre.  There was no doubt but that she was a lugubrious figure,
+even to Prosper's optimistic and inexperienced mind.  He could not
+imagine her as beaming on his hearth!  It was with some alarm that,
+after the introduction had been completed, he beheld the manager
+take his leave.  As the door closed, the bashful Prosper felt the
+murky eyes of the widow fixed upon him.  A gentle cough,
+accompanied with the resigned laying of a black mittened hand upon
+her chest, suggested a genteel prelude to conversation, with
+possible pulmonary complications.
+
+"I am induced to accept your proposal temporarily," she said, in a
+voice of querulous precision, "on account of pressing pecuniary
+circumstances which would not have happened had my claim against
+the shipowners for my dear husband's loss been properly raised.  I
+hope you fully understand that I am unfitted both by ill health and
+early education from doing any menial or manual work in your
+household.  I shall simply oversee and direct.  I shall expect that
+the stipend you offer shall be paid monthly in advance.  And as my
+medical man prescribes a certain amount of stimulation for my
+system, I shall expect to be furnished with such viands--or even"--
+she coughed slightly--"such beverages as may be necessary.  I am
+far from strong--yet my wants are few."
+
+"Ez far ez I am ketchin' on and followin' ye, ma'am," returned
+Prosper timidly, "ye'll hev everything ye want--jest like it was
+yer own home.  In fact," he went on, suddenly growing desperate as
+the difficulties of adjusting this unexpectedly fastidious and
+superior woman to his plan seemed to increase, "ye'll jest consider
+me ez yer"--  But here her murky eyes were fixed on his and he
+faltered.  Yet he had gone too far to retreat.  "Ye see," he
+stammered, with a hysterical grimness that was intended to be
+playful--"ye see, this is jest a little secret betwixt and between
+you and me; there'll be only you and me in the house, and it would
+kinder seem to the boys more homelike--ef--ef--you and me had--you
+bein' a widder, you know--a kind of--of"--here his smile became
+ghastly--"close relationship."
+
+The widow of Captain Pottinger here sat up so suddenly that she
+seemed to slip through her sombre and precise enwrappings with an
+exposure of the real Mrs. Pottinger that was almost improper.  Her
+high color deepened; the pupils of her black eyes contracted in the
+light the innocent Prosper had poured into them.  Leaning forward,
+with her fingers clasped on her bosom, she said: "Did you tell this
+to the manager?"
+
+"Of course not," said Prosper; "ye see, it's only a matter 'twixt
+you and me."
+
+Mrs. Pottinger looked at Prosper, drew a deep breath, and then
+gazed at the abelone shells for moral support.  A smile, half
+querulous, half superior, crossed her face as she said: "This is
+very abrupt and unusual.  There is, of course, a disparity in our
+ages!  You have never seen me before--at least to my knowledge--
+although you may have heard of me.  The Spraggs of Marblehead are
+well known--perhaps better than the Pottingers.  And yet, Mr.
+Griggs"--
+
+"Riggs," suggested Prosper hurriedly.
+
+"Riggs.  Excuse me!  I was thinking of young Lieutenant Griggs of
+the Navy, whom I knew in the days now past.  Mr. Riggs, I should
+say.  Then you want me to"--
+
+"To be my old mother, ma'am," said Prosper tremblingly.  "That is,
+to pretend and look ez ef you was!  You see, I haven't any, but I
+thought it would he nice for the boys, and make it more like home
+in my new house, ef I allowed that my old mother would be comin' to
+live with me.  They don't know I never had a mother to speak of.
+They'll never find it out!  Say ye will, Mrs. Pottinger!  Do!"
+
+And here the unexpected occurred.  Against all conventional rules
+and all accepted traditions of fiction, I am obliged to state that
+Mrs. Pottinger did NOT rise up and order the trembling Prosper to
+leave the house!  She only gripped the arm of her chair a little
+tighter, leaned forward, and disdaining her usual precision and
+refinement of speech, said quietly: "It's a bargain.  If THAT'S
+what you're wanting, my son, you can count upon me as becoming your
+old mother, Cecilia Jane Pottinger Riggs, every time!"
+
+A few days later the sentimentalist Joe Wynbrook walked into the
+Wild Cat saloon, where his comrades were drinking, and laid a
+letter down on the bar with every expression of astonishment and
+disgust.  "Look," he said, "if that don't beat all!  Ye wouldn't
+believe it, but here's Prossy Riggs writin' that he came across his
+mother--his MOTHER, gentlemen--in 'Frisco; she hevin', unbeknownst
+to him, joined a party visiting the coast!  And what does this
+blamed fool do?  Why, he's goin' to bring her--that old woman--
+HERE!  Here--gentlemen--to take charge of that new house--and spoil
+our fun.  And the God-forsaken idiot thinks that we'll LIKE it!"
+
+It was one of those rare mornings in the rainy season when there
+was a suspicion of spring in the air, and after a night of rainfall
+the sun broke through fleecy clouds with little islets of blue sky--
+when Prosper Riggs and his mother drove into Wild Cat camp.  An
+expression of cheerfulness was on the faces of his old comrades.
+For it had been recognized that, after all, "Prossy" had a perfect
+right to bring his old mother there--his well-known youth and
+inexperience preventing this baleful performance from being
+established as a precedent.  For these reasons hats were cheerfully
+doffed, and some jackets put on, as the buggy swept up the hill to
+the pretty new cottage, with its green blinds and white veranda, on
+the crest.
+
+Yet I am afraid that Prosper was not perfectly happy, even in the
+triumphant consummation of his plans.  Mrs. Pottinger's sudden and
+business-like acquiescence in it, and her singular lapse from her
+genteel precision, were gratifying but startling to his
+ingenuousness.  And although from the moment she accepted the
+situation she was fertile in resources and full of precaution
+against any possibility of detection, he saw, with some uneasiness,
+that its control had passed out of his hands.
+
+"You say your comrades know nothing of your family history?" she
+had said to him on the journey thither.  "What are you going to
+tell them?"
+
+"Nothin', 'cept your bein' my old mother," said Prosper hopelessly.
+
+"That's not enough, my son."  (Another embarrassment to Prosper was
+her easy grasp of the maternal epithets.)  "Now listen!  You were
+born just six months after your father, Captain Riggs (formerly
+Pottinger) sailed on his first voyage.  You remember very little of
+him, of course, as he was away so much."
+
+"Hadn't I better know suthin about his looks?" said Prosper
+submissively.
+
+"A tall dark man, that's enough," responded Mrs. Pottinger sharply.
+
+"Hadn't he better favor me?" said Prosper, with his small cunning
+recognizing the fact that he himself was a decided blond.
+
+"Ain't at all necessary," said the widow firmly.  "You were always
+wild and ungovernable," she continued," and ran away from school to
+join some Western emigration.  That accounts for the difference of
+our styles."
+
+"But," continued Prosper, "I oughter remember suthin about our old
+times--runnin' arrants for you, and bringin' in the wood o' frosty
+mornin's, and you givin' me hot doughnuts," suggested Prosper
+dubiously.
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Pottinger promptly.  "We lived in
+the city, with plenty of servants.  Just remember, Prosper dear,
+your mother wasn't THAT low-down country style."
+
+Glad to be relieved from further invention, Prosper was,
+nevertheless, somewhat concerned at this shattering of the ideal
+mother in the very camp that had sung her praises.  But he could
+only trust to her recognizing the situation with her usual
+sagacity, of which he stood in respectful awe.
+
+Joe Wynbrook and Cyrus Brewster had, as older members of the camp,
+purposely lingered near the new house to offer any assistance to
+"Prossy and his mother," and had received a brief and passing
+introduction to the latter.  So deep and unexpected was the
+impression she made upon them that these two oracles of the camp
+retired down the hill in awkward silence for some time, neither
+daring to risk his reputation by comment or oversurprise.
+
+But when they approached the curious crowd below awaiting them,
+Cyrus Brewster ventured to say, "Struck me ez ef that old gal was
+rather high-toned for Prossy's mother."
+
+Joe Wynbrook instantly seized the fatal admission to show the
+advantage of superior insight:--
+
+"Struck YOU!  Why, it was no more than I expected all along!  What
+did we know of Prossy?  Nothin'!  What did he ever tell us'?
+Nothin'!  And why'?  'Cos it was his secret.  Lord! a blind mule
+could see that.  All this foolishness and simplicity o' his come o'
+his bein' cuddled and pampered as a baby.  Then, like ez not, he
+was either kidnapped or led away by some feller--and nearly broke
+his mother's heart.  I'll bet my bottom dollar he has been
+advertised for afore this--only we didn't see the paper.  Like as
+not they had agents out seekin' him, and he jest ran into their
+hands in 'Frisco!  I had a kind o' presentiment o' this when he
+left, though I never let on anything."
+
+"I reckon, too, that she's kinder afraid he'll bolt agin.  Did ye
+notice how she kept watchin' him all the time, and how she did the
+bossin' o' everything?  And there's ONE thing sure!  He's changed--
+yes!  He don't look as keerless and free and foolish ez he uster."
+
+Here there was an unmistakable chorus of assent from the crowd that
+had joined them.  Every one--even those who had not been introduced
+to the mother--had noticed his strange restraint and reticence.  In
+the impulsive logic of the camp, conduct such as this, in the face
+of that superior woman--his mother--could only imply that her
+presence was distasteful to him; that he was either ashamed of
+their noticing his inferiority to her, or ashamed of THEM!  Wild
+and hasty as was their deduction, it was, nevertheless, voiced by
+Joe Wynbrook in a tone of impartial and even reluctant conviction.
+"Well, gentlemen, some of ye may remember that when I heard that
+Prossy was bringin' his mother here I kicked--kicked because it
+only stood to reason that, being HIS mother, she'd be that foolish
+she'd upset the camp.  There wasn't room enough for two such
+chuckle-heads--and one of 'em being a woman, she couldn't be shut
+up or sat upon ez we did to HIM.  But now, gentlemen, ez we see she
+ain't that kind, but high-toned and level-headed, and that she's
+got the grip on Prossy--whether he likes it or not--we ain't goin'
+to let him go back on her!  No, sir! we ain't goin' to let him
+break her heart the second time!  He may think we ain't good enough
+for her, but ez long ez she's civil to us, we'll stand by her."
+
+In this conscientious way were the shackles of that unhallowed
+relationship slowly riveted on the unfortunate Prossy.  In his
+intercourse with his comrades during the next two or three days
+their attitude was shown in frequent and ostentatious praise of his
+mother, and suggestive advice, such as: "I wouldn't stop at the
+saloon, Prossy; your old mother is wantin' ye;" or, "Chuck that
+'ere tarpolin over your shoulders, Pross, and don't take your wet
+duds into the house that yer old mother's bin makin' tidy."  Oddly
+enough, much of this advice was quite sincere, and represented--for
+at least twenty minutes--the honest sentiments of the speaker.
+Prosper was touched at what seemed a revival of the sentiment under
+which he had acted, forgot his uneasiness, and became quite himself
+again--a fact also noticed by his critics.  "Ye've only to keep him
+up to his work and he'll be the widder's joy agin," said Cyrus
+Brewster.  Certainly he was so far encouraged that he had a long
+conversation with Mrs. Pottinger that night, with the result that
+the next morning Joe Wynbrook, Cyrus Brewster, Hank Mann, and
+Kentucky Ike were invited to spend the evening at the new house.
+As the men, clean shirted and decently jacketed, filed into the
+neat sitting room with its bright carpet, its cheerful fire, its
+side table with a snowy cloth on which shining tea and coffee pots
+were standing, their hearts thrilled with satisfaction.  In a large
+stuffed rocking chair, Prossy's old mother, wrapped up in a shawl
+and some mysterious ill health which seemed to forbid any exertion,
+received them with genteel languor and an extended black mitten.
+
+"I cannot," said Mrs. Pottinger, with sad pensiveness, "offer you
+the hospitality of my own home, gentlemen--you remember, Prosper,
+dear, the large salon and our staff of servants at Lexington
+Avenue!--but since my son has persuaded me to take charge of his
+humble cot, I hope you will make all allowances for its
+deficiencies--even," she added, casting a look of mild reproach on
+the astonished Prosper--"even if HE cannot."
+
+"I'm sure he oughter to be thankful to ye, ma'am," said Joe
+Wynbrook quickly, "for makin' a break to come here to live, jest ez
+we're thankful--speakin' for the rest of this camp--for yer
+lightin' us up ez you're doin'!  I reckon I'm speakin' for the
+crowd," he added, looking round him.
+
+Murmurs of "That's so" and "You bet" passed through the company,
+and one or two cast a half-indignant glance at Prosper.
+
+"It's only natural," continued Mrs. Pottinger resignedly, "that
+having lived so long alone, my dear Prosper may at first be a
+little impatient of his old mother's control, and perhaps regret
+his invitation."
+
+"Oh no, ma'am," said the embarrassed Prosper.
+
+But here the mercurial Wynbrook interposed on behalf of amity and
+the camp's esprit de corps.  "Why, Lord! ma'am, he's jest bin
+longin' for ye!  Times and times agin he's talked about ye; sayin'
+how ef he could only get ye out of yer Fifth Avenue saloon to share
+his humble lot with him here, he'd die happy!  YOU'VE heard him
+talk, Brewster?"
+
+"Frequent," replied the accommodating Brewster.
+
+"Part of the simple refreshment I have to offer you," continued
+Mrs. Pottinger, ignoring further comment, "is a viand the exact
+quality of which I am not familiar with, but which my son informs
+me is a great favorite with you.  It has been prepared by Li Sing,
+under my direction.  Prosper, dear, see that the--er--doughnuts--
+are brought in with the coffee."
+
+Satisfaction beamed on the faces of the company, with perhaps the
+sole exception of Prosper.  As a dish containing a number of brown
+glistening spheres of baked dough was brought in, the men's eyes
+shone in sympathetic appreciation.  Yet that epicurean light was
+for a moment dulled as each man grasped a sphere, and then sat
+motionless with it in his hand, as if it was a ball and they were
+waiting the signal for playing.
+
+"I am told," said Mrs. Pottinger, with a glance of Christian
+tolerance at Prosper, "that lightness is considered desirable by
+some--perhaps you gentlemen may find them heavy."
+
+"Thar is two kinds," said the diplomatic Joe cheerfully, as he
+began to nibble his, sideways, like a squirrel, "light and heavy;
+some likes 'em one way, and some another."
+
+They were hard and heavy, but the men, assisted by the steaming
+coffee, finished them with heroic politeness.  "And now,
+gentlemen," said Mrs. Pottinger, leaning back in her chair and
+calmly surveying the party, "you have my permission to light your
+pipes while you partake of some whiskey and water."
+
+The guests looked up--gratified but astonished.  "Are ye sure,
+ma'am, you don't mind it?" said Joe politely.
+
+"Not at all," responded Mrs. Pottinger briefly.  "In fact, as my
+physician advises the inhalation of tobacco smoke for my asthmatic
+difficulties, I will join you."  After a moment's fumbling in a
+beaded bag that hung from her waist, she produced a small black
+clay pipe, filled it from the same receptacle, and lit it.
+
+A thrill of surprise went round the company, and it was noticed
+that Prosper seemed equally confounded.  Nevertheless, this
+awkwardness was quickly overcome by the privilege and example given
+them, and with, a glass of whiskey and water before them, the men
+were speedily at their ease.  Nor did Mrs. Pottinger disdain to
+mingle in their desultory talk.  Sitting there with her black pipe
+in her mouth, but still precise and superior, she told a thrilling
+whaling adventure of Prosper's father (drawn evidently from the
+experience of the lamented Pottinger), which not only deeply
+interested her hearers, but momentarily exalted Prosper in their
+minds as the son of that hero.  "Now you speak o' that, ma'am,"
+said the ingenuous Wynbrook, "there's a good deal o' Prossy in that
+yarn o' his father's; same kind o' keerless grit!  You remember,
+boys, that day the dam broke and he stood thar, the water up to his
+neck, heavin' logs in the break till he stopped it."  Briefly, the
+evening, in spite of its initial culinary failure and its
+surprises, was a decided social success, and even the bewildered
+and doubting Prosper went to bed relieved.  It was followed by many
+and more informal gatherings at the house, and Mrs Pottinger so far
+unbent--if that term could be used of one who never altered her
+primness of manner--as to join in a game of poker--and even
+permitted herself to win.
+
+But by the end of six weeks another change in their feelings
+towards Prosper seemed to creep insidiously over the camp.  He had
+been received into his former fellowship, and even the presence of
+his mother had become familiar, but he began to be an object of
+secret commiseration.  They still frequented the house, but among
+themselves afterwards they talked in whispers.  There was no doubt
+to them that Prosper's old mother drank not only what her son had
+provided, but what she surreptitiously obtained from the saloon.
+There was the testimony of the barkeeper, himself concerned equally
+with the camp in the integrity of the Riggs household.  And there
+was an even darker suspicion.  But this must be given in Joe
+Wynbrook's own words:--
+
+"I didn't mind the old woman winnin' and winnin' reg'lar--for
+poker's an unsartin game;--it ain't the money that we're losin'--
+for it's all in the camp.  But when she's developing a habit o'
+holdin' FOUR aces when somebody else hez TWO, who don't like to let
+on because it's Prosper's old mother--it's gettin' rough!  And
+dangerous too, gentlemen, if there happened to be an outsider in,
+or one of the boys should kick.  Why, I saw Bilson grind his teeth--
+he holdin' a sequence flush--ace high--when the dear old critter
+laid down her reg'lar four aces and raked in the pile.  We had to
+nearly kick his legs off under the table afore he'd understand--not
+havin' an old mother himself."
+
+"Some un will hev to tackle her without Prossy knowin' it.  For it
+would jest break his heart, arter all he's gone through to get her
+here!" said Brewster significantly.
+
+"Onless he DID know it and it was that what made him so sorrowful
+when they first came.  B'gosh! I never thought o' that," said
+Wynbrook, with one of his characteristic sudden illuminations.
+
+"Well, gentlemen, whether he did or not," said the barkeeper
+stoutly, "he must never know that WE know it.  No, not if the old
+gal cleans out my bar and takes the last scad in the camp."
+
+And to this noble sentiment they responded as one man.
+
+How far they would have been able to carry out that heroic resolve
+was never known, for an event occurred which eclipsed its
+importance.  One morning at breakfast Mrs. Pottinger fixed a
+clouded eye upon Prosper.
+
+"Prosper," she said, with fell deliberation "you ought to know you
+have a sister."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," returned Prosper, with that meekness with which he
+usually received these family disclosures.
+
+"A sister," continued the lady, "whom you haven't seen since you
+were a child; a sister who for family reasons has been living with
+other relatives; a girl of nineteen."
+
+"Yea, ma'am," said Prosper humbly.  "But ef you wouldn't mind
+writin' all that down on a bit o' paper--ye know my short memory!
+I would get it by heart to-day in the gulch.  I'd have it all pat
+enough by night, ef," he added, with a short sigh, "ye was
+kalkilatin' to make any illusions to it when the boys are here."
+
+"Your sister Augusta," continued Mrs. Pottinger, calmly ignoring
+these details, "will be here to-morrow to make me a visit."
+
+But here the worm Prosper not only turned, but stood up, nearly
+upsetting the table.  "It can't be did, ma'am it MUSTN'T be did!"
