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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories in Light and Shadow by Bret Harte
+#20 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Stories in Light and Shadow
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+by Bret Harte
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+February, 2000  [Etext #2508]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Stories in Light and Shadow by Bret Harte
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+
+STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW
+
+by
+
+Bret Harte
+
+
+From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 13
+
+P. F. COLLIER & SON
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+"UNSER KARL"
+
+UNCLE JIM AND UNCLE BILLY
+
+SEE YUP
+
+THE DESBOROUGH CONNECTIONS
+
+SALOMY JANE'S KISS
+
+THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN
+
+THE PASSING OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+
+STORIES IN LIGHT AND SHADOW
+
+
+"UNSER KARL"
+
+
+The American consul for Schlachtstadt had just turned out of the
+broad Konig's Allee into the little square that held his consulate.
+Its residences always seemed to him to wear that singularly
+uninhabited air peculiar to a street scene in a theatre.  The
+facades, with their stiff, striped wooden awnings over the windows,
+were of the regularity, color, and pattern only seen on the stage,
+and conversation carried on in the street below always seemed to be
+invested with that perfect confidence and security which surrounds
+the actor in his painted desert of urban perspective.  Yet it was a
+peaceful change to the other byways and highways of Schlachtstadt
+which were always filled with an equally unreal and mechanical
+soldiery, who appeared to be daily taken out of their boxes of
+"caserne" or "depot" and loosely scattered all over the pretty
+linden-haunted German town.  There were soldiers standing on street
+corners; soldiers staring woodenly into shop windows; soldiers
+halted suddenly into stone, like lizards, at the approach of
+Offiziere; Offiziere lounging stiffly four abreast, sweeping the
+pavement with their trailing sabres all at one angle.  There were
+cavalcades of red hussars, cavalcades of blue hussars, cavalcades
+of Uhlans, with glittering lances and pennons--with or without a
+band--formally parading; there were straggling "fatigues" or
+"details" coming round the corners; there were dusty, businesslike
+columns of infantry, going nowhere and to no purpose.  And they one
+and all seemed to be WOUND UP--for that service--and apparently
+always in the same place.  In the band of their caps--invariably of
+one pattern--was a button, in the centre of which was a square
+opening or keyhole.  The consul was always convinced that through
+this keyhole opening, by means of a key, the humblest caporal wound
+up his file, the Hauptmann controlled his lieutenants and non-
+commissioned officers, and even the general himself, wearing the
+same cap, was subject through his cap to a higher moving power.  In
+the suburbs, when the supply of soldiers gave out, there were
+sentry-boxes; when these dropped off, there were "caissons," or
+commissary wagons.  And, lest the military idea should ever fail
+from out the Schlachtstadt's burgher's mind, there were police in
+uniform, street-sweepers in uniform; the ticket-takers, guards, and
+sweepers at the Bahnhof were in uniform,--but all wearing the same
+kind of cap, with the probability of having been wound up freshly
+each morning for their daily work.  Even the postman delivered
+peaceful invoices to the consul with his side-arms and the air of
+bringing dispatches from the field of battle; and the consul
+saluted, and felt for a few moments the whole weight of his
+consular responsibility.
+
+Yet, in spite of this military precedence, it did not seem in the
+least inconsistent with the decidedly peaceful character of the
+town, and this again suggested its utter unreality; wandering cows
+sometimes got mixed up with squadrons of cavalry, and did not seem
+to mind it; sheep passed singly between files of infantry, or
+preceded them in a flock when on the march; indeed, nothing could
+be more delightful and innocent than to see a regiment of infantry
+in heavy marching order, laden with every conceivable thing they
+could want for a week, returning after a cheerful search for an
+invisible enemy in the suburbs, to bivouac peacefully among the
+cabbages in the market-place.  Nobody was ever imposed upon for a
+moment by their tremendous energy and severe display; drums might
+beat, trumpets blow, dragoons charge furiously all over the
+Exercier Platz, or suddenly flash their naked swords in the streets
+to the guttural command of an officer--nobody seemed to mind it.
+People glanced up to recognize Rudolf or Max "doing their service,"
+nodded, and went about their business.  And although the officers
+always wore their side-arms, and at the most peaceful of social
+dinners only relinquished their swords in the hall, apparently that
+they might be ready to buckle them on again and rush out to do
+battle for the Fatherland between the courses, the other guests
+only looked upon these weapons in the light of sticks and
+umbrellas, and possessed their souls in peace.  And when, added to
+this singular incongruity, many of these warriors were spectacled,
+studious men, and, despite their lethal weapons, wore a slightly
+professional air, and were--to a man--deeply sentimental and
+singularly simple, their attitude in this eternal Kriegspiel seemed
+to the consul more puzzling than ever.
+
+As he entered his consulate he was confronted with another aspect
+of Schlachtstadt quite as wonderful, yet already familiar to him.
+For, in spite of these "alarums without," which, however, never
+seem to penetrate beyond the town itself, Schlachtstadt and its
+suburbs were known all over the world for the manufactures of
+certain beautiful textile fabrics, and many of the rank and file of
+those warriors had built up the fame and prosperity of the district
+over their peaceful looms in wayside cottages.  There were great
+depots and counting-houses, larger than even the cavalry barracks,
+where no other uniform but that of the postman was known.  Hence it
+was that the consul's chief duty was to uphold the flag of his own
+country by the examination and certification of divers invoices
+sent to his office by the manufacturers.  But, oddly enough, these
+business messengers were chiefly women,--not clerks, but ordinary
+household servants, and, on busy days, the consulate might have
+been mistaken for a female registry office, so filled and possessed
+it was by waiting Madchen.  Here it was that Gretchen, Lieschen,
+and Clarchen, in the cleanest of blue gowns, and stoutly but
+smartly shod, brought their invoices in a piece of clean paper, or
+folded in a blue handkerchief, and laid them, with fingers more or
+less worn and stubby from hard service, before the consul for his
+signature.  Once, in the case of a very young Madchen, that
+signature was blotted by the sweep of a flaxen braid upon it as the
+child turned to go; but generally there was a grave, serious
+business instinct and sense of responsibility in these girls of
+ordinary peasant origin which, equally with their sisters of
+France, were unknown to the English or American woman of any class.
+
+That morning, however, there was a slight stir among those who,
+with their knitting, were waiting their turn in the outer office as
+the vice-consul ushered the police inspector into the consul's
+private office.  He was in uniform, of course, and it took him a
+moment to recover from his habitual stiff, military salute,--a
+little stiffer than that of the actual soldier.
+
+It was a matter of importance!  A stranger had that morning been
+arrested in the town and identified as a military deserter.  He
+claimed to be an American citizen; he was now in the outer office,
+waiting the consul's interrogation.
+
+The consul knew, however, that the ominous accusation had only a
+mild significance here.  The term "military deserter" included any
+one who had in youth emigrated to a foreign country without first
+fulfilling his military duty to his fatherland.  His first
+experiences of these cases had been tedious and difficult,--
+involving a reference to his Minister at Berlin, a correspondence
+with the American State Department, a condition of unpleasant
+tension, and finally the prolonged detention of some innocent
+German--naturalized--American citizen, who had forgotten to bring
+his papers with him in revisiting his own native country.  It so
+chanced, however, that the consul enjoyed the friendship and
+confidence of the General Adlerkreutz, who commanded the 20th
+Division, and it further chanced that the same Adlerkreutz was as
+gallant a soldier as ever cried Vorwarts! at the head of his men,
+as profound a military strategist and organizer as ever carried his
+own and his enemy's plans in his iron head and spiked helmet, and
+yet with as simple and unaffected a soul breathing under his gray
+mustache as ever issued from the lips of a child.  So this grim but
+gentle veteran had arranged with the consul that in cases where the
+presumption of nationality was strong, although the evidence was
+not present, he would take the consul's parole for the appearance
+of the "deserter" or his papers, without the aid of prolonged
+diplomacy.  In this way the consul had saved to Milwaukee a worthy
+but imprudent brewer, and to New York an excellent sausage butcher
+and possible alderman; but had returned to martial duty one or two
+tramps or journeymen who had never seen America except from the
+decks of the ships in which they were "stowaways," and on which
+they were returned,--and thus the temper and peace of two great
+nations were preserved.
+
+"He says," said the inspector severely, "that he is an American
+citizen, but has lost his naturalization papers.  Yet he has made
+the damaging admission to others that he lived several years in
+Rome!  And," continued the inspector, looking over his shoulder at
+the closed door as he placed his finger beside his nose, "he says
+he has relations living at Palmyra, whom he frequently visited.
+Ach!  Observe this unheard-of-and-not-to-be-trusted statement!"
+
+The consul, however, smiled with a slight flash of intelligence.
+"Let me see him," he said.
+
+They passed into the outer office; another policeman and a corporal
+of infantry saluted and rose.  In the centre of an admiring and
+sympathetic crowd of Dienstmadchen sat the culprit, the least
+concerned of the party; a stripling--a boy--scarcely out of his
+teens!  Indeed, it was impossible to conceive of a more innocent,
+bucolic, and almost angelic looking derelict.  With a skin that had
+the peculiar white and rosiness of fresh pork, he had blue eyes,
+celestially wide open and staring, and the thick flocculent yellow
+curls of the sun god!  He might have been an overgrown and badly
+dressed Cupid who had innocently wandered from Paphian shores.  He
+smiled as the consul entered, and wiped from his full red lips with
+the back of his hand the traces of a sausage he was eating.  The
+consul recognized the flavor at once,--he had smelled it before in
+Lieschen's little hand-basket.
+
+"You say you lived at Rome?" began the consul pleasantly.  "Did you
+take out your first declaration of your intention of becoming an
+American citizen there?"
+
+The inspector cast an approving glance at the consul, fixed a stern
+eye on the cherubic prisoner, and leaned back in his chair to hear
+the reply to this terrible question.
+
+"I don't remember," said the culprit, knitting his brows in infantine
+thought.  "It was either there, or at Madrid or Syracuse."
+
+The inspector was about to rise; this was really trifling with the
+dignity of the municipality.  But the consul laid his hand on the
+official's sleeve, and, opening an American atlas to a map of the
+State of New York, said to the prisoner, as he placed the
+inspector's hand on the sheet, "I see you know the names of the
+TOWNS on the Erie and New York Central Railroad.  But"--
+
+"I can tell you the number of people in each town and what are the
+manufactures," interrupted the young fellow, with youthful vanity.
+"Madrid has six thousand, and there are over sixty thousand in"--
+
+"That will do," said the consul, as a murmur of Wunderschon! went
+round the group of listening servant girls, while glances of
+admiration were shot at the beaming accused.  "But you ought to
+remember the name of the town where your naturalization papers were
+afterwards sent."
+
+"But I was a citizen from the moment I made my declaration," said
+the stranger smiling, and looking triumphantly at his admirers,
+"and I could vote!"
+
+The inspector, since he had come to grief over American geographical
+nomenclature, was grimly taciturn.  The consul, however, was by no
+means certain of his victory.  His alleged fellow citizen was too
+encyclopaedic in his knowledge: a clever youth might have crammed
+for this with a textbook, but then he did not LOOK at all clever;
+indeed, he had rather the stupidity of the mythological subject he
+represented.  "Leave him with me," said the consul.  The inspector
+handed him a precis of the case.  The cherub's name was Karl
+Schwartz, an orphan, missing from Schlachtstadt since the age of
+twelve.  Relations not living, or in emigration.  Identity
+established by prisoner's admission and record.
+
+"Now, Karl," said the consul cheerfully, as the door of his private
+office closed upon them, "what is your little game?  Have you EVER
+had any papers?  And if you were clever enough to study the map of
+New York State, why weren't you clever enough to see that it
+wouldn't stand you in place of your papers?"
+
+"Dot's joost it," said Karl in English; "but you see dot if I haf
+declairet mine intention of begomming a citizen, it's all the same,
+don't it?"
+
+"By no means, for you seem to have no evidence of the DECLARATION;
+no papers at all."
+
+"Zo!" said Karl.  Nevertheless, he pushed his small, rosy, pickled-
+pig's-feet of fingers through his fleecy curls and beamed
+pleasantly at the consul.  "Dot's vot's der matter," he said, as if
+taking a kindly interest in some private trouble of the consul's.
+"Dot's vere you vos, eh?"
+
+The consul looked steadily at him for a moment.  Such stupidity was
+by no means phenomenal, nor at all inconsistent with his
+appearance.  "And," continued the consul gravely, "I must tell you
+that, unless you have other proofs than you have shown, it will be
+my duty to give you up to the authorities."
+
+"Dot means I shall serve my time, eh?" said Karl, with an unchanged
+smile.
+
+"Exactly so," returned the consul.
+
+"Zo!" said karl.  "Dese town--dose Schlachtstadt--is fine town, eh?
+Fine vomens.  Goot men.  Und beer und sausage.  Blenty to eat and
+drink, eh?  Und," looking around the room, "you and te poys haf a
+gay times."
+
+"Yes," said the consul shortly, turning away.  But he presently
+faced round again on the unfettered Karl, who was evidently
+indulging in a gormandizing reverie.
+
+"What on earth brought you here, anyway?"
+
+"Was it das?"
+
+"What brought you here from America, or wherever you ran away from?"
+
+"To see der, volks."
+
+"But you are an ORPHAN, you know, and you have no folks living
+here."
+
+"But all Shermany is mine volks,--de whole gountry, don't it?  Pet
+your poots!  How's dot, eh?"
+
+The consul turned back to his desk and wrote a short note to
+General Adlerkreutz in his own American German.  He did not think
+it his duty in the present case to interfere with the authorities
+or to offer his parole for Karl Schwartz.  But he would claim that,
+as the offender was evidently an innocent emigrant and still young,
+any punishment or military degradation be omitted, and he be
+allowed to take his place like any other recruit in the ranks.  If
+he might have the temerity to the undoubted, far-seeing military
+authority of suggestion making here, he would suggest that Karl was
+for the commissariat fitted!  Of course, he still retained the
+right, on production of satisfactory proof, his discharge to claim.
+
+The consul read this aloud to Karl.  The cherubic youth smiled and
+said, "Zo!"  Then, extending his hand, he added the word "Zshake!"
+
+The consul shook his hand a little remorsefully, and, preceding him
+to the outer room, resigned him with the note into the inspector's
+hands.  A universal sigh went up from the girls, and glances of
+appeal sought the consul; but he wisely concluded that it would be
+well, for a while, that Karl--a helpless orphan--should be under
+some sort of discipline!  And the securer business of certifying
+invoices recommenced.
+
+Late that afternoon he received a folded bit of blue paper from the
+waistbelt of an orderly, which contained in English characters and
+as a single word "Alright," followed by certain jagged pen-marks,
+which he recognized as Adlerkreutz's signature.  But it was not
+until a week later that he learned anything definite.  He was
+returning one night to his lodgings in the residential part of the
+city, and, in opening the door with his pass-key, perceived in the
+rear of the hall his handmaiden Trudschen, attended by the usual
+blue or yellow or red shadow.  He was passing by them with the
+local 'n' Abend! on his lips when the soldier turned his face and
+saluted.  The consul stopped.  It was the cherub Karl in uniform!
+
+But it had not subdued a single one of his characteristics.  His
+hair had been cropped a little more closely under his cap, but
+there was its color and woolliness still intact; his plump figure
+was girt by belt and buttons, but he only looked the more unreal,
+and more like a combination of pen-wiper and pincushion, until his
+puffy breast and shoulders seemed to offer a positive invitation to
+any one who had picked up a pin.  But, wonderful!--according to his
+brief story--he had been so proficient in the goose step that he
+had been put in uniform already, and allowed certain small
+privileges,--among them, evidently the present one.  The consul
+smiled and passed on.  But it seemed strange to him that Trudschen,
+who was a tall strapping girl, exceedingly popular with the
+military, and who had never looked lower than a corporal at least,
+should accept the attentions of an Einjahriger like that.  Later he
+interrogated her.
+
+Ach! it was only Unser Karl!  And the consul knew he was Amerikanisch!
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes!  It was such a tearful story!"
+
+"Tell me what it is," said the consul, with a faint hope that Karl
+had volunteered some communication of his past.
+
+"Ach Gott!  There in America he was a man, and could 'vote,' make
+laws, and, God willing, become a town councilor,--or Ober
+Intendant,--and here he was nothing but a soldier for years.  And
+this America was a fine country.  Wunderschon?  There were such big
+cities, and one 'Booflo'--could hold all Schlachtstadt, and had of
+people five hundred thousand!"
+
+The consul sighed.  Karl had evidently not yet got off the line of
+the New York Central and Erie roads.  "But does he remember yet
+what he did with his papers?" said the consul persuasively.
+
+"Ach!  What does he want with PAPERS when he could make the laws?
+They were dumb, stupid things--these papers--to him."
+
+"But his appetite remains good, I hope?" suggested the consul.
+
+This closed the conversation, although Karl came on many other
+nights, and his toy figure quite supplanted the tall corporal of
+hussars in the remote shadows of the hall.  One night, however, the
+consul returned home from a visit to a neighboring town a day
+earlier than he was expected.  As he neared his house he was a
+little surprised to find the windows of his sitting-room lit up,
+and that there were no signs of Trudschen in the lower hall or
+passages.  He made his way upstairs in the dark and pushed open the
+door of his apartment.  To his astonishment, Karl was sitting
+comfortably in his own chair, his cap off before a student-lamp on
+the table, deeply engaged in apparent study.  So profound was his
+abstraction that it was a moment before he looked up, and the
+consul had a good look at his usually beaming and responsive face,
+which, however, now struck him as wearing a singular air of thought
+and concentration.  When their eyes at last met, he rose instantly
+and saluted, and his beaming smile returned.  But, either from his
+natural phlegm or extraordinary self-control he betrayed neither
+embarrassment nor alarm.
+
+The explanation he gave was direct and simple.  Trudschen had gone
+out with the Corporal Fritz for a short walk, and had asked him to
+"keep house" during their absence.  He had no books, no papers,
+nothing to read in the barracks, and no chance to improve his mind.
+He thought the Herr Consul would not object to his looking at his
+books.  The consul was touched; it was really a trivial indiscretion
+and as much Trudschen's fault as Karl's!  And if the poor fellow had
+any mind to improve,--his recent attitude certainly suggested
+thought and reflection,--the consul were a brute to reprove him.  He
+smiled pleasantly as Karl returned a stubby bit of pencil and some
+greasy memoranda to his breast pocket, and glanced at the table.
+But to his surprise it was a large map that Karl had been studying,
+and, to his still greater surprise, a map of the consul's own
+district.
+
+"You seem to be fond of map-studying," said the consul pleasantly.
+"You are not thinking of emigrating again?"
+
+"Ach, no!" said Karl simply; "it is my cousine vot haf lif near
+here.  I find her."
+
+But he left on Trudschen's return, and the consul was surprised to
+see that, while Karl's attitude towards her had not changed, the
+girl exhibited less effusiveness than before.  Believing it to be
+partly the effect of the return of the corporal, the consul taxed
+her with faithlessness.  But Trudschen looked grave.
+
+"Ah!  He has new friends, this Karl of ours.  He cares no more for
+poor girls like us.  When fine ladies like the old Frau von Wimpfel
+make much of him, what will you?"
+
+It appeared, indeed, from Trudschen's account, that the widow of a
+wealthy shopkeeper had made a kind of protege of the young soldier,
+and given him presents.  Furthermore, that the wife of his colonel
+had employed him to act as page or attendant at an afternoon
+Gesellschaft, and that since then the wives of other officers had
+sought him.  Did not the Herr Consul think it was dreadful that
+this American, who could vote and make laws, should be subjected to
+such things?