+he said wildly.  "It's enough for me to have played this camp with
+YOU--but now to run in"--
+
+"Can't be did!" repeated Mrs. Pottinger, rising in her turn and
+fixing upon the unfortunate Prosper a pair of murky piratical eyes
+that had once quelled the sea-roving Pottinger.  "Do you, my
+adopted son, dare to tell me that I can't have my own flesh and
+blood beneath my roof?"
+
+"Yes!  I'd rather tell the whole story--I'd rather tell the boys I
+fooled them--than go on again!" burst out the excited Prosper.
+
+But Mrs. Pottinger only set her lips implacably together.  "Very
+well, tell them then," she said rigidly; "tell them how you lured
+me from my humble dependence in San Francisco with the prospect of
+a home with you; tell them how you compelled me to deceive their
+trusting hearts with your wicked falsehoods; tell them how you--a
+foundling--borrowed me for your mother, my poor dead husband for
+your father, and made me invent falsehood upon falsehood to tell
+them while you sat still and listened!"
+
+Prosper gasped.
+
+"Tell them," she went on deliberately, "that when I wanted to bring
+my helpless child to her only home--THEN, only then--you determined
+to break your word to me, either because you meanly begrudged her
+that share of your house, or to keep your misdeeds from her
+knowledge!  Tell them that, Prossy, dear, and see what they'll
+say!"
+
+Prosper sank back in his chair aghast.  In his sudden instinct of
+revolt he had forgotten the camp!  He knew, alas, too well what
+they would say!  He knew that, added to their indignation at having
+been duped, their chivalry and absurd sentiment would rise in arms
+against the abandonment of two helpless women!
+
+"P'r'aps ye're right, ma'am," he stammered.  "I was only thinkin',"
+he added feebly, "how SHE'D take it."
+
+"She'll take it as I wish her to take it," said Mrs. Pottinger
+firmly.
+
+"Supposin', ez the camp don't know her, and I ain't bin talkin' o'
+havin' any SISTER, you ran her in here as my COUSIN?  See?  You
+bein' her aunt?"
+
+Mrs. Pottinger regarded him with compressed lips for some time.
+Then she said, slowly and half meditatively: "Yes, it might be
+done!  She will probably be willing to sacrifice her nearer
+relationship to save herself from passing as your sister.  It would
+be less galling to her pride, and she wouldn't have to treat you so
+familiarly."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Prosper, too relieved to notice the
+uncomplimentary nature of the suggestion.  "And ye see I could
+call her 'Miss Pottinger,' which would come easier to me."
+
+In its high resolve to bear with the weaknesses of Prosper's
+mother, the camp received the news of the advent of Prosper's
+cousin solely with reference to its possible effect upon the aunt's
+habits, and very little other curiosity.  Prosper's own reticence,
+they felt, was probably due to the tender age at which he had
+separated from his relations.  But when it was known that Prosper's
+mother had driven to the house with a very pretty girl of eighteen,
+there was a flutter of excitement in that impressionable community.
+Prosper, with his usual shyness, had evaded an early meeting with
+her, and was even loitering irresolutely on his way home from work,
+when, as he approached the house, to his discomfiture the door
+suddenly opened, the young lady appeared and advanced directly
+towards him.
+
+She was slim, graceful, and prettily dressed, and at any other
+moment Prosper might have been impressed by her good looks.  But
+her brows were knit, her dark eyes--in which there was an
+unmistakable reminiscence of Mrs. Pottinger--were glittering, and
+although she was apparently anticipating their meeting, it was
+evidently with no cousinly interest.  When within a few feet of him
+she stopped.  Prosper with a feeble smile offered his hand.  She
+sprang back.
+
+"Don't touch me!  Don't come a step nearer or I'll scream!"
+
+Prosper, still with smiling inanity, stammered that he was only
+"goin' to shake hands," and moved sideways towards the house.
+
+"Stop!" she said, with a stamp of her slim foot.  "Stay where you
+are!  We must have our talk out HERE.  I'm not going to waste words
+with you in there, before HER."
+
+Prosper stopped.
+
+"What did you do this for?" she said angrily.  "How dared you?  How
+could you?  Are you a man, or the fool she takes you for?"
+
+"Wot did I do WOT for?" said Prosper sullenly.
+
+"This!  Making my mother pretend you were her son!  Bringing her
+here among these men to live a lie!"
+
+"She was willin'," said Prosper gloomily.  "I told her what she had
+to do, and she seemed to like it."
+
+"But couldn't you see she was old and weak, and wasn't responsible
+for her actions?  Or were you only thinking of yourself?"
+
+This last taunt stung him.  He looked up.  He was not facing a
+helpless, dependent old woman as he had been the day before, but a
+handsome, clever girl, in every way his superior--and in the right!
+In his vague sense of honor it seemed more creditable for him to
+fight it out with HER.  He burst out: "I never thought of myself!
+I never had an old mother; I never knew what it was to want one--
+but the men did!  And as I couldn't get one for them, I got one for
+myself--to share and share alike--I thought they'd be happier ef
+there was one in the camp!"
+
+There was the unmistakable accent of truth in his voice.  There
+came a faint twitching of the young girl's lips and the dawning of
+a smile.  But it only acted as a goad to the unfortunate Prosper.
+"Ye kin laugh, Miss Pottinger, but it's God's truth!  But one thing
+I didn't do.  No!  When your mother wanted to bring you in here as
+my sister, I kicked!  I did!  And you kin thank me, for all your
+laughin', that you're standing in this camp in your own name--and
+ain't nothin' but my cousin."
+
+"I suppose you thought your precious friends didn't want a SISTER
+too?" said the girl ironically.
+
+"It don't make no matter wot they want now," he said gloomily.
+"For," he added, with sudden desperation, "it's come to an end!
+Yes!  You and your mother will stay here a spell so that the boys
+don't suspicion nothin' of either of ye.  Then I'll give it out
+that you're takin' your aunt away on a visit.  Then I'll make over
+to her a thousand dollars for all the trouble I've given her, and
+you'll take her away.  I've bin a fool, Miss Pottinger, mebbe I am
+one now, but what I'm doin' is on the square, and it's got to be
+done!"
+
+He looked so simple and so good--so like an honest schoolboy
+confessing a fault and abiding by his punishment, for all his six
+feet of altitude and silky mustache--that Miss Pottinger lowered
+her eyes.  But she recovered herself and said sharply:--
+
+"It's all very well to talk of her going away!  But she WON'T.  You
+have made her like you--yes! like you better than me--than any of
+us!  She says you're the only one who ever treated her like a
+mother--as a mother should be treated.  She says she never knew
+what peace and comfort were until she came to you.  There!  Don't
+stare like that!  Don't you understand?  Don't you see?  Must I
+tell you again that she is strange--that--that she was ALWAYS queer
+and strange--and queerer on account of her unfortunate habits--
+surely you knew THEM, Mr. Riggs!  She quarreled with us all.  I
+went to live with my aunt, and she took herself off to San
+Francisco with a silly claim against my father's shipowners.
+Heaven only knows how she managed to live there; but she always
+impressed people with her manners, and some one always helped her!
+At last I begged my aunt to let me seek her, and I tracked her
+here.  There!  If you've confessed everything to me, you have made
+me confess everything to you, and about my own mother, too!  Now,
+what is to be done?"
+
+"Whatever is agreeable to you is the same to me, Miss Pottinger,"
+he said formally.
+
+"But you mustn't call me 'Miss Pottinger' so loud.  Somebody might
+hear you," she returned mischievously.
+
+"All right--'cousin,' then," he said, with a prodigious blush.
+"Supposin' we go in."
+
+In spite of the camp's curiosity, for the next few days they
+delicately withheld their usual evening visits to Prossy's mother.
+"They'll be wantin' to talk o' old times, and we don't wanter be
+too previous," suggested Wynbrook.  But their verdict, when they at
+last met the new cousin, was unanimous, and their praises
+extravagant.  To their inexperienced eyes she seemed to possess all
+her aunt's gentility and precision of language, with a vivacity and
+playfulness all her own.  In a few days the whole camp was in love
+with her.  Yet she dispensed her favors with such tactful
+impartiality and with such innocent enjoyment--free from any
+suspicion of coquetry--that there were no heartburnings, and the
+unlucky man who nourished a fancied slight would have been laughed
+at by his fellows.  She had a town-bred girl's curiosity and
+interest in camp life, which she declared was like a "perpetual
+picnic," and her slim, graceful figure halting beside a ditch where
+the men were working seemed to them as grateful as the new spring
+sunshine.  The whole camp became tidier; a coat was considered de
+rigueur at "Prossy's mother" evenings; there was less horseplay in
+the trails, and less shouting.  "It's all very well to talk about
+'old mothers,'" said the cynical barkeeper, "but that gal, single
+handed, has done more in a week to make the camp decent than old
+Ma'am Riggs has in a month o' Sundays."
+
+Since Prosper's brief conversation with Miss Pottinger before the
+house, the question "What is to be done?" had singularly lapsed,
+nor had it been referred to again by either.  The young lady had
+apparently thrown herself into the diversions of the camp with the
+thoughtless gayety of a brief holiday maker, and it was not for him
+to remind her--even had he wished to--that her important question
+had never been answered.  He had enjoyed her happiness with the
+relief of a secret shared by her.  Three weeks had passed; the last
+of the winter's rains had gone.  Spring was stirring in underbrush
+and wildwood, in the pulse of the waters, in the sap of the great
+pines, in the uplifting of flowers.  Small wonder if Prosper's
+boyish heart had stirred a little too.
+
+In fact, he had been possessed by another luminous idea--a wild
+idea that to him seemed almost as absurd as the one which had
+brought him all this trouble.  It had come to him like that one--
+out of a starlit night--and he had risen one morning with a
+feverish intent to put it into action!  It brought him later to
+take an unprecedented walk alone with Miss Pottinger, to linger
+under green leaves in unfrequented woods, and at last seemed about
+to desert him as he stood in a little hollow with her hand in his--
+their only listener an inquisitive squirrel.  Yet this was all the
+disappointed animal heard him stammer,--
+
+"So you see, dear, it would THEN be no lie--for--don't you see?--
+she'd be really MY mother as well as YOURS."
+
+
+The marriage of Prosper Riggs and Miss Pottinger was quietly
+celebrated at Sacramento, but Prossy's "old mother" did not return
+with the happy pair.
+
+Of Mrs. Pottinger's later career some idea may be gathered from a
+letter which Prosper received a year after his marriage.
+"Circumstances," wrote Mrs. Pottinger, "which had induced me to
+accept the offer of a widower to take care of his motherless
+household, have since developed into a more enduring matrimonial
+position, so that I can always offer my dear Prosper a home with
+his mother, should he choose to visit this locality, and a second
+father in Hiram W. Watergates, Esq., her husband."
+
+
+
+THE CONVALESCENCE OF JACK HAMLIN
+
+
+The habitually quiet, ascetic face of Seth Rivers was somewhat
+disturbed and his brows were knitted as he climbed the long ascent
+of Windy Hill to its summit and his own rancho.  Perhaps it was the
+effect of the characteristic wind, which that afternoon seemed to
+assault him from all points at once and did not cease its battery
+even at his front door, but hustled him into the passage, blew him
+into the sitting room, and then celebrated its own exit from the
+long, rambling house by the banging of doors throughout the halls
+and the slamming of windows in the remote distance.
+
+Mrs. Rivers looked up from her work at this abrupt onset of her
+husband, but without changing her own expression of slightly
+fatigued self-righteousness.  Accustomed to these elemental
+eruptions, she laid her hands from force of habit upon the lifting
+tablecloth, and then rose submissively to brush together the
+scattered embers and ashes from the large hearthstone, as she had
+often done before.
+
+"You're in early, Seth," she said.
+
+"Yes.  I stopped at the Cross Roads Post Office.  Lucky I did, or
+you'd hev had kempany on your hands afore you knowed it--this very
+night!  I found this letter from Dr. Duchesne," and he produced a
+letter from his pocket.
+
+Mrs. Rivers looked up with an expression of worldly interest.  Dr.
+Duchesne had brought her two children into the world with some
+difficulty, and had skillfully attended her through a long illness
+consequent upon the inefficient maternity of soulful but fragile
+American women of her type.  The doctor had more than a mere local
+reputation as a surgeon, and Mrs. Rivers looked up to him as her
+sole connecting link with a world of thought beyond Windy Hill.
+
+"He's comin' up yer to-night, bringin' a friend of his--a patient
+that he wants us to board and keep for three weeks until he's well
+agin," continued Mr. Rivers.  "Ye know how the doctor used to rave
+about the pure air on our hill."
+
+Mrs. Rivers shivered slightly, and drew her shawl over her
+shoulders, but nodded a patient assent.
+
+"Well, he says it's just what that patient oughter have to cure
+him.  He's had lung fever and other things, and this yer air and
+gin'ral quiet is bound to set him up.  We're to board and keep him
+without any fuss or feathers, and the doctor sez he'll pay liberal
+for it.  This yer's what he sez," concluded Mr. Rivers, reading
+from the letter: "'He is now fully convalescent, though weak, and
+really requires no other medicine than the--ozone'--yes, that's
+what the doctor calls it--'of Windy Hill, and in fact as little
+attendance as possible.  I will not let him keep even his negro
+servant with him.  He'll give you no trouble, if he can be
+prevailed upon to stay the whole time of his cure.'"
+
+"There's our spare room--it hasn't been used since Parson Greenwood
+was here," said Mrs. Rivers reflectively.  "Melinda could put it to
+rights in an hour.  At what time will he come?"
+
+"He'd come about nine.  They drive over from Hightown depot.  But,"
+he added grimly, "here ye are orderin' rooms to be done up and ye
+don't know who for."
+
+"You said a friend of Dr. Duchesne," returned Mrs. Rivers simply.
+
+"Dr. Duchesne has many friends that you and me mightn't cotton to,"
+said her husband.  "This man is Jack Hamlin."  As his wife's remote
+and introspective black eyes returned only vacancy, he added
+quickly.  "The noted gambler!"
+
+"Gambler?" echoed his wife, still vaguely.
+
+"Yes--reg'lar; it's his business."
+
+"Goodness, Seth!  He can't expect to do it here."
+
+"No," said Seth quickly, with that sense of fairness to his fellow
+man which most women find it so difficult to understand.  "No--and
+he probably won't mention the word 'card' while he's here."
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Rivers interrogatively.
+
+"And," continued Seth, seeing that the objection was not pressed,
+he's one of them desprit men!  A reg'lar fighter!  Killed two or
+three men in dools!"
+
+Mrs. Rivers stared.  "What could Dr. Duchesne have been thinking
+of?  Why, we wouldn't be safe in the house with him!"
+
+Again Seth's sense of equity triumphed.  "I never heard of his
+fightin' anybody but his own kind, and when he was bullyragged.
+And ez to women he's quite t'other way in fact, and that's why I
+think ye oughter know it afore you let him come.  He don't go round
+with decent women.  In fact"--But here Mr. Rivers, in the sanctity
+of conjugal confidences and the fullness of Bible reading, used a
+few strong scriptural substantives happily unnecessary to repeat
+here.
+
+"Seth!" said Mrs. Rivers suddenly, "you seem to know this man."
+
+The unexpectedness and irrelevancy of this for a moment startled
+Seth.  But that chaste and God-fearing man had no secrets.  "Only
+by hearsay, Jane," he returned quietly; "but if ye say the word
+I'll stop his comin' now."
+
+"It's too late," said Mrs. Rivers decidedly.
+
+"I reckon not," returned her husband, "and that's why I came
+straight here.  I've only got to meet them at the depot and say
+this thing can't be done--and that's the end of it.  They'll go off
+quiet to the hotel."
+
+"I don't like to disappoint the doctor, Seth," said Mrs. Rivers.
+"We might," she added, with a troubled look of inquiry at her
+husband, "we might take that Mr. Hamlin on trial.  Like as not he
+won't stay, anyway, when he sees what we're like, Seth.  What do
+you think?  It would be only our Christian duty, too."
+
+"I was thinkin' o' that as a professin' Christian, Jane," said her
+husband.  "But supposin' that other Christians don't look at it in
+that light.  Thar's Deacon Stubbs and his wife and the parson.  Ye
+remember what he said about 'no covenant with sin'?"
+
+"The Stubbses have no right to dictate who I'll have in my house,"
+said Mrs. Rivers quickly, with a faint flush in her rather sallow
+cheeks.
+
+"It's your say and nobody else's," assented her husband with grim
+submissiveness.  "You do what you like."
+
+Mrs. Rivers mused.  "There's only myself and Melinda here," she
+said with sublime naivete; "and the children ain't old enough to be
+corrupted.  I am satisfied if you are, Seth," and she again looked
+at him inquiringly.
+
+"Go ahead, then, and get ready for 'em," said Seth, hurrying away
+with unaffected relief.  "If you have everything fixed by nine
+o'clock, that'll do."
+
+Mrs. Rivers had everything "fixed" by that hour, including herself
+presumably, for she had put on a gray dress which she usually wore
+when shopping in the county town, adding a prim collar and cuffs.
+A pearl-encircled brooch, the wedding gift of Seth, and a solitaire
+ring next to her wedding ring, with a locket containing her
+children's hair, accented her position as a proper wife and mother.
+At a quarter to nine she had finished tidying the parlor, opening
+the harmonium so that the light might play upon its polished
+keyboard, and bringing from the forgotten seclusion of her closet
+two beautifully bound volumes of Tupper's "Poems" and Pollok's
+"Course of Time," to impart a literary grace to the centre table.
+She then drew a chair to the table and sat down before it with a
+religious magazine in her lap.  The wind roared over the deep-
+throated chimney, the clock ticked monotonously, and then there
+came the sound of wheels and voices.
+
+But Mrs. Rivers was not destined to see her guest that night.  Dr.
+Duchesne, under the safe lee of the door, explained that Mr. Hamlin
+had been exhausted by the journey, and, assisted by a mild opiate,
+was asleep in the carriage; that if Mrs. Rivers did not object,
+they would carry him at once to his room.  In the flaring and
+guttering of candles, the flashing of lanterns, the flapping of
+coats and shawls, and the bewildering rush of wind, Mrs. Rivers was
+only vaguely conscious of a slight figure muffled tightly in a
+cloak carried past her in the arms of a grizzled negro up the
+staircase, followed by Dr. Duchesne.  With the closing of the front
+door on the tumultuous world without, a silence fell again on the
+little parlor.
+
+When the doctor made his reappearance it was to say that his
+patient was being undressed and put to bed by his negro servant,
+who, however, would return with the doctor to-night, but that the
+patient would be left with everything that was necessary, and that
+he would require no attention from the family until the next day.
+Indeed, it was better that he should remain undisturbed.  As the
+doctor confined his confidences and instructions entirely to the
+physical condition of their guest, Mrs. Rivers found it awkward to
+press other inquiries.
+
+"Of course," she said at last hesitatingly, but with a certain
+primness of expression, "Mr. Hamlin must expect to find everything
+here very different from what he is accustomed to--at least from
+what my husband says are his habits."
+
+"Nobody knows that better than he, Mrs. Rivers," returned the
+doctor with an equally marked precision of manner, "and you could
+not have a guest who would be less likely to make you remind him of
+it."
+
+A little annoyed, yet not exactly knowing why, Mrs. Rivers
+abandoned the subject, and as the doctor shortly afterwards busied
+himself in the care of his patient, with whom he remained until the
+hour of his departure, she had no chance of renewing it.  But as he
+finally shook hands with his host and hostess, it seemed to her
+that he slightly recurred to it.  "I have the greatest hope of the
+curative effect of this wonderful locality on my patient, but even
+still more of the beneficial effect of the complete change of his
+habits, his surroundings, and their influences."  Then the door
+closed on the man of science and the grizzled negro servant, the
+noise of the carriage wheels was shut out with the song of the wind
+in the pine tops, and the rancho of Windy Hill possessed Mr. Jack
+Hamlin in peace.  Indeed, the wind was now falling, as was its
+custom at that hour, and the moon presently arose over a hushed and
+sleeping landscape.
+
+For the rest of the evening the silent presence in the room above
+affected the household; the half-curious servants and ranch hands
+spoke in whispers in the passages, and at evening prayers, in the
+dining room, Seth Rivers, kneeling before and bowed over a rush-
+bottomed chair whose legs were clutched by his strong hands,
+included "the stranger within our gates" in his regular
+supplications.  When the hour for retiring came, Seth, with a
+candle in his hand, preceded his wife up the staircase, but stopped
+before the door of their guest's room.  "I reckon," he said
+interrogatively to Mrs. Rivers, "I oughter see ef he's wantin'
+anythin'?"
+
+"You heard what the doctor said," returned Mrs. Rivers cautiously.
+At the same time she did not speak decidedly, and the
+frontiersman's instinct of hospitality prevailed.  He knocked
+lightly; there was no response.  He turned the door handle softly.
+The door opened.  A faint clean perfume--an odor of some general
+personality rather than any particular thing--stole out upon them.
+The light of Seth's candle struck a few glints from some cut-glass
+and silver, the contents of the guest's dressing case, which had
+been carefully laid out upon a small table by his negro servant.
+There was also a refined neatness in the disposition of his clothes
+and effects which struck the feminine eye of even the tidy Mrs.
+Rivers as something new to her experience.  Seth drew nearer the
+bed with his shaded candle, and then, turning, beckoned his wife to
+approach.  Mrs. Rivers hesitated--but for the necessity of silence
+she would have openly protested--but that protest was shut up in
+her compressed lips as she came forward.
+
+For an instant that awe with which absolute helplessness invests
+the sleeping and dead was felt by both husband and wife.  Only the
+upper part of the sleeper's face was visible above the bedclothes,
+held in position by a thin white nervous hand that was encircled at
+the wrist by a ruffle.  Seth stared.  Short brown curls were
+tumbled over a forehead damp with the dews of sleep and exhaustion.
+But what appeared more singular, the closed eyes of this vessel of
+wrath and recklessness were fringed with lashes as long and silky
+as a woman's.  Then Mrs. Rivers gently pulled her husband's sleeve,
+and they both crept back with a greater sense of intrusion and even
+more cautiously than they had entered.  Nor did they speak until
+the door was closed softly and they were alone on the landing.
+Seth looked grimly at his wife.
+
+"Don't look much ez ef he could hurt anybody."
+
+"He looks like a sick man," returned Mrs. Rivers calmly.
+
+
+The unconscious object of this criticism and attention slept until
+late; slept through the stir of awakened life within and without,
+through the challenge of early cocks in the lean-to shed, through
+the creaking of departing ox teams and the lazy, long-drawn
+commands of teamsters, through the regular strokes of the morning
+pump and the splash of water on stones, through the far-off barking
+of dogs and the half-intelligible shouts of ranchmen; slept through
+the sunlight on his ceiling, through its slow descent of his wall,
+and awoke with it in his eyes!  He woke, too, with a delicious
+sense of freedom from pain, and of even drawing a long breath
+without difficulty--two facts so marvelous and dreamlike that he
+naturally closed his eyes again lest he should waken to a world of
+suffering and dyspnoea.  Satisfied at last that this relief was
+real, he again opened his eyes, but upon surroundings so strange,
+so wildly absurd and improbable, that he again doubted their
+reality.  He was lying in a moderately large room, primly and
+severely furnished, but his attention was for the moment riveted to
+a gilt frame upon the wall beside him bearing the text, "God Bless
+Our Home," and then on another frame on the opposite wall which
+admonished him to "Watch and Pray."  Beside them hung an engraving
+of the "Raising of Lazarus," and a Hogarthian lithograph of "The
+Drunkard's Progress."  Mr. Hamlin closed his eyes; he was dreaming
+certainly--not one of those wild, fantastic visions that had so
+miserably filled the past long nights of pain and suffering, but
+still a dream!  At last, opening one eye stealthily, he caught the
+flash of the sunlight upon the crystal and silver articles of his
+dressing case, and that flash at once illuminated his memory.  He
+remembered his long weeks of illness and the devotion of Dr.
+Duchesne.  He remembered how, when the crisis was past, the doctor
+had urged a complete change and absolute rest, and had told him of
+a secluded rancho in some remote locality kept by an honest Western
+pioneer whose family he had attended.  He remembered his own
+reluctant assent, impelled by gratitude to the doctor and the
+helplessness of a sick man.  He now recalled the weary journey
+thither, his exhaustion and the semi-consciousness of his arrival
+in a bewildering wind on a shadowy hilltop.  And this was the
+place!
+
+He shivered slightly, and ducked his head under the cover again.
+But the brightness of the sun and some exhilarating quality in the
+air tempted him to have another outlook, avoiding as far as
+possible the grimly decorated walls.  If they had only left him his
+faithful servant he could have relieved himself of that mischievous
+badinage which always alternately horrified and delighted that
+devoted negro.  But he was alone--absolutely alone--in this
+conventicle!
+
+Presently he saw the door open slowly.  It gave admission to the
+small round face and yellow ringlets of a little girl, and finally
+to her whole figure, clasping a doll nearly as large as herself.
+For a moment she stood there, arrested by the display of Mr.
+Hamlin's dressing case on the table.  Then her glances moved around
+the room and rested upon the bed.  Her blue eyes and Mr. Hamlin's
+brown ones met and mingled.  Without a moment's hesitation she
+moved to the bedside.  Taking her doll's hands in her own, she
+displayed it before him.
+
+"Isn't it pitty?"
+
+Mr. Hamlin was instantly his old self again.  Thrusting his hand
+comfortably under the pillow, he lay on his side and gazed at it
+long and affectionately.  "I never," he said in a faint voice, but
+with immovable features, "saw anything so perfectly beautiful.  Is
+it alive?"
+
+"It's a dolly," she returned gravely, smoothing down its frock and
+straightening its helpless feet.  Then seized with a spontaneous
+idea, like a young animal she suddenly presented it to him with
+both hands and said,--
+
+"Kiss it."
+
+Mr. Hamlin implanted a chaste salute on its vermilion cheek.
+"Would you mind letting me hold it for a little?" he said with
+extreme diffidence.
+
+The child was delighted, as he expected.  Mr. Hamlin placed it in a
+sitting posture on the edge of his bed, and put an ostentatious
+paternal arm around it.
+
+"But you're alive, ain't you?" he said to the child.
+
+This subtle witticism convulsed her.  "I'm a little girl," she
+gurgled.
+
+"I see; her mother?"
+
+"Ess."
+
+"And who's your mother?"
+
+"Mammy."
+
+"Mrs. Rivers?"
+
+The child nodded until her ringlets were shaken on her cheek.
+After a moment she began to laugh bashfully and with repression,
+yet as Mr. Hamlin thought a little mischievously.  Then as he
+looked at her interrogatively she suddenly caught hold of the
+ruffle of his sleeve.
+
+"Oo's got on mammy's nighty."
+
+Mr. Hamlin started.  He saw the child's obvious mistake and
+actually felt himself blushing.  It was unprecedented--it was the
+sheerest weakness--it must have something to do with the confounded
+air.
+
+"I grieve to say you are deeply mistaken--it is my very own," he
+returned with great gravity.  Nevertheless, he drew the coverlet
+close over his shoulder.  But here he was again attracted by
+another face at the half-opened door--a freckled one, belonging to
+a boy apparently a year or two older than the girl.  He was
+violently telegraphing to her to come away, although it was evident
+that he was at the same time deeply interested in the guest's
+toilet articles.  Yet as his bright gray eyes and Mr. Hamlin's
+brown ones met, he succumbed, as the girl had, and walked directly
+to the bedside.  But he did it bashfully--as the girl had not.  He
+even attempted a defensive explanation.
+
+"She hadn't oughter come in here, and mar wouldn't let her, and she
+knows it," he said with superior virtue.
+
+"But I asked her to come as I'm asking you," said Mr. Hamlin
+promptly, "and don't you go back on your sister or you'll never be
+president of the United States."  With this he laid his hand on the
+boy's tow head, and then, lifting himself on his pillow to a half-
+sitting posture, put an arm around each of the children, drawing
+them together, with the doll occupying the central post of honor.
+"Now," continued Mr. Hamlin, albeit in a voice a little faint from
+the exertion, "now that we're comfortable together I'll tell you
+the story of the good little boy who became a pirate in order to
+save his grandmother and little sister from being eaten by a wolf
+at the door."
+
+But, alas! that interesting record of self-sacrifice never was
+told.  For it chanced that Melinda Bird, Mrs. Rivers's help,
+following the trail of the missing children, came upon the open
+door and glanced in.  There, to her astonishment, she saw the
+domestic group already described, and to her eyes dominated by the
+"most beautiful and perfectly elegant" young man she had ever seen.
+But let not the incautious reader suppose that she succumbed as
+weakly as her artless charges to these fascinations.  The character
+and antecedents of that young man had been already delivered to her
+in the kitchen by the other help.  With that single glance she
+halted; her eyes sought the ceiling in chaste exaltation.  Falling
+back a step, she called in ladylike hauteur and precision, "Mary
+Emmeline and John Wesley."
+
+Mr. Hamlin glanced at the children.  "It's Melindy looking for us,"
+said John Wesley.  But they did not move.  At which Mr. Hamlin
+called out faintly but cheerfully, "They're here, all right."
+
+Again the voice arose with still more marked and lofty
+distinctness, "John Wesley and Mary Em-me-line."  It seemed to Mr.
+Hamlin that human accents could not convey a more significant and
+elevated ignoring of some implied impropriety in his invitation.
+He was for a moment crushed.
+
+But he only said to his little friends with a smile, "You'd better
+go now and we'll have that story later."
+
+"Affer beckus?" suggested Mary Emmeline.
+
+"In the woods," added John Wesley.
+
+Mr. Hamlin nodded blandly.  The children trotted to the door.  It
+closed upon them and Miss Bird's parting admonition, loud enough
+for Mr. Hamlin to hear, "No more freedoms, no more intrudings, you
+hear."
+
+The older culprit, Hamlin, retreated luxuriously under his
+blankets, but presently another new sensation came over him--
+absolutely, hunger.  Perhaps it was the child's allusion to
+"beckus," but he found himself wondering when it would be ready.
+This anxiety was soon relieved by the appearance of his host
+himself bearing a tray, possibly in deference to Miss Bird's sense
+of propriety.  It appeared also that Dr. Duchesne had previously
+given suitable directions for his diet, and Mr. Hamlin found his
+repast simple but enjoyable.  Always playfully or ironically polite
+to strangers, he thanked his host and said he had slept splendidly.
+
+"It's this yer 'ozone' in the air that Dr. Duchesne talks about,"
+said Seth complacently.
+
+"I am inclined to think it is also those texts," said Mr. Hamlin
+gravely, as he indicated them on the wall.  "You see they reminded
+me of church and my boyhood's slumbers there.  I have never slept
+so peacefully since."  Seth's face brightened so interestedly at
+what he believed to be a suggestion of his guest's conversion that
+Mr. Hamlin was fain to change the subject.  When his host had
+withdrawn he proceeded to dress himself, but here became conscious
+of his weakness and was obliged to sit down.  In one of those
+enforced rests he chanced to be near the window, and for the first
+time looked on the environs of his place of exile.  For a moment he
+was staggered.  Everything seemed to pitch downward from the rocky
+outcrop on which the rambling house and farm sheds stood.  Even the
+great pines around it swept downward like a green wave, to rise
+again in enormous billows as far as the eye could reach.  He could
+count a dozen of their tumbled crests following each other on their
+way to the distant plain.  In some vague point of that shimmering
+horizon of heat and dust was the spot he came from the preceding
+night.  Yet the recollection of it and his feverish past seemed to
+confuse him, and he turned his eyes gladly away.
+
+Pale, a little tremulous, but immaculate and jaunty in his white
+flannels and straw hat, he at last made his way downstairs.  To his
+great relief he found the sitting room empty, as he would have
+willingly deferred his formal acknowledgments to his hostess later.
+A single glance at the interior determined him not to linger, and
+he slipped quietly into the open air and sunshine.  The day was
+warm and still, as the wind only came up with the going down of the
+sun, and the atmosphere was still redolent with the morning spicing
+of pine and hay and a stronger balm that seemed to fill his breast
+with sunshine.  He walked toward the nearest shade--a cluster of
+young buckeyes--and having with a certain civic fastidiousness
+flicked the dust from a stump with his handkerchief he sat down.
+It was very quiet and calm.  The life and animation of early
+morning had already vanished from the hill, or seemed to be
+suspended with the sun in the sky.  He could see the ranchmen and
+oxen toiling on the green terraced slopes below, but no sound
+reached his ears.  Even the house he had just quitted seemed empty
+of life throughout its rambling length.  His seclusion was
+complete.  Could he stand it for three weeks?  Perhaps it need not
+be for so long; he was already stronger!  He foresaw that the
+ascetic Seth might become wearisome.  He had an intuition that Mrs.
+Rivers would be equally so; he should certainly quarrel with
+Melinda, and this would probably debar him from the company of the
+children--his only hope.
+
+But his seclusion was by no means so complete as he expected.  He
+presently was aware of a camp-meeting hymn hummed somewhat
+ostentatiously by a deep contralto voice, which he at once
+recognized as Melinda's, and saw that severe virgin proceeding from
+the kitchen along the ridge until within a few paces of the
+buckeyes, when she stopped and, with her hand shading her eyes,
+apparently began to examine the distant fields.  She was a tall,
+robust girl, not without certain rustic attractions, of which she
+seemed fully conscious.  This latter weakness gave Mr. Hamlin a new
+idea.  He put up the penknife with which he had been paring his
+nails while wondering why his hands had become so thin, and awaited
+events.  She presently turned, approached the buckeyes, plucked a
+spike of the blossoms with great girlish lightness, and then
+apparently discovering Mr. Hamlin, started in deep concern and said
+with somewhat stentorian politeness: "I BEG your pardon--didn't
+know I was intruding!"
+
+"Don't mention it," returned Jack promptly, but without moving.  "I
+saw you coming and was prepared; but generally--as I have something
+the matter with my heart--a sudden joy like this is dangerous."
+
+Somewhat mystified, but struggling between an expression of
+rigorous decorum and gratified vanity, Miss Melinda stammered, "I
+was only"--
+
+"I knew it--I saw what you were doing," interrupted Jack gravely,
+"only I wouldn't do it if I were you.  You were looking at one of
+those young men down the hill.  You forgot that if you could see
+him he could see you looking too, and that would only make him
+conceited.  And a girl with YOUR attractions don't require that."
+
+"Ez if," said Melinda, with lofty but somewhat reddening scorn,
+"there was a man on this hull rancho that I'd take a second look
+at."
+
+"It's the first look that does the business," returned Jack simply.
+"But maybe I was wrong.  Would you mind--as you're going straight
+back to the house" (Miss Melinda had certainly expressed no such
+intention)--"turning those two little kids loose out here?  I've a
+sort of engagement with them."
+
+"I will speak to their mar," said Melinda primly, yet with a
+certain sign of relenting, as she turned away.
+
+"You can say to her that I regretted not finding her in the sitting
+room when I came down," continued Jack tactfully.
+
+Apparently the tact was successful, for he was delighted a few
+moments later by the joyous onset of John Wesley and Mary Emmeline
+upon the buckeyes, which he at once converted into a game of hide
+and seek, permitting himself at last to be shamelessly caught in
+the open.  But here he wisely resolved upon guarding against
+further grown-up interruption, and consulting with his companions
+found that on one of the lower terraces there was a large reservoir
+fed by a mountain rivulet, but they were not allowed to play there.
+Thither, however, the reckless Jack hied with his playmates and was
+presently ensconced under a willow tree, where he dexterously
+fashioned tiny willow canoes with his penknife and sent them
+sailing over a submerged expanse of nearly an acre.  But half an
+hour of this ingenious amusement was brought to an abrupt
+termination.  While cutting bark, with his back momentarily turned
+on his companions, he heard a scream, and turned quickly to see
+John Wesley struggling in the water, grasping a tree root, and Mary
+Emmeline--nowhere!  In another minute he saw the strings of her
+pinafore appear on the surface a few yards beyond, and in yet
+another minute, with a swift rueful glance at his white flannels,
+he had plunged after her.  A disagreeable shock of finding himself
+out of his depths was, however, followed by contact with the
+child's clothing, and clutching her firmly, a stroke or two brought
+him panting to the bank.  Here a gasp, a gurgle, and then a roar
+from Mary Emmeline, followed by a sympathetic howl from John
+Wesley, satisfied him that the danger was over.  Rescuing the boy
+from the tree root, he laid them both on the grass and contemplated
+them exercising their lungs with miserable satisfaction.  But here
+he found his own breathing impeded in addition to a slight
+faintness, and was suddenly obliged to sit down beside them, at
+which, by some sympathetic intuition, they both stopped crying.
+
+Encouraged by this, Mr. Hamlin got them to laughing again, and then
+proposed a race home in their wet clothes, which they accepted, Mr.
+Hamlin, for respiratory reasons, lagging in their rear until he had
+the satisfaction of seeing them captured by the horrified Melinda
+in front of the kitchen, while he slipped past her and regained his
+own room.  Here he changed his saturated clothes, tried to rub away
+a certain chilliness that was creeping over him, and lay down in
+his dressing gown to miserable reflections.  He had nearly drowned
+the children and overexcited himself, in spite of his promise to
+the doctor!  He would never again be intrusted with the care of the
+former nor be believed by the latter!
+
+But events are not always logical in sequence.  Mr. Hamlin went
+comfortably to sleep and into a profuse perspiration.  He was
+awakened by a rapping at his door, and opening it, was surprised to
+find Mrs. Rivers with anxious inquiries as to his condition.
+"Indeed," she said, with an emotion which even her prim reserve
+could not conceal, "I did not know until now how serious the
+accident was, and how but for you and Divine Providence my little
+girl might have been drowned.  It seems Melinda saw it all."
+
+Inwardly objurgating the spying Melinda, but relieved that his
+playmates hadn't broken their promise of secrecy, Mr. Hamlin
+laughed.
+
+"I'm afraid that your little girl wouldn't have got into the water
+at all but for me--and you must give all the credit of getting her
+out to the other fellow."  He stopped at the severe change in Mrs.
+Rivers's expression, and added quite boyishly and with a sudden
+drop from his usual levity, "But please don't keep the children
+away from me for all that, Mrs. Rivers."
+
+Mrs. Rivers did not, and the next day Jack and his companions
+sought fresh playing fields and some new story-telling pastures.
+Indeed, it was a fine sight to see this pale, handsome, elegantly
+dressed young fellow lounging along between a blue-checkered
+pinafored girl on one side and a barefooted boy on the other.  The
+ranchmen turned and looked after him curiously.  One, a rustic
+prodigal, reduced by dissipation to the swine-husks of ranching,
+saw fit to accost him familiarly.
+
+"The last time I saw you dealing poker in Sacramento, Mr. Hamlin, I
+did not reckon to find you up here playing with a couple of kids."