+
+The consul did not know what to think.  It seemed to him, however,
+that Karl was "getting on," and that he was not in need of his
+assistance.  It was in the expectation of hearing more about him,
+however, that he cheerfully accepted an invitation from Adlerkreutz
+to dine at the Caserne one evening with the staff.  Here he found,
+somewhat to his embarrassment, that the dinner was partly in his
+own honor, and at the close of five courses, and the emptying of
+many bottles, his health was proposed by the gallant veteran
+Adlerkreutz in a neat address of many syllables containing all the
+parts of speech and a single verb.  It was to the effect that in
+his soul-friend the Herr Consul and himself was the never-to-be-
+severed union of Germania and Columbia, and in their perfect
+understanding was the war-defying alliance of two great nations,
+and that in the consul's noble restoration of Unser Karl to the
+German army there was the astute diplomacy of a great mind.  He was
+satisfied that himself and the Herr Consul still united in the
+great future, looking down upon a common brotherhood,--the great
+Germanic-American Confederation,--would feel satisfied with
+themselves and each other and their never-to-be-forgotten earth-
+labors.  Cries of "Hoch! Hoch!" resounded through the apartment
+with the grinding roll of heavy-bottomed beer-glasses, and the
+consul, tremulous with emotion and a reserve verb in his pocket,
+rose to reply.  Fully embarked upon this perilous voyage, and
+steering wide and clear of any treacherous shore of intelligence or
+fancied harbor of understanding and rest, he kept boldly out at
+sea.  He said that, while his loving adversary in this battle of
+compliment had disarmed him and left him no words to reply to his
+generous panegyric, he could not but join with that gallant soldier
+in his heartfelt aspirations for the peaceful alliance of both
+countries.  But while he fully reciprocated all his host's broader
+and higher sentiments, he must point out to this gallant assembly,
+this glorious brotherhood, that even a greater tie of sympathy
+knitted him to the general,--the tie of kinship!  For while it was
+well known to the present company that their gallant commander had
+married an Englishwoman, he, the consul, although always an
+American, would now for the first time confess to them that he
+HIMSELF was of Dutch descent on his mother's side!  He would say no
+more, but confidently leave them in possession of the tremendous
+significance of this until-then-unknown fact!  He sat down, with
+the forgotten verb still in his pocket, but the applause that
+followed this perfectly conclusive, satisfying, and logical climax
+convinced him of his success.  His hand was grasped eagerly by
+successive warriors; the general turned and embraced him before the
+breathless assembly; there were tears in the consul's eyes.
+
+As the festivities progressed, however, he found to his surprise
+that Karl had not only become the fashion as a military page, but
+that his naive stupidity and sublime simplicity was the wondering
+theme and inexhaustible delight of the whole barracks.  Stories
+were told of his genius for blundering which rivaled Handy Andy's;
+old stories of fatuous ignorance were rearranged and fitted to "our
+Karl."  It was "our Karl" who, on receiving a tip of two marks from
+the hands of a young lady to whom he had brought the bouquet of a
+gallant lieutenant, exhibited some hesitation, and finally said,
+"Yes, but, gnadiges Fraulein, that COST us nine marks!"  It was
+"our Karl" who, interrupting the regrets of another lady that she
+was unable to accept his master's invitation, said politely, "Ah!
+what matter, Gnadigste?  I have still a letter for Fraulein Kopp
+[her rival], and I was told that I must not invite you both."  It
+was "our Karl" who astonished the hostess to whom he was sent at
+the last moment with apologies from an officer, unexpectedly
+detained at barrack duty, by suggesting that he should bring that
+unfortunate officer his dinner from the just served table.  Nor
+were these charming infelicities confined to his social and
+domestic service.  Although ready, mechanical, and invariably
+docile in the manual and physical duties of a soldier,--which
+endeared him to the German drill-master,--he was still invincibly
+ignorant as to its purport, or even the meaning and structure of
+the military instruments he handled or vacantly looked upon.  It
+was "our Karl" who suggested to his instructors that in field-
+firing it was quicker and easier to load his musket to the muzzle
+at once, and get rid of its death-dealing contents at a single
+discharge, than to load and fire consecutively.  It was "our Karl"
+who nearly killed the instructor at sentry drill by adhering to the
+letter of his instructions when that instructor had forgotten the
+password.  It was the same Karl who, severely admonished for his
+recklessness, the next time added to his challenge the precaution,
+"Unless you instantly say 'Fatherland' I'll fire!"  Yet his perfect
+good humor and childlike curiosity were unmistakable throughout,
+and incited his comrades and his superiors to show him everything
+in the hope of getting some characteristic comment from him.
+Everything and everybody were open to Karl and his good-humored
+simplicity.
+
+That evening, as the general accompanied the consul down to the
+gateway and the waiting carriage, a figure in uniform ran
+spontaneously before them and shouted "Heraus!" to the sentries.
+But the general promptly checked "the turning out" of the guard
+with a paternal shake of his finger to the over-zealous soldier, in
+whom the consul recognized Karl.  "He is my Bursche now," said the
+general explanatorily.  "My wife has taken a fancy to him.  Ach! he
+is very popular with these women."  The consul was still more
+surprised.  The Frau Generalin Adlerkreutz he knew to be a
+pronounced Englishwoman,--carrying out her English ways,
+proprieties, and prejudices in the very heart of Schlachtstadt,
+uncompromisingly, without fear and without reproach.  That she
+should follow a merely foreign society craze, or alter her English
+household so as to admit the impossible Karl, struck him oddly.
+
+A month or two elapsed without further news of Karl, when one
+afternoon he suddenly turned up at the consulate.  He had again
+sought the consular quiet to write a few letters home; he had no
+chance in the confinement of the barracks.
+
+"But by this time you must be in the family of a field-marshal, at
+least," suggested the consul pleasantly.
+
+"Not to-day, but next week," said Karl, with sublime simplicity;
+"THEN I am going to serve with the governor commandant of
+Rheinfestung."
+
+The consul smiled, motioned him to a seat at a table in the outer
+office, and left him undisturbed to his correspondence.
+
+Returning later, he found Karl, his letters finished, gazing with
+childish curiosity and admiration at some thick official envelopes,
+bearing the stamp of the consulate, which were lying on the table.
+He was evidently struck with the contrast between them and the
+thin, flimsy affairs he was holding in his hand.  He appeared still
+more impressed when the consul told him what they were.
+
+"Arc you writing to your friends?" continued the consul, touched by
+his simplicity.
+
+"Ach ja!" said Karl eagerly.
+
+"Would you like to put your letter in one of these envelopes?"
+continued the official.
+
+The beaming face and eyes of Karl were a sufficient answer.  After
+all, it was a small favor granted to this odd waif, who seemed to
+still cling to the consular protection.  He handed him the envelope
+and left him addressing it in boyish pride.
+
+It was Karl's last visit to the consulate.  He appeared to have
+spoken truly, and the consul presently learned that he had indeed
+been transferred, through some high official manipulation, to the
+personal service of the governor of Rheinfestung.  There was
+weeping among the Dienstmadchen of Schlachtstadt, and a distinct
+loss of originality and lightness in the gatherings of the gentler
+Hausfrauen.  His memory still survived in the barracks through the
+later editions of his former delightful stupidities,--many of them,
+it is to be feared, were inventions,--and stories that were
+supposed to have come from Rheinfestung were described in the slang
+of the Offiziere as being "colossal."  But the consul remembered
+Rheinfestung, and could not imagine it as a home for Karl, or in
+any way fostering his peculiar qualities.  For it was eminently a
+fortress of fortresses, a magazine of magazines, a depot of depots.
+It was the key of the Rhine, the citadel of Westphalia, the
+"Clapham Junction" of German railways, but defended, fortified,
+encompassed, and controlled by the newest as well as the oldest
+devices of military strategy and science.  Even in the pipingest
+time of peace, whole railway trains went into it like a rat in a
+trap, and might have never come out of it; it stretched out an
+inviting hand and arm across the river that might in the twinkling
+of an eye be changed into a closed fist of menace.  You "defiled"
+into it, commanded at every step by enfilading walls; you
+"debouched" out of it, as you thought, and found yourself only
+before the walls; you "reentered" it at every possible angle; you
+did everything apparently but pass through it.  You thought
+yourself well out of it, and were stopped by a bastion.  Its
+circumvallations haunted you until you came to the next station.
+It had pressed even the current of the river into its defensive
+service.  There were secrets of its foundations and mines that only
+the highest military despots knew and kept to themselves.  In a
+word--it was impregnable.
+
+That such a place could not be trifled with or misunderstood in its
+right-and-acute-angled severities seemed plain to every one.  But
+set on by his companions, who were showing him its defensive
+foundations, or in his own idle curiosity, Karl managed to fall
+into the Rhine and was fished out with difficulty.  The immersion
+may have chilled his military ardor or soured his good humor, for
+later the consul heard that he had visited the American consular
+agent at an adjacent town with the old story of his American
+citizenship.  "He seemed," said the consul's colleague, "to be well
+posted about American railways and American towns, but he had no
+papers.  He lounged around the office for a while and"--
+
+"Wrote letters home?" suggested the consul, with a flash of
+reminiscence.
+
+"Yes, the poor chap had no privacy at the barracks, and I reckon
+was overlooked or bedeviled."
+
+This was the last the consul heard of Karl Schwartz directly; for a
+week or two later he again fell into the Rhine, this time so
+fatally and effectually that in spite of the efforts of his
+companions he was swept away by the rapid current, and thus ended
+his service to his country.  His body was never recovered.
+
+A few months before the consul was transferred from Schlachtstadt
+to another post his memory of the departed Karl was revived by a
+visit from Adlerkreutz.  The general looked grave.
+
+"You remember Unser Karl?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Do you think he was an impostor?"
+
+"As regards his American citizenship, yes!  But I could not say
+more."
+
+"So!" said the general.  "A very singular thing has happened," he
+added, twirling his mustache.  "The Inspector of police has
+notified us of the arrival of a Karl Schwartz in this town.  It
+appears he is the REAL Karl Schwartz, identified by his sister as
+the only one.  The other, who was drowned, was an impostor.  Hein?"
+
+"Then you have secured another recruit?" said the consul smilingly.
+
+"No.  For this one has already served his time in Elsass, where he
+went when he left here as a boy.  But, Donnerwetter, why should
+that dumb fool take his name?"
+
+"By chance, I fancy.  Then he stupidly stuck to it, and had to take
+the responsibilities with it.  Don't you see?" said the consul,
+pleased with his own cleverness.
+
+"Zo-o!" said the general slowly, in his deepest voice.  But the
+German exclamation has a variety of significance, according to the
+inflection, and Adlerkreutz's ejaculation seemed to contain them
+all.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+It was in Paris, where the consul had lingered on his way to his
+new post.  He was sitting in a well-known cafe, among whose
+habitues were several military officers of high rank.  A group of
+them were gathered round a table near him.  He was idly watching
+them with an odd recollection of Schlachtstadt in his mind, and as
+idly glancing from them to the more attractive Boulevard without.
+The consul was getting a little tired of soldiers.
+
+Suddenly there was a slight stir in the gesticulating group and a
+cry of greeting.  The consul looked up mechanically, and then his
+eyes remained fixed and staring at the newcomer.  For it was the
+dead Karl; Karl, surely!  Karl!--his plump figure belted in a
+French officer's tunic; his flaxen hair clipped a little closer,
+but still its fleece showing under his kepi.  Karl, his cheeks more
+cherubic than ever--unchanged but for a tiny yellow toy mustache
+curling up over the corners of his full lips.  Karl, beaming at his
+companions in his old way, but rattling off French vivacities
+without the faintest trace of accent.  Could he be mistaken?  Was
+it some phenomenal resemblance, or had the soul of the German
+private been transmigrated to the French officer.
+
+The consul hurriedly called the garcon.  "Who is that officer who
+has just arrived?"
+
+"It is the Captain Christian, of the Intelligence Bureau," said the
+waiter, with proud alacrity.  "A famous officer, brave as a
+rabbit,--un fier lapin,--and one of our best clients.  So drole,
+too, such a farceur and mimic.  M'sieur would be ravished to hear
+his imitations."
+
+"But he looks like a German; and his name!"
+
+"Ah, he is from Alsace.  But not a German!" said the waiter,
+absolutely whitening with indignation.  "He was at Belfort.  So
+was I.  Mon Dieu!  No, a thousand times no!"
+
+"But has he been living here long?" said the consul.
+
+"In Paris, a few months.  But his Department, M'sieur understands,
+takes him EVERYWHERE!  Everywhere where he can gain information."
+
+The consul's eyes were still on the Captain Christian.  Presently
+the officer, perhaps instinctively conscious of the scrutiny,
+looked towards him.  Their eyes met.  To the consul's surprise, the
+ci-devant Karl beamed upon him, and advanced with outstretched
+hand.
+
+But the consul stiffened slightly, and remained so with his glass
+in his hand.  At which Captain Christian brought his own easily to
+a military salute, and said politely:--
+
+"Monsieur le Consul has been promoted from his post.  Permit me to
+congratulate him."
+
+"You have heard, then?" said the consul dryly.
+
+"Otherwise I should not presume.  For our Department makes it a
+business--in Monsieur le Consul's case it becomes a pleasure--to
+know everything."
+
+"Did your Department know that the real Karl Schwartz has
+returned?" said the consul dryly.
+
+Captain Christian shrugged his shoulders.  "Then it appears that
+the sham Karl died none too soon," he said lightly.  "And yet"--he
+bent his eyes with mischievous reproach upon the consul.
+
+"Yet what?" demanded the consul sternly.
+
+"Monsieur le Consul might have saved the unfortunate man by
+accepting him as an American citizen and not helping to force him
+into the German service."
+
+The consul saw in a flash the full military significance of this
+logic, and could not repress a smile.  At which Captain Christian
+dropped easily into a chair beside him, and as easily into broken
+German English:--
+
+"Und," he went on, "dees town--dees Schlachtstadt is fine town, eh?
+Fine womens?  Goot men?  Und peer and sausage?  Blenty to eat and
+trink, eh?  Und you und te poys haf a gay times?"
+
+The consul tried to recover his dignity.  The waiter behind him,
+recognizing only the delightful mimicry of this adorable officer,
+was in fits of laughter.  Nevertheless, the consul managed to say
+dryly:--
+
+"And the barracks, the magazines, the commissariat, the details,
+the reserves of Schlachtstadt were very interesting?"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"And Rheinfestung--its plans--its details, even its dangerous
+foundations by the river--they were to a soldier singularly
+instructive?"
+
+"You have reason to say so," said Captain Christian, curling his
+little mustache.
+
+"And the fortress--you think?"
+
+"Imprenable!  Mais"--
+
+The consul remembered General Adlerkreutz's "Zo-o," and wondered.
+
+
+
+UNCLE JIM AND UNCLE BILLY
+
+
+They were partners.  The avuncular title was bestowed on them by
+Cedar Camp, possibly in recognition of a certain matured good
+humor, quite distinct from the spasmodic exuberant spirits of its
+other members, and possibly from what, to its youthful sense,
+seemed their advanced ages--which must have been at least forty!
+They had also set habits even in their improvidence, lost
+incalculable and unpayable sums to each other over euchre regularly
+every evening, and inspected their sluice-boxes punctually every
+Saturday for repairs--which they never made.  They even got to
+resemble each other, after the fashion of old married couples, or,
+rather, as in matrimonial partnerships, were subject to the
+domination of the stronger character; although in their case it is
+to be feared that it was the feminine Uncle Billy--enthusiastic,
+imaginative, and loquacious--who swayed the masculine, steady-
+going, and practical Uncle Jim.  They had lived in the camp since
+its foundation in 1849; there seemed to be no reason why they
+should not remain there until its inevitable evolution into a
+mining-town.  The younger members might leave through restless
+ambition or a desire for change or novelty; they were subject to no
+such trifling mutation.  Yet Cedar Camp was surprised one day to
+hear that Uncle Billy was going away.
+
+The rain was softly falling on the bark thatch of the cabin with a
+muffled murmur, like a sound heard through sleep.  The southwest
+trades were warm even at that altitude, as the open door testified,
+although a fire of pine bark was flickering on the adobe hearth and
+striking out answering fires from the freshly scoured culinary
+utensils on the rude sideboard, which Uncle Jim had cleaned that
+morning with his usual serious persistency.  Their best clothes,
+which were interchangeable and worn alternately by each other on
+festal occasions, hung on the walls, which were covered with a
+coarse sailcloth canvas instead of lath-and-plaster, and were
+diversified by pictures from illustrated papers and stains from the
+exterior weather.  Two "bunks," like ships' berths,--an upper and
+lower one,--occupied the gable-end of this single apartment, and on
+beds of coarse sacking, filled with dry moss, were carefully rolled
+their respective blankets and pillows.  They were the only articles
+not used in common, and whose individuality was respected.
+
+Uncle Jim, who had been sitting before the fire, rose as the square
+bulk of his partner appeared at the doorway with an armful of wood
+for the evening stove.  By that sign he knew it was nine o'clock:
+for the last six years Uncle Billy had regularly brought in the
+wood at that hour, and Uncle Jim had as regularly closed the door
+after him, and set out their single table, containing a greasy pack
+of cards taken from its drawer, a bottle of whiskey, and two tin
+drinking-cups.  To this was added a ragged memorandum-book and a
+stick of pencil.  The two men drew their stools to the table.
+
+"Hol' on a minit," said Uncle Billy.
+
+His partner laid down the cards as Uncle Billy extracted from his
+pocket a pill-box, and, opening it, gravely took a pill.  This was
+clearly an innovation on their regular proceedings, for Uncle Billy
+was always in perfect health.
+
+"What's this for?" asked Uncle Jim half scornfully.
+
+"Agin ager."
+
+"You ain't got no ager," said Uncle Jim, with the assurance of
+intimate cognizance of his partner's physical condition.
+
+"But it's a pow'ful preventive!  Quinine!  Saw this box at Riley's
+store, and laid out a quarter on it.  We kin keep it here,
+comfortable, for evenings.  It's mighty soothin' arter a man's done
+a hard day's work on the river-bar.  Take one."
+
+Uncle Jim gravely took a pill and swallowed it, and handed the box
+back to his partner.
+
+"We'll leave it on the table, sociable like, in case any of the
+boys come in," said Uncle Billy, taking up the cards.  "Well.  How
+do we stand?"
+
+Uncle Jim consulted the memorandum-book.  "You were owin' me sixty-
+two thousand dollars on the last game, and the limit's seventy-five
+thousand!"
+
+"Je whillikins!" ejaculated Uncle Billy.  "Let me see."
+
+He examined the book, feebly attempted to challenge the additions,
+but with no effect on the total.  "We oughter hev made the limit a
+hundred thousand," he said seriously; "seventy-five thousand is
+only triflin' in a game like ours.  And you've set down my claim at
+Angel's?" he continued.
+
+"I allowed you ten thousand dollars for that," said Uncle Jim, with
+equal gravity, "and it's a fancy price too."
+
+The claim in question being an unprospected hillside ten miles
+distant, which Uncle Jim had never seen, and Uncle Billy had not
+visited for years, the statement was probably true; nevertheless,
+Uncle Billy retorted:--
+
+"Ye kin never tell how these things will pan out.  Why, only this
+mornin' I was taking a turn round Shot Up Hill, that ye know is
+just rotten with quartz and gold, and I couldn't help thinkin' how
+much it was like my ole claim at Angel's.  I must take a day off to
+go on there and strike a pick in it, if only for luck."
+
+Suddenly he paused and said, "Strange, ain't it, you should speak
+of it to-night?  Now I call that queer!"
+
+He laid down his cards and gazed mysteriously at his companion.
+Uncle Jim knew perfectly that Uncle Billy had regularly once a week
+for many years declared his final determination to go over to
+Angel's and prospect his claim, yet nevertheless he half responded
+to his partner's suggestion of mystery, and a look of fatuous
+wonder crept into his eyes.  But he contented himself by saying
+cautiously, "You spoke of it first."
+
+"That's the more sing'lar," said Uncle Billy confidently.  "And
+I've been thinking about it, and kinder seeing myself thar all day.
+It's mighty queer!"  He got up and began to rummage among some torn
+and coverless books in the corner.
+
+"Where's that 'Dream Book' gone to?"
+
+"The Carson boys borrowed it," replied Uncle Jim.  "Anyhow, yours
+wasn't no dream--only a kind o' vision, and the book don't take no
+stock in visions."  Nevertheless, he watched his partner with some
+sympathy, and added, "That reminds me that I had a dream the other
+night of being in 'Frisco at a small hotel, with heaps o' money,
+and all the time being sort o' scared and bewildered over it."
+
+"No?" queried his partner eagerly yet reproachfully.  "You never
+let on anything about it to ME!  It's mighty queer you havin' these
+strange feelin's, for I've had 'em myself.  And only to-night,
+comin' up from the spring, I saw two crows hopping in the trail,
+and I says, 'If I see another, it's luck, sure!'  And you'll think
+I'm lyin', but when I went to the wood-pile just now there was the
+THIRD one sittin' up on a log as plain as I see you.  Tell 'e what
+folks ken laugh--but that's just what Jim Filgee saw the night
+before he made the big strike!"
+
+They were both smiling, yet with an underlying credulity and
+seriousness as singularly pathetic as it seemed incongruous to
+their years and intelligence.  Small wonder, however, that in their
+occupation and environment--living daily in an atmosphere of hope,
+expectation, and chance, looking forward each morning to the blind
+stroke of a pick that might bring fortune--they should see signs in
+nature and hear mystic voices in the trackless woods that
+surrounded them.  Still less strange that they were peculiarly
+susceptible to the more recognized diversions of chance, and were
+gamblers on the turning of a card who trusted to the revelation of
+a shovelful of upturned earth.