+
+"No!" responded Mr. Hamlin suavely, "and yet I remember I was
+playing with some country idiots down there, and you were one of
+them.  Well! understand that up here I prefer the kids.  Don't let
+me have to remind you of it."
+
+Nevertheless, Mr. Hamlin could not help noticing that for the next
+two or three days there were many callers at the ranch and that he
+was obliged in his walks to avoid the highroad on account of the
+impertinent curiosity of wayfarers.  Some of them were of that sex
+which he would not have contented himself with simply calling
+"curious."
+
+"To think," said Melinda confidently to her mistress, "that that
+thar Mrs. Stubbs, who wouldn't go to the Hightown Hotel because
+there was a play actress thar, has been snoopin' round here twice
+since that young feller came."
+
+Of this fact, however, Mr. Hamlin was blissfully unconscious.
+
+Nevertheless, his temper was growing uncertain; the angle of his
+smart straw hat was becoming aggressive to strangers; his
+politeness sardonic.  And now Sunday morning had come with an
+atmosphere of starched piety and well-soaped respectability at the
+rancho, and the children were to be taken with the rest of the
+family to the day-long service at Hightown.  As these Sabbath
+pilgrimages filled the main road, he was fain to take himself and
+his loneliness to the trails and byways, and even to invade the
+haunts of some other elegant outcasts like himself--to wit, a
+crested hawk, a graceful wild cat beautifully marked, and an
+eloquently reticent rattlesnake.  Mr. Hamlin eyed them without
+fear, and certainly without reproach.  They were not out of their
+element.
+
+Suddenly he heard his name called in a stentorian contralto.  An
+impatient ejaculation rose to his lips, but died upon them as he
+turned.  It was certainly Melinda, but in his present sensitive
+loneliness it struck him for the first time that he had never
+actually seen her before as she really was.  Like most men in his
+profession he was a quick reader of thoughts and faces when he was
+interested, and although this was the same robust, long-limbed,
+sunburnt girl he had met, he now seemed to see through her triple
+incrustation of human vanity, conventional piety, and outrageous
+Sabbath finery an honest, sympathetic simplicity that commanded his
+respect.
+
+"You are back early from church," he said.
+
+"Yes.  One service is good enough for me when thar ain't no special
+preacher," she returned, "so I jest sez to Silas, 'as I ain't here
+to listen to the sisters cackle ye kin put to the buckboard and
+drive me home ez soon ez you please.'"
+
+"And so his name is Silas," suggested Mr. Hamlin cheerfully.
+
+"Go 'long with you, Mr. Hamlin, and don't pester," she returned,
+with heifer-like playfulness.  "Well, Silas put to, and when we
+rose the hill here I saw your straw hat passin' in the gulch, and
+sez to Silas, sez I, 'Ye kin pull up here, for over yar is our new
+boarder, Jack Hamlin, and I'm goin' to talk with him.'  'All
+right,' sez he, 'I'd sooner trust ye with that gay young gambolier
+every day of the week than with them saints down thar on Sunday.
+He deals ez straight ez he shoots, and is about as nigh onto a
+gentleman as they make 'em.'"
+
+For one moment or two Miss Bird only saw Jack's long lashes.  When
+his eyes once more lifted they were shining.  "And what did you
+say?" he said, with a short laugh.
+
+"I told him he needn't be Christopher Columbus to have discovered
+that."  She turned with a laugh toward Jack, to be met by the word
+"shake," and an outstretched thin white hand which grasped her
+large red one with a frank, fraternal pressure.
+
+"I didn't come to tell ye that," remarked Miss Bird as she sat down
+on a boulder, took off her yellow hat, and restacked her tawny mane
+under it, "but this: I reckoned I went to Sunday meetin' as I ought
+ter.  I kalkilated to hear considerable about 'Faith' and 'Works,'
+and sich, but I didn't reckon to hear all about you from the Lord's
+Prayer to the Doxology.  You were in the special prayers ez a
+warnin', in the sermon ez a text; they picked out hymns to fit ye!
+And always a drefful example and a visitation.  And the rest o' the
+tune it was all gabble, gabble by the brothers and sisters about
+you.  I reckon, Mr. Hamlin, that they know everything you ever did
+since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and a good deal more
+than you ever thought of doin'.  The women is all dead set on
+convertin' ye and savin' ye by their own precious selves, and the
+men is ekally dead set on gettin' rid o' ye on that account."
+
+"And what did Seth and Mrs. Rivers say?" asked Hamlin composedly,
+but with kindling eyes.
+
+"They stuck up for ye ez far ez they could.  But ye see the parson
+hez got a holt upon Seth, havin' caught him kissin' a convert at
+camp meeting; and Deacon Turner knows suthin about Mrs. Rivers's
+sister, who kicked over the pail and jumped the fence years ago,
+and she's afeard a' him.  But what I wanted to tell ye was that
+they're all comin' up here to take a look at ye--some on 'em to-
+night.  You ain't afeard, are ye?" she added, with a loud laugh.
+
+"Well, it looks rather desperate, doesn't it?" returned Jack, with
+dancing eyes.
+
+"I'll trust ye for all that," said Melinda.  "And now I reckon I'll
+trot along to the rancho.  Ye needn't offer ter see me home," she
+added, as Jack made a movement to accompany her.  "Everybody up
+here ain't as fair-minded ez Silas and you, and Melinda Bird hez a
+character to lose!  So long!"  With this she cantered away, a
+little heavily, perhaps, adjusting her yellow hat with both hands
+as she clattered down the steep hill.
+
+That afternoon Mr. Hamlin drew largely on his convalescence to
+mount a half-broken mustang, and in spite of the rising afternoon
+wind to gallop along the highroad in quite as mischievous and
+breezy a fashion.  He was wont to allow his mustang's nose to hang
+over the hind rails of wagons and buggies containing young couples,
+and to dash ahead of sober carryalls that held elderly "members in
+good standing."
+
+An accomplished rider, he picked up and brought back the flying
+parasol of Mrs. Deacon Stubbs without dismounting.  He finally came
+home a little blown, but dangerously composed.
+
+There was the usual Sunday evening gathering at Windy Hill Rancho--
+neighbors and their wives, deacons and the pastor--but their
+curiosity was not satisfied by the sight of Mr. Hamlin, who kept
+his own room and his own counsel.  There was some desultory
+conversation, chiefly on church topics, for it was vaguely felt
+that a discussion of the advisability or getting rid of the guest
+of their host was somewhat difficult under this host's roof, with
+the guest impending at any moment.  Then a diversion was created by
+some of the church choir practicing the harmonium with the singing
+of certain more or less lugubrious anthems.  Mrs. Rivers presently
+joined in, and in a somewhat faded soprano, which, however, still
+retained considerable musical taste and expression, sang, "Come, ye
+disconsolate."  The wind moaned over the deep-throated chimney in a
+weird harmony with the melancholy of that human appeal as Mrs.
+Rivers sang the first verse:--
+
+
+    "Come, ye disconsolate, where'er ye languish,
+       Come to the Mercy Seat, fervently kneel;
+     Here bring your wounded hearts--here tell your anguish,
+       Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal!"
+
+
+A pause followed, and the long-drawn, half-human sigh of the
+mountain wind over the chimney seemed to mingle with the wail of
+the harmonium.  And then, to their thrilled astonishment, a tenor
+voice, high, clear, but tenderly passionate, broke like a skylark
+over their heads in the lines of the second verse:--
+
+
+    "Joy of the desolate, Light of the straying,
+       Hope of the penitent--fadeless and pure;
+     Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying,
+       Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot cure!"
+
+
+The hymn was old and familiar enough, Heaven knows.  It had been
+quite popular at funerals, and some who sat there had had its
+strange melancholy borne upon them in time of loss and
+tribulations, but never had they felt its full power before.
+Accustomed as they were to emotional appeal and to respond to it,
+as the singer's voice died away above them, their very tears flowed
+and fell with that voice.  A few sobbed aloud, and then a voice
+asked tremulously,--
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It's Mr. Hamlin," said Seth quietly.  "I've heard him often
+hummin' things before."
+
+There was another silence, and the voice of Deacon Stubbs broke in
+harshly,--
+
+"It's rank blasphemy."
+
+"If it's rank blasphemy to sing the praise o' God, not only better
+than some folks in the choir, but like an angel o' light, I wish
+you'd do a little o' that blaspheming on Sundays, Mr. Stubbs."
+
+The speaker was Mrs. Stubbs, and as Deacon Stubbs was a notoriously
+bad singer the shot told.
+
+"If he's sincere, why does he stand aloof?  Why does he not join
+us?" asked the parson.
+
+"He hasn't been asked," said Seth quietly.  "If I ain't mistaken
+this yer gathering this evening was specially to see how to get rid
+of him."
+
+There was a quick murmur of protest at this.  The parson exchanged
+glances with the deacon and saw that they were hopelessly in the
+minority.
+
+"I will ask him myself," said Mrs. Rivers suddenly.
+
+"So do, Sister Rivers; so do," was the unmistakable response.
+
+Mrs. Rivers left the room and returned in a few moments with a
+handsome young man, pale, elegant, composed, even to a grave
+indifference.  What his eyes might have said was another thing; the
+long lashes were scarcely raised.
+
+"I don't mind playing a little," he said quietly to Mrs. Rivers, as
+if continuing a conversation, "but you'll have to let me trust my
+memory."
+
+"Then you--er--play the harmonium?" said the parson, with an
+attempt at formal courtesy.
+
+"I was for a year or two the organist in the choir of Dr. Todd's
+church at Sacramento," returned Mr. Hamlin quietly.
+
+The blank amazement on the faces of Deacons Stubbs and Turner and
+the parson was followed by wreathed smiles from the other auditors
+and especially from the ladies.  Mr. Hamlin sat down to the
+instrument, and in another moment took possession of it as it had
+never been held before.  He played from memory as he had implied,
+but it was the memory of a musician.  He began with one or two
+familiar anthems, in which they all joined.  A fragment of a mass
+and a Latin chant followed.  An "Ave Maria" from an opera was his
+first secular departure, but his delighted audience did not detect
+it.  Then he hurried them along in unfamiliar language to "O mio
+Fernando" and "Spiritu gentil," which they fondly imagined were
+hymns, until, with crowning audacity, after a few preliminary
+chords of the "Miserere," he landed them broken-hearted in the
+Trovatore's donjon tower with "Non te scordar de mi."
+
+Amidst the applause he heard the preacher suavely explain that
+those Popish masses were always in the Latin language, and rose
+from the instrument satisfied with his experiment.  Excusing
+himself as an invalid from joining them in a light collation in the
+dining room, and begging his hostess's permission to retire, he
+nevertheless lingered a few moments by the door as the ladies filed
+out of the room, followed by the gentlemen, until Deacon Turner,
+who was bringing up the rear, was abreast of him.  Here Mr. Hamlin
+became suddenly deeply interested in a framed pencil drawing which
+hung on the wall.  It was evidently a schoolgirl's amateur
+portrait, done by Mrs. Rivers.  Deacon Turner halted quickly by his
+side as the others passed out--which was exactly what Mr. Hamlin
+expected.
+
+"Do you know the face?" said the deacon eagerly.
+
+Thanks to the faithful Melinda, Mr. Hamlin did know it perfectly.
+It was a pencil sketch of Mrs. Rivers's youthfully erring sister.
+But he only said he thought he recognized a likeness to some one he
+had seen in Sacramento.
+
+The deacon's eye brightened.  "Perhaps the same one--perhaps," he
+added in a submissive and significant tone "a--er--painful story."
+
+"Rather--to him," observed Hamlin quietly.
+
+"How?--I--er--don't understand," said Deacon Turner.
+
+"Well, the portrait looks like a lady I knew in Sacramento who had
+been in some trouble when she was a silly girl, but had got over it
+quietly.  She was, however, troubled a good deal by some mean hound
+who was every now and then raking up the story wherever she went.
+Well, one of her friends--I might have been among them, I don't
+exactly remember just now--challenged him, but although he had no
+conscientious convictions about slandering a woman, he had some
+about being shot for it, and declined.  The consequence was he was
+cowhided once in the street, and the second time tarred and
+feathered and ridden on a rail out of town.  That, I suppose, was
+what you meant by your 'painful story.'  But is this the woman?"
+
+"No, no," said the deacon hurriedly, with a white face, "you have
+quite misunderstood."
+
+"But whose is this portrait?" persisted Jack.
+
+"I believe that--I don't know exactly--but I think it is a sister
+of Mrs. Rivers's," stammered the deacon.
+
+"Then, of course, it isn't the same woman," said Jack in simulated
+indignation.
+
+"Certainly--of course not," returned the deacon.
+
+"Phew!" said Jack.  "That was a mighty close call.  Lucky we were
+alone, wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said the deacon, with a feeble smile.
+
+"Seth," continued Jack, with a thoughtful air, "looks like a quiet
+man, but I shouldn't like to have made that mistake about his
+sister-in-law before him.  These quiet men are apt to shoot
+straight.  Better keep this to ourselves."
+
+Deacon Turner not only kept the revelation to himself but
+apparently his own sacred person also, as he did not call again at
+Windy Hill Rancho during Mr. Hamlin's stay.  But he was exceedingly
+polite in his references to Jack, and alluded patronizingly to a
+"little chat" they had had together.  And when the usual reaction
+took place in Mr. Hamlin's favor and Jack was actually induced to
+perform on the organ at Hightown Church next Sunday, the deacon's
+voice was loudest in his praise.  Even Parson Greenwood allowed
+himself to be non-committal as to the truth of the rumor, largely
+circulated, that one of the most desperate gamblers in the State
+had been converted through his exhortations.
+
+So, with breezy walks and games with the children, occasional
+confidences with Melinda and Silas, and the Sabbath "singing of
+anthems," Mr. Hamlin's three weeks of convalescence drew to a
+close.  He had lately relaxed his habit of seclusion so far as to
+mingle with the company gathered for more social purposes at the
+rancho, and once or twice unbent so far as to satisfy their
+curiosity in regard to certain details of his profession.
+
+"I have no personal knowledge of games of cards," said Parson
+Greenwood patronizingly, "and think I am right in saying that our
+brothers and sisters are equally inexperienced.  I am--ahem--far
+from believing, however, that entire ignorance of evil is the best
+preparation for combating it, and I should be glad if you'd explain
+to the company the intricacies of various games.  There is one that
+you mentioned, with a--er--scriptural name."
+
+"Faro," said Hamlin, with an unmoved face.
+
+"Pharaoh," repeated the parson gravely; "and one which you call
+'poker,' which seems to require great self-control."
+
+"I couldn't make you understand poker without your playing it,"
+said Jack decidedly.
+
+"As long as we don't gamble--that is, play for money--I see no
+objection," returned the parson.
+
+"And," said Jack musingly, "you could use beans."
+
+It was agreed finally that there would be no falling from grace in
+their playing among themselves, in an inquiring Christian spirit,
+under Jack's guidance, he having decided to abstain from card
+playing during his convalescence, and Jack permitted himself to be
+persuaded to show them the following evening.
+
+It so chanced, however, that Dr. Duchesne, finding the end of
+Jack's "cure" approaching, and not hearing from that interesting
+invalid, resolved to visit him at about this time.  Having no
+chance to apprise Jack of his intention, on coming to Hightown at
+night he procured a conveyance at the depot to carry him to Windy
+Hill Rancho.  The wind blew with its usual nocturnal rollicking
+persistency, and at the end of his turbulent drive it seemed almost
+impossible to make himself heard amongst the roaring of the pines
+and some astounding preoccupation of the inmates.  After vainly
+knocking, the doctor pushed open the front door and entered.  He
+rapped at the closed sitting room door, but receiving no reply,
+pushed it open upon the most unexpected and astounding scene he had
+ever witnessed.  Around the centre table several respectable
+members of the Hightown Church, including the parson, were gathered
+with intense and eager faces playing poker, and behind the parson,
+with his hands in his pockets, carelessly lounged the doctor's
+patient, the picture of health and vigor.  A disused pack of cards
+was scattered on the floor, and before the gentle and precise Mrs.
+Rivers was heaped a pile of beans that would have filled a quart
+measure.
+
+When Dr. Duchesne had tactfully retreated before the hurried and
+stammering apologies of his host and hostess, and was alone with
+Jack in his rooms, he turned to him with a gravity that was more
+than half affected and said, "How long, sir, did it take you to
+effect this corruption?"
+
+"Upon my honor," said Jack simply, "they played last night for the
+first time.  And they forced me to show them.  But," added Jack
+after a significant pause, "I thought it would make the game
+livelier and be more of a moral lesson if I gave them nearly all
+good pat hands.  So I ran in a cold deck on them--the first time I
+ever did such a thing in my life.  I fixed up a pack of cards so
+that one had three tens, another three jacks, and another three
+queens, and so on up to three aces.  In a minute they had all
+tumbled to the game, and you never saw such betting.  Every man and
+woman there believed he or she had struck a sure thing, and staked
+accordingly.  A new panful of beans was brought on, and Seth, your
+friend, banked for them.  And at last the parson raked in the whole
+pile."
+
+"I suppose you gave him the three aces," said Dr. Duchesne
+gloomily.
+
+"The parson," said Jack slowly, "HADN'T A SINGLE PAIR IN HIS HAND.
+It was the stoniest, deadest, neatest BLUFF I ever saw.  And when
+he'd frightened off the last man who held out and laid that measly
+hand of his face down on that pile of kings, queens, and aces, and
+looked around the table as he raked in the pile, there was a smile
+of humble self-righteousness on his face that was worth double the
+money."
+
+
+
+A PUPIL OF CHESTNUT RIDGE
+
+
+The schoolmaster of Chestnut Ridge was interrupted in his after-
+school solitude by the click of hoof and sound of voices on the
+little bridle path that led to the scant clearing in which his
+schoolhouse stood.  He laid down his pen as the figures of a man
+and woman on horseback passed the windows and dismounted before the
+porch.  He recognized the complacent, good-humored faces of Mr. and
+Mrs. Hoover, who owned a neighboring ranch of some importance and
+who were accounted well to do people by the community.  Being a
+childless couple, however, while they generously contributed to the
+support of the little school, they had not added to its flock, and
+it was with some curiosity that the young schoolmaster greeted them
+and awaited the purport of their visit.  This was protracted in
+delivery through a certain polite dalliance with the real subject
+characteristic of the Southwestern pioneer.
+
+"Well, Almiry," said Mr. Hoover, turning to his wife after the
+first greeting with the schoolmaster was over, "this makes me feel
+like old times, you bet!  Why, I ain't bin inside a schoolhouse
+since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.  Thar's the benches, and
+the desks, and the books and all them 'a b, abs,' jest like the old
+days.  Dear! Dear!  But the teacher in those days was ez old and
+grizzled ez I be--and some o' the scholars--no offense to you, Mr.
+Brooks--was older and bigger nor you.  But times is changed: yet
+look, Almiry, if thar ain't a hunk o' stale gingerbread in that
+desk jest as it uster be!  Lord! how it all comes back!  Ez I was
+sayin' only t'other day, we can't be too grateful to our parents
+for givin' us an eddication in our youth;" and Mr. Hoover, with the
+air of recalling an alma mater of sequestered gloom and cloistered
+erudition, gazed reverently around the new pine walls.
+
+But Mrs. Hoover here intervened with a gracious appreciation of the
+schoolmaster's youth after her usual kindly fashion.  "And don't
+you forget it, Hiram Hoover, that these young folks of to-day kin
+teach the old schoolmasters of 'way back more'n you and I dream of.
+We've heard of your book larnin', Mr. Brooks, afore this, and we're
+proud to hev you here, even if the Lord has not pleased to give us
+the children to send to ye.  But we've always paid our share in
+keeping up the school for others that was more favored, and now it
+looks as if He had not forgotten us, and ez if"--with a significant,
+half-shy glance at her husband and a corroborating nod from that
+gentleman--"ez if, reelly, we might be reckonin' to send you a
+scholar ourselves."
+
+The young schoolmaster, sympathetic and sensitive, felt somewhat
+embarrassed.  The allusion to his extreme youth, mollified though
+it was by the salve of praise from the tactful Mrs. Hoover, had
+annoyed him, and perhaps added to his slight confusion over the
+information she vouchsafed.  He had not heard of any late addition
+to the Hoover family, he would not have been likely to, in his
+secluded habits; and although he was accustomed to the naive and
+direct simplicity of the pioneer, he could scarcely believe that
+this good lady was announcing a maternal expectation.  He smiled
+vaguely and begged them to be seated.
+
+"Ye see," said Mr. Hoover, dropping upon a low bench, "the way the
+thing pans out is this.  Almiry's brother is a pow'ful preacher
+down the coast at San Antonio and hez settled down thar with a big
+Free Will Baptist Church congregation and a heap o' land got from
+them Mexicans.  Thar's a lot o' poor Spanish and Injin trash that
+belong to the land, and Almiry's brother hez set about convertin'
+'em, givin' 'em convickshion and religion, though the most of 'em
+is Papists and followers of the Scarlet Woman.  Thar was an orphan,
+a little girl that he got outer the hands o' them priests, kinder
+snatched as a brand from the burnin', and he sent her to us to be
+brought up in the ways o' the Lord, knowin' that we had no children
+of our own.  But we thought she oughter get the benefit o'
+schoolin' too, besides our own care, and we reckoned to bring her
+here reg'lar to school."
+
+Relieved and pleased to help the good-natured couple in the care of
+the homeless waif, albeit somewhat doubtful of their religious
+methods, the schoolmaster said he would be delighted to number her
+among his little flock.  Had she already received any tuition?
+
+"Only from them padres, ye know, things about saints, Virgin Marys,
+visions, and miracles," put in Mrs. Hoover; "and we kinder thought
+ez you know Spanish you might be able to get rid o' them in
+exchange for 'conviction o' sins' and 'justification by faith,' ye
+know."
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Brooks, smiling at the thought of displacing
+the Church's "mysteries" for certain corybantic displays and
+thaumaturgical exhibitions he had witnessed at the Dissenters' camp
+meeting, "that I must leave all that to you, and I must caution you
+to be careful what you do lest you also shake her faith in the
+alphabet and the multiplication table."
+
+"Mebbee you're right," said Mrs. Hoover, mystified but good-
+natured; "but thar's one thing more we oughter tell ye.  She's--
+she's a trifle dark complected."
+
+The schoolmaster smiled.  "Well?" he said patiently.
+
+"She isn't a nigger nor an Injin, ye know, but she's kinder a half-
+Spanish, half-Mexican Injin, what they call 'mes--mes'"--
+
+"Mestiza," suggested Mr. Brooks; "a half-breed or mongrel."
+
+"I reckon.  Now thar wouldn't be any objection to that, eh?" said
+Mr. Hoover a little uneasily.
+
+"Not by me," returned the schoolmaster cheerfully.  "And although
+this school is state-aided it's not a 'public school' in the eye of
+the law, so you have only the foolish prejudices of your neighbors
+to deal with."  He had recognized the reason of their hesitation
+and knew the strong racial antagonism held towards the negro and
+Indian by Mr. Hoover's Southwestern compatriots, and he could not
+refrain from "rubbing it in."
+
+"They kin see," interposed Mrs. Hoover, "that she's not a nigger,
+for her hair don't 'kink,' and a furrin Injin, of course, is
+different from one o' our own."
+
+"If they hear her speak Spanish, and you simply say she is a
+foreigner, as she is, it will be all right," said the schoolmaster
+smilingly.  "Let her come, I'll look after her."
+
+Much relieved, after a few more words the couple took their
+departure, the schoolmaster promising to call the next afternoon at
+the Hoovers' ranch and meet his new scholar.  "Ye might give us a
+hint or two how she oughter be fixed up afore she joins the school."
+
+The ranch was about four miles from the schoolhouse, and as Mr.
+Brooks drew rein before the Hoovers' gate he appreciated the
+devotion of the couple who were willing to send the child that
+distance twice a day.  The house, with its outbuildings, was on a
+more liberal scale than its neighbors, and showed few of the
+makeshifts and half-hearted advances towards permanent occupation
+common to the Southwestern pioneers, who were more or less nomads
+in instinct and circumstance.  He was ushered into a well-furnished
+sitting room, whose glaring freshness was subdued and repressed by
+black-framed engravings of scriptural subjects.  As Mr. Brooks
+glanced at them and recalled the schoolrooms of the old missions,
+with their monastic shadows which half hid the gaudy, tinseled
+saints and flaming or ensanguined hearts upon the walls, he feared
+that the little waif of Mother Church had not gained any
+cheerfulness in the exchange.
+
+As she entered the room with Mrs. Hoover, her large dark eyes--the
+most notable feature in her small face--seemed to sustain the
+schoolmaster's fanciful fear in their half-frightened wonder.  She
+was clinging closely to Mrs. Hoover's side, as if recognizing the
+good woman's maternal kindness even while doubtful of her purpose;
+but on the schoolmaster addressing her in Spanish, a singular
+change took place in their relative positions.  A quick look of
+intelligence came into her melancholy eyes, and with it a slight
+consciousness of superiority to her protectors that was
+embarrassing to him.  For the rest he observed merely that she was
+small and slightly built, although her figure was hidden in a long
+"check apron" or calico pinafore with sleeves--a local garment--
+which was utterly incongruous with her originality.  Her skin was
+olive, inclining to yellow, or rather to that exquisite shade of
+buff to be seen in the new bark of the madrono.  Her face was oval,
+and her mouth small and childlike, with little to suggest the
+aboriginal type in her other features.
+
+The master's questions elicited from the child the fact that she
+could read and write, that she knew her "Hail Mary" and creed
+(happily the Protestant Mrs. Hoover was unable to follow this
+questioning), but he also elicited the more disturbing fact that
+her replies and confidences suggested a certain familiarity and
+equality of condition which he could only set down to his own
+youthfulness of appearance.  He was apprehensive that she might
+even make some remark regarding Mrs. Hoover, and was not sorry that
+the latter did not understand Spanish.  But before he left he
+managed to speak with Mrs. Hoover alone and suggested a change in
+the costume of the pupil when she came to school.  "The better she
+is dressed," suggested the wily young diplomat, "the less likely is
+she to awaken any suspicion of her race."
+
+"Now that's jest what's botherin' me, Mr. Brooks," returned Mrs.
+Hoover, with a troubled face, "for you see she is a growin' girl,"
+and she concluded, with some embarrassment, "I can't quite make up
+my mind how to dress her."
+
+"How old is she?" asked the master abruptly.
+
+"Goin' on twelve, but,"--and Mrs. Hoover again hesitated.
+
+"Why, two of my scholars, the Bromly girls, are over fourteen,"
+said the master, "and you know how they are dressed;" but here he
+hesitated in his turn.  It had just occurred to him that the little
+waif was from the extreme South, and the precocious maturity of the
+mixed races there was well known.  He even remembered, to his
+alarm, to have seen brides of twelve and mothers of fourteen among
+the native villagers.  This might also account for the suggestion
+of equality in her manner, and even for a slight coquettishness
+which he thought he had noticed in her when he had addressed her
+playfully as a muchacha.  "I should dress her in something
+Spanish," he said hurriedly, "something white, you know, with
+plenty of flounces and a little black lace, or a black silk skirt
+and a lace scarf, you know.  She'll be all right if you don't make
+her look like a servant or a dependent," he added, with a show of
+confidence he was far from feeling.  "But you haven't told me her
+name," he concluded.
+
+"As we're reckonin' to adopt her," said Mrs. Hoover gravely,
+"you'll give her ours."
+
+"But I can't call her 'Miss Hoover,'" suggested the master; "what's
+her first name?"
+
+"We was thinkin' o' 'Serafina Ann,'" said Mrs. Hoover with more
+gravity.
+
+"But what is her name?" persisted the master.
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. Hoover, with a troubled look, "me and Hiram
+consider it's a heathenish sort of name for a young gal, but you'll
+find it in my brother's letter."  She took a letter from under the
+lid of a large Bible on the table and pointed to a passage in it.
+
+"The child was christened 'Concepcion,'" read the master.  "Why,
+that's one of the Marys!"
+
+"The which?" asked Mrs. Hoover severely.
+
+"One of the titles of the Virgin Mary; 'Maria de la Concepcion,'"
+said Mr. Brooks glibly.
+
+"It don't sound much like anythin' so Christian and decent as
+'Maria' or 'Mary,'" returned Mrs. Hoover suspiciously.
+
+"But the abbreviation, 'Concha,' is very pretty.  In fact it's just
+the thing, it's so very Spanish," returned the master decisively.
+"And you know that the squaw who hangs about the mining camp is
+called 'Reservation Ann,' and old Mrs. Parkins's negro cook is
+called 'Aunt Serafina,' so 'Serafina Ann' is too suggestive.
+'Concha Hoover' 's the name."
+
+"P'r'aps you're right," said Mrs. Hoover meditatively.
+
+"And dress her so she'll look like her name and you'll be all
+right," said the master gayly as he took his departure.
+
+Nevertheless, it was with some anxiety the next morning he heard
+the sound of hoofs on the rocky bridle path leading to the
+schoolhouse.  He had already informed his little flock of the
+probable addition to their numbers and their breathless curiosity
+now accented the appearance of Mr. Hoover riding past the window,
+followed by a little figure on horseback, half hidden in the
+graceful folds of a serape.  The next moment they dismounted at the
+porch, the serape was cast aside, and the new scholar entered.
+
+A little alarmed even in his admiration, the master nevertheless
+thought he had never seen a more dainty figure.  Her heavily
+flounced white skirt stopped short just above her white-stockinged
+ankles and little feet, hidden in white satin, low-quartered
+slippers.  Her black silk, shell-like jacket half clasped her
+stayless bust clad in an under-bodice of soft muslin that faintly
+outlined a contour which struck him as already womanly.  A black
+lace veil which had protected her head, she had on entering slipped
+down to her shoulders with a graceful gesture, leaving one end of
+it pinned to her hair by a rose above her little yellow ear.  The
+whole figure was so inconsistent with its present setting that the
+master inwardly resolved to suggest a modification of it to Mrs.
+Hoover as he, with great gravity, however, led the girl to the seat
+he had prepared for her.  Mr. Hoover, who had been assisting
+discipline as he conscientiously believed by gazing with hushed,
+reverent reminiscence on the walls, here whispered behind his large
+hand that he would call for her at "four o'clock" and tiptoed out
+of the schoolroom.  The master, who felt that everything would
+depend upon his repressing the children's exuberant curiosity and
+maintaining the discipline of the school for the next few minutes,
+with supernatural gravity addressed the young girl in Spanish and
+placed before her a few slight elementary tasks.  Perhaps the
+strangeness of the language, perhaps the unwonted seriousness of
+the master, perhaps also the impassibility of the young stranger
+herself, all contributed to arrest the expanding smiles on little
+faces, to check their wandering eyes, and hush their eager
+whispers.  By degrees heads were again lowered over their tasks,
+the scratching of pencils on slates, and the far-off rapping of
+Woodpeckers again indicated the normal quiet of the schoolroom, and
+the master knew he had triumphed, and the ordeal was past.
+
+But not as regarded himself, for although the new pupil had
+accepted his instructions with childlike submissiveness, and even
+as it seemed to him with childlike comprehension, he could not help
+noticing that she occasionally glanced at him with a demure
+suggestion of some understanding between them, or as if they were
+playing at master and pupil.  This naturally annoyed him and
+perhaps added a severer dignity to his manner, which did not appear
+to be effective, however, and which he fancied secretly amused her.
+Was she covertly laughing at him?  Yet against this, once or twice,
+as her big eyes wandered from her task over the room, they
+encountered the curious gaze of the other children, and he fancied
+he saw an exchange of that freemasonry of intelligence common to
+children in the presence of their elders even when strangers to
+each other.  He looked forward to recess to see how she would get
+on with her companions; he knew that this would settle her status
+in the school, and perhaps elsewhere.  Even her limited English
+vocabulary would not in any way affect that instinctive, childlike
+test of superiority, but he was surprised when the hour of recess
+came and he had explained to her in Spanish and English its
+purpose, to see her quietly put her arm around the waist of Matilda
+Bromly, the tallest girl in the school, as the two whisked
+themselves off to the playground.  She was a mere child after all!
+
+Other things seemed to confirm this opinion.  Later, when the
+children returned from recess, the young stranger had instantly
+become a popular idol, and had evidently dispensed her favors and
+patronage generously.  The elder Bromly girl was wearing her lace
+veil, another had possession of her handkerchief, and a third
+displayed the rose which had adorned her left ear, things of which
+the master was obliged to take note with a view of returning them
+to the prodigal little barbarian at the close of school.  Later he
+was, however, much perplexed by the mysterious passage under the
+desks of some unknown object which apparently was making the
+circuit of the school.  With the annoyed consciousness that he was
+perhaps unwittingly participating in some game, he finally "nailed
+it" in the possession of Demosthenes Walker, aged six, to the
+spontaneous outcry of "Cotched!" from the whole school.  When
+produced from Master Walker's desk in company with a horned toad
+and a piece of gingerbread, it was found to be Concha's white satin
+slipper, the young girl herself, meanwhile, bending demurely over
+her task with the bereft foot tucked up like a bird's under her
+skirt.  The master, reserving reproof of this and other enormities
+until later, contented himself with commanding the slipper to be
+brought to him, when he took it to her with the satirical remark in
+Spanish that the schoolroom was not a dressing room--Camara para
+vestirse.  To his surprise, however, she smilingly held out the
+tiny stockinged foot with a singular combination of the spoiled
+child and the coquettish senorita, and remained with it extended as
+if waiting for him to kneel and replace the slipper.  But he laid
+it carefully on her desk.
+
+"Put it on at once," he said in English.
+
+There was no mistaking the tone of his voice, whatever his
+language.  Concha darted a quick look at him like the momentary
+resentment of an animal, but almost as quickly her eyes became
+suffused, and with a hurried movement she put on the slipper.
+
+"Please, sir, it dropped off and Jimmy Snyder passed it on," said a
+small explanatory voice among the benches.
+
+"Silence!" said the master.
+
+Nevertheless, he was glad to see that the school had not noticed
+the girl's familiarity even though they thought him "hard."  He was
+not sure upon reflection but that he had magnified her offense and
+had been unnecessarily severe, and this feeling was augmented by
+his occasionally finding her looking at him with the melancholy,
+wondering eyes of a chidden animal.  Later, as he was moving among
+the desks' overlooking the tasks of the individual pupils, he
+observed from a distance that her head was bent over her desk while
+her lips were moving as if repeating to herself her lesson, and
+that afterwards, with a swift look around the room to assure
+herself that she was unobserved, she made a hurried sign of the
+cross.  It occurred to him that this might have followed some
+penitential prayer of the child, and remembering her tuition by the
+padres it gave him an idea.  He dismissed school a few moments
+earlier in order that he might speak to her alone before Mr. Hoover
+arrived.
+
+Referring to the slipper incident and receiving her assurances that
+"she" (the slipper) was much too large and fell often "so," a fact
+really established by demonstration, he seized his opportunity.
+"But tell me, when you were with the padre and your slipper fell
+off, you did not expect him to put it on for you?"
+
+Concha looked at him coyly and then said triumphantly, "Ah, no! but
+he was a priest, and you are a young caballero."
+
+Yet even after this audacity Mr. Brooks found he could only
+recommend to Mr. Hoover a change in the young girl's slippers, the
+absence of the rose-pinned veil, and the substitution of a
+sunbonnet.  For the rest he must trust to circumstances.  As Mr.
+Hoover--who with large paternal optimism had professed to see
+already an improvement in her--helped her into the saddle, the
+schoolmaster could not help noticing that she had evidently
+expected him to perform that act of courtesy, and that she looked
+correspondingly reproachful.
+
+"The holy fathers used sometimes to let me ride with them on their
+mules," said Concha, leaning over her saddle towards the
+schoolmaster.
+
+"Eh, what, missy?" said the Protestant Mr. Hoover, pricking up his
+ears.  "Now you just listen to Mr. Brooks's doctrines, and never
+mind them Papists," he added as he rode away, with the firm
+conviction that the master had already commenced the task of her
+spiritual conversion.
+
+The next day the master awoke to find his little school famous.
+Whatever were the exaggerations or whatever the fancies carried
+home to their parents by the children, the result was an
+overwhelming interest in the proceedings and personnel of the
+school by the whole district.  People had already called at the
+Hoover ranch to see Mrs. Hoover's pretty adopted daughter.  The
+master, on his way to the schoolroom that morning, had found a few
+woodmen and charcoal burners lounging on the bridle path that led
+from the main road.  Two or three parents accompanied their
+children to school, asserting they had just dropped in to see how
+"Aramanta" or "Tommy" were "gettin' on."  As the school began to
+assemble several unfamiliar faces passed the windows or were boldly
+flattened against the glass.  The little schoolhouse had not seen
+such a gathering since it had been borrowed for a political meeting
+in the previous autumn.  And the master noticed with some concern
+that many of the faces were the same which he had seen uplifted to
+the glittering periods of Colonel Starbottle, "the war horse of the
+Democracy."
+
+For he could not shut his eyes to the fact that they came from no
+mere curiosity to see the novel and bizarre; no appreciation of
+mere picturesqueness or beauty; and alas! from no enthusiasm for
+the progression of education.  He knew the people among whom he had
+lived, and he realized the fatal question of "color" had been
+raised in some mysterious way by those Southwestern emigrants who
+had carried into this "free state" their inherited prejudices.  A
+few words convinced him that the unhappy children had variously
+described the complexion of their new fellow pupil, and it was
+believed that the "No'th'n" schoolmaster, aided and abetted by
+"capital" in the person of Hiram Hoover, had introduced either a
+"nigger wench," a "Chinese girl," or an "Injin baby" to the same
+educational privileges as the "pure whites," and so contaminated
+the sons of freemen in their very nests.  He was able to reassure
+many that the child was of Spanish origin, but a majority preferred
+the evidence of their own senses, and lingered for that purpose.
+As the hour for her appearance drew near and passed, he was seized
+with a sudden fear that she might not come, that Mr. Hoover had
+been prevailed upon by his compatriots, in view of the excitement,
+to withdraw her from the school.  But a faint cheer from the bridle
+path satisfied him, and the next moment a little retinue swept by
+the window, and he understood.  The Hoovers had evidently
+determined to accent the Spanish character of their little charge.
+Concha, with a black riding skirt over her flounces, was now
+mounted on a handsome pinto mustang glittering with silver
+trappings, accompanied by a vaquero in a velvet jacket, Mr. Hoover
+bringing up the rear.  He, as he informed the master, had merely
+come to show the way to the vaquero, who hereafter would always
+accompany the child to and from school.  Whether or not he had been
+induced to this display by the excitement did not transpire.