+
+It was quite natural, therefore, that they should return from their
+abstract form of divination to the table and their cards.  But they
+were scarcely seated before they heard a crackling step in the
+brush outside, and the free latch of their door was lifted.  A
+younger member of the camp entered.  He uttered a peevish "Halloo!"
+which might have passed for a greeting, or might have been a slight
+protest at finding the door closed, drew the stool from which Uncle
+Jim had just risen before the fire, shook his wet clothes like a
+Newfoundland dog, and sat down.  Yet he was by no means churlish
+nor coarse-looking, and this act was rather one of easy-going,
+selfish, youthful familiarity than of rudeness.  The cabin of
+Uncles Billy and Jim was considered a public right or "common" of
+the camp.  Conferences between individual miners were appointed
+there.  "I'll meet you at Uncle Billy's" was a common tryst.  Added
+to this was a tacit claim upon the partners' arbitrative powers, or
+the equal right to request them to step outside if the interviews
+were of a private nature.  Yet there was never any objection on the
+part of the partners, and to-night there was not a shadow of
+resentment of this intrusion in the patient, good-humored, tolerant
+eyes of Uncles Jim and Billy as they gazed at their guest.  Perhaps
+there was a slight gleam of relief in Uncle Jim's when he found
+that the guest was unaccompanied by any one, and that it was not a
+tryst.  It would have been unpleasant for the two partners to have
+stayed out in the rain while their guests were exchanging private
+confidences in their cabin.  While there might have been no limit
+to their good will, there might have been some to their capacity
+for exposure.
+
+Uncle Jim drew a huge log from beside the hearth and sat on the
+driest end of it, while their guest occupied the stool.  The young
+man, without turning away from his discontented, peevish brooding
+over the fire, vaguely reached backward for the whiskey-bottle and
+Uncle Billy's tin cup, to which he was assisted by the latter's
+hospitable hand.  But on setting down the cup his eye caught sight
+of the pill-box.
+
+"Wot's that?" he said, with gloomy scorn.  "Rat poison?"
+
+"Quinine pills--agin ager," said Uncle Jim.  "The newest thing out.
+Keeps out damp like Injin-rubber!  Take one to follow yer whiskey.
+Me and Uncle Billy wouldn't think o' settin' down, quiet like, in
+the evening arter work, without 'em.  Take one--ye 'r' welcome!  We
+keep 'em out here for the boys."
+
+Accustomed as the partners were to adopt and wear each other's
+opinions before folks, as they did each other's clothing, Uncle
+Billy was, nevertheless, astonished and delighted at Uncle Jim's
+enthusiasm over HIS pills.  The guest took one and swallowed it.
+
+"Mighty bitter!" he said, glancing at his hosts with the quick
+Californian suspicion of some practical joke.  But the honest faces
+of the partners reassured him.
+
+"That bitterness ye taste," said Uncle Jim quickly, "is whar the
+thing's gittin' in its work.  Sorter sickenin' the malaria--and
+kinder water-proofin' the insides all to onct and at the same lick!
+Don't yer see?  Put another in yer vest pocket; you'll be cryin'
+for 'em like a child afore ye get home.  Thar!  Well, how's things
+agoin' on your claim, Dick?  Boomin', eh?"
+
+The guest raised his head and turned it sufficiently to fling his
+answer back over his shoulder at his hosts.  "I don't know what
+YOU'D call' boomin','" he said gloomily; "I suppose you two men
+sitting here comfortably by the fire, without caring whether school
+keeps or not, would call two feet of backwater over one's claim
+'boomin';' I reckon YOU'D consider a hundred and fifty feet of
+sluicing carried away, and drifting to thunder down the South Fork,
+something in the way of advertising to your old camp!  I suppose
+YOU'd think it was an inducement to investors!  I shouldn't
+wonder," he added still more gloomily, as a sudden dash of rain
+down the wide-throated chimney dropped in his tin cup--"and it
+would be just like you two chaps, sittin' there gormandizing over
+your quinine--if yer said this rain that's lasted three weeks was
+something to be proud of!"
+
+It was the cheerful and the satisfying custom of the rest of the
+camp, for no reason whatever, to hold Uncle Jim and Uncle Billy
+responsible for its present location, its vicissitudes, the
+weather, or any convulsion of nature; and it was equally the
+partners' habit, for no reason whatever, to accept these
+animadversions and apologize.
+
+"It's a rain that's soft and mellowin'," said Uncle Billy gently,
+"and supplin' to the sinews and muscles.  Did ye ever notice, Jim"--
+ostentatiously to his partner--"did ye ever notice that you get
+inter a kind o' sweaty lather workin' in it?  Sorter openin' to the
+pores!"
+
+"Fetches 'em every time," said Uncle Billy.  "Better nor fancy
+soap."
+
+Their guest laughed bitterly.  "Well, I'm going to leave it to you.
+I reckon to cut the whole concern to-morrow, and 'lite' out for
+something new.  It can't be worse than this."
+
+The two partners looked grieved, albeit they were accustomed to
+these outbursts.  Everybody who thought of going away from Cedar
+Camp used it first as a threat to these patient men, after the
+fashion of runaway nephews, or made an exemplary scene of their
+going.
+
+"Better think twice afore ye go," said Uncle Billy.
+
+"I've seen worse weather afore ye came," said Uncle Jim slowly.
+"Water all over the Bar; the mud so deep ye couldn't get to Angel's
+for a sack o' flour, and we had to grub on pine nuts and jackass-
+rabbits.  And yet--we stuck by the camp, and here we are!"
+
+The mild answer apparently goaded their guest to fury.  He rose
+from his seat, threw back his long dripping hair from his handsome
+but querulous face, and scattered a few drops on the partners.
+"Yes, that's just it.  That's what gets me!  Here you stick, and
+here you are!  And here you'll stick and rust until you starve or
+drown!  Here you are,--two men who ought to be out in the world,
+playing your part as grown men,--stuck here like children 'playing
+house' in the woods; playing work in your wretched mud-pie ditches,
+and content.  Two men not so old that you mightn't be taking your
+part in the fun of the world, going to balls or theatres, or paying
+attention to girls, and yet old enough to have married and have
+your families around you, content to stay in this God-forsaken
+place; old bachelors, pigging together like poorhouse paupers.
+That's what gets me!  Say you LIKE it?  Say you expect by hanging
+on to make a strike--and what does that amount to?  What are YOUR
+chances?  How many of us have made, or are making, more than grub
+wages?  Say you're willing to share and share alike as you do--have
+you got enough for two?  Aren't you actually living off each other?
+Aren't you grinding each other down, choking each other's
+struggles, as you sink together deeper and deeper in the mud of
+this cussed camp?  And while you're doing this, aren't you, by your
+age and position here, holding out hopes to others that you know
+cannot be fulfilled?"
+
+Accustomed as they were to the half-querulous, half-humorous, but
+always extravagant, criticism of the others, there was something so
+new in this arraignment of themselves that the partners for a
+moment sat silent.  There was a slight flush on Uncle Billy's
+cheek, there was a slight paleness on Uncle Jim's.  He was the
+first to reply.  But he did so with a certain dignity which neither
+his partner nor their guest had ever seen on his face before.
+
+"As it's OUR fire that's warmed ye up like this, Dick Bullen," he
+said, slowly rising, with his hand resting on Uncle Billy's
+shoulder, "and as it's OUR whiskey that's loosened your tongue, I
+reckon we must put up with what ye 'r' saying, just as we've
+managed to put up with our own way o' living, and not quo'll with
+ye under our own roof."
+
+The young fellow saw the change in Uncle Jim's face and quickly
+extended his hand, with an apologetic backward shake of his long
+hair.  "Hang it all, old man," he said, with a laugh of mingled
+contrition and amusement, "you mustn't mind what I said just now.
+I've been so worried thinking of things about MYSELF, and, maybe, a
+little about you, that I quite forgot I hadn't a call to preach to
+anybody--least of all to you.  So we part friends, Uncle Jim, and
+you too, Uncle Billy, and you'll forget what I said.  In fact, I
+don't know why I spoke at all--only I was passing your claim just
+now, and wondering how much longer your old sluice-boxes would hold
+out, and where in thunder you'd get others when they caved in!  I
+reckon that sent me off.  That's all, old chap!"
+
+Uncle Billy's face broke into a beaming smile of relief, and it was
+HIS hand that first grasped his guest's; Uncle Jim quickly followed
+with as honest a pressure, but with eyes that did not seem to be
+looking at Bullen, though all trace of resentment had died out of
+them.  He walked to the door with him, again shook hands, but
+remained looking out in the darkness some time after Dick Bullen's
+tangled hair and broad shoulders had disappeared.
+
+Meantime, Uncle Billy had resumed his seat and was chuckling and
+reminiscent as he cleaned out his pipe.
+
+"Kinder reminds me of Jo Sharp, when he was cleaned out at poker by
+his own partners in his own cabin, comin' up here and bedevilin' US
+about it!  What was it you lint him?"
+
+But Uncle Jim did not reply; and Uncle Billy, taking up the cards,
+began to shuffle them, smiling vaguely, yet at the same time
+somewhat painfully.  "Arter all, Dick was mighty cut up about what
+he said, and I felt kinder sorry for him.  And, you know, I rather
+cotton to a man that speaks his mind.  Sorter clears him out, you
+know, of all the slumgullion that's in him.  It's just like washin'
+out a pan o' prospecting: you pour in the water, and keep slushing
+it round and round, and out comes first the mud and dirt, and then
+the gravel, and then the black sand, and then--it's all out, and
+there's a speck o' gold glistenin' at the bottom!"
+
+"Then you think there WAS suthin' in what he said?" said Uncle Jim,
+facing about slowly.
+
+An odd tone in his voice made Uncle Billy look up.  "No," he said
+quickly, shying with the instinct of an easy pleasure-loving nature
+from a possible grave situation.  "No, I don't think he ever got
+the color!  But wot are ye moonin' about for?  Ain't ye goin' to
+play?  It's mor' 'n half past nine now."
+
+Thus adjured, Uncle Jim moved up to the table and sat down, while
+Uncle Billy dealt the cards, turning up the Jack or right bower--
+but WITHOUT that exclamation of delight which always accompanied
+his good fortune, nor did Uncle Jim respond with the usual
+corresponding simulation of deep disgust.  Such a circumstance had
+not occurred before in the history of their partnership.  They both
+played in silence--a silence only interrupted by a larger splash of
+raindrops down the chimney.
+
+"We orter put a couple of stones on the chimney-top, edgewise, like
+Jack Curtis does.  It keeps out the rain without interferin' with
+the draft," said Uncle Billy musingly.
+
+"What's the use if"--
+
+"If what?" said Uncle Billy quietly.
+
+"If we don't make it broader," said Uncle Jim half wearily.
+
+They both stared at the chimney, but Uncle Jim's eye followed the
+wall around to the bunks.  There were many discolorations on the
+canvas, and a picture of the Goddess of Liberty from an illustrated
+paper had broken out in a kind of damp, measly eruption.  "I'll
+stick that funny handbill of the 'Washin' Soda' I got at the
+grocery store the other day right over the Liberty gal.  It's a
+mighty perty woman washin' with short sleeves," said Uncle Billy.
+"That's the comfort of them picters, you kin always get somethin'
+new, and it adds thickness to the wall."
+
+Uncle Jim went back to the cards in silence.  After a moment he
+rose again, and hung his overcoat against the door.
+
+"Wind's comin' in," he said briefly.
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Billy cheerfully, "but it wouldn't seem nat'ral
+if there wasn't that crack in the door to let the sunlight in o
+mornin's.  Makes a kind o' sundial, you know.  When the streak o'
+light's in that corner, I says 'six o'clock!' when it's across the
+chimney I say 'seven!' and so 'tis!"
+
+It certainly had grown chilly, and the wind was rising.  The candle
+guttered and flickered; the embers on the hearth brightened
+occasionally, as if trying to dispel the gathering shadows, but
+always ineffectually.  The game was frequently interrupted by the
+necessity of stirring the fire.  After an interval of gloom, in
+which each partner successively drew the candle to his side to
+examine his cards, Uncle Jim said:--
+
+"Say?"
+
+"Well!" responded Uncle Billy.
+
+"Are you sure you saw that third crow on the wood-pile?"
+
+"Sure as I see you now--and a darned sight plainer.  Why?"
+
+"Nothin', I was just thinkin'.  Look here!  How do we stand now?"
+
+Uncle Billy was still losing.  "Nevertheless," he said cheerfully,
+"I'm owin' you a matter of sixty thousand dollars."
+
+Uncle Jim examined the book abstractedly.  "Suppose," he said
+slowly, but without looking at his partner, "suppose, as it's
+gettin' late now, we play for my half share of the claim agin the
+limit--seventy thousand--to square up."
+
+"Your half share!" repeated Uncle Billy, with amused incredulity.
+
+"My half share of the claim,--of this yer house, you know,--one
+half of all that Dick Bullen calls our rotten starvation property,"
+reiterated Uncle Jim, with a half smile.
+
+Uncle Billy laughed.  It was a novel idea; it was, of course, "all
+in the air," like the rest of their game, yet even then he had an
+odd feeling that he would have liked Dick Bullen to have known it.
+"Wade in, old pard," he said.  "I'm on it."
+
+Uncle Jim lit another candle to reinforce the fading light, and the
+deal fell to Uncle Billy.  He turned up Jack of clubs.  He also
+turned a little redder as he took up his cards, looked at them, and
+glanced hastily at his partner.  "It's no use playing," he said.
+"Look here!"  He laid down his cards on the table.  They were the
+ace, king and queen of clubs, and Jack of spades,--or left bower,--
+which, with the turned-up Jack of clubs,--or right bower,--
+comprised ALL the winning cards!
+
+"By jingo!  If we'd been playin' four-handed, say you an' me agin
+some other ducks, we'd have made 'four' in that deal, and h'isted
+some money--eh?" and his eyes sparkled.  Uncle Jim, also, had a
+slight tremulous light in his own.
+
+"Oh no!  I didn't see no three crows this afternoon," added Uncle
+Billy gleefully, as his partner, in turn, began to shuffle the
+cards with laborious and conscientious exactitude.  Then dealing,
+he turned up a heart for trumps.  Uncle Billy took up his cards one
+by one, but when he had finished his face had become as pale as it
+had been red before.  "What's the matter?" said Uncle Jim quickly,
+his own face growing white.
+
+Uncle Billy slowly and with breathless awe laid down his cards,
+face up on the table.  It was exactly the same sequence IN HEARTS,
+with the knave of diamonds added.  He could again take every trick.
+
+They stared at each other with vacant faces and a half-drawn smile
+of fear.  They could hear the wind moaning in the trees beyond;
+there was a sudden rattling at the door.  Uncle Billy started to
+his feet, but Uncle Jim caught his arm.  "DON'T LEAVE THE CARDS!
+It's only the wind; sit down," he said in a low awe-hushed voice,
+"it's your deal; you were two before, and two now, that makes your
+four; you've only one point to make to win the game.  Go on."
+
+They both poured out a cup of whiskey, smiling vaguely, yet with a
+certain terror in their eyes.  Their hands were cold; the cards
+slipped from Uncle Billy's benumbed fingers; when he had shuffled
+them he passed them to his partner to shuffle them also, but did
+not speak.  When Uncle Jim had shuffled them methodically he handed
+them back fatefully to his partner.  Uncle Billy dealt them with a
+trembling hand.  He turned up a club.  "If you are sure of these
+tricks you know you've won," said Uncle Jim in a voice that was
+scarcely audible.  Uncle Billy did not reply, but tremulously laid
+down the ace and right and left bowers.
+
+He had won!
+
+A feeling of relief came over each, and they laughed hysterically
+and discordantly.  Ridiculous and childish as their contest might
+have seemed to a looker-on, to each the tension had been as great
+as that of the greatest gambler, without the gambler's trained
+restraint, coolness, and composure.  Uncle Billy nervously took up
+the cards again.
+
+"Don't," said Uncle Jim gravely; "it's no use--the luck's gone now."
+
+"Just one more deal," pleaded his partner.
+
+Uncle Jim looked at the fire, Uncle Billy hastily dealt, and threw
+the two hands face up on the table.  They were the ordinary average
+cards.  He dealt again, with the same result.  "I told you so,"
+said Uncle Jim, without looking up.
+
+It certainly seemed a tame performance after their wonderful hands,
+and after another trial Uncle Billy threw the cards aside and drew
+his stool before the fire.  "Mighty queer, warn't it?" he said,
+with reminiscent awe.  "Three times running.  Do you know, I felt a
+kind o' creepy feelin' down my back all the time.  Criky! what
+luck!  None of the boys would believe it if we told 'em--least of
+all that Dick Bullen, who don't believe in luck, anyway.  Wonder
+what he'd have said! and, Lord! how he'd have looked!  Wall! what
+are you starin' so for?"
+
+Uncle Jim had faced around, and was gazing at Uncle Billy's good-
+humored, simple face.  "Nothin'!" he said briefly, and his eyes
+again sought the fire.
+
+"Then don't look as if you was seein' suthin'--you give me the
+creeps," returned Uncle Billy a little petulantly.  "Let's turn in,
+afore the fire goes out!"
+
+The fateful cards were put back into the drawer, the table shoved
+against the wall.  The operation of undressing was quickly got
+over, the clothes they wore being put on top of their blankets.
+Uncle Billy yawned, "I wonder what kind of a dream I'll have
+tonight--it oughter be suthin' to explain that luck."  This was his
+"good-night" to his partner.  In a few moments he was sound asleep.
+
+Not so Uncle Jim.  He heard the wind gradually go down, and in the
+oppressive silence that followed could detect the deep breathing of
+his companion and the far-off yelp of a coyote.  His eyesight
+becoming accustomed to the semi-darkness, broken only by the
+scintillation of the dying embers of their fire, he could take in
+every detail of their sordid cabin and the rude environment in
+which they had lived so long.  The dismal patches on the bark roof,
+the wretched makeshifts of each day, the dreary prolongation of
+discomfort, were all plain to him now, without the sanguine hope
+that had made them bearable.  And when he shut his eyes upon them,
+it was only to travel in fancy down the steep mountain side that he
+had trodden so often to the dreary claim on the overflowed river,
+to the heaps of "tailings" that encumbered it, like empty shells of
+the hollow, profitless days spent there, which they were always
+waiting for the stroke of good fortune to clear away.  He saw again
+the rotten "sluicing," through whose hopeless rifts and holes even
+their scant daily earnings had become scantier.  At last he arose,
+and with infinite gentleness let himself down from his berth
+without disturbing his sleeping partner, and wrapping himself in
+his blanket, went to the door, which he noiselessly opened.  From
+the position of a few stars that were glittering in the northern
+sky he knew that it was yet scarcely midnight; there were still
+long, restless hours before the day!  In the feverish state into
+which he had gradually worked himself it seemed to him impossible
+to wait the coming of the dawn.
+
+But he was mistaken.  For even as he stood there all nature seemed
+to invade his humble cabin with its free and fragrant breath, and
+invest him with its great companionship.  He felt again, in that
+breath, that strange sense of freedom, that mystic touch of
+partnership with the birds and beasts, the shrubs and trees, in
+this greater home before him.  It was this vague communion that had
+kept him there, that still held these world-sick, weary workers in
+their rude cabins on the slopes around him; and he felt upon his
+brow that balm that had nightly lulled him and them to sleep and
+forgetfulness.  He closed the door, turned away, crept as
+noiselessly as before into his bunk again, and presently fell into
+a profound slumber.
+
+But when Uncle Billy awoke the next morning he saw it was late; for
+the sun, piercing the crack of the closed door, was sending a
+pencil of light across the cold hearth, like a match to rekindle
+its dead embers.  His first thought was of his strange luck the
+night before, and of disappointment that he had not had the dream
+of divination that he had looked for.  He sprang to the floor, but
+as he stood upright his glance fell on Uncle Jim's bunk.  It was
+empty.  Not only that, but his BLANKETS--Uncle Jim's own particular
+blankets--WERE GONE!
+
+A sudden revelation of his partner's manner the night before struck
+him now with the cruelty of a blow; a sudden intelligence, perhaps
+the very divination he had sought, flashed upon him like lightning!
+He glanced wildly around the cabin.  The table was drawn out from
+the wall a little ostentatiously, as if to catch his eye.  On it
+was lying the stained chamois-skin purse in which they had kept the
+few grains of gold remaining from their last week's "clean up."