+Enough that the effect was a success.  The riding skirt and her
+mustang's fripperies had added to Concha's piquancy, and if her
+origin was still doubted by some, the child herself was accepted
+with enthusiasm.  The parents who were spectators were proud of
+this distinguished accession to their children's playmates, and
+when she dismounted amid the acclaim of her little companions, it
+was with the aplomb of a queen.
+
+The master alone foresaw trouble in this encouragement of her
+precocious manner.  He received her quietly, and when she had
+removed her riding skirt, glancing at her feet, said approvingly,
+"I am glad to see you have changed your slippers; I hope they fit
+you more firmly than the others."
+
+The child shrugged her shoulders.  "Quien sabe.  But Pedro (the
+vaquero) will help me now on my horse when he comes for me."
+
+The master understood the characteristic non sequitur as an
+allusion to his want of gallantry on the previous day, but took no
+notice of it.  Nevertheless, he was pleased to see during the day
+that she was paying more attention to her studies, although they
+were generally rehearsed with the languid indifference to all
+mental accomplishment which belonged to her race.  Once he thought
+to stimulate her activity through her personal vanity.
+
+"Why can you not learn as quickly as Matilda Bromly?  She is only
+two years older than you," he suggested.
+
+"Ah!  Mother of God!--why does she then try to wear roses like me?
+And with that hair.  It becomes her not."
+
+The master became thus aware for the first time that the elder
+Bromly girl, in "the sincerest form of flattery" to her idol, was
+wearing a yellow rose in her tawny locks, and, further, that Master
+Bromly with exquisite humor had burlesqued his sister's imitation
+with a very small carrot stuck above his left ear.  This the master
+promptly removed, adding an additional sum to the humorist's
+already overflowing slate by way of penance, and returned to
+Concha.  "But wouldn't you like to be as clever as she?--you can if
+you will only learn."
+
+"What for should I?  Look you; she has a devotion for the tall one--
+the boy Brown!  Ah! I want him not."
+
+Yet, notwithstanding this lack of noble ambition, Concha seemed to
+have absorbed the "devotion" of the boys, big and little, and as
+the master presently discovered even that of many of the adult
+population.  There were always loungers on the bridle path at the
+opening and closing of school, and the vaquero, who now always
+accompanied her, became an object of envy.  Possibly this caused
+the master to observe him closely.  He was tall and thin, with a
+smooth complexionless face, but to the master's astonishment he had
+the blue gray eye of the higher or Castilian type of native
+Californian.  Further inquiry proved that he was a son of one of
+the old impoverished Spanish grant holders whose leagues and cattle
+had been mortgaged to the Hoovers, who now retained the son to
+control the live stock "on shares."  "It looks kinder ez ef he
+might hev an eye on that poorty little gal when she's an age to
+marry," suggested a jealous swain.  For several days the girl
+submitted to her school tasks with her usual languid indifference
+and did not again transgress the ordinary rules.  Nor did Mr.
+Brooks again refer to their hopeless conversation.  But one
+afternoon he noticed that in the silence and preoccupation of the
+class she had substituted another volume for her text-book and was
+perusing it with the articulating lips of the unpracticed reader.
+He demanded it from her.  With blazing eyes and both hands thrust
+into her desk she refused and defied him.  Mr. Brooks slipped his
+arms around her waist, quietly lifted her from the bench--feeling
+her little teeth pierce the back of his hand as he did so, but
+secured the book.  Two of the elder boys and girls had risen with
+excited faces.
+
+"Sit down!" said the master sternly.
+
+They resumed their places with awed looks.  The master examined the
+book.  It was a little Spanish prayer book.  "You were reading
+this?" he said in her own tongue.
+
+"Yes.  You shall not prevent me!" she burst out.  "Mother of God!
+THEY will not let me read it at the ranch.  They would take it from
+me.  And now YOU!"
+
+"You may read it when and where you like, except when you should be
+studying your lessons," returned the master quietly.  "You may keep
+it here in your desk and peruse it at recess.  Come to me for it
+then.  You are not fit to read it now."
+
+The girl looked up with astounded eyes, which in the capriciousness
+of her passionate nature the next moment filled with tears.  Then
+dropping on her knees she caught the master's bitten hand and
+covered it with tears and kisses.  But he quietly disengaged it and
+lifted her to her seat.  There was a sniffling sound among the
+benches, which, however, quickly subsided as he glanced around the
+room, and the incident ended.
+
+Regularly thereafter she took her prayer book back at recess and
+disappeared with the children, finding, as he afterwards learned, a
+seat under a secluded buckeye tree, where she was not disturbed by
+them until her orisons were concluded.  The children must have
+remained loyal to some command of hers, for the incident and this
+custom were never told out of school, and the master did not
+consider it his duty to inform Mr. or Mrs. Hoover.  If the child
+could recognize some check--even if it were deemed by some a
+superstitious one--over her capricious and precocious nature, why
+should he interfere?
+
+One day at recess he presently became conscious of the ceasing of
+those small voices in the woods around the schoolhouse, which were
+always as familiar and pleasant to him in his seclusion as the song
+of their playfellows--the birds themselves.  The continued silence
+at last awakened his concern and curiosity.  He had seldom intruded
+upon or participated in their games or amusements, remembering when
+a boy himself the heavy incompatibility of the best intentioned
+adult intruder to even the most hypocritically polite child at such
+a moment.  A sense of duty, however, impelled him to step beyond
+the schoolhouse, where to his astonishment he found the adjacent
+woods empty and soundless.  He was relieved, however, after
+penetrating its recesses, to hear the distant sound of small
+applause and the unmistakable choking gasps of Johnny Stidger's
+pocket accordion.  Following the sound he came at last upon a
+little hollow among the sycamores, where the children were disposed
+in a ring, in the centre of which, with a handkerchief in each
+hand, Concha the melancholy!--Concha the devout!--was dancing that
+most extravagant feat of the fandango--the audacious sembicuaca!
+
+Yet, in spite of her rude and uncertain accompaniment, she was
+dancing it with a grace, precision, and lightness that was
+wonderful; in spite of its doubtful poses and seductive languors
+she was dancing it with the artless gayety and innocence--perhaps
+from the suggestion of her tiny figure--of a mere child among an
+audience of children.  Dancing it alone she assumed the parts of
+the man and woman; advancing, retreating, coquetting, rejecting,
+coyly bewitching, and at last yielding as lightly and as
+immaterially as the flickering shadows that fell upon them from the
+waving trees overhead.  The master was fascinated yet troubled.
+What if there had been older spectators?  Would the parents take
+the performance as innocently as the performer and her little
+audience?  He thought it necessary later to suggest this delicately
+to the child.  Her temper rose, her eyes flashed.
+
+"Ah, the slipper, she is forbidden.  The prayer book--she must not.
+The dance, it is not good.  Truly, there is nothing."
+
+For several days she sulked.  One morning she did not come to
+school, nor the next.  At the close of the third day the master
+called at the Hoovers' ranch.
+
+Mrs. Hoover met him embarrassedly in the hall.  "I was sayin' to
+Hiram he ought to tell ye, but he didn't like to till it was
+certain.  Concha's gone."
+
+"Gone?" echoed the master.
+
+"Yes.  Run off with Pedro.  Married to him yesterday by the Popish
+priest at the mission."
+
+"Married!  That child?"
+
+"She wasn't no child, Mr. Brooks.  We were deceived.  My brother
+was a fool, and men don't understand these things.  She was a grown
+woman--accordin' to these folks' ways and ages--when she kem here.
+And that's what bothered me."
+
+There was a week's excitement at Chestnut Ridge, but it pleased the
+master to know that while the children grieved for the loss of
+Concha they never seemed to understand why she had gone.
+
+
+
+DICK BOYLE'S BUSINESS CARD
+
+
+The Sage Wood and Dead Flat stage coach was waiting before the
+station.  The Pine Barrens mail wagon that connected with it was
+long overdue, with its transfer passengers, and the station had
+relapsed into listless expectation.  Even the humors of Dick Boyle,
+the Chicago "drummer,"--and, so far, the solitary passenger--which
+had diverted the waiting loungers, began to fail in effect, though
+the cheerfulness of the humorist was unabated.  The ostlers had
+slunk back into the stables, the station keeper and stage driver
+had reduced their conversation to impatient monosyllables, as if
+each thought the other responsible for the delay.  A solitary
+Indian, wrapped in a commissary blanket and covered by a cast-off
+tall hat, crouched against the wall of the station looking stolidly
+at nothing.  The station itself, a long, rambling building
+containing its entire accommodation for man and beast under one
+monotonous, shed-like roof, offered nothing to attract the eye.
+Still less the prospect, on the one side two miles of arid waste to
+the stunted, far-spaced pines in the distance, known as the
+"Barrens;" on the other an apparently limitless level with darker
+patches of sage brush, like the scars of burnt-out fires.
+
+Dick Boyle approached the motionless Indian as a possible relief.
+"YOU don't seem to care much if school keeps or not, do you, Lo?"
+
+The Indian, who had been half crouching on his upturned soles, here
+straightened himself with a lithe, animal-like movement, and stood
+up.  Boyle took hold of a corner of his blanket and examined it
+critically.
+
+"Gov'ment ain't pampering you with A1 goods, Lo!  I reckon the
+agent charged 'em four dollars for that.  Our firm could have
+delivered them to you for 2 dols. 37 cents, and thrown in a box of
+beads in the bargain.  Suthin like this!"  He took from his pocket
+a small box containing a gaudy bead necklace and held it up before
+the Indian.
+
+The savage, who had regarded him--or rather looked beyond him--with
+the tolerating indifference of one interrupted by a frisking
+inferior animal, here suddenly changed his expression.  A look of
+childish eagerness came into his gloomy face; he reached out his
+hand for the trinket.
+
+"Hol' on!" said Boyle, hesitating for a moment; then he suddenly
+ejaculated, "Well! take it, and one o' these," and drew a business
+card from his pocket, which he stuck in the band of the battered
+tall hat of the aborigine.  "There! show that to your friends, and
+when you're wantin' anything in our line"--
+
+The interrupting roar of laughter, coming from the box seat of the
+coach, was probably what Boyle was expecting, for he turned away
+demurely and walked towards the coach.  "All right, boys! I've
+squared the noble red man, and the star of empire is taking its
+westward way.  And I reckon our firm will do the 'Great Father'
+business for him at about half the price that it is done in
+Washington."
+
+But at this point the ostlers came hurrying out of the stables.
+"She's comin'," said one.  "That's her dust just behind the Lone
+Pine--and by the way she's racin' I reckon she's comin' in mighty
+light."
+
+"That's so," said the mail agent, standing up on the box seat for a
+better view, "but darned ef I kin see any outside passengers.  I
+reckon we haven't waited for much."
+
+Indeed, as the galloping horses of the incoming vehicle pulled out
+of the hanging dust in the distance, the solitary driver could be
+seen urging on his team.  In a few moments more they had halted at
+the lower end of the station.
+
+"Wonder what's up!" said the mail agent.
+
+"Nothin'!  Only a big Injin scare at Pine Barrens," said one of the
+ostlers.  "Injins doin' ghost dancin'--or suthin like that--and the
+passengers just skunked out and went on by the other line.  Thar's
+only one ez dar come--and she's a lady."
+
+"A lady?" echoed Boyle.
+
+"Yes," answered the driver, taking a deliberate survey of a tall,
+graceful girl who, waiving the gallant assistance of the station
+keeper, had leaped unaided from the vehicle.  "A lady--and the fort
+commandant's darter at that!  She's clar grit, you bet--a chip o'
+the old block.  And all this means, sonny, that you're to give up
+that box seat to HER.  Miss Julia Cantire don't take anythin' less
+when I'm around."
+
+The young lady was already walking, directly and composedly,
+towards the waiting coach--erect, self-contained, well gloved and
+booted, and clothed, even in her dust cloak and cape of plain ashen
+merino, with the unmistakable panoply of taste and superiority.  A
+good-sized aquiline nose, which made her handsome mouth look
+smaller; gray eyes, with an occasional humid yellow sparkle in
+their depths; brown penciled eyebrows, and brown tendrils of hair,
+all seemed to Boyle to be charmingly framed in by the silver gray
+veil twisted around her neck and under her oval chin.  In her sober
+tints she appeared to him to have evoked a harmony even out of the
+dreadful dust around them.  What HE appeared to her was not so
+plain; she looked him over--he was rather short; through him--he
+was easily penetrable; and then her eyes rested with a frank
+recognition on the driver.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Foster," she said, with a smile.
+
+"Mornin', miss.  I hear they're havin' an Injin scare over at the
+Barrens.  I reckon them men must feel mighty mean at bein' stumped
+by a lady!"
+
+"I don't think they believed I would go, and some of them had their
+wives with them," returned the young lady indifferently; "besides,
+they are Eastern people, who don't know Indians as well as WE do,
+Mr. Foster."
+
+The driver blushed with pleasure at the association.  "Yes, ma'am,"
+he laughed, "I reckon the sight of even old 'Fleas in the Blanket'
+over there," pointing to the Indian, who was walking stolidly away
+from the station, "would frighten 'em out o' their boots.  And yet
+he's got inside his hat the business card o' this gentleman--Mr.
+Dick Boyle, traveling for the big firm o' Fletcher & Co. of
+Chicago"--he interpolated, rising suddenly to the formal heights of
+polite introduction; "so it sorter looks ez ef any SKELPIN' was to
+be done it might be the other way round, ha! ha!"
+
+Miss Cantire accepted the introduction and the joke with polite but
+cool abstraction, and climbed lightly into the box seat as the mail
+bags and a quantity of luggage--evidently belonging to the evading
+passengers--were quickly transferred to the coach.  But for his
+fair companion, the driver would probably have given profane voice
+to his conviction that his vehicle was used as a "d----d baggage
+truck," but he only smiled grimly, gathered up his reins, and
+flicked his whip.  The coach plunged forward into the dust, which
+instantly rose around it, and made it thereafter a mere cloud in
+the distance.  Some of that dust for a moment overtook and hid the
+Indian, walking stolidly in its track, but he emerged from it at an
+angle, with a quickened pace and a peculiar halting trot.  Yet that
+trot was so well sustained that in an hour he had reached a fringe
+of rocks and low bushes hitherto invisible through the
+irregularities of the apparently level plain, into which he plunged
+and disappeared.  The dust cloud which indicated the coach--
+probably owing to these same irregularities--had long since been
+lost on the visible horizon.
+
+The fringe which received him was really the rim of a depression
+quite concealed from the surface of the plain,--which it followed
+for some miles through a tangled trough-like bottom of low trees
+and underbrush,--and was a natural cover for wolves, coyotes, and
+occasionally bears, whose half-human footprint might have deceived
+a stranger.  This did not, however, divert the Indian, who,
+trotting still doggedly on, paused only to examine another
+footprint--much more frequent--the smooth, inward-toed track of
+moccasins.  The thicket grew more dense and difficult as he went
+on, yet he seemed to glide through its density and darkness--an
+obscurity that now seemed to be stirred by other moving objects,
+dimly seen, and as uncertain and intangible as sunlit leaves
+thrilled by the wind, yet bearing a strange resemblance to human
+figures!  Pressing a few yards further, he himself presently became
+a part of this shadowy procession, which on closer scrutiny
+revealed itself as a single file of Indians, following each other
+in the same tireless trot.  The woods and underbrush were full of
+them; all moving on, as he had moved, in a line parallel with the
+vanishing coach.  Sometimes through the openings a bared painted
+limb, a crest of feathers, or a strip of gaudy blanket was visible,
+but nothing more.  And yet only a few hundred yards away stretched
+the dusky, silent plain--vacant of sound or motion!
+
+
+Meanwhile the Sage Wood and Pine Barren stage coach, profoundly
+oblivious--after the manner of all human invention--of everything
+but its regular function, toiled dustily out of the higher plain
+and began the grateful descent of a wooded canyon, which was, in
+fact, the culminating point of the depression, just described,
+along which the shadowy procession was slowly advancing, hardly a
+mile in the rear and flank of the vehicle.  Miss Julia Cantire, who
+had faced the dust volleys of the plain unflinchingly, as became a
+soldier's daughter, here stood upright and shook herself--her
+pretty head and figure emerging like a goddess from the enveloping
+silver cloud.  At least Mr. Boyle, relegated to the back seat,
+thought so--although her conversation and attentions had been
+chiefly directed to the driver and mail agent.  Once, when he had
+light-heartedly addressed a remark to her, it had been received
+with a distinct but unpromising politeness that had made him desist
+from further attempts, yet without abatement of his cheerfulness,
+or resentment of the evident amusement his two male companions got
+out of his "snub."  Indeed, it is to be feared that Miss Julia had
+certain prejudices of position, and may have thought that a
+"drummer"--or commercial traveler--was no more fitting company for
+the daughter of a major than an ordinary peddler.  But it was more
+probable that Mr. Boyle's reputation as a humorist--a teller of
+funny stories and a boon companion of men--was inconsistent with
+the feminine ideal of high and exalted manhood.  The man who "sets
+the table in a roar" is apt to be secretly detested by the sex, to
+say nothing of the other obvious reasons why Juliets do not like
+Mercutios!
+
+For some such cause as this Dick Boyle was obliged to amuse himself
+silently, alone on the back seat, with those liberal powers of
+observation which nature had given him.  On entering the canyon he
+had noticed the devious route the coach had taken to reach it, and
+had already invented an improved route which should enter the
+depression at the point where the Indians had already (unknown to
+him) plunged into it, and had conceived a road through the tangled
+brush that would shorten the distance by some miles.  He had
+figured it out, and believed that it "would pay."  But by this time
+they were beginning the somewhat steep and difficult ascent of the
+canyon on the other side.  The vehicle had not crawled many yards
+before it stopped.  Dick Boyle glanced around.  Miss Cantire was
+getting down.  She had expressed a wish to walk the rest of the
+ascent, and the coach was to wait for her at the top.  Foster had
+effusively begged her to take her own time--"there was no hurry!"
+Boyle glanced a little longingly after her graceful figure,
+released from her cramped position on the box, as it flitted
+youthfully in and out of the wayside trees; he would like to have
+joined her in the woodland ramble, but even his good nature was not
+proof against her indifference.  At a turn in the road they lost
+sight of her, and, as the driver and mail agent were deep in a
+discussion about the indistinct track, Boyle lapsed into his silent
+study of the country.  Suddenly he uttered a slight exclamation,
+and quietly slipped from the back of the toiling coach to the
+ground.  The action was, however, quickly noted by the driver, who
+promptly put his foot on the brake and pulled up.  "Wot's up now?"
+he growled.
+
+Boyle did not reply, but ran back a few steps and began searching
+eagerly on the ground.
+
+"Lost suthin?" asked Foster.
+
+"Found something," said Boyle, picking up a small object.  "Look at
+that!  D----d if it isn't the card I gave that Indian four hours
+ago at the station!"  He held up the card.
+
+"Look yer, sonny," retorted Foster gravely, "ef yer wantin' to get
+out and hang round Miss Cantire, why don't yer say so at oncet?
+That story won't wash!"
+
+"Fact!" continued Boyle eagerly.  "It's the same card I stuck in
+his hat--there's the greasy mark in the corner.  How the devil did
+it--how did HE get here?"
+
+"Better ax him," said Foster grimly, "ef he's anywhere round."