+The grains had been carefully divided, and half had been taken!
+But near it lay the little memorandum-book, open, with the stick of
+pencil lying across it.  A deep line was drawn across the page on
+which was recorded their imaginary extravagant gains and losses,
+even to the entry of Uncle Jim's half share of the claim which he
+had risked and lost!  Underneath were hurriedly scrawled the
+words:--
+
+"Settled by YOUR luck, last night, old pard.--JAMES FOSTER."
+
+
+It was nearly a month before Cedar Camp was convinced that Uncle
+Billy and Uncle Jim had dissolved partnership.  Pride had prevented
+Uncle Billy from revealing his suspicions of the truth, or of
+relating the events that preceded Uncle Jim's clandestine flight,
+and Dick Bullen had gone to Sacramento by stage-coach the same
+morning.  He briefly gave out that his partner had been called to
+San Francisco on important business of their own, that indeed might
+necessitate his own removal there later.  In this he was singularly
+assisted by a letter from the absent Jim, dated at San Francisco,
+begging him not to be anxious about his success, as he had hopes of
+presently entering into a profitable business, but with no further
+allusions to his precipitate departure, nor any suggestion of a
+reason for it.  For two or three days Uncle Billy was staggered and
+bewildered; in his profound simplicity he wondered if his
+extraordinary good fortune that night had made him deaf to some
+explanation of his partner's, or, more terrible, if he had shown
+some "low" and incredible intimation of taking his partner's
+extravagant bet as REAL and binding.  In this distress he wrote to
+Uncle Jim an appealing and apologetic letter, albeit somewhat
+incoherent and inaccurate, and bristling with misspelling, camp
+slang, and old partnership jibes.  But to this elaborate epistle he
+received only Uncle Jim's repeated assurances of his own bright
+prospects, and his hopes that his old partner would be more
+fortunate, single-handed, on the old claim.  For a whole week or
+two Uncle Billy sulked, but his invincible optimism and good humor
+got the better of him, and he thought only of his old partner's
+good fortune.  He wrote him regularly, but always to one address--a
+box at the San Francisco post-office, which to the simple-minded
+Uncle Billy suggested a certain official importance.  To these
+letters Uncle Jim responded regularly but briefly.
+
+From a certain intuitive pride in his partner and his affection,
+Uncle Billy did not show these letters openly to the camp, although
+he spoke freely of his former partner's promising future, and even
+read them short extracts.  It is needless to say that the camp did
+not accept Uncle Billy's story with unsuspecting confidence.  On
+the contrary, a hundred surmises, humorous or serious, but always
+extravagant, were afloat in Cedar Camp.  The partners had quarreled
+over their clothes--Uncle Jim, who was taller than Uncle Billy, had
+refused to wear his partner's trousers.  They had quarreled over
+cards--Uncle Jim had discovered that Uncle Billy was in possession
+of a "cold deck," or marked pack.  They had quarreled over Uncle
+Billy's carelessness in grinding up half a box of "bilious pills"
+in the morning's coffee.  A gloomily imaginative mule-driver had
+darkly suggested that, as no one had really seen Uncle Jim leave
+the camp, he was still there, and his bones would yet be found in
+one of the ditches; while a still more credulous miner averred that
+what he had thought was the cry of a screech-owl the night previous
+to Uncle Jim's disappearance, might have been the agonized
+utterance of that murdered man.  It was highly characteristic of
+that camp--and, indeed, of others in California--that nobody, not
+even the ingenious theorists themselves, believed their story, and
+that no one took the slightest pains to verify or disprove it.
+Happily, Uncle Billy never knew it, and moved all unconsciously in
+this atmosphere of burlesque suspicion.  And then a singular change
+took place in the attitude of the camp towards him and the
+disrupted partnership.  Hitherto, for no reason whatever, all had
+agreed to put the blame upon Billy--possibly because he was present
+to receive it.  As days passed that slight reticence and dejection
+in his manner, which they had at first attributed to remorse and a
+guilty conscience, now began to tell as absurdly in his favor.
+Here was poor Uncle Billy toiling though the ditches, while his
+selfish partner was lolling in the lap of luxury in San Francisco!
+Uncle Billy's glowing accounts of Uncle Jim's success only
+contributed to the sympathy now fully given in his behalf and their
+execration of the absconding partner.  It was proposed at Biggs's
+store that a letter expressing the indignation of the camp over his
+heartless conduct to his late partner, William Fall, should be
+forwarded to him.  Condolences were offered to Uncle Billy, and
+uncouth attempts were made to cheer his loneliness.  A procession
+of half a dozen men twice a week to his cabin, carrying their own
+whiskey and winding up with a "stag dance" before the premises, was
+sufficient to lighten his eclipsed gayety and remind him of a
+happier past.  "Surprise" working parties visited his claim with
+spasmodic essays towards helping him, and great good humor and
+hilarity prevailed.  It was not an unusual thing for an honest
+miner to arise from an idle gathering in some cabin and excuse
+himself with the remark that he "reckoned he'd put in an hour's
+work in Uncle Billy's tailings!"  And yet, as before, it was very
+improbable if any of these reckless benefactors REALLY believed in
+their own earnestness or in the gravity of the situation.  Indeed,
+a kind of hopeful cynicism ran through their performances.  "Like
+as not, Uncle Billy is still in 'cahoots' [i. e., shares] with his
+old pard, and is just laughin' at us as he's sendin' him accounts
+of our tomfoolin'."
+
+And so the winter passed and the rains, and the days of cloudless
+skies and chill starlit nights began.  There were still freshets
+from the snow reservoirs piled high in the Sierran passes, and the
+Bar was flooded, but that passed too, and only the sunshine
+remained.  Monotonous as the seasons were, there was a faint
+movement in the camp with the stirring of the sap in the pines and
+cedars.  And then, one day, there was a strange excitement on the
+Bar.  Men were seen running hither and thither, but mainly
+gathering in a crowd on Uncle Billy's claim, that still retained
+the old partners' names in "The Fall and Foster."  To add to the
+excitement, there was the quickly repeated report of a revolver, to
+all appearance aimlessly exploded in the air by some one on the
+outskirts of the assemblage.  As the crowd opened, Uncle Billy
+appeared, pale, hysterical, breathless, and staggering a little
+under the back-slapping and hand-shaking of the whole camp.  For
+Uncle Billy had "struck it rich"--had just discovered a "pocket,"
+roughly estimated to be worth fifteen thousand dollars!
+
+Although in that supreme moment he missed the face of his old
+partner, he could not help seeing the unaffected delight and
+happiness shining in the eyes of all who surrounded him.  It was
+characteristic of that sanguine but uncertain life that success and
+good fortune brought no jealousy nor envy to the unfortunate, but
+was rather a promise and prophecy of the fulfillment of their own
+hopes.  The gold was there--Nature but yielded up her secret.
+There was no prescribed limit to her bounty.  So strong was this
+conviction that a long-suffering but still hopeful miner, in the
+enthusiasm of the moment, stooped down and patted a large boulder
+with the apostrophic "Good old gal!"
+
+Then followed a night of jubilee, a next morning of hurried
+consultation with a mining expert and speculator lured to the camp
+by the good tidings; and then the very next night--to the utter
+astonishment of Cedar Camp--Uncle Billy, with a draft for twenty
+thousand dollars in his pocket, started for San Francisco, and took
+leave of his claim and the camp forever!
+
+        .        .        .        .        .         .
+
+When Uncle Billy landed at the wharves of San Francisco he was a
+little bewildered.  The Golden Gate beyond was obliterated by the
+incoming sea-fog, which had also roofed in the whole city, and
+lights already glittered along the gray streets that climbed the
+grayer sand-hills.  As a Western man, brought up by inland rivers,
+he was fascinated and thrilled by the tall-masted seagoing ships,
+and he felt a strange sense of the remoter mysterious ocean, which
+he had never seen.  But he was impressed and startled by smartly
+dressed men and women, the passing of carriages, and a sudden
+conviction that he was strange and foreign to what he saw.  It had
+been his cherished intention to call upon his old partner in his
+working clothes, and then clap down on the table before him a draft
+for ten thousand dollars as HIS share of their old claim.  But in
+the face of these brilliant strangers a sudden and unexpected
+timidity came upon him.  He had heard of a cheap popular hotel,
+much frequented by the returning gold-miner, who entered its
+hospitable doors--which held an easy access to shops--and emerged
+in a few hours a gorgeous butterfly of fashion, leaving his old
+chrysalis behind him.  Thence he inquired his way; hence he
+afterwards issued in garments glaringly new and ill fitting.  But
+he had not sacrificed his beard, and there was still something fine
+and original in his handsome weak face that overcame the cheap
+convention of his clothes.  Making his way to the post-office, he
+was again discomfited by the great size of the building, and
+bewildered by the array of little square letter-boxes behind glass
+which occupied one whole wall, and an equal number of opaque and
+locked wooden ones legibly numbered.  His heart leaped; he
+remembered the number, and before him was a window with a clerk
+behind it.  Uncle Billy leaned forward.
+
+"Kin you tell me if the man that box 690 b'longs to is in?"
+
+The clerk stared, made him repeat the question, and then turned
+away.  But he returned almost instantly, with two or three grinning
+heads besides his own, apparently set behind his shoulders.  Uncle
+Billy was again asked to repeat his question.  He did so.
+
+"Why don't you go and see if 690 is in his box?" said the first
+clerk, turning with affected asperity to one of the others.
+
+The clerk went away, returned, and said with singular gravity, "He
+was there a moment ago, but he's gone out to stretch his legs.
+It's rather crampin' at first; and he can't stand it more than ten
+hours at a time, you know."
+
+But simplicity has its limits.  Uncle Billy had already guessed his
+real error in believing his partner was officially connected with
+the building; his cheek had flushed and then paled again.  The
+pupils of his blue eyes had contracted into suggestive black
+points.  "Ef you'll let me in at that winder, young fellers," he
+said, with equal gravity, "I'll show yer how I kin make YOU small
+enough to go in a box without crampin'!  But I only wanted to know
+where Jim Foster LIVED."
+
+At which the first clerk became perfunctory again, but civil.  "A
+letter left in his box would get you that information," he said,
+"and here's paper and pencil to write it now."
+
+Uncle Billy took the paper and began to write, "Just got here.
+Come and see me at"--  He paused.  A brilliant idea had struck him;
+He could impress both his old partner and the upstarts at the
+window; he would put in the name of the latest "swell" hotel in San
+Francisco, said to be a fairy dream of opulence.  He added "The
+Oriental," and without folding the paper shoved it in the window.
+
+"Don't you want an envelope?" asked the clerk.
+
+"Put a stamp on the corner of it," responded Uncle Billy, laying
+down a coin, "and she'll go through."  The clerk smiled, but
+affixed the stamp, and Uncle Billy turned away.
+
+But it was a short-lived triumph.  The disappointment at finding
+Uncle Jim's address conveyed no idea of his habitation seemed to
+remove him farther away, and lose his identity in the great city.
+Besides, he must now make good his own address, and seek rooms at
+the Oriental.  He went thither.  The furniture and decorations,
+even in these early days of hotel-building in San Francisco, were
+extravagant and over-strained, and Uncle Billy felt lost and lonely
+in his strange surroundings.  But he took a handsome suite of
+rooms, paid for them in advance on the spot, and then, half
+frightened, walked out of them to ramble vaguely through the city
+in the feverish hope of meeting his old partner.  At night his
+inquietude increased; he could not face the long row of tables in
+the pillared dining-room, filled with smartly dressed men and
+women; he evaded his bedroom, with its brocaded satin chairs and
+its gilt bedstead, and fled to his modest lodgings at the Good
+Cheer House, and appeased his hunger at its cheap restaurant, in
+the company of retired miners and freshly arrived Eastern
+emigrants.  Two or three days passed thus in this quaint double
+existence.  Three or four times a day he would enter the gorgeous
+Oriental with affected ease and carelessness, demand his key from
+the hotel-clerk, ask for the letter that did not come, go to his
+room, gaze vaguely from his window on the passing crowd below for
+the partner he could not find, and then return to the Good Cheer
+House for rest and sustenance.  On the fourth day he received a
+short note from Uncle Jim; it was couched in his usual sanguine but
+brief and businesslike style.  He was very sorry, but important and
+profitable business took him out of town, but he trusted to return
+soon and welcome his old partner.  He was also, for the first time,
+jocose, and hoped that Uncle Billy would not "see all the sights"
+before he, Uncle Jim, returned.  Disappointing as this
+procrastination was to Uncle Billy, a gleam of hope irradiated it:
+the letter had bridged over that gulf which seemed to yawn between
+them at the post-office.  His old partner had accepted his visit to
+San Francisco without question, and had alluded to a renewal of
+their old intimacy.  For Uncle Billy, with all his trustful
+simplicity, had been tortured by two harrowing doubts: one, whether
+Uncle Jim in his new-fledged smartness as a "city" man--such as he
+saw in the streets--would care for his rough companionship; the
+other, whether he, Uncle Billy, ought not to tell him at once of
+his changed fortune.  But, like all weak, unreasoning men, he clung
+desperately to a detail--he could not forego his old idea of
+astounding Uncle Jim by giving him his share of the "strike" as his
+first intimation of it, and he doubted, with more reason perhaps,
+if Jim would see him after he had heard of his good fortune.  For
+Uncle Billy had still a frightened recollection of Uncle Jim's
+sudden stroke for independence, and that rigid punctiliousness
+which had made him doggedly accept the responsibility of his
+extravagant stake at euchre.
+
+With a view of educating himself for Uncle Jim's company, he "saw
+the sights" of San Francisco--as an overgrown and somewhat stupid
+child might have seen them--with great curiosity, but little
+contamination or corruption.  But I think he was chiefly pleased
+with watching the arrival of the Sacramento and Stockton steamers
+at the wharves, in the hope of discovering his old partner among
+the passengers on the gang-plank.  Here, with his old superstitious
+tendency and gambler's instinct, he would augur great success in
+his search that day if any one of the passengers bore the least
+resemblance to Uncle Jim, if a man or woman stepped off first, or
+if he met a single person's questioning eye.  Indeed, this got to
+be the real occupation of the day, which he would on no account
+have omitted, and to a certain extent revived each day in his mind
+the morning's work of their old partnership.  He would say to
+himself, "It's time to go and look up Jim," and put off what he was
+pleased to think were his pleasures until this act of duty was
+accomplished.
+
+In this singleness of purpose he made very few and no entangling
+acquaintances, nor did he impart to any one the secret of his
+fortune, loyally reserving it for his partner's first knowledge.
+To a man of his natural frankness and simplicity this was a great
+trial, and was, perhaps, a crucial test of his devotion.  When he
+gave up his rooms at the Oriental--as not necessary after his
+partner's absence--he sent a letter, with his humble address, to
+the mysterious lock-box of his partner without fear or false shame.
+He would explain it all when they met.  But he sometimes treated
+unlucky and returning miners to a dinner and a visit to the gallery
+of some theatre.  Yet while he had an active sympathy with and
+understanding of the humblest, Uncle Billy, who for many years had
+done his own and his partner's washing, scrubbing, mending, and
+cooking, and saw no degradation in it, was somewhat inconsistently
+irritated by menial functions in men, and although he gave
+extravagantly to waiters, and threw a dollar to the crossing-
+sweeper, there was always a certain shy avoidance of them in his
+manner.  Coming from the theatre one night Uncle Billy was,
+however, seriously concerned by one of these crossing-sweepers
+turning hastily before them and being knocked down by a passing
+carriage.  The man rose and limped hurriedly away; but Uncle Billy
+was amazed and still more irritated to hear from his companion that
+this kind of menial occupation was often profitable, and that at
+some of the principal crossings the sweepers were already rich men.
+
+But a few days later brought a more notable event to Uncle Billy.
+One afternoon in Montgomery Street he recognized in one of its
+smartly dressed frequenters a man who had a few years before been a
+member of Cedar Camp.  Uncle Billy's childish delight at this
+meeting, which seemed to bridge over his old partner's absence,
+was, however, only half responded to by the ex-miner, and then
+somewhat satirically.  In the fullness of his emotion, Uncle Billy
+confided to him that he was seeking his old partner, Jim Foster,
+and, reticent of his own good fortune, spoke glowingly of his
+partner's brilliant expectations, but deplored his inability to
+find him.  And just now he was away on important business.  "I
+reckon he's got back," said the man dryly.  "I didn't know he had a
+lock-box at the post-office, but I can give you his other address.
+He lives at the Presidio, at Washerwoman's Bay."  He stopped and
+looked with a satirical smile at Uncle Billy.  But the latter,
+familiar with Californian mining-camp nomenclature, saw nothing
+strange in it, and merely repeated his companion's words.
+
+"You'll find him there!  Good-by!  So long!  Sorry I'm in a hurry,"
+said the ex-miner, and hurried away.
+
+Uncle Billy was too delighted with the prospect of a speedy meeting
+with Uncle Jim to resent his former associate's supercilious haste,
+or even to wonder why Uncle Jim had not informed him that he had
+returned.  It was not the first time that he had felt how wide was
+the gulf between himself and these others, and the thought drew him
+closer to his old partner, as well as his old idea, as it was now
+possible to surprise him with the draft.  But as he was going to
+surprise him in his own boarding-house--probably a handsome one--
+Uncle Billy reflected that he would do so in a certain style.
+
+He accordingly went to a livery stable and ordered a landau and
+pair, with a negro coachman.  Seated in it, in his best and most
+ill-fitting clothes, he asked the coachman to take him to the
+Presidio, and leaned back in the cushions as they drove through the
+streets with such an expression of beaming gratification on his
+good-humored face that the passers-by smiled at the equipage and
+its extravagant occupant.  To them it seemed the not unusual sight
+of the successful miner "on a spree."  To the unsophisticated Uncle
+Billy their smiling seemed only a natural and kindly recognition of
+his happiness, and he nodded and smiled back to them with
+unsuspecting candor and innocent playfulness.  "These yer 'Frisco
+fellers ain't ALL slouches, you bet," he added to himself half
+aloud, at the back of the grinning coachman.
+
+Their way led through well-built streets to the outskirts, or
+rather to that portion of the city which seemed to have been
+overwhelmed by shifting sand-dunes, from which half-submerged
+fences and even low houses barely marked the line of highway.  The
+resistless trade-winds which had marked this change blew keenly in
+his face and slightly chilled his ardor.  At a turn in the road the
+sea came in sight, and sloping towards it the great Cemetery of
+Lone Mountain, with white shafts and marbles that glittered in the
+sunlight like the sails of ships waiting to be launched down that
+slope into the Eternal Ocean.  Uncle Billy shuddered.  What if it
+had been his fate to seek Uncle Jim there!
+
+"Dar's yar Presidio!" said the negro coachman a few moments later,
+pointing with his whip, "and dar's yar Wash'woman's Bay!"
+
+Uncle Billy stared.  A huge quadrangular fort of stone with a flag
+flying above its battlements stood at a little distance, pressed
+against the rocks, as if beating back the encroaching surges;
+between him and the fort but farther inland was a lagoon with a
+number of dilapidated, rudely patched cabins or cottages, like
+stranded driftwood around its shore.  But there was no mansion, no
+block of houses, no street, not another habitation or dwelling to
+be seen!
+
+Uncle Billy's first shock of astonishment was succeeded by a
+feeling of relief.  He had secretly dreaded a meeting with his old
+partner in the "haunts of fashion;" whatever was the cause that
+made Uncle Jim seek this obscure retirement affected him but
+slightly; he even was thrilled with a vague memory of the old
+shiftless camp they had both abandoned.  A certain instinct--he
+knew not why, or less still that it might be one of delicacy--made
+him alight before they reached the first house.  Bidding the
+carriage wait, Uncle Billy entered, and was informed by a blowzy
+Irish laundress at a tub that Jim Foster, or "Arkansaw Jim," lived
+at the fourth shanty "beyant."  He was at home, for "he'd shprained
+his fut."  Uncle Billy hurried on, stopped before the door of a
+shanty scarcely less rude than their old cabin, and half timidly
+pushed it open.  A growling voice from within, a figure that rose
+hurriedly, leaning on a stick, with an attempt to fly, but in the
+same moment sank back in a chair with an hysterical laugh--and
+Uncle Billy stood in the presence of his old partner!  But as Uncle
+Billy darted forward, Uncle Jim rose again, and this time with
+outstretched hands.  Uncle Billy caught them, and in one supreme
+pressure seemed to pour out and transfuse his whole simple soul
+into his partner's.  There they swayed each other backwards and
+forwards and sideways by their still clasped hands, until Uncle
+Billy, with a glance at Uncle Jim's bandaged ankle, shoved him by
+sheer force down into his chair.
+
+Uncle Jim was first to speak.  "Caught, b' gosh!  I mighter known
+you'd be as big a fool as me!  Look you, Billy Fall, do you know
+what you've done?  You've druv me out er the streets whar I was
+makin' an honest livin', by day, on three crossin's!  Yes," he
+laughed forgivingly, "you druv me out er it, by day, jest because I
+reckoned that some time I might run into your darned fool face,"--
+another laugh and a grasp of the hand,--"and then, b'gosh! not
+content with ruinin' my business BY DAY, when I took to it at
+night, YOU took to goin' out at nights too, and so put a stopper on
+me there!  Shall I tell you what else you did?  Well, by the holy
+poker! I owe this sprained foot to your darned foolishness and my
+own, for it was getting away from YOU one night after the theatre
+that I got run into and run over!
+
+"Ye see," he went on, unconscious of Uncle Billy's paling face, and
+with a naivete, though perhaps not a delicacy, equal to Uncle
+Billy's own, "I had to play roots on you with that lock-box
+business and these letters, because I did not want you to know what
+I was up to, for you mightn't like it, and might think it was
+lowerin' to the old firm, don't yer see?  I wouldn't hev gone into
+it, but I was played out, and I don't mind tellin' you NOW, old
+man, that when I wrote you that first chipper letter from the lock-
+box I hedn't eat anythin' for two days.  But it's all right NOW,"
+with a laugh.  "Then I got into this business--thinkin' it nothin'--
+jest the very last thing--and do you know, old pard, I couldn't
+tell anybody but YOU--and, in fact, I kept it jest to tell you--
+I've made nine hundred and fifty-six dollars!  Yes, sir, NINE
+HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX DOLLARS! solid money, in Adams and Co.'s
+Bank, just out er my trade."
+
+"Wot trade?" asked Uncle Billy.
+
+Uncle Jim pointed to the corner, where stood a large, heavy
+crossing-sweeper's broom.  "That trade."
+
+"Certingly," said Uncle Billy, with a quick laugh.
+
+"It's an outdoor trade," said Uncle Jim gravely, but with no
+suggestion of awkwardness or apology in his manner; "and thar ain't
+much difference between sweepin' a crossin' with a broom and raking
+over tailing with a rake, ONLY--WOT YE GET with a broom YOU HAVE
+HANDED TO YE, and ye don't have to PICK IT UP AND FISH IT OUT ER
+the wet rocks and sluice-gushin'; and it's a heap less tiring to
+the back."
+
+"Certingly, you bet!" said Uncle Billy enthusiastically, yet with a
+certain nervous abstraction.
+
+"I'm glad ye say so; for yer see I didn't know at first how you'd
+tumble to my doing it, until I'd made my pile.  And ef I hadn't
+made it, I wouldn't hev set eyes on ye agin, old pard--never!"
+
+"Do you mind my runnin' out a minit," said Uncle Billy, rising.
+"You see, I've got a friend waitin' for me outside--and I reckon"--
+he stammered--"I'll jest run out and send him off, so I kin talk
+comf'ble to ye."
+
+"Ye ain't got anybody you're owin' money to," said Uncle Jim
+earnestly, "anybody follerin' you to get paid, eh?  For I kin jest
+set down right here and write ye off a check on the bank!"
+
+"No," said Uncle Billy.  He slipped out of the door, and ran like a
+deer to the waiting carriage.  Thrusting a twenty-dollar gold-piece
+into the coachman's hand, he said hoarsely, "I ain't wantin' that
+kerridge just now; ye ken drive around and hev a private jamboree
+all by yourself the rest of the afternoon, and then come and wait
+for me at the top o' the hill yonder."
+
+Thus quit of his gorgeous equipage, he hurried back to Uncle Jim,
+grasping his ten-thousand dollar draft in his pocket.  He was
+nervous, he was frightened, but he must get rid of the draft and
+his story, and have it over.  But before he could speak he was
+unexpectedly stopped by Uncle Jim.
+
+"Now, look yer, Billy boy!" said Uncle Jim; "I got suthin' to say
+to ye--and I might as well clear it off my mind at once, and then
+we can start fair agin.  Now," he went on, with a half laugh,
+"wasn't it enough for ME to go on pretendin' I was rich and doing a
+big business, and gettin' up that lock-box dodge so as ye couldn't
+find out whar I hung out and what I was doin'--wasn't it enough for
+ME to go on with all this play-actin', but YOU, you long-legged or
+nary cuss! must get up and go to lyin' and play-actin', too!"
+
+"ME play-actin'?  ME lyin'?" gasped Uncle Billy.
+
+Uncle Jim leaned back in his chair and laughed.  "Do you think you
+could fool ME?  Do you think I didn't see through your little game
+o' going to that swell Oriental, jest as if ye'd made a big strike--
+and all the while ye wasn't sleepin' or eatin' there, but jest
+wrastlin' yer hash and having a roll down at the Good Cheer!  Do
+you think I didn't spy on ye and find that out?  Oh, you long-eared
+jackass-rabbit!"
+
+He laughed until the tears came into his eyes, and Uncle Billy
+laughed too, albeit until the laugh on his face became quite fixed,
+and he was fain to bury his head in his handkerchief.
+
+"And yet," said Uncle Jim, with a deep breath, "gosh! I was
+frighted--jest for a minit!  I thought, mebbe, you HAD made a big
+strike--when I got your first letter--and I made up my mind what
+I'd do!  And then I remembered you was jest that kind of an open
+sluice that couldn't keep anythin' to yourself, and you'd have been
+sure to have yelled it out to ME the first thing.  So I waited.
+And I found you out, you old sinner!"  He reached forward and dug
+Uncle Billy in the ribs.
+
+"What WOULD you hev done?" said Uncle Billy, after an hysterical
+collapse.
+
+Uncle Jim's face grew grave again.  "I'd hev--I'd--hev cl'ared out!
+Out er 'Frisco! out er Californy! out er Ameriky!  I couldn't have
+stud it!  Don't think I would hev begrudged ye yer luck!  No man
+would have been gladder than me."  He leaned forward again, and
+laid his hand caressingly upon his partner's arm--"Don't think I'd
+hev wanted to take a penny of it--but I--thar! I COULDN'T hev stood
+up under it!  To hev had YOU, you that I left behind, comin' down
+here rollin' in wealth and new partners and friends, and arrive
+upon me--and this shanty--and"--he threw towards the corner of the
+room a terrible gesture, none the less terrible that it was
+illogical and inconsequent to all that had gone before--"and--and--
+THAT BROOM!"
+
+There was a dead silence in the room.  With it Uncle Billy seemed
+to feel himself again transported to the homely cabin at Cedar Camp
+and that fateful night, with his partner's strange, determined face
+before him as then.  He even fancied that he heard the roaring of
+the pines without, and did not know that it was the distant sea.
+
+But after a minute Uncle Jim resumed:--
+
+"Of course you've made a little raise somehow, or you wouldn't be
+here?"
+
+"Yes," said Uncle Billy eagerly.  "Yes!  I've got"--  He stopped
+and stammered.  "I've got--a--few hundreds."
+
+"Oh, oh!" said Uncle Jim cheerfully.  He paused, and then added
+earnestly, "I say!  You ain't got left, over and above your d--d
+foolishness at the Oriental, as much as five hundred dollars?"
+
+"I've got," said Uncle Billy, blushing a little over his first
+deliberate and affected lie, "I've got at least five hundred and
+seventy-two dollars.  Yes," he added tentatively, gazing anxiously
+at his partner, "I've got at least that."
+
+"Je whillikins!" said Uncle Jim, with a laugh.  Then eagerly, "Look
+here, pard!  Then we're on velvet!  I've got NINE hundred; put your
+FIVE with that, and I know a little ranch that we can get for
+twelve hundred.  That's what I've been savin' up for--that's my
+little game!  No more minin' for ME.  It's got a shanty twice as
+big as our old cabin, nigh on a hundred acres, and two mustangs.
+We can run it with two Chinamen and jest make it howl!  Wot yer
+say--eh?"  He extended his hand.
+
+"I'm in," said Uncle Billy, radiantly grasping Uncle Jim's.  But
+his smile faded, and his clear simple brow wrinkled in two lines.
+
+Happily Uncle Jim did not notice it.  "Now, then, old pard," he
+said brightly, "we'll have a gay old time to-night--one of our
+jamborees!  I've got some whiskey here and a deck o' cards, and
+we'll have a little game, you understand, but not for 'keeps' now!
+No, siree; we'll play for beans."
+
+A sudden light illuminated Uncle Billy's face again, but he said,
+with a grim desperation, "Not to-night!  I've got to go into town.
+That fren' o' mine expects me to go to the theayter, don't ye see?
+But I'll be out to-morrow at sun-up, and we'll fix up this thing o'
+the ranch."
+
+"Seems to me you're kinder stuck on this fren'," grunted Uncle Jim.
+
+Uncle Billy's heart bounded at his partner's jealousy.  "No--but I
+MUST, you know," he returned, with a faint laugh.
+
+"I say--it ain't a HER, is it?" said Uncle Jim.
+
+Uncle Billy achieved a diabolical wink and a creditable blush at
+his lie.
+
+"Billy?"
+
+"Jim!"
+
+And under cover of this festive gallantry Uncle Billy escaped.  He
+ran through the gathering darkness, and toiled up the shifting
+sands to the top of the hill, where he found the carriage waiting.
+
+"Wot," said Uncle Billy in a low confidential tone to the coachman,
+"wot do you 'Frisco fellers allow to be the best, biggest, and
+riskiest gamblin'-saloon here?  Suthin' high-toned, you know?"
+
+The negro grinned.  It was the usual case of the extravagant
+spendthrift miner, though perhaps he had expected a different
+question and order.
+
+"Dey is de 'Polka,' de 'El Dorado,' and de 'Arcade' saloon, boss,"
+he said, flicking his whip meditatively.  "Most gents from de mines
+prefer de 'Polka,' for dey is dancing wid de gals frown in.  But de
+real prima facie place for gents who go for buckin' agin de tiger
+and straight-out gamblin' is de 'Arcade.'"
+
+"Drive there like thunder!" said Uncle Billy, leaping into the
+carriage.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+True to his word, Uncle Billy was at his partner's shanty early the
+next morning.  He looked a little tired, but happy, and had brought
+a draft with him for five hundred and seventy-five dollars, which
+he explained was the total of his capital.  Uncle Jim was
+overjoyed.  They would start for Napa that very day, and conclude
+the purchase of the ranch; Uncle Jim's sprained foot was a
+sufficient reason for his giving up his present vocation, which he
+could also sell at a small profit.  His domestic arrangements were
+very simple; there was nothing to take with him--there was
+everything to leave behind.  And that afternoon, at sunset, the two
+reunited partners were seated on the deck of the Napa boat as she
+swung into the stream.
+
+Uncle Billy was gazing over the railing with a look of abstracted
+relief towards the Golden Gate, where the sinking sun seemed to be
+drawing towards him in the ocean a golden stream that was forever
+pouring from the Bay and the three-hilled city beside it.  What
+Uncle Billy was thinking of, or what the picture suggested to him,
+did not transpire; for Uncle Jim, who, emboldened by his holiday,
+was luxuriating in an evening paper, suddenly uttered a long-drawn
+whistle, and moved closer to his abstracted partner.  "Look yer,"
+he said, pointing to a paragraph he had evidently just read, "just
+you listen to this, and see if we ain't lucky, you and me, to be
+jest wot we air--trustin' to our own hard work--and not thinkin' o'
+'strikes' and 'fortins.'  Jest unbutton yer ears, Billy, while I
+reel off this yer thing I've jest struck in the paper, and see what
+d--d fools some men kin make o' themselves.  And that theer
+reporter wot wrote it--must hev seed it reely!"
+
+Uncle Jim cleared his throat, and holding the paper close to his
+eyes read aloud slowly:--
+
+"'A scene of excitement that recalled the palmy days of '49 was
+witnessed last night at the Arcade Saloon.  A stranger, who might
+have belonged to that reckless epoch, and who bore every evidence
+of being a successful Pike County miner out on a "spree," appeared
+at one of the tables with a negro coachman bearing two heavy bags
+of gold.  Selecting a faro-bank as his base of operations, he began
+to bet heavily and with apparent recklessness, until his play
+excited the breathless attention of every one.  In a few moments he
+had won a sum variously estimated at from eighty to a hundred
+thousand dollars.  A rumor went round the room that it was a
+concerted attempt to "break the bank" rather than the drunken freak
+of a Western miner, dazzled by some successful strike.  To this
+theory the man's careless and indifferent bearing towards his
+extraordinary gains lent great credence.  The attempt, if such it
+was, however, was unsuccessful.  After winning ten times in
+succession the luck turned, and the unfortunate "bucker" was
+cleared out not only of his gains, but of his original investment,
+which may be placed roughly at twenty thousand dollars.  This
+extraordinary play was witnessed by a crowd of excited players, who
+were less impressed by even the magnitude of the stakes than the
+perfect sang-froid and recklessness of the player, who, it is said,
+at the close of the game tossed a twenty-dollar gold-piece to the
+banker and smilingly withdrew.  The man was not recognized by any
+of the habitues of the place.'
+
+"There!" said Uncle Jim, as he hurriedly slurred over the French
+substantive at the close, "did ye ever see such God-forsaken
+foolishness?"
+
+Uncle Billy lifted his abstracted eyes from the current, still
+pouring its unreturning gold into the sinking sun, and said, with a
+deprecatory smile, "Never!"
+
+Nor even in the days of prosperity that visited the Great Wheat
+Ranch of "Fall and Foster" did he ever tell his secret to his
+partner.
+
+
+
+SEE YUP
+
+
+I don't suppose that his progenitors ever gave him that name, or,
+indeed, that it was a NAME at all; but it was currently believed
+that--as pronounced "See UP"--it meant that lifting of the outer
+angle of the eye common to the Mongolian.  On the other hand, I had
+been told that there was an old Chinese custom of affixing some
+motto or legend, or even a sentence from Confucius, as a sign above
+their shops, and that two or more words, which might be merely
+equivalent to "Virtue is its own reward," or "Riches are
+deceitful," were believed by the simple Californian miner to be the
+name of the occupant himself.  Howbeit, "See Yup" accepted it with
+the smiling patience of his race, and never went by any other.  If
+one of the tunnelmen always addressed him as "Brigadier-General,"
+"Judge," or "Commodore," it was understood to be only the American
+fondness for ironic title, and was never used except in personal
+conversation.  In appearance he looked like any other Chinaman,
+wore the ordinary blue cotton blouse and white drawers of the
+Sampan coolie, and, in spite of the apparent cleanliness and
+freshness of these garments, always exhaled that singular medicated
+odor--half opium, half ginger--which we recognized as the common
+"Chinese smell."
+
+Our first interview was characteristic of his patient quality.  He
+had done my washing for several months, but I had never yet seen
+him.  A meeting at last had become necessary to correct his
+impressions regarding "buttons"--which he had seemed to consider as
+mere excrescences, to be removed like superfluous dirt from soiled
+linen.  I had expected him to call at my lodgings, but he had not
+yet made his appearance.  One day, during the noontide recess of
+the little frontier school over which I presided, I returned rather
+early.  Two or three of the smaller boys, who were loitering about
+the school-yard, disappeared with a certain guilty precipitation
+that I suspected for the moment, but which I presently dismissed
+from my mind.  I passed through the empty school-room to my desk,
+sat down, and began to prepare the coming lessons.  Presently I
+heard a faint sigh.  Looking up, to my intense concern, I
+discovered a solitary Chinaman whom I had overlooked, sitting in a
+rigid attitude on a bench with his back to the window.  He caught
+my eye and smiled sadly, but without moving.
+
+"What are you doing here?" I asked sternly.
+
+"Me washee shilts; me talkee 'buttons.'"
+
+"Oh! you're See Yup, are you?"
+
+"Allee same, John."
+
+"Well, come here."
+
+I continued my work, but he did not move.
+
+"Come here, hang it!  Don't you understand?"
+
+"Me shabbee, 'comme yea.'  But me no shabbee Mellican boy, who
+catchee me, allee same.  YOU 'comme yea'--YOU shabbee?"
+
+Indignant, but believing that the unfortunate man was still in fear
+of persecution from the mischievous urchins whom I had evidently
+just interrupted, I put down my pen and went over to him.  Here I
+discovered, to my surprise and mortification, that his long pigtail
+was held hard and fast by the closed window behind him which the
+young rascals had shut down upon it, after having first noiselessly
+fished it outside with a hook and line.  I apologized, opened the
+window, and released him.  He did not complain, although he must
+have been fixed in that uncomfortable position for some minutes,
+but plunged at once into the business that brought him there.
+
+"But WHY didn't you come to my lodgings?" I asked.
+
+He smiled sadly but intelligently.
+
+"Mishtel Bally [Mr. Barry, my landlord] he owce me five dollee fo
+washee, washee.  He no payee me.  He say he knock hellee outee me
+allee time I come for payee.  So me no come HOUSEE, me come
+SCHOOLEE, Shabbee?  Mellican boy no good, but not so big as
+Mellican man.  No can hurtee Chinaman so much.  Shabbee?"
+
+Alas!  I knew that this was mainly true.  Mr. James Barry was an
+Irishman, whose finer religious feelings revolted against paying
+money to a heathen.  I could not find it in my heart to say
+anything to See Yup about the buttons; indeed, I spoke in
+complimentary terms about the gloss of my shirts, and I think I
+meekly begged him to come again for my washing.  When I went home I
+expostulated with Mr. Barry, but succeeded only in extracting from
+him the conviction that I was one of "thim black Republican fellys
+that worshiped naygurs."  I had simply made an enemy of him.  But I
+did not know that, at the same time, I had made a friend of See
+Yup!
+
+I became aware of this a few days later, by the appearance on my
+desk of a small pot containing a specimen of camellia japonica in
+flower.  I knew the school-children were in the habit of making
+presents to me in this furtive fashion,--leaving their own nosegays
+of wild flowers, or perhaps a cluster of roses from their parents'
+gardens,--but I also knew that this exotic was too rare to come
+from them.  I remembered that See Yup had a Chinese taste for
+gardening, and a friend, another Chinaman, who kept a large nursery
+in the adjoining town.  But my doubts were set at rest by the
+discovery of a small roll of red rice-paper containing my washing-
+bill, fastened to the camellia stalk.  It was plain that this
+mingling of business and delicate gratitude was clearly See Yup's
+own idea.  As the finest flower was the topmost one, I plucked it
+for wearing, when I found, to my astonishment, that it was simply
+wired to the stalk.  This led me to look at the others, which I
+found also wired!  More than that, they seemed to be an inferior
+flower, and exhaled that cold, earthy odor peculiar to the
+camellia, even, as I thought, to an excess.  A closer examination
+resulted in the discovery that, with the exception of the first
+flower I had plucked, they were one and all ingeniously constructed
+of thin slices of potato, marvelously cut to imitate the vegetable
+waxiness and formality of the real flower.  The work showed an
+infinite and almost pathetic patience in detail, yet strangely
+incommensurate with the result, admirable as it was.  Nevertheless,
+this was also like See Yup.  But whether he had tried to deceive
+me, or whether he only wished me to admire his skill, I could not
+say.  And as his persecution by my scholars had left a balance of
+consideration in his favor, I sent him a warm note of thanks, and
+said nothing of my discovery.
+
+As our acquaintance progressed, I became frequently the recipient
+of other small presents from him: a pot of preserves of a quality I
+could not purchase in shops, and whose contents in their crafty,
+gingery dissimulation so defied definition that I never knew
+whether they were animal, vegetable, or mineral; two or three
+hideous Chinese idols, "for luckee," and a diabolical fire-work
+with an irregular spasmodic activity that would sometimes be
+prolonged until the next morning.  In return, I gave him some
+apparently hopeless oral lessons in English, and certain sentences
+to be copied, which he did with marvelous precision.  I remember
+one instance when this peculiar faculty of imitation was disastrous
+in result.  In setting him a copy, I had blurred a word which I
+promptly erased, and then traced the letters more distinctly over
+the scratched surface.  To my surprise, See Yup triumphantly
+produced HIS copy with the erasion itself carefully imitated, and,
+in fact, much more neatly done than mine.