+
+"But I say, Foster, I don't like the look of this at all!  Miss
+Cantire is alone, and"--
+
+But a burst of laughter from Foster and the mail agent interrupted
+him.  "That's so," said Foster.  "That's your best holt!  Keep it
+up!  You jest tell her that!  Say thar's another Injin skeer on;
+that that thar bloodthirsty ole 'Fleas in His Blanket' is on the
+warpath, and you're goin' to shed the last drop o' your blood
+defendin' her!  That'll fetch her, and she ain't bin treatin' you
+well!  G'lang!"
+
+The horses started forward under Foster's whip, leaving Boyle
+standing there, half inclined to join in the laugh against himself,
+and yet impelled by some strange instinct to take a more serious
+view of his discovery.  There was no doubt it was the same card he
+had given to the Indian.  True, that Indian might have given it to
+another--yet by what agency had it been brought there faster than
+the coach traveled on the same road, and yet invisibly to them?
+For an instant the humorous idea of literally accepting Foster's
+challenge, and communicating his discovery to Miss Cantire,
+occurred to him; he could have made a funny story out of it, and
+could have amused any other girl with it, but he would not force
+himself upon her, and again doubted if the discovery were a matter
+of amusement.  If it were really serious, why should he alarm her?
+He resolved, however, to remain on the road, and within convenient
+distance of her, until she returned to the coach; she could not be
+far away.  With this purpose he walked slowly on, halting
+occasionally to look behind.
+
+Meantime the coach continued its difficult ascent, a difficulty
+made greater by the singular nervousness of the horses, that only
+with great trouble and some objurgation from the driver could be
+prevented from shying from the regular track.
+
+"Now, wot's gone o' them critters?" said the irate Foster,
+straining at the reins until he seemed to lift the leader back into
+the track again.
+
+"Looks as ef they smelt suthin--b'ar or Injin ponies," suggested
+the mail agent.
+
+"Injin ponies?" repeated Foster scornfully.
+
+"Fac'!  Injin ponies set a hoss crazy--jest as wild hosses would!"
+
+"Whar's yer Injin ponies?" demanded Foster incredulously.
+
+"Dunno," said the mail agent simply.
+
+But here the horses again swerved so madly from some point of the
+thicket beside them that the coach completely left the track on the
+right.  Luckily it was a disused trail and the ground fairly good,
+and Foster gave them their heads, satisfied of his ability to
+regain the regular road when necessary.  It took some moments for
+him to recover complete control of the frightened animals, and then
+their nervousness having abated with their distance from the
+thicket, and the trail being less steep though more winding than
+the regular road, he concluded to keep it until he got to the
+summit, when he would regain the highway once more and await his
+passengers.  Having done this, the two men stood up on the box, and
+with an anxiety they tried to conceal from each other looked down
+the canyon for the lagging pedestrians.
+
+"I hope Miss Cantire hasn't been stampeded from the track by any
+skeer like that," said the mail agent dubiously.
+
+"Not she!  She's got too much grit and sabe for that, unless that
+drummer hez caught up with her and unloaded his yarn about that
+kyard."
+
+They were the last words the men spoke.  For two rifle shots
+cracked from the thicket beside the road; two shots aimed with such
+deliberateness and precision that the two men, mortally stricken,
+collapsed where they stood, hanging for a brief moment over the
+dashboard before they rolled over on the horses' backs.  Nor did
+they remain there long, for the next moment they were seized by
+half a dozen shadowy figures and with the horses and their cut
+traces dragged into the thicket.  A half dozen and then a dozen
+other shadows flitted and swarmed over, in, and through the coach,
+reinforced by still more, until the whole vehicle seemed to be
+possessed, covered, and hidden by them, swaying and moving with
+their weight, like helpless carrion beneath a pack of ravenous
+wolves.  Yet even while this seething congregation was at its
+greatest, at some unknown signal it as suddenly dispersed,
+vanished, and disappeared, leaving the coach empty--vacant and void
+of all that had given it life, weight, animation, and purpose--a
+mere skeleton on the roadside.  The afternoon wind blew through its
+open doors and ravaged rack and box as if it had been the wreck of
+weeks instead of minutes, and the level rays of the setting sun
+flashed and blazed into its windows as though fire had been added
+to the ruin.  But even this presently faded, leaving the abandoned
+coach a rigid, lifeless spectre on the twilight plain.
+
+An hour later there was the sound of hurrying hoofs and jingling
+accoutrements, and out of the plain swept a squad of cavalrymen
+bearing down upon the deserted vehicle.  For a few moments they,
+too, seemed to surround and possess it, even as the other shadows
+had done, penetrating the woods and thicket beside it.  And then as
+suddenly at some signal they swept forward furiously in the track
+of the destroying shadows.
+
+
+Miss Cantire took full advantage of the suggestion "not to hurry"
+in her walk, with certain feminine ideas of its latitude.  She
+gathered a few wild flowers and some berries in the underwood,
+inspected some birds' nests with a healthy youthful curiosity, and
+even took the opportunity of arranging some moist tendrils of her
+silky hair with something she took from the small reticule that
+hung coquettishly from her girdle.  It was, indeed, some twenty
+minutes before she emerged into the road again; the vehicle had
+evidently disappeared in a turn of the long, winding ascent, but
+just ahead of her was that dreadful man, the "Chicago drummer."
+She was not vain, but she made no doubt that he was waiting there
+for her.  There was no avoiding him, but his companionship could be
+made a brief one.  She began to walk with ostentatious swiftness.
+
+Boyle, whose concern for her safety was secretly relieved at this,
+began to walk forward briskly too without looking around.  Miss
+Cantire was not prepared for this; it looked so ridiculously as if
+she were chasing him!  She hesitated slightly, but now as she was
+nearly abreast of him she was obliged to keep on.
+
+"I think you do well to hurry, Miss Cantire," he said as she
+passed.  "I've lost sight of the coach for some time, and I dare
+say they're already waiting for us at the summit."
+
+Miss Cantire did not like this any better.  To go on beside this
+dreadful man, scrambling breathlessly after the stage--for all the
+world like an absorbed and sentimentally belated pair of
+picnickers--was really TOO much.  "Perhaps if YOU ran on and told
+them I was coming as fast as I could," she suggested tentatively.
+
+"It would be as much as my life is worth to appear before Foster
+without you," he said laughingly.  "You've only got to hurry on a
+little faster."
+
+But the young lady resented this being driven by a "drummer."  She
+began to lag, depressing her pretty brows ominously.
+
+"Let me carry your flowers," said Boyle.  He had noticed that she
+was finding some difficulty in holding up her skirt and the nosegay
+at the same time.
+
+"No! No!" she said in hurried horror at this new suggestion of
+their companionship.  "Thank you very much--but they're really not
+worth keeping--I am going to throw them away.  There!" she added,
+tossing them impatiently in the dust.
+
+But she had not reckoned on Boyle's perfect good-humor.  That
+gentle idiot stooped down, actually gathered them up again, and was
+following!  She hurried on; if she could only get to the coach
+first, ignoring him!  But a vulgar man like that would be sure to
+hand them to her with some joke!  Then she lagged again--she was
+getting tired, and she could see no sign of the coach.  The
+drummer, too, was also lagging behind--at a respectful distance,
+like a groom or one of her father's troopers.  Nevertheless this
+did not put her in a much better humor, and halting until he came
+abreast of her, she said impatiently: "I don't see why Mr. Foster
+should think it necessary to send any one to look after me."
+
+"He didn't," returned Boyle simply.  "I got down to pick up
+something."
+
+"To pick up something?" she returned incredulously.
+
+"Yes.  THAT."  He held out the card.  "It's the card of our firm."
+
+Miss Cantire smiled ironically.  "You are certainly devoted to your
+business."
+
+"Well, yes," returned Boyle good-humoredly.  "You see I reckon it
+don't pay to do anything halfway.  And whatever I do, I mean to
+keep my eyes about me."  In spite of her prejudice, Miss Cantire
+could see that these necessary organs, if rather flippant, were
+honest.  "Yes, I suppose there isn't much on that I don't take in.
+Why now, Miss Cantire, there's that fancy dust cloak you're
+wearing--it isn't in our line of goods--nor in anybody's line west
+of Chicago; it came from Boston or New York, and was made for home
+consumption!  But your hat--and mighty pretty it is too, as YOU'VE
+fixed it up--is only regular Dunstable stock, which we could put
+down at Pine Barrens for four and a half cents a piece, net.  Yet I
+suppose you paid nearly twenty-five cents for it at the Agency!"
+
+Oddly enough this cool appraisement of her costume did not incense
+the young lady as it ought to have done.  On the contrary, for some
+occult feminine reason, it amused and interested her.  It would be
+such a good story to tell her friends of a "drummer's" idea of
+gallantry; and to tease the flirtatious young West Pointer who had
+just joined.  And the appraisement was truthful--Major Cantire had
+only his pay--and Miss Cantire had been obliged to select that hat
+from the government stores.
+
+"Are you in the habit of giving this information to ladies you meet
+in traveling?" she asked.
+
+"Well, no!" answered Boyle--"for that's just where you have to keep
+your eyes open.  Most of 'em wouldn't like it, and it's no use
+aggravating a possible customer.  But you are not that kind."
+
+Miss Cantire was silent.  She knew she was not of that kind, but
+she did not require his vulgar indorsement.  She pushed on for some
+moments alone, when suddenly he hailed her.  She turned
+impatiently.  He was carefully examining the road on both sides.
+
+"We have either lost our way," he said, rejoining her, "or the
+coach has turned off somewhere.  These tracks are not fresh, and as
+they are all going the same way, they were made by the up coach
+last night.  They're not OUR tracks; I thought it strange we hadn't
+sighted the coach by this time."
+
+"And then"--said Miss Cantire impatiently.
+
+"We must turn back until we find them again."
+
+The young lady frowned.  "Why not keep on until we get to the top?"
+she said pettishly.  "I'm sure I shall."  She stopped suddenly as
+she caught sight of his grave face and keen, observant eyes.  "Why
+can't we go on as we are?"
+
+"Because we are expected to come back to the COACH--and not to the
+summit merely.  These are the 'orders,' and you know you are a
+soldier's daughter!"  He laughed as he spoke, but there was a
+certain quiet deliberation in his manner that impressed her.  When
+he added, after a pause, "We must go back and find where the tracks
+turned off," she obeyed without a word.
+
+They walked for some time, eagerly searching for signs of the
+missing vehicle.  A curious interest and a new reliance in Boyle's
+judgment obliterated her previous annoyance, and made her more
+natural.  She ran ahead of him with youthful eagerness, examining
+the ground, following a false clue with great animation, and
+confessing her defeat with a charming laugh.  And it was she who,
+after retracing their steps for ten minutes, found the diverging
+track with a girlish cry of triumph.  Boyle, who had followed her
+movements quite as interestedly as her discovery, looked a little
+grave as he noticed the deep indentations made by the struggling
+horses.  Miss Cantire detected the change in his face; ten minutes
+before she would never have observed it.  "I suppose we had better
+follow the new track," she said inquiringly, as he seemed to
+hesitate.
+
+"Certainly," he said quickly, as if coming to a prompt decision.
+"That is safest."
+
+"What do you think has happened?  The ground looks very much cut
+up," she said in a confidential tone, as new to her as her previous
+observation of him.
+
+"A horse has probably stumbled and they've taken the old trail as
+less difficult," said Boyle promptly.  In his heart he did not
+believe it, yet he knew that if anything serious had threatened
+them the coach would have waited in the road.  "It's an easier
+trail for us, though I suppose it's a little longer," he added
+presently.
+
+"You take everything so good-humoredly, Mr. Boyle," she said after
+a pause.
+
+"It's the way to do business, Miss Cantire," he said.  "A man in my
+line has to cultivate it."
+
+She wished he hadn't said that, but, nevertheless, she returned a
+little archly: "But you haven't any business with the stage company
+nor with ME, although I admit I intend to get my Dunstable
+hereafter from your firm at the wholesale prices."
+
+Before he could reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by
+distance, floated down from the ridge above them.  "There!" said
+Miss Cantire eagerly.  "Do you hear that?"
+
+His face was turned towards the distant ridge, but really that she
+might not question his eyes.  She continued with animation: "That's
+from the coach--to guide us--don't you see?"
+
+"Yes," he returned, with a quick laugh, "and it says hurry up--
+mighty quick--we're tired waiting--so we'd better push on."
+
+"Why don't you answer back with your revolver?" she asked.
+
+"Haven't got one," he said.
+
+"Haven't got one?" she repeated in genuine surprise.  "I thought
+you gentlemen who are traveling always carried one.  Perhaps it's
+inconsistent with your gospel of good-humor."
+
+"That's just it, Miss Cantire," he said with a laugh.  "You've hit
+it."
+
+"Why," she said hesitatingly, "even I have a derringer--a very
+little one, you know, which I carry in my reticule.  Captain
+Richards gave it to me."  She opened her reticule and showed a
+pretty ivory-handled pistol.  The look of joyful surprise which
+came into his face changed quickly as she cocked it and lifted it
+into the air.  He seized her arm quickly.
+
+"No, please don't, you might want it--I mean the report won't carry
+far enough.  It's a very useful little thing, for all that, but
+it's only effective at close quarters."  He kept the pistol in his
+hand as they walked on.  But Miss Cantire noticed this, also his
+evident satisfaction when she had at first produced it, and his
+concern when she was about to discharge it uselessly.  She was a
+clever girl, and a frank one to those she was inclined to trust.
+And she began to trust this stranger.  A smile stole along her oval
+cheek.
+
+"I really believe you're afraid of something, Mr. Boyle," she said,
+without looking up.  "What is it?  You haven't got that Indian
+scare too?"
+
+Boyle had no false shame.  "I think I have," he returned, with
+equal frankness.  "You see, I don't understand Indians as well as
+you--and Foster."
+
+"Well, you take my word and Foster's that there is not the least
+danger from them.  About here they are merely grown-up children,
+cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their
+masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are
+over.  The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving.
+Even then they only steal what they actually want,--horses, guns,
+and powder.  A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant
+wagon can't.  So your trunk of samples is quite safe with Foster."
+
+Boyle did not think it necessary to protest.  Perhaps he was
+thinking of something else.
+
+"I've a mind," she went on slyly, "to tell you something more.
+Confidence for confidence: as you've told me YOUR trade secrets,
+I'll tell you one of OURS.  Before we left Pine Barrens, my father
+ordered a small escort of cavalrymen to be in readiness to join
+that coach if the scouts, who were watching, thought it necessary.
+So, you see, I'm something of a fraud as regards my reputation for
+courage."
+
+"That doesn't follow," said Boyle admiringly, "for your father must
+have thought there was some danger, or he wouldn't have taken that
+precaution."
+
+"Oh, it wasn't for me," said the young girl quickly.
+
+"Not for you?" repeated Boyle.
+
+Miss Cantire stopped short, with a pretty flush of color and an
+adorable laugh.  "There! I've done it, so I might as well tell the
+whole story.  But I can trust you, Mr. Boyle."  (She faced him with
+clear, penetrating eyes.)  "Well," she laughed again, "you might
+have noticed that we had a quantity of baggage of passengers who
+didn't go?  Well, those passengers never intended to go, and hadn't
+any baggage!  Do you understand?  Those innocent-looking heavy
+trunks contained carbines and cartridges from our post for Fort
+Taylor"--she made him a mischievous curtsy--"under MY charge!
+And," she added, enjoying his astonishment, "as you saw, I brought
+them through safe to the station, and had them transferred to this
+coach with less fuss and trouble than a commissary transport and
+escort would have made."
+
+"And they were in THIS coach?" repeated Boyle abstractedly.
+
+"Were?  They ARE!" said Miss Cantire.
+
+"Then the sooner I get you back to your treasure again the better,"
+said Boyle with a laugh.  "Does Foster know it?"
+
+"Of course not!  Do you suppose I'd tell it to anybody but a
+stranger to the place?  Perhaps, like you, I know when and to whom
+to impart information," she said mischievously.
+
+Whatever was in Boyle's mind he had space for profound and admiring
+astonishment of the young lady before him.  The girlish simplicity
+and trustfulness of her revelation seemed as inconsistent with his
+previous impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish
+reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her
+tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure.  Mr. Boyle, like
+most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size.
+
+They walked on for some moments in silence.  The ascent was
+comparatively easy but devious, and Boyle could see that this new
+detour would take them still some time to reach the summit.  Miss
+Cantire at last voiced the thought in his own mind.  "I wonder what
+induced them to turn off here? and if you hadn't been so clever as
+to discover their tracks, how could we have found them?  But," she
+added, with feminine logic, "that, of course, is why they fired
+those shots."
+
+Boyle remembered, however, that the shots came from another
+direction, but did not correct her conclusion.  Nevertheless he
+said lightly: "Perhaps even Foster might have had an Indian scare."
+
+"He ought to know 'friendlies' or 'government reservation men'
+better by this time," said Miss Cantire; "however, there is
+something in that.  Do you know," she added with a laugh, "though I
+haven't your keen eyes I'm gifted with a keen scent, and once or
+twice I've thought I SMELT Indians--that peculiar odor of their
+camps, which is unlike anything else, and which one detects even in
+their ponies.  I used to notice it when I rode one; no amount of
+grooming could take it away."
+
+"I don't suppose that the intensity or degree of this odor would
+give you any idea of the hostile or friendly feelings of the
+Indians towards you?" asked Boyle grimly.
+
+Although the remark was consistent with Boyle's objectionable
+reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a
+smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security
+so far, and their nearness to their journey's end, developed
+further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood
+upon the plain again.
+
+There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible
+leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of
+the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had
+indubitably returned.  Mr. Boyle drew a long breath.  They were
+comparatively safe from any invisible attack now.  At the end of
+ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the
+top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at
+the junction of the highway.
+
+"Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?" she said,
+glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, they're too ridiculous.  Please do."
+
+"May I keep one?" he asked, with the first intonation of masculine
+weakness in his voice.
+
+"If you like," she said, a little coldly.
+
+Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers
+obediently aside.
+
+"Dear me, how ridiculous!" she said.
+
+"What is ridiculous?" he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a
+slight color.  But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the
+distance.
+
+"Why, there don't seem to be any horses to the coach!"
+
+He looked.  Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now
+quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone.  He glanced
+hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them
+from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the
+plain.  "Sit down, don't move until I return," he said quickly.
+"Take that."  He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the
+coach.  It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its
+dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste
+of its desertion!  A light step behind him made him turn.  It was
+Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the cocked derringer in
+her hand.  "How foolish of you--without a weapon," she gasped in
+explanation.
+
+Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each
+other!  After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their
+protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a
+suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle--
+apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment--
+that it instinctively affected them alike.  And as I am writing of
+human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit
+of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!
+
+"It was so kind of them to leave the coach," said Miss Cantire
+faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful
+eyes.  "But what made them run away?"
+
+Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach.  In that
+brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon
+it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested
+the awful truth.  Even the soft imprint of the Indians' moccasined
+feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the
+cavalrymen.  It was these that first attracted Boyle's attention,
+but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released
+coach horses.
+
+Not so his companion!  She was examining them more closely, and
+suddenly lifted her bright, animated face.  "Look!" she said; "our
+men have been here, and have had a hand in this--whatever it is."
+
+"Our men?" repeated Boyle blankly.
+
+"Yes!--troopers from the post--the escort I told you of.  These are
+the prints of the regulation cavalry horseshoe--not of Foster's
+team, nor of Indian ponies, who never have any!  Don't you see?"
+she went on eagerly; "our men have got wind of something and have
+galloped down here--along the ridge--see!" she went on, pointing to
+the hoof prints coming from the plain.  "They've anticipated some
+Indian attack and secured everything."