+
+In our confidential intercourse, I never seemed to really get
+nearer to him.  His sympathy and simplicity appeared like his
+flowers--to be a good-humored imitation of my own.  I am satisfied
+that his particularly soulless laugh was not derived from any
+amusement he actually felt, yet I could not say it was forced.  In
+his accurate imitations, I fancied he was only trying to evade any
+responsibility of his own.  THAT devolved upon his taskmaster!  In
+the attention he displayed when new ideas were presented to him,
+there was a slight condescension, as if he were looking down upon
+them from his three thousand years of history.
+
+"Don't you think the electric telegraph wonderful?" I asked one
+day.
+
+"Very good for Mellican man," he said, with his aimless laugh;
+"plenty makee him jump!"
+
+I never could tell whether he had confounded it with electro-
+galvanism, or was only satirizing our American haste and
+feverishness.  He was capable of either.  For that matter, we knew
+that the Chinese themselves possessed some means of secretly and
+quickly communicating with one another.  Any news of good or ill
+import to their race was quickly disseminated through the
+settlement before WE knew anything about it.  An innocent basket of
+clothes from the wash, sent up from the river-bank, became in some
+way a library of information; a single slip of rice-paper,
+aimlessly fluttering in the dust of the road, had the mysterious
+effect of diverging a whole gang of coolie tramps away from our
+settlement.
+
+When See Yup was not subject to the persecutions of the more
+ignorant and brutal he was always a source of amusement to all, and
+I cannot recall an instance when he was ever taken seriously.  The
+miners found diversions even in his alleged frauds and trickeries,
+whether innocent or retaliatory, and were fond of relating with
+great gusto his evasion of the Foreign Miners' Tax.  This was an
+oppressive measure aimed principally at the Chinese, who humbly
+worked the worn-out "tailings" of their Christian fellow miners.
+It was stated that See Yup, knowing the difficulty--already alluded
+to--of identifying any particular Chinaman by NAME, conceived the
+additional idea of confusing recognition by intensifying the
+monotonous facial expression.  Having paid his tax himself to the
+collector, he at once passed the receipt to his fellows, so that
+the collector found himself confronted in different parts of the
+settlement with the receipt and the aimless laugh of, apparently,
+See Yup himself.  Although we all knew that there were a dozen
+Chinamen or more at work at the mines, the collector never was able
+to collect the tax from more than TWO, --See Yup and one See Yin,--
+and so great was THEIR facial resemblance that the unfortunate
+official for a long time hugged himself with the conviction that he
+had made See Yup PAY TWICE, and withheld the money from the
+government!  It is very probable that the Californian's recognition
+of the sanctity of a joke, and his belief that "cheating the
+government was only cheating himself," largely accounted for the
+sympathies of the rest of the miners.
+
+But these sympathies were not always unanimous.
+
+One evening I strolled into the bar-room of the principal saloon,
+which, so far as mere upholstery and comfort went, was also the
+principal house in the settlement.  The first rains had commenced;
+the windows were open, for the influence of the southwest trades
+penetrated even this far-off mountain mining settlement, but, oddly
+enough, there was a fire in the large central stove, around which
+the miners had collected, with their steaming boots elevated on a
+projecting iron railing that encircled it.  They were not attracted
+by the warmth, but the stove formed a social pivot for gossip, and
+suggested that mystic circle dear to the gregarious instinct.  Yet
+they were decidedly a despondent group.  For some moments the
+silence was only broken by a gasp, a sigh, a muttered oath, or an
+impatient change of position.  There was nothing in the fortunes of
+the settlement, nor in their own individual affairs to suggest this
+gloom.  The singular truth was that they were, one and all,
+suffering from the pangs of dyspepsia.
+
+Incongruous as such a complaint might seem to their healthy
+environment,--their outdoor life, their daily exercise, the healing
+balsam of the mountain air, their enforced temperance in diet, and
+the absence of all enervating pleasures,--it was nevertheless the
+incontestable fact.  Whether it was the result of the nervous,
+excitable temperament which had brought them together in this
+feverish hunt for gold; whether it was the quality of the tinned
+meats or half-cooked provisions they hastily bolted, begrudging the
+time it took to prepare and to consume them; whether they too often
+supplanted their meals by tobacco or whiskey, the singular
+physiological truth remained that these young, finely selected
+adventurers, living the lives of the natural, aboriginal man, and
+looking the picture of health and strength, actually suffered more
+from indigestion than the pampered dwellers of the cities.  The
+quantity of "patent medicines," "bitters," "pills," "panaceas," and
+"lozenges" sold in the settlement almost exceeded the amount of the
+regular provisions whose effects they were supposed to correct.
+The sufferers eagerly scanned advertisements and placards.  There
+were occasional "runs" on new "specifics," and general conversation
+eventually turned into a discussion of their respective merits.  A
+certain childlike faith and trust in each new remedy was not the
+least distressing and pathetic of the symptoms of these grown-up,
+bearded men.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said Cyrus Parker, glancing around at his fellow
+sufferers, "ye kin talk of your patent medicines, and I've tackled
+'em all, but only the other day I struck suthin' that I'm goin' to
+hang on to, you bet."
+
+Every eye was turned moodily to the speaker, but no one said
+anything.
+
+"And I didn't get it outer advertisements, nor off of circulars.  I
+got it outer my head, just by solid thinking," continued Parker.
+
+"What was it, Cy?" said one unsophisticated and inexperienced
+sufferer.
+
+Instead of replying, Parker, like a true artist, knowing he had the
+ear of his audience, dramatically flashed a question upon them.
+
+"Did you ever hear of a Chinaman having dyspepsy?"
+
+"Never heard he had sabe enough to hev ANYTHING," said a scorner.
+
+"No, but DID ye?" insisted Parker.
+
+"Well, no!" chorused the group.  They were evidently struck with
+the fact.
+
+"Of course you didn't," said Parker triumphantly.  "'Cos they
+AIN'T.  Well, gentlemen, it didn't seem to me the square thing that
+a pesky lot o' yellow-skinned heathens should be built different to
+a white man, and never know the tortur' that a Christian feels; and
+one day, arter dinner, when I was just a-lyin' flat down on the
+bank, squirmin', and clutching the short grass to keep from
+yellin', who should go by but that pizened See Yup, with a grin on
+his face.
+
+"'Mellican man plenty playee to him Joss after eatin',' sez he; 'but
+Chinaman smellee punk, allee same, and no hab got.'
+
+"I knew the slimy cuss was just purtendin' he thought I was prayin'
+to my Joss, but I was that weak I hadn't stren'th, boys, to heave a
+rock at him.  Yet it gave me an idea."
+
+"What was it?" they asked eagerly.
+
+"I went down to his shop the next day, when he was alone, and I was
+feeling mighty bad, and I got hold of his pigtail and I allowed I'd
+stuff it down his throat if he didn't tell me what he meant.  Then
+he took a piece of punk and lit it, and put it under my nose, and,
+darn my skin, gentlemen, you migh'n't believe me, but in a minute I
+felt better, and after a whiff or two I was all right."
+
+"Was it pow'ful strong, Cy?" asked the inexperienced one.
+
+"No," said Parker, "and that's just what's got me.  It was a sort
+o' dreamy, spicy smell, like a hot night.  But as I couldn't go
+'round 'mong you boys with a lighted piece o' punk in my hand, ez
+if I was settin' off Fourth of July firecrackers, I asked him if he
+couldn't fix me up suthin' in another shape that would be handier
+to use when I was took bad, and I'd reckon to pay him for it like
+ez I'd pay for any other patent medicine.  So he fixed me up this."
+
+He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out a small red paper
+which, when opened, disclosed a pink powder.  It was gravely passed
+around the group.
+
+"Why, it smells and tastes like ginger," said one.
+
+"It is only ginger!" said another scornfully.
+
+"Mebbe it is, and mebbe it isn't," returned Cy Parker stoutly.
+"Mebbe ut's only my fancy.  But if it's the sort o' stuff to bring
+on that fancy, and that fancy CURES me, it's all the same.  I've
+got about two dollars' worth o' that fancy or that ginger, and I'm
+going to stick to it.  You hear me!"  And he carefully put it back
+in his pocket.
+
+At which criticisms and gibes broke forth.  If he (Cy Parker), a
+white man, was going to "demean himself" by consulting a Chinese
+quack, he'd better buy up a lot o' idols and stand 'em up around
+his cabin.  If he had that sort o' confidences with See Yup, he
+ought to go to work with him on his cheap tailings, and be
+fumigated all at the same time.  If he'd been smoking an opium
+pipe, instead of smelling punk, he ought to be man enough to
+confess it.  Yet it was noticeable that they were all very anxious
+to examine the packet again, but Cy Parker was alike indifferent to
+demand or entreaty.
+
+A few days later I saw Abe Wynford, one of the party, coming out of
+See Yup's wash-house.  He muttered something in passing about the
+infamous delay in sending home his washing, but did not linger long
+in conversation.  The next day I met another miner AT the wash-
+house, but HE lingered so long on some trifling details that I
+finally left him there alone with See Yup.  When I called upon
+Poker Jack of Shasta, there was a singular smell of incense in HIS
+cabin, which he attributed to the very resinous quality of the fir
+logs he was burning.  I did not attempt to probe these mysteries by
+any direct appeal to See Yup himself: I respected his reticence;
+indeed, if I had not, I was quite satisfied that he would have lied
+to me.  Enough that his wash-house was well patronized, and he was
+decidedly "getting on."
+
+It might have been a month afterwards that Dr. Duchesne was setting
+a broken bone in the settlement, and after the operation was over,
+had strolled into the Palmetto Saloon.  He was an old army surgeon,
+much respected and loved in the district, although perhaps a little
+feared for the honest roughness and military precision of his
+speech.  After he had exchanged salutations with the miners in his
+usual hearty fashion, and accepted their invitation to drink, Cy
+Parker, with a certain affected carelessness which did not,
+however, conceal a singular hesitation in his speech, began:--
+
+"I've been wantin' to ask ye a question, Doc,--a sort o' darned
+fool question, ye know,--nothing in the way of consultation, don't
+you see, though it's kin er in the way o' your purfeshun.  Sabe?"
+
+"Go on, Cy," said the doctor good-humoredly, "this is my dispensary
+hour."
+
+"Oh! it ain't anything about symptoms, Doc, and there ain't
+anything the matter with me.  It's only just to ask ye if ye
+happened to know anything about the medical practice of these yer
+Chinamen?"
+
+"I don't know," said the doctor bluntly, "and I don't know ANYBODY
+who does."
+
+There was a sudden silence in the bar, and the doctor, putting down
+his glass, continued with slight professional precision:--
+
+"You see, the Chinese know nothing of anatomy from personal
+observation.  Autopsies and dissection are against their
+superstitions, which declare the human body sacred, and are
+consequently never practiced."
+
+There was a slight movement of inquiring interest among the party,
+and Cy Parker, after a meaning glance at the others, went on half
+aggressively, half apologetically:--
+
+"In course, they ain't surgeons like you, Doc, but that don't keep
+them from having their own little medicines, just as dogs eat
+grass, you know.  Now I want to put it to you, as a fa'r-minded
+man, if you mean ter say that, jest because those old women who
+sarve out yarbs and spring medicines in families don't know
+anything of anatomy, they ain't fit to give us their simple and
+nat'ral medicines?"
+
+"But the Chinese medicines are not simple or natural," said the
+doctor coolly.
+
+"Not simple?" echoed the party, closing round him.
+
+"I don't mean to say," continued the doctor, glancing around at
+their eager, excited faces with an appearance of wonder, "that they
+are positively noxious, unless taken in large quantities, for they
+are not drugs at all, but I certainly should not call them
+'simple.'  Do YOU know what they principally are?"
+
+"Well, no," said Parker cautiously, "perhaps not EXACTLY."
+
+"Come a little closer, and I'll tell you."
+
+Not only Parker's head but the others were bent over the counter.
+Dr. Duchesne uttered a few words in a tone inaudible to the rest of
+the company.  There was a profound silence, broken at last by Abe
+Wynford's voice:--
+
+"Ye kin pour me out about three fingers o' whiskey, Barkeep.  I'll
+take it straight."
+
+"Same to me," said the others.
+
+The men gulped down their liquor; two of them quietly passed out.
+The doctor wiped his lips, buttoned his coat, and began to draw on
+his riding-gloves.
+
+"I've heerd," said Poker Jack of Shasta, with a faint smile on his
+white face, as he toyed with the last drops of liquor in his glass,
+"that the darned fools sometimes smell punk as a medicine, eh?"
+
+"Yes, THAT'S comparatively decent," said the doctor reflectively.
+"It's only sawdust mixed with a little gum and formic acid."
+
+"Formic acid?  Wot's that?"
+
+"A very peculiar acid secreted by ants.  It is supposed to be used
+by them offensively in warfare--just as the skunk, eh?"
+
+But Poker Jack of Shasta had hurriedly declared that he wanted to
+speak to a man who was passing, and had disappeared.  The doctor
+walked to the door, mounted his horse, and rode away.  I noticed,
+however, that there was a slight smile on his bronzed, impassive
+face.  This led me to wonder if he was entirely ignorant of the
+purpose for which he had been questioned, and the effect of his
+information.  I was confirmed in the belief by the remarkable
+circumstances that nothing more was said of it; the incident seemed
+to have terminated there, and the victims made no attempt to
+revenge themselves on See Yup.  That they had one and all, secretly
+and unknown to one another, patronized him, there was no doubt;
+but, at the same time, as they evidently were not sure that Dr.
+Duchesne had not hoaxed them in regard to the quality of See Yup's
+medicines, they knew that an attack on the unfortunate Chinaman
+would in either case reveal their secret and expose them to the
+ridicule of their brother miners.  So the matter dropped, and See
+Yup remained master of the situation.
+
+Meantime he was prospering.  The coolie gang he worked on the
+river, when not engaged in washing clothes, were "picking over" the
+"tailings," or refuse of gravel, left on abandoned claims by
+successful miners.  As there was no more expense attending this
+than in stone-breaking or rag-picking, and the feeding of the
+coolies, which was ridiculously cheap, there was no doubt that See
+Yup was reaping a fair weekly return from it; but, as he sent his
+receipts to San Francisco through coolie managers, after the
+Chinese custom, and did not use the regular Express Company, there
+was no way of ascertaining the amount.  Again, neither See Yup nor
+his fellow countrymen ever appeared to have any money about them.
+In ruder times and more reckless camps, raids were often made by
+ruffians on their cabins or their traveling gangs, but never with
+any pecuniary result.  This condition, however, it seemed was
+destined to change.
+
+One Saturday See Yup walked into Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express
+office with a package of gold-dust, which, when duly weighed, was
+valued at five hundred dollars.  It was consigned to a Chinese
+company in San Francisco.  When the clerk handed See Yup a receipt,
+he remarked casually:--
+
+"Washing seems to pay, See Yup."
+
+"Washee velly good pay.  You wantee washee, John?" said See Yup
+eagerly.
+
+"No, no," said the clerk, with a laugh.  "I was only thinking five
+hundred dollars would represent the washing of a good many shirts."
+
+"No leplesent washee shirts at all!  Catchee gold-dust when washee
+tailings.  Shabbee?"
+
+The clerk DID "shabbee," and lifted his eyebrows.  The next
+Saturday See Yup appeared with another package, worth about four
+hundred dollars, directed to the same consignee.
+
+"Didn't pan out quite so rich this week, eh?" said the clerk
+engagingly.
+
+"No," returned See Yup impassively; "next time he payee more."
+
+When the third Saturday came, with the appearance of See Yup and
+four hundred and fifty dollars' worth of gold-dust, the clerk felt
+he was no longer bound to keep the secret.  He communicated it to
+others, and in twenty-four hours the whole settlement knew that See
+Yup's coolie company were taking out an average of four hundred
+dollars per week from the refuse and tailings of the old abandoned
+Palmetto claim!
+
+The astonishment of the settlement was profound.  In earlier days
+jealousy and indignation at the success of these degraded heathens
+might have taken a more active and aggressive shape, and it would
+have fared ill with See Yup and his companions.  But the settlement
+had become more prosperous and law-abiding; there were one or two
+Eastern families and some foreign capital already there, and its
+jealousy and indignation were restricted to severe investigation
+and legal criticism.  Fortunately for See Yup, it was an old-
+established mining law that an abandoned claim and its tailings
+became the property of whoever chose to work it.  But it was
+alleged that See Yup's company had in reality "struck a lead,"--
+discovered a hitherto unknown vein or original deposit of gold, not
+worked by the previous company, and having failed legally to
+declare it by preemption and public registry, in their foolish
+desire for secrecy, had thus forfeited their right to the property.
+A surveillance of their working, however, did not establish this
+theory; the gold that See Yup had sent away was of the kind that
+might have been found in the tailings overlooked by the late
+Palmetto owners.  Yet it was a very large yield for mere refuse.
+
+"Them Palmetto boys were mighty keerless after they'd made their
+big 'strike' and got to work on the vein, and I reckon they threw a
+lot of gold away," said Cy Parker, who remembered their large-
+handed recklessness in the "flush days."  "On'y that WE didn't
+think it was white man's work to rake over another man's leavin's,
+we might hev had what them derned Chinamen hev dropped into.  Tell
+ye what, boys, we've been a little too 'high and mighty,' and we'll
+hev to climb down."
+
+At last the excitement reached its climax, and diplomacy was
+employed to effect what neither intimidation nor espionage could
+secure.  Under the pretense of desiring to buy out See Yup's
+company, a select committee of the miners was permitted to examine
+the property and its workings.  They found the great bank of stones
+and gravel, representing the cast-out debris of the old claim,
+occupied by See Yup and four or five plodding automatic coolies.
+At the end of two hours the committee returned to the saloon
+bursting with excitement.  They spoke under their breath, but
+enough was gathered to satisfy the curious crowd that See Yup's
+pile of tailings was rich beyond their expectations.  The committee
+had seen with their own eyes gold taken out of the sand and gravel
+to the amount of twenty dollars in the two short hours of their
+examination.  And the work had been performed in the stupidest,
+clumsiest, yet PATIENT Chinese way.  What might not white men do
+with better appointed machinery!  A syndicate was at once formed.
+See Yup was offered twenty thousand dollars if he would sell out
+and put the syndicate in possession of the claim in twenty-four
+hours.  The Chinaman received the offer stolidly.  As he seemed
+inclined to hesitate, I am grieved to say that it was intimated to
+him that if he declined he might be subject to embarrassing and
+expensive legal proceedings to prove his property, and that
+companies would be formed to "prospect" the ground on either side
+of his heap of tailings.  See Yup at last consented, with the
+proviso that the money should be paid in gold into the hands of a
+Chinese agent in San Francisco on the day of the delivery of the
+claim.  The syndicate made no opposition to this characteristic
+precaution of the Chinaman.  It was like them not to travel with
+money, and the implied uncomplimentary suspicion of danger from the
+community was overlooked.  See Yup departed the day that the
+syndicate took possession.  He came to see me before he went.  I
+congratulated him upon his good fortune; at the same time, I was
+embarrassed by the conviction that he was unfairly forced into a
+sale of his property at a figure far below its real value.
+
+I think differently now.
+
+At the end of the week it was said that the new company cleared up
+about three hundred dollars.  This was not so much as the community
+had expected, but the syndicate was apparently satisfied, and the
+new machinery was put up.  At the end of the next week the
+syndicate were silent as to their returns.  One of them made a
+hurried visit to San Francisco.  It was said that he was unable to
+see either See Yup or the agent to whom the money was paid.  It was
+also noticed that there was no Chinaman remaining in the settlement.
+Then the fatal secret was out.
+
+The heap of tailings had probably never yielded the See Yup company
+more than twenty dollars a week, the ordinary wage of such a
+company.  See Yup had conceived the brilliant idea of "booming" it
+on a borrowed capital of five hundred dollars in gold-dust, which
+he OPENLY transmitted by express to his confederate and creditor in
+San Francisco, who in turn SECRETLY sent it back to See Yup by
+coolie messengers, to be again openly transmitted to San Francisco.
+The package of gold-dust was thus passed backwards and forwards
+between debtor and creditor, to the grave edification of the
+Express Company and the fatal curiosity of the settlement.  When
+the syndicate had gorged the bait thus thrown out, See Yup, on the
+day the self-invited committee inspected the claim, promptly
+"salted" the tailings by CONSCIENTIOUSLY DISTRIBUTING THE GOLD-DUST
+OVER IT so deftly that it appeared to be its natural composition
+and yield.
+
+I have only to bid farewell to See Yup, and close this reminiscence
+of a misunderstood man, by adding the opinion of an eminent jurist
+in San Francisco, to whom the facts were submitted: "So clever was
+this alleged fraud, that it is extremely doubtful if an action
+would lie against See Yup in the premises, there being no legal
+evidence of the 'salting,' and none whatever of his actual
+allegation that the gold-dust was the ORDINARY yield of the
+tailings, that implication resting entirely with the committee who
+examined it under false pretense, and who subsequently forced the
+sale by intimidation."
+
+
+
+THE DESBOROUGH CONNECTIONS
+
+
+"Then it isn't a question of property or next of kin?" said the
+consul.
+
+"Lord! no," said the lady vivaciously.  "Why, goodness me!  I
+reckon old Desborough could, at any time before he died, have
+'bought up' or 'bought out' the whole lot of his relatives on this
+side of the big pond, no matter what they were worth.  No, it's
+only a matter of curiosity and just sociableness."
+
+The American consul at St. Kentigorn felt much relieved.  He had
+feared it was only the old story of delusive quests for imaginary
+estates and impossible inheritances which he had confronted so often
+in nervous wan-eyed enthusiasts and obstreperous claimants from his
+own land.  Certainly there was no suggestion of this in the richly
+dressed and be-diamonded matron before him, nor in her pretty
+daughter, charming in a Paris frock, alive with the consciousness of
+beauty and admiration, and yet a little ennuye from gratified
+indulgence.  He knew the mother to be the wealthy widow of a New
+York millionaire, that she was traveling for pleasure in Europe, and
+a chance meeting with her at dinner a few nights before had led to
+this half-capricious, half-confidential appointment at the consulate.
+
+"No," continued Mrs. Desborough; "Mr. Desborough came to America,
+when a small boy, with an uncle who died some years ago.  Mr.
+Desborough never seemed to hanker much after his English relatives
+as long as I knew him, but now that I and Sadie are over here, why
+we guessed we might look 'em up and sort of sample 'em!  'Desborough'
+'s rather a good name," added the lady, with a complacency that,
+however, had a suggestion of query in it.
+
+"Yes," said the consul; "from the French, I fancy."
+
+"Mr. Desborough was English--very English," corrected the lady.
+
+"I mean it may be an old Norman name," said the consul.
+
+'Norman's good enough for ME," said the daughter, reflecting.
+"We'll just settle it as Norman.  I never thought about that DES."
+
+"Only you may find it called 'Debborough' here, and spelt so," said
+the consul, smiling.
+
+Miss Desborough lifted her pretty shoulders and made a charming
+grimace.  "Then we won't acknowledge 'em.  No Debborough for me!"
+
+"You might put an advertisement in the papers, like the 'next of
+kin' notice, intimating, in the regular way, that they would 'hear
+of something to their advantage'--as they certainly would,"
+continued the consul, with a bow.  "It would be such a refreshing
+change to the kind of thing I'm accustomed to, don't you know--this
+idea of one of my countrywomen coming over just to benefit English
+relatives!  By Jove!  I wouldn't mind undertaking the whole thing
+for you--it's such a novelty."  He was quite carried away with the
+idea.
+
+But the two ladies were far from participating in this joyous
+outlook.  "No," said Mrs. Desborough promptly, "that wouldn't do.
+You see," she went on with superb frankness, "that would be just
+giving ourselves away, and saying who WE were before we found out
+what THEY were like.  Mr. Desborough was all right in HIS way, but
+we don't know anything about his FOLKS!  We ain't here on a mission
+to improve the Desboroughs, nor to gather in any 'lost tribes.'"
+
+It was evident that, in spite of the humor of the situation and the
+levity of the ladies, there was a characteristic national
+practicalness about them, and the consul, with a sigh, at last gave
+the address of one or two responsible experts in genealogical
+inquiry, as he had often done before.  He felt it was impossible to
+offer any advice to ladies as thoroughly capable of managing their
+own affairs as his fair countrywomen, yet he was not without some
+curiosity to know the result of their practical sentimental quest.
+That he should ever hear of them again he doubted.  He knew that
+after their first loneliness had worn off in their gregarious
+gathering at a London hotel they were not likely to consort with
+their own country people, who indeed were apt to fight shy of one
+another, and even to indulge in invidious criticism of one another
+when admitted in that society to which they were all equally
+strangers.  So he took leave of them on their way back to London
+with the belief that their acquaintance terminated with that brief
+incident.  But he was mistaken.
+
+In the year following he was spending his autumn vacation at a
+country house.  It was an historic house, and had always struck him
+as being--even in that country of historic seats--a singular
+example of the vicissitudes of English manorial estates and the
+mutations of its lords.  His host in his prime had been recalled
+from foreign service to unexpectedly succeed to an uncle's title
+and estate.  That estate, however, had come into the possession of
+the uncle only through his marriage with the daughter of an old
+family whose portraits still looked down from the walls upon the
+youngest and alien branch.  There were likenesses, effigies,
+memorials, and reminiscences of still older families who had
+occupied it through forfeiture by war or the favoritism of kings,
+and in its stately cloisters and ruined chapel was still felt the
+dead hand of its evicted religious founders, which could not be
+shaken off.
+
+It was this strange individuality that affected all who saw it.
+For, however changed were those within its walls, whoever were its
+inheritors or inhabiters, Scrooby Priory never changed nor altered
+its own character.  However incongruous or ill-assorted the
+portraits that looked from its walls,--so ill met that they might
+have flown at one another's throats in the long nights when the
+family were away,--the great house itself was independent of them
+all.  The be-wigged, be-laced, and be-furbelowed of one day's
+gathering, the round-headed, steel-fronted, and prim-kerchiefed
+congregation of another day, and even the black-coated, bare-armed,
+and bare-shouldered assemblage of to-day had no effect on the
+austerities of the Priory.  Modern houses might show the tastes and
+prepossessions of their dwellers, might have caught some passing
+trick of the hour, or have recorded the augmented fortunes or
+luxuriousness of the owner, but Scrooby Priory never!  No one had
+dared even to disturb its outer rigid integrity; the breaches of
+time and siege were left untouched.  It held its calm indifferent
+sway over all who passed its low-arched portals, and the consul was
+fain to believe that he--a foreign visitor--was no more alien to
+the house than its present owner.
+
+"I'm expecting a very charming compatriot of yours to-morrow," said
+Lord Beverdale as they drove from the station together.  "You must
+tell me what to show her."
+
+"I should think any countrywoman of mine would be quite satisfied
+with the Priory," said the consul, glancing thoughtfully towards
+the pile dimly seen through the park.
+
+"I shouldn't like her to be bored here," continued Beverdale.
+"Algy met her at Rome, where she was occupying a palace with her
+mother--they're very rich, you know.  He found she was staying with
+Lady Minever at Hedham Towers, and I went over and invited her with
+a little party.  She's a Miss Desborough."
+
+The consul gave a slight start, and was aware that Beverdale was
+looking at him.
+
+"Perhaps you know her?" said Beverdale.
+
+"Just enough to agree with you that she is charming," said the
+consul.  "I dined with them, and saw them at the consulate."
+
+"Oh yes; I always forget you are a consul.  Then, of course, you
+know all about them.  I suppose they're very rich, and in society
+over there?" said Beverdale in a voice that was quite animated.
+
+It was on the consul's lips to say that the late Mr. Desborough was
+an Englishman, and even to speak playfully of their proposed quest,
+but a sudden instinct withheld him.  After all, perhaps it was only
+a caprice, or idea, they had forgotten,--perhaps, who knows?--that
+they were already ashamed of.  They had evidently "got on" in
+English society, if that was their real intent, and doubtless Miss
+Desborough, by this time, was quite as content with the chance of
+becoming related to the Earl of Beverdale, through his son and
+heir, Algernon, as if they had found a real Lord Desborough among
+their own relatives.  The consul knew that Lord Beverdale was not a
+rich man, that like most men of old family he was not a slave to
+class prejudice; indeed, the consul had seen very few noblemen off
+the stage or out of the pages of a novel who were.  So he said,
+with a slight affectation of authority, that there was as little
+doubt of the young lady's wealth as there was of her personal
+attractions.
+
+They were nearing the house through a long avenue of chestnuts
+whose variegated leaves were already beginning to strew the ground
+beneath, and they could see the vista open upon the mullioned
+windows of the Priory, lighted up by the yellow October sunshine.
+In that sunshine stood a tall, clean-limbed young fellow, dressed
+in a shooting-suit, whom the consul recognized at once as Lord
+Algernon, the son of his companion.  As if to accent the graces of
+this vision of youth and vigor, near him, in the shadow, an old man
+had halted, hat in hand, still holding the rake with which he had
+been gathering the dead leaves in the avenue; his back bent, partly
+with years, partly with the obeisance of a servitor.  There was
+something so marked in this contrast, in this old man standing in
+the shadow of the fading year, himself as dried and withered as the
+leaves he was raking, yet pausing to make his reverence to this
+passing sunshine of youth and prosperity in the presence of his
+coming master, that the consul, as they swept by, looked after him
+with a stirring of pain.
+
+"Rather an old man to be still at work," said the consul.
+
+Beverdale laughed.  "You must not let him hear you say so; he
+considers himself quite as fit as any younger man in the place,
+and, by Jove! though he's nearly eighty, I'm inclined to believe
+it.  He's not one of our people, however; he comes from the
+village, and is taken on at odd times, partly to please himself.
+His great aim is to be independent of his children,--he has a
+granddaughter who is one of the maids at the Priory,--and to keep
+himself out of the workhouse.  He does not come from these parts--
+somewhere farther north, I fancy.  But he's a tough lot, and has a
+deal of work in him yet."
+
+"Seems to be going a bit stale lately," said Lord Algernon, "and I
+think is getting a little queer in his head.  He has a trick of
+stopping and staring straight ahead, at times, when he seems to go
+off for a minute or two.  There!" continued the young man, with a
+light laugh.  "I say! he's doing it now!"  They both turned quickly
+and gazed at the bent figure--not fifty yards away--standing in
+exactly the same attitude as before.  But, even as they gazed, he
+slowly lifted his rake and began his monotonous work again.
+
+At Scrooby Priory, the consul found that the fame of his fair
+countrywoman had indeed preceded her, and that the other guests
+were quite as anxious to see Miss Desborough as he was.  One of
+them had already met her in London; another knew her as one of the
+house party at the Duke of Northforeland's, where she had been a
+central figure.  Some of her naive sallies and frank criticisms
+were repeated with great unction by the gentlemen, and with some
+slight trepidation and a "fearful joy" by the ladies.  He was more
+than ever convinced that mother and daughter had forgotten their
+lineal Desboroughs, and he resolved to leave any allusion to it to
+the young lady herself.
+
+She, however, availed herself of that privilege the evening after
+her arrival.  "Who'd have thought of meeting YOU here?" she said,
+sweeping her skirts away to make room for him on a sofa.  "It's a
+coon's age since I saw you--not since you gave us that letter to
+those genealogical gentlemen in London."
+
+The consul hoped that it had proved successful.
+
+"Yes, but maw guessed we didn't care to go back to Hengist and
+Horsa, and when they let loose a lot of 'Debboroughs' and
+'Daybrooks' upon us, maw kicked!  We've got a drawing ten yards
+long, that looks like a sour apple tree, with lots of Desboroughs
+hanging up on the branches like last year's pippins, and I guess
+about as worm-eaten.  We took that well enough, but when it came to
+giving us a map of straight lines and dashes with names written
+under them like an old Morse telegraph slip, struck by lightning,
+then maw and I guessed that it made us tired.
+
+"You know," she went on, opening her clear gray eyes on the consul,
+with a characteristic flash of shrewd good sense through her quaint
+humor, "we never reckoned where this thing would land us, and we
+found we were paying a hundred pounds, not only for the Desboroughs,
+but all the people they'd MARRIED, and their CHILDREN, and
+children's children, and there were a lot of outsiders we'd never
+heard of, nor wanted to hear of.  Maw once thought she'd got on the
+trail of a Plantagenet, and followed it keen, until she found she
+had been reading the dreadful thing upside down.  Then we concluded
+we wouldn't take any more stock in the family until it had risen."
+
+During this speech the consul could not help noticing that,
+although her attitude was playfully confidential to him, her voice
+really was pitched high enough to reach the ears of smaller groups
+around her, who were not only following her with the intensest
+admiration, but had shamelessly abandoned their own conversation,
+and had even faced towards her.  Was she really posing in her
+naivete?  There was a certain mischievous, even aggressive,
+consciousness in her pretty eyelids.  Then she suddenly dropped
+both eyes and voice, and said to the consul in a genuine aside, "I
+like this sort of thing much better."
+
+The consul looked puzzled.  "What sort of thing?"
+
+"Why, all these swell people, don't you see? those pictures on the
+walls! this elegant room! everything that has come down from the
+past, all ready and settled for you, you know--ages ago!  Something
+you haven't to pick up for yourself and worry over."
+
+But here the consul pointed out that the place itself was not
+"ancestral" as regarded the present earl, and that even the
+original title of his predecessors had passed away from it.  "In
+fact, it came into the family by one of those 'outsiders' you
+deprecate.  But I dare say you'd find the place quite as
+comfortable with Lord Beverdale for a host as you would if you had
+found out he were a cousin," he added.
+
+"Better," said the young lady frankly.
+
+"I suppose your mother participates in these preferences?" said the
+consul, with a smile.
+
+"No," said Miss Desborough, with the same frankness, "I think maw's
+rather cut up at not finding a Desborough.  She was invited down
+here, but SHE'S rather independent, you know, so she allowed I
+could take care of myself, while she went off to stay with the old
+Dowager Lady Mistowe, who thinks maw a very proper womanly person.
+I made maw mad by telling her that's just what old Lady Mistowe
+would say of her cook--for I can't stand these people's patronage.
+However, I shouldn't wonder if I was invited here as a 'most
+original person.'"
+
+But here Lord Algernon came up to implore her to sing them one of
+"those plantation songs;" and Miss Desborough, with scarcely a
+change of voice or manner, allowed herself to be led to the piano.
+The consul had little chance to speak with her again, but he saw
+enough that evening to convince him not only that Lord Algernon was
+very much in love with her, but that the fact had been equally and
+complacently accepted by the family and guests.  That her present
+visit was only an opportunity for a formal engagement was clear to
+every woman in the house--not excepting, I fear, even the fair
+subject of gossip herself.  Yet she seemed so unconcerned and self-
+contained that the consul wondered if she really cared for Lord
+Algernon.  And having thus wondered, he came to the conclusion that
+it didn't much matter, for the happiness of so practically
+organized a young lady, if she loved him or not.
+
+It is highly probable that Miss Sadie Desborough had not even gone
+so far as to ask herself that question.  She awoke the next morning
+with a sense of easy victory and calm satisfaction that had,
+however, none of the transports of affection.  Her taste was
+satisfied by the love of a handsome young fellow,--a typical
+Englishman,--who, if not exactly original or ideal, was, she felt,
+of an universally accepted, "hall-marked" standard, the legitimate
+outcome of a highly ordered, carefully guarded civilization, whose
+repose was the absence of struggle or ambition; a man whose regular
+features were not yet differentiated from the rest of his class by
+any of those disturbing lines which people call character.
+Everything was made ready for her, without care or preparation; she
+had not even an ideal to realize or to modify.  She could slip
+without any jar or dislocation into this life which was just saved
+from self-indulgence and sybaritic luxury by certain conventional
+rules of activity and the occupation of amusement which, as
+obligations of her position, even appeared to suggest the novel
+aspect of a DUTY!  She could accept all this without the sense of
+being an intruder in an unbroken lineage--thanks to the consul's
+account of the Beverdales' inheritance.  She already pictured
+herself as the mistress of this fair domain, the custodian of its
+treasures and traditions, and the dispenser of its hospitalities,
+but--as she conscientiously believed--without pride or vanity, in
+her position; only an intense and thoughtful appreciation of it.
+Nor did she dream of ever displaying it ostentatiously before her
+less fortunate fellow countrywomen; on the contrary, she looked
+forward to their possible criticism of her casting off all
+transatlantic ties with an uneasy consciousness that was perhaps
+her nearest approach to patriotism.  Yet, again, she reasoned that,
+as her father was an Englishman, she was only returning to her old
+home.  As to her mother, she had already comforted herself by
+noticing certain discrepancies in that lady's temperament, which
+led her to believe that she herself alone inherited her father's
+nature--for her mother was, of course, distinctly American!  So
+little conscious was she of any possible snobbishness in this
+belief, that in her superb naivete she would have argued the point
+with the consul, and employed a wit and dialect that were purely
+American.
+
+She had slipped out of the Priory early that morning that she might
+enjoy alone, unattended and unciceroned, the aspect of that vast
+estate which might be hers for the mere accepting.  Perhaps there
+was some instinct of delicacy in her avoiding Lord Algernon that
+morning; not wishing, as she herself might have frankly put it, "to
+take stock" of his inheritance in his presence.  As she passed into
+the garden through the low postern door, she turned to look along
+the stretching facade of the main building, with the high stained
+windows of its banqueting-hall and the state chamber where a king
+had slept.  Even in that crisp October air, and with the green of
+its ivied battlements against the gold of the distant wood, it
+seemed to lie in the languid repose of an eternal summer.  She
+hurried on down the other terrace into the Italian garden, a quaint
+survival of past grandeur, passed the great orangery and numerous
+conservatories, making a crystal hamlet in themselves--seeing
+everywhere the same luxury.  But it was a luxury that she fancied
+was redeemed from the vulgarity of ostentation by the long custom
+of years and generations, so unlike the millionaire palaces of her
+own land; and, in her enthusiasm, she even fancied it was further
+sanctified by the grim monastic founders who had once been content
+with bread and pulse in the crumbling and dismantled refectory.  In
+the plenitude of her feelings she felt a slight recognition of some
+beneficent being who had rolled this golden apple at her feet, and
+felt as if she really should like to "do good" in her sphere.
+
+It so chanced that, passing through a small gate in the park, she
+saw walking, a little ahead of her, a young girl whom she at once
+recognized as a Miss Amelyn, one of the guests of the evening
+before.  Miss Desborough remembered that she played the accompaniment
+of one or two songs upon the piano, and had even executed a long
+solo during the general conversation, without attention from the
+others, and apparently with little irritation to herself, subsiding
+afterwards into an armchair, quite on the fringe of other people's
+conversation.  She had been called "my dear" by one or two dowagers,
+and by her Christian name by the earl, and had a way of impalpably
+melting out of sight at times.  These trifles led Miss Desborough to
+conclude that she was some kind of dependent or poor relation.  Here
+was an opportunity to begin her work of "doing good."  She quickened
+her pace and overtook Miss Amelyn.
+
+"Let me walk with you," she said graciously.
+
+The young English girl smiled assent, but looked her surprise at
+seeing the cynosure of last night's eyes unattended.
+
+"Oh," said Sadie, answering the mute query, "I didn't want to be
+'shown round' by anybody, and I'm not going to bore YOU with asking
+to see sights either.  We'll just walk together; wherever YOU'RE
+going is good enough for me."
+
+"I'm going as far as the village," said Miss Amelyn, looking down
+doubtfully at Sadie's smart French shoes--"if you care to walk so
+far."
+
+Sadie noticed that her companion was more solidly booted, and that
+her straight, short skirts, although less stylish than her own, had
+a certain character, better fitted to the freer outdoor life of the
+country.  But she only said, however, "The village will do," and
+gayly took her companion's arm.
+
+"But I'm afraid you'll find it very uninteresting, for I am going
+to visit some poor cottages," persisted Miss Amelyn, with a certain
+timid ingenuousness of manner which, however, was as distinct as
+Miss Desborough's bolder frankness.  "I promised the rector's
+daughter to take her place to-day."
+
+"And I feel as if I was ready to pour oil and wine to any extent,"
+said Miss Desborough, "so come along!"
+
+Miss Amelyn laughed, and yet glanced around her timidly, as if she
+thought that Miss Desborough ought to have a larger and more
+important audience.  Then she continued more confidentially and
+boldly, "But it isn't at all like 'slumming,' you know.  These poor
+people here are not very bad, and are not at all extraordinary."
+
+"Never mind," said Sadie, hurrying her along.  After a pause she
+went on, "You know the Priory very well, I guess?"
+
+"I lived there when I was a little girl, with my aunt, the Dowager
+Lady Beverdale," said Miss Amelyn.  "When my cousin Fred, who was
+the young heir, died, and the present Lord Beverdale succeeded,--HE
+never expected it, you know, for there were two lives, his two
+elder brothers, besides poor Fred's, between, but they both died,--
+we went to live in the Dower House."
+
+"The Dower House?" repeated Sadie.
+
+"Yes, Lady Beverdale's separate property."
+
+"But I thought all this property--the Priory--came into the family
+through HER."