+
+"But if they were the same escort you spoke of, they must have
+known you were here, and have"--he was about to say "abandoned
+you," but checked himself, remembering they were her father's
+soldiers.
+
+"They knew I could take care of myself, and wouldn't stand in the
+way of their duty," said the young girl, anticipating him with
+quick professional pride that seemed to fit her aquiline nose and
+tall figure.  "And if they knew that," she added, softening with a
+mischievous smile, "they also knew, of course, that I was protected
+by a gallant stranger vouched for by Mr. Foster!  No!" she added,
+with a certain blind, devoted confidence, which Boyle noticed with
+a slight wince that she had never shown before, "it's all right!
+and 'by orders,' Mr. Boyle, and when they've done their work
+they'll be back."
+
+But Boyle's masculine common sense was, perhaps, safer than Miss
+Cantire's feminine faith and inherited discipline, for in an
+instant he suddenly comprehended the actual truth!  The Indians had
+been there FIRST; THEY had despoiled the coach and got off safely
+with their booty and prisoners on the approach of the escort, who
+were now naturally pursuing them with a fury aroused by the belief
+that their commander's daughter was one of their prisoners.  This
+conviction was a dreadful one, yet a relief as far as the young
+girl was concerned.  But should he tell her?  No!  Better that she
+should keep her calm faith in the triumphant promptness of the
+soldiers--and their speedy return.
+
+"I dare say you are right," he said cheerfully, "and let us be
+thankful that in the empty coach you'll have at least a half-
+civilized shelter until they return.  Meantime I'll go and
+reconnoitre a little."
+
+"I will go with you," she said.
+
+But Boyle pointed out to her so strongly the necessity of her
+remaining to wait for the return of the soldiers that, being also
+fagged out by her long climb, she obediently consented, while he,
+even with his inspiration of the truth, did not believe in the
+return of the despoilers, and knew she would be safe.
+
+He made his way to the nearest thicket, where he rightly believed
+the ambush had been prepared, and to which undoubtedly they first
+retreated with their booty.  He expected to find some signs or
+traces of their spoil which in their haste they had to abandon.  He
+was more successful than he anticipated.  A few steps into the
+thicket brought him full upon a realization of more than his worst
+convictions--the dead body of Foster!  Near it lay the body of the
+mail agent.  Both had been evidently dragged into the thicket from
+where they fell, scalped and half stripped.  There was no evidence
+of any later struggle; they must have been dead when they were
+brought there.
+
+Boyle was neither a hard-hearted nor an unduly sensitive man.  His
+vocation had brought him peril enough by land and water; he had
+often rendered valuable assistance to others, his sympathy never
+confusing his directness and common sense.  He was sorry for these
+two men, and would have fought to save them.  But he had no
+imaginative ideas of death.  And his keen perception of the truth
+was consequently sensitively alive only to that grotesqueness of
+aspect which too often the hapless victims of violence are apt to
+assume.  He saw no agony in the vacant eyes of the two men lying on
+their backs in apparently the complacent abandonment of
+drunkenness, which was further simulated by their tumbled and
+disordered hair matted by coagulated blood, which, however, had
+lost its sanguine color.  He thought only of the unsuspecting girl
+sitting in the lonely coach, and hurriedly dragged them further
+into the bushes.  In doing this he discovered a loaded revolver and
+a flask of spirits which had been lying under them, and promptly
+secured them.  A few paces away lay the coveted trunks of arms and
+ammunition, their lids wrenched off and their contents gone.  He
+noticed with a grim smile that his own trunks of samples had shared
+a like fate, but was delighted to find that while the brighter
+trifles had attracted the Indians' childish cupidity they had
+overlooked a heavy black merino shawl of a cheap but serviceable
+quality.  It would help to protect Miss Cantire from the evening
+wind, which was already rising over the chill and stark plain.  It
+also occurred to him that she would need water after her parched
+journey, and he resolved to look for a spring, being rewarded at
+last by a trickling rill near the ambush camp.  But he had no
+utensil except the spirit flask, which he finally emptied of its
+contents and replaced with the pure water--a heroic sacrifice to a
+traveler who knew the comfort of a stimulant.  He retraced his
+steps, and was just emerging from the thicket when his quick eye
+caught sight of a moving shadow before him close to the ground,
+which set the hot blood coursing through his veins.
+
+It was the figure of an Indian crawling on his hands and knees
+towards the coach, scarcely forty yards away.  For the first time
+that afternoon Boyle's calm good-humor was overswept by a blind and
+furious rage.  Yet even then he was sane enough to remember that a
+pistol shot would alarm the girl, and to keep that weapon as a last
+resource.  For an instant he crept forward as silently and
+stealthily as the savage, and then, with a sudden bound, leaped
+upon him, driving his head and shoulders down against the rocks
+before he could utter a cry, and sending the scalping knife he was
+carrying between his teeth flying with the shock from his battered
+jaw.  Boyle seized it--his knee still in the man's back--but the
+prostrate body never moved beyond a slight contraction of the lower
+limbs.  The shock had broken the Indian's neck.  He turned the
+inert man on his back--the head hung loosely on the side.  But in
+that brief instant Boyle had recognized the "friendly" Indian of
+the station to whom he had given the card.
+
+He rose dizzily to his feet.  The whole action had passed in a few
+seconds of time, and had not even been noticed by the sole occupant
+of the coach.  He mechanically cocked his revolver, but the man
+beneath him never moved again.  Neither was there any sign of
+flight or reinforcement from the thicket around him.  Again the
+whole truth flashed upon him.  This spy and traitor had been left
+behind by the marauders to return to the station and avert
+suspicion; he had been lurking around, but being without firearms,
+had not dared to attack the pair together.
+
+It was a moment or two before Boyle regained his usual elastic
+good-humor.  Then he coolly returned to the spring, "washed himself
+of the Indian," as he grimly expressed it to himself, brushed his
+clothes, picked up the shawl and flask, and returned to the coach.
+It was getting dark now, but the glow of the western sky shone
+unimpeded through the windows, and the silence gave him a great
+fear.  He was relieved, however, on opening the door, to find Miss
+Cantire sitting stiffly in a corner.  "I am sorry I was so long,"
+he said, apologetically to her attitude, "but"--
+
+"I suppose you took your own time," she interrupted in a voice of
+injured tolerance.  "I don't blame you; anything's better than
+being cooped up in this tiresome stage for goodness knows how
+long!"
+
+"I was hunting for water," he said humbly, "and have brought you
+some."  He handed her the flask.
+
+"And I see you have had a wash," she said a little enviously.  "How
+spick and span you look!  But what's the matter with your necktie?"
+
+He put his hand to his neck hurriedly.  His necktie was loose, and
+had twisted to one side in the struggle.  He colored quite as much
+from the sensitiveness of a studiously neat man as from the fear of
+discovery.  "And what's that?" she added, pointing to the shawl.
+
+"One of my samples that I suppose was turned out of the coach and
+forgotten in the transfer," he said glibly.  "I thought it might
+keep you warm."
+
+She looked at it dubiously and laid it gingerly aside.  "You don't
+mean to say you go about with such things OPENLY?" she said
+querulously.
+
+"Yes; one mustn't lose a chance of trade, you know," he resumed
+with a smile.
+
+"And you haven't found this journey very profitable," she said
+dryly.  "You certainly are devoted to your business!"  After a
+pause, discontentedly: "It's quite night already--we can't sit here
+in the dark."
+
+"We can take one of the coach lamps inside; they're still there.
+I've been thinking the matter over, and I reckon if we leave one
+lighted outside the coach it may guide your friends back."  He HAD
+considered it, and believed that the audacity of the act, coupled
+with the knowledge the Indians must have of the presence of the
+soldiers in the vicinity, would deter rather than invite their
+approach.
+
+She brightened considerably with the coach lamp which he lit and
+brought inside.  By its light she watched him curiously.  His face
+was slightly flushed and his eyes very bright and keen looking.
+Man killing, except with old professional hands, has the
+disadvantage of affecting the circulation.
+
+But Miss Cantire had noticed that the flask smelt of whiskey.  The
+poor man had probably fortified himself from the fatigues of the
+day.
+
+"I suppose you are getting bored by this delay," she said
+tentatively.
+
+"Not at all," he replied.  "Would you like to play cards?  I've got
+a pack in my pocket.  We can use the middle seat as a table, and
+hang the lantern by the window strap."
+
+She assented languidly from the back seat; he was on the front
+seat, with the middle seat for a table between them.  First Mr.
+Boyle showed her some tricks with the cards and kindled her
+momentary and flashing interest in a mysteriously evoked but
+evanescent knave.  Then they played euchre, at which Miss Cantire
+cheated adorably, and Mr. Boyle lost game after game shamelessly.
+Then once or twice Miss Cantire was fain to put her cards to her
+mouth to conceal an apologetic yawn, and her blue-veined eyelids
+grew heavy.  Whereupon Mr. Boyle suggested that she should make
+herself comfortable in the corner of the coach with as many
+cushions as she liked and the despised shawl, while he took the
+night air in a prowl around the coach and a lookout for the
+returning party.  Doing so, he was delighted, after a turn or two,
+to find her asleep, and so returned contentedly to his sentry
+round.
+
+He was some distance from the coach when a low moaning sound in the
+thicket presently increased until it rose and fell in a prolonged
+howl that was repeated from the darkened plains beyond.  He
+recognized the voice of wolves; he instinctively felt the sickening
+cause of it.  They had scented the dead bodies, and he now
+regretted that he had left his own victim so near the coach.  He
+was hastening thither when a cry, this time human and more
+terrifying, came from the coach.  He turned towards it as its door
+flew open and Miss Cantire came rushing toward him.  Her face was
+colorless, her eyes wild with fear, and her tall, slim figure
+trembled convulsively as she frantically caught at the lapels of
+his coat, as if to hide herself within its folds, and gasped
+breathlessly,--
+
+"What is it?  Oh! Mr. Boyle, save me!"
+
+"They are wolves," he said hurriedly.  "But there is no danger;
+they would never attack you; you were safe where you were; let me
+lead you back."
+
+But she remained rooted to the spot, still clinging desperately to
+his coat.  "No, no!" she said, "I dare not!  I heard that awful cry
+in my sleep.  I looked out and saw it--a dreadful creature with
+yellow eyes and tongue, and a sickening breath as it passed between
+the wheels just below me.  Ah!  What's that?" and she again lapsed
+in nervous terror against him.
+
+Boyle passed his arm around her promptly, firmly, masterfully.  She
+seemed to feel the implied protection, and yielded to it
+gratefully, with the further breakdown of a sob.  "There is no
+danger," he repeated cheerfully.  "Wolves are not good to look at,
+I know, but they wouldn't have attacked you.  The beast only scents
+some carrion on the plain, and you probably frightened him more
+than he did you.  Lean on me," he continued as her step tottered;
+"you will be better in the coach."
+
+"And you won't leave me alone again?" she said in hesitating terror.
+
+"No!"
+
+He supported her to the coach gravely, gently--her master and still
+more his own for all that her beautiful loosened hair was against
+his cheek and shoulder, its perfume in his nostrils, and the
+contour of her lithe and perfect figure against his own.  He helped
+her back into the coach, with the aid of the cushions and shawl
+arranged a reclining couch for her on the back seat, and then
+resumed his old place patiently.  By degrees the color came back to
+her face--as much of it as was not hidden by her handkerchief.
+
+Then a tremulous voice behind it began a half-smothered apology.
+"I am SO ashamed, Mr. Boyle--I really could not help it!  But it
+was so sudden--and so horrible--I shouldn't have been afraid of it
+had it been really an Indian with a scalping knife--instead of that
+beast!  I don't know why I did it--but I was alone--and seemed to
+be dead--and you were dead too and they were coming to eat me!
+They do, you know--you said so just now!  Perhaps I was dreaming.
+I don't know what you must think of me--I had no idea I was such a
+coward!"
+
+But Boyle protested indignantly.  He was sure if HE had been asleep
+and had not known what wolves were before, he would have been
+equally frightened.  She must try to go to sleep again--he was sure
+she could--and he would not stir from the coach until she waked, or
+her friends came.
+
+She grew quieter presently, and took away the handkerchief from a
+mouth that smiled though it still quivered; then reaction began,
+and her tired nerves brought her languor and finally repose.  Boyle
+watched the shadows thicken around her long lashes until they lay
+softly on the faint flush that sleep was bringing to her cheek; her
+delicate lips parted, and her quick breath at last came with the
+regularity of slumber.
+
+So she slept, and he, sitting silently opposite her, dreamed--the
+old dream that comes to most good men and true once in their lives.
+He scarcely moved until the dawn lightened with opal the dreary
+plain, bringing back the horizon and day, when he woke from his
+dream with a sigh, and then a laugh.  Then he listened for the
+sound of distant hoofs, and hearing them, crept noiselessly from
+the coach.  A compact body of horsemen were bearing down upon it.
+He rose quickly to meet them, and throwing up his hand, brought
+them to a halt at some distance from the coach.  They spread out,
+resolving themselves into a dozen troopers and a smart young cadet-
+like officer.
+
+"If you are seeking Miss Cantire," he said in a quiet, businesslike
+tone, "she is quite safe in the coach and asleep.  She knows
+nothing yet of what has happened, and believes it is you who have
+taken everything away for security against an Indian attack.  She
+has had a pretty rough night--what with her fatigue and her alarm
+at the wolves--and I thought it best to keep the truth from her as
+long as possible, and I would advise you to break it to her
+gently."  He then briefly told the story of their experiences,
+omitting only his own personal encounter with the Indian.  A new
+pride, which was perhaps the result of his vigil, prevented him.
+
+The young officer glanced at him with as much courtesy as might be
+afforded to a civilian intruding upon active military operations.
+"I am sure Major Cantire will be greatly obliged to you when he
+knows it," he said politely, "and as we intend to harness up and
+take the coach back to Sage Wood Station immediately, you will have
+an opportunity of telling him."
+
+"I am not going back by the coach to Sage Wood," said Boyle
+quietly.  "I have already lost twelve hours of my time--as well as
+my trunk--on this picnic, and I reckon the least Major Cantire can
+do is to let me take one of your horses to the next station in time
+to catch the down coach.  I can do it, if I set out at once."
+
+Boyle heard his name, with the familiar prefix of "Dicky," given to
+the officer by a commissary sergeant, whom he recognized as having
+met at the Agency, and the words "Chicago drummer " added, while a
+perceptible smile went throughout the group.  "Very well, sir,"
+said the officer, with a familiarity a shade less respectful than
+his previous formal manner.  "You can take the horse, as I believe
+the Indians have already made free with your samples.  Give him a
+mount, sergeant."
+
+The two men walked towards the coach.  Boyle lingered a moment at
+the window to show him the figure of Miss Cantire still peacefully
+slumbering among her pile of cushions, and then turned quietly
+away.  A moment later he was galloping on one of the troopers'
+horses across the empty plain.
+
+
+Miss Cantire awoke presently to the sound of a familiar voice and
+the sight of figures that she knew.  But the young officer's first
+words of explanation--a guarded account of the pursuit of the
+Indians and the recapture of the arms, suppressing the killing of
+Foster and the mail agent--brought a change to her brightened face
+and a wrinkle to her pretty brow.
+
+"But Mr. Boyle said nothing of this to me," she said, sitting up.
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Already on his way to the next station on one of our horses!
+Wanted to catch the down stage and get a new box of samples, I
+fancy, as the braves had rigged themselves out with his laces and
+ribbons.  Said he'd lost time enough on this picnic," returned the
+young officer, with a laugh.  "Smart business chap; but I hope he
+didn't bore you?"
+
+Miss Cantire felt her cheek flush, and bit her lip.  "I found him
+most kind and considerate, Mr. Ashford," she said coldly.  "He may
+have thought the escort could have joined the coach a little
+earlier, and saved all this; but he was too much of a gentleman to
+say anything about it to ME," she added dryly, with a slight
+elevation of her aquiline nose.
+
+Nevertheless Boyle's last words stung her deeply.  To hurry off,
+too, without saying "good-by," or even asking how she slept!  No
+doubt he HAD lost time, and was tired of her company, and thought
+more of his precious samples than of her!  After all, it was like
+him to rush off for an order!
+
+She was half inclined to call the young officer back and tell him
+how Boyle had criticised her costume on the road.  But Mr. Ashford
+was at that time entirely preoccupied with his men around a ledge
+of rock and bushes some yards from the coach, yet not so far away
+but that she could hear what they said.  "I'll swear there was no
+dead Injin here when we came yesterday!  We searched the whole
+place--by daylight, too--for any sign.  The Injin was killed in his
+tracks by some one last night.  It's like Dick Boyle, lieutenant,
+to have done it, and like him to have said nothin' to frighten the
+young lady.  He knows when to keep his mouth shut--and when to open
+it."
+
+Miss Cantire sank back in her corner as the officer turned and
+approached the coach.  The incident of the past night flashed back
+upon her--Mr. Boyle's long absence, his flushed face, twisted
+necktie, and enforced cheerfulness.  She was shocked, amazed,
+discomfited--and admiring!  And this hero had been sitting opposite
+to her, silent all the rest of the night!
+
+"Did Mr. Boyle say anything of an Indian attack last night?" asked
+Ashford.  "Did you hear anything?"
+
+"Only the wolves howling," said Miss Cantire.  "Mr. Boyle was away
+twice."  She was strangely reticent--in complimentary imitation of
+her missing hero.
+
+"There's a dead Indian here who has been killed," began Ashford.
+
+"Oh, please don't say anything more, Mr. Ashford," interrupted the
+young lady, "but let us get away from this horrid place at once.
+Do get the horses in.  I can't stand it."
+
+But the horses were already harnessed and mounted, postilion-wise,
+by the troopers.  The vehicle was ready to start when Miss Cantire
+called "Stop!"
+
+When Ashford presented himself at the door, the young lady was upon
+her hands and knees, searching the bottom of the coach.  "Oh, dear!
+I've lost something.  I must have dropped it on the road," she said
+breathlessly, with pink cheeks.  "You must positively wait and let
+me go back and find it.  I won't be long.  You know there's 'no
+hurry.'"
+
+Mr. Ashford stared as Miss Cantire skipped like a schoolgirl from
+the coach and ran down the trail by which she and Boyle had
+approached the coach the night before.  She had not gone far before
+she came upon the withered flowers he had thrown away at her
+command.  "It must be about here," she murmured.  Suddenly she
+uttered a cry of delight, and picked up the business card that
+Boyle had shown her.  Then she looked furtively around her, and,
+selecting a sprig of myrtle among the cast-off flowers, concealed
+it in her mantle and ran back, glowing, to the coach.  "Thank you!
+All right, I've found it," she called to Ashford, with a dazzling
+smile, and leaped inside.
+
+The coach drove on, and Miss Cantire, alone in its recesses, drew
+the myrtle from her mantle and folding it carefully in her
+handkerchief, placed it in her reticule.  Then she drew out the
+card, read its dryly practical information over and over again,
+examined the soiled edges, brushed them daintily, and held it for a
+moment, with eyes that saw not, motionless in her hand.  Then she
+raised it slowly to her lips, rolled it into a spiral, and,
+loosening a hook and eye, thrust it gently into her bosom.
+
+And Dick Boyle, galloping away to the distant station, did not know
+that the first step towards a realization of his foolish dream had
+been taken!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Trent's Trust & Other Stories, by Harte
+
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