+
+"It did--this was the Amelyns' place; but the oldest son or nearest
+male heir always succeeds to the property and title."
+
+"Do you mean to say that the present Lord Beverdale turned that old
+lady out?"
+
+Miss Amelyn looked shocked.  "I mean to say," she said gravely,
+"Lady Beverdale would have had to go when her own son became of
+age, had he lived."  She paused, and then said timidly, "Isn't it
+that way in America?"
+
+"Dear no!"  Miss Desborough had a faint recollection that there was
+something in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence
+against primogeniture.  "No! the men haven't it ALL their own way
+THERE--not much!"
+
+Miss Amelyn looked as if she did not care to discuss this problem.
+After a few moments Sadie continued, "You and Lord Algernon are
+pretty old friends, I guess?"
+
+"No," replied Miss Amelyn.  "He came once or twice to the Priory
+for the holidays, when he was quite a boy at Marlborough--for the
+family weren't very well off, and his father was in India.  He was
+a very shy boy, and of course no one ever thought of him succeeding."
+
+Miss Desborough felt half inclined to be pleased with this, and yet
+half inclined to resent this possible snubbing of her future
+husband.  But they were nearing the village, and Miss Amelyn turned
+the conversation to the object of her visit.  It was a new village--
+an unhandsome village, for all that it stood near one of the gates
+of the park.  It had been given over to some mines that were still
+worked in its vicinity, and to the railway, which the uncle of the
+present earl had resisted; but the railway had triumphed, and the
+station for Scrooby Priory was there.  There was a grim church, of
+a blackened or weather-beaten stone, on the hill, with a few grim
+Amelyns reposing cross-legged in the chancel, but the character of
+the village was as different from the Priory as if it were in
+another county.  They stopped at the rectory, where Miss Amelyn
+provided herself with certain doles and gifts, which the American
+girl would have augmented with a five-pound note but for Miss
+Amelyn's horrified concern.  "As many shillings would do, and they
+would be as grateful," she said.  "More they wouldn't understand."
+
+"Then keep it, and dole it out as you like," said Sadie quickly.
+
+"But I don't think that--that Lord Beverdale would quite approve,"
+hesitated Miss Amelyn.
+
+The pretty brow of her companion knit, and her gray eyes flashed
+vivaciously.  "What has HE to do with it?" she said pertly;
+"besides, you say these are not HIS poor.  Take that five-pound
+note--or--I'll DOUBLE it, get it changed into sovereigns at the
+station, and hand 'em round to every man, woman, and child."
+
+Miss Amelyn hesitated.  The American girl looked capable of doing
+what she said; perhaps it was a national way of almsgiving!  She
+took the note, with the mental reservation of making a full
+confession to the rector and Lord Beverdale.
+
+She was right in saying that the poor of Scrooby village were not
+interesting.  There was very little squalor or degradation; their
+poverty seemed not a descent, but a condition to which they had
+been born; the faces which Sadie saw were dulled and apathetic
+rather than sullen or rebellious; they stood up when Miss Amelyn
+entered, paying HER the deference, but taking little note of the
+pretty butterfly who was with her, or rather submitting to her
+frank curiosity with that dull consent of the poor, as if they had
+lost even the sense of privacy, or a right to respect.  It seemed
+to the American girl that their poverty was more indicated by what
+they were SATISFIED with than what she thought they MISSED.  It is
+to be feared that this did not add to Sadie's sympathy; all the
+beggars she had seen in America wanted all they could get, and she
+felt as if she were confronted with an inferior animal.
+
+"There's a wonderful old man lives here," said Miss Amelyn, as they
+halted before a stone and thatch cottage quite on the outskirts of
+the village.  "We can't call him one of our poor, for he still
+works, although over eighty, and it's his pride to keep out of the
+poorhouse, and, as he calls it, 'off' the hands of his
+granddaughters.  But we manage to do something for THEM, and we
+hope he profits by it.  One of them is at the Priory; they're
+trying to make a maid of her, but her queer accent--they're from
+the north--is against her with the servants.  I am afraid we won't
+see old Debs, for he's at work again to-day, though the doctor has
+warned him."
+
+"Debs!  What a funny name!"
+
+"Yes, but as many of these people cannot read or write, the name is
+carried by the ear, and not always correctly.  Some of the railway
+navvies, who come from the north as he does, call him 'Debbers.'"
+
+They were obliged to descend into the cottage, which was so low
+that it seemed to have sunk into the earth until its drooping eaves
+of thatch mingled with the straw heap beside it.  Debs was not at
+home.  But his granddaughter was there, who, after a preliminary
+"bob," continued the stirring of the pot before the fire in
+tentative silence.
+
+"I am sorry to find that your grandfather has gone to work again in
+spite of the doctor's orders," said Miss Amelyn.
+
+The girl continued to stir the pot, and then said without looking
+up, but as if also continuing a train of aggressive thoughts with
+her occupation: "Eay, but 'e's so set oop in 'issen 'ee doan't take
+orders from nobbut--leastways doctor.  Moinds 'em now moor nor a
+floy.  Says 'ee knaws there nowt wrong wi' 'is 'eart.  Mout be
+roight--how'siver, sarten sewer, 'is 'EAD'S a' in a muddle!  Toims
+'ee goes off stamrin' and starin' at nowt, as if 'ee a'nt a
+n'aporth o' sense.  How'siver I be doing my duty by 'em--and 'ere's
+'is porritch when a' cooms--'gin a' be sick or maad."
+
+What the American understood of the girl's speech and manner struck
+her as having very little sympathy with either her aged relative or
+her present visitor.  And there was a certain dogged selfish
+independence about her that Miss Desborough half liked and half
+resented.  However, Miss Amelyn did not seem to notice it, and,
+after leaving a bottle of port for the grandfather, she took her
+leave and led Sadie away.  As they passed into the village a
+carriage, returning to the Priory, filled with their fellow guests,
+dashed by, but was instantly pulled up at a word from Lord
+Algernon, who leaped from the vehicle, hat in hand, and implored
+the fair truant and her companion to join them.
+
+"We're just making a tour around Windover Hill, and back to
+luncheon," he said, with a rising color.  "We missed you awfully!
+If we had known you were so keen on 'good works,' and so early at
+it, by Jove! we'd have got up a 'slummin' party,' and all joined!"
+
+"And you haven't seen half," said Lord Beverdale from the box.
+"Miss Amelyn's too partial to the village.  There's an old drunken
+retired poacher somewhere in a hut in Crawley Woods, whom it's
+death to approach, except with a large party.  There's malignant
+diphtheria over at the South Farm, eight down with measles at the
+keeper's, and an old woman who has been bedridden for years."
+
+But Miss Desborough was adamant, though sparkling.  She thanked
+him, but said she had just seen an old woman "who had been lying in
+bed for twenty years, and hadn't spoken the truth once!"  She
+proposed "going outside of Lord Beverdale's own preserves of grain-
+fed poor," and starting up her own game.  She would return in time
+for luncheon--if she could; if not, she "should annex the gruel of
+the first kind incapable she met."
+
+Yet, actually, she was far from displeased at being accidentally
+discovered by these people while following out her capricious whim
+of the morning.  One or two elder ladies, who had fought shy of her
+frocks and her frankness the evening before, were quite touched now
+by this butterfly who was willing to forego the sunlight of society,
+and soil her pretty wings on the haunts of the impoverished, with
+only a single companion,--of her own sex!--and smiled approvingly.
+And in her present state of mind, remembering her companion's timid
+attitude towards Lord Beverdale's opinions, she was not above
+administering this slight snub to him in her presence.
+
+When they had driven away, with many regrets, Miss Amelyn was deeply
+concerned.  "I am afraid," she said, with timid conscientiousness,
+"I have kept you from going with them.  And you must be bored with
+what you have seen, I know.  I don't believe you really care one bit
+for it--and you are only doing it to please me."
+
+"Trot out the rest of your show," said Sadie promptly, "and we'll
+wind up by lunching with the rector."
+
+"He'd be too delighted," said Miss Amelyn, with disaster written
+all over her girlish, truthful face, "but--but--you know--it really
+wouldn't be quite right to Lord Beverdale.  You're his principal
+guest--you know, and--they'd think I had taken you off."
+
+"Well," said Miss Desborough impetuously, "what's the matter with
+that inn--the Red Lion?  We can get a sandwich there, I guess.  I'm
+not VERY hungry."
+
+Miss Amelyn looked horrified for a moment, and then laughed; but
+immediately became concerned again.  "No! listen to me, REALLY now!
+Let me finish my round alone!  You'll have ample time if you go NOW
+to reach the Priory for luncheon.  Do, please!  It would be ever so
+much better for everybody.  I feel quite guilty as it is, and I
+suppose I am already in Lord Beverdale's black books."
+
+The trouble in the young girl's face was unmistakable, and as it
+suited Miss Desborough's purpose just as well to show her
+independence by returning, as she had set out, alone, she consented
+to go.  Miss Amelyn showed her a short cut across the park, and they
+separated--to meet at dinner.  In this brief fellowship, the
+American girl had kept a certain supremacy and half-fascination over
+the English girl, even while she was conscious of an invincible
+character in Miss Amelyn entirely different from and superior to her
+own.  Certainly there was a difference in the two peoples.  Why else
+this inherited conscientious reverence for Lord Beverdale's
+position, shown by Miss Amelyn, which she, an American alive to its
+practical benefits, could not understand?  Would Miss Amelyn and
+Lord Algernon have made a better match?  The thought irritated her,
+even while she knew that she herself possessed the young man's
+affections, the power to marry him, and, as she believed, kept her
+own independence in the matter.
+
+As she entered the iron gates at the lower end of the park, and
+glanced at the interwoven cipher and crest of the Amelyns still
+above, she was conscious that the wind was blowing more chill, and
+that a few clouds had gathered.  As she walked on down the long
+winding avenue, the sky became overcast, and, in one of those
+strange contrasts of the English climate, the glory of the whole
+day went out with the sunshine.  The woods suddenly became wrinkled
+and gray, the distant hills sombre, the very English turf beneath
+her feet grew brown; a mile and a half away, through the opening of
+the trees, the west part of the Priory looked a crumbling, ivy-
+eaten ruin.  A few drops of rain fell.  She hurried on.  Suddenly
+she remembered that the avenue made a long circuit before
+approaching the house, and that its lower end, where she was
+walking, was but a fringe of the park.  Consequently there must be
+a short cut across some fields and farm buildings to the back of
+the park and the Priory.  She at once diverged to the right,
+presently found a low fence, which she clambered over, and again
+found a footpath which led to a stile.  Crossing that, she could
+see the footpath now led directly to the Priory,--now a grim and
+austere looking pile in the suddenly dejected landscape,--and that
+it was probably used only by the servants and farmers.  A gust of
+wind brought some swift needles of rain to her cheek; she could see
+the sad hills beyond the Priory already veiling their faces; she
+gathered her skirts and ran.  The next field was a long one, but
+beside the further stile was a small clump of trees, the only ones
+between her and the park.  Hurrying on to that shelter, she saw
+that the stile was already occupied by a tall but bent figure,
+holding a long stick in his hand, which gave him the appearance,
+against the horizon, of the figure of Time leaning on his scythe.
+As she came nearer she saw it was, indeed, an old man, half resting
+on his rake.  He was very rugged and weather-beaten, and although
+near the shelter of the trees, apparently unmindful of the rain
+that was falling on his bald head, and the limp cap he was holding
+uselessly in one hand.  He was staring at her, yet apparently
+unconscious of her presence.  A sudden instinct came upon her--it
+was "Debs"!
+
+She went directly up to him, and with that frank common sense which
+ordinarily distinguished her, took his cap from his hand and put it
+on his head, grasped his arm firmly, and led him to the shelter of
+the tree.  Then she wiped the raindrops from his face with her
+handkerchief, shook out her own dress and her wet parasol, and,
+propping her companion against the tree, said:--
+
+"There, Mr. Debs!  I've heard of people who didn't know enough to
+come in when it rained, but I never met one before."
+
+The old man started, lifted his hairy, sinewy arm, bared to the
+elbow, and wiped his bare throat with the dry side of it.  Then a
+look of intelligence--albeit half aggressive--came into his face.
+"Wheer beest tha going?" he asked.
+
+Something in his voice struck Sadie like a vague echo.  Perhaps it
+was only the queer dialect--or some resemblance to his
+granddaughter's voice.  She looked at him a little more closely as
+she said:--
+
+"To the Priory."
+
+"Whaat?"
+
+She pointed with her parasol to the gray pile in the distance.  It
+was possible that this demented peasant didn't even UNDERSTAND
+English.
+
+"The hall.  Oh, ay!"  Suddenly his brows knit ominously as he faced
+her.  "An' wassist tha doin' drest oop in this foinery?  Wheer
+gettist thee that goawn?  Thissen, or thy maester?  Nowt even a
+napron, fit for thy wark as maaid at serviss; an' parson a gettin'
+tha plaace at Hall!  So thou'lt be high and moity will tha! thou'lt
+not walk wi' maaids, but traipse by thissen like a slut in the
+toon--dang tha!"
+
+Although it was plain to Sadie that the old man, in his wandering
+perception, had mistaken her for his granddaughter in service at
+the Priory, there was still enough rudeness in his speech for her
+to have resented it.  But, strange to say, there was a kind of
+authority in it that touched her with an uneasiness and repulsion
+that was stronger than any other feeling.  "I think you have
+mistaken me for some one else," she said hurriedly, yet wondering
+why she had admitted it, and even irritated at the admission.  "I
+am a stranger here, a visitor at the Priory.  I called with Miss
+Amelyn at your cottage, and saw your other granddaughter; that's
+how I knew your name."
+
+The old man's face changed.  A sad, senile smile of hopeless
+bewilderment crept into his hard mouth; he plucked his limp cap
+from his head and let it hang submissively in his fingers, as if it
+were his sole apology.  Then he tried to straighten himself, and
+said, "Naw offins, miss, naw offins!  If tha knaws mea tha'll knaw
+I'm grandfeyther to two galls as moight be tha owern age; tha'll
+tell 'ee that old Debs at haaty years 'as warked and niver lost a
+day as man or boy; has niver coome oopen 'em for n'aporth.  An'
+'e'll keep out o' warkus till he doy.  An' 'ee's put by enow to by
+wi' his own feythers in Lanksheer, an' not liggen aloane in
+parson's choorchyard."
+
+It was part of her uneasiness that, scarcely understanding or,
+indeed, feeling any interest in these maundering details, she still
+seemed to have an odd comprehension of his character and some
+reminiscent knowledge of him, as if she were going through the
+repetition of some unpleasant dream.  Even his wrinkled face was
+becoming familiar to her.  Some weird attraction was holding her;
+she wanted to get away from it as much as she wanted to analyze it.
+She glanced ostentatiously at the sky, prepared to open her
+parasol, and began to edge cautiously away.
+
+"Then tha beant from these pearts?" he said suddenly.
+
+"No, no," she said quickly and emphatically,--"no, I'm an American."
+
+The old man started and moved towards her, eagerly, his keen eyes
+breaking through the film that at times obscured them.  "'Merrikan!
+tha baist 'Merrikan?  Then tha knaws ma son John, 'ee war nowt but
+a bairn when brether Dick took un to 'Merriky!  Naw! Now! that wor
+fifty years sen!--niver wroate to his old feyther--niver coomed
+back, 'Ee wor tall-loike, an' thea said 'e feavored mea."  He
+stopped, threw up his head, and with his skinny fingers drew back
+his long, straggling locks from his sunken cheeks, and stared in
+her face.  The quick transition of fascination, repulsion, shock,
+and indefinable apprehension made her laugh hysterically.  To her
+terror he joined in it, and eagerly clasped her wrists.  "Eh, lass!
+tha knaws John--tha coomes from un to ole grandfeyther.  Who-rr-u!
+Eay! but tha tho't to fool mea, did tha, lass?  Whoy, I knoawed tha
+voice, for a' tha foine peacock feathers.  So tha be John's gell
+coom from Ameriky.  Dear! a dear!  Coom neaur, lass! let's see what
+tha's loike.  Eh, but thou'lt kiss tha grandfather, sewerly?"
+
+A wild terror and undefined consternation had completely
+overpowered her!  But she made a desperate effort to free her
+wrists, and burst out madly:--
+
+"Let me go!  How dare you!  I don't know you or yours!  I'm nothing
+to you or your kin!  My name is Desborough--do you understand--do
+you hear me, Mr. Debs?--DESBOROUGH!"
+
+At the word the old man's fingers stiffened like steel around her
+wrists, as he turned upon her a hard, invincible face.
+
+"So thou'lt call thissen Des-borough, wilt tha?  Let me tell tha,
+then, that 'Debs,' 'Debban,' 'Debbrook,' and 'Des-borough' are all
+a seame!  Ay! thy feyther and thy feyther's feyther!  Thou'lt be a
+Des-borough, will tha?  Dang tha! and look doon on tha kin, and
+dress thissen in silks o' shame!  Tell 'ee thou'rt an ass, gell!
+Don't tha hear?  An ass! for all tha bean John's bairn!  An ass!
+that's what tha beast!"
+
+With flashing eyes and burning cheeks she made one more supreme
+effort, lifting her arms, freeing her wrists, and throwing the old
+man staggering from her.  Then she leaped the stile, turned, and
+fled through the rain.  But before she reached the end of the field
+she stopped!  She had freed herself--she was stronger than he--what
+had she to fear?  He was crazy!  Yes, he MUST be crazy, and he had
+insulted her, but he was an old man--and God knows what!  Her heart
+was beating rapidly, her breath was hurried, but she ran back to
+the stile.
+
+He was not there.  The field sloped away on either side of it.  But
+she could distinguish nothing in the pouring rain above the wind-
+swept meadow.  He must have gone home.  Relieved for a moment she
+turned and hurried on towards the Priory.
+
+But at every step she was followed, not by the old man's presence,
+but by what he had said to her, which she could not shake off as
+she had shaken off his detaining fingers.  Was it the ravings of
+insanity, or had she stumbled unwittingly upon some secret--was it
+after all a SECRET?  Perhaps it was something they all knew, or
+would know later.  And she had come down here for this.  For back
+of her indignation, back even of her disbelief in his insanity,
+there was an awful sense of truth!  The names he had flung out, of
+"Debs," "Debban," and "Debbrook" now flashed upon her as something
+she had seen before, but had not understood.  Until she satisfied
+herself of this, she felt she could not live or breathe!  She
+loathed the Priory, with its austere exclusiveness, as it rose
+before her; she wished she had never entered it; but it contained
+that which she must know, and know at once!  She entered the
+nearest door and ran up the grand staircase.  Her flushed face and
+disordered appearance were easily accounted for by her exposure to
+the sudden storm.  She went to her bedroom, sent her maid to
+another room to prepare a change of dress, and sinking down before
+her traveling-desk, groped for a document.  Ah! there it was--the
+expensive toy that she had played with!  She hastily ran over its
+leaves to the page she already remembered.  And there, among the
+dashes and perpendicular lines she had jested over last night, on
+which she had thought was a collateral branch of the line, stood
+her father's name and that of Richard, his uncle, with the
+bracketed note in red ink, "see Debbrook, Daybrook, Debbers, and
+Debs."  Yes! this gaunt, half-crazy, overworked peasant, content to
+rake the dead leaves before the rolling chariots of the Beverdales,
+was her grandfather; that poorly clad girl in the cottage, and even
+the menial in the scullery of this very house that might be HERS,
+were her COUSINS!  She burst into a laugh, and then refolded the
+document and put it away.
+
+At luncheon she was radiant and sparkling.  Her drenched clothes
+were an excuse for a new and ravishing toilette.  She had never
+looked so beautiful before, and significant glances were exchanged
+between some of the guests, who believed that the expected proposal
+had already come.  But those who were of the carriage party knew
+otherwise, and of Lord Algernon's disappointment.  Lord Beverdale
+contented himself with rallying his fair guest on the becomingness
+of "good works."  But he continued, "You're offering a dreadful
+example to these ladies, Miss Desborough, and I know I shall never
+hereafter be able to content them with any frivolous morning
+amusement at the Priory.  For myself, when I am grown gouty and
+hideous, I know I shall bloom again as a district visitor."
+
+Yet under this surface sparkle and nervous exaltation Sadie never
+lost consciousness of the gravity of the situation.  If her sense
+of humor enabled her to see one side of its grim irony; if she
+experienced a wicked satisfaction in accepting the admiration and
+easy confidence of the high-born guests, knowing that her cousin
+had assisted in preparing the meal they were eating, she had never
+lost sight of the practical effect of the discovery she had made.
+And she had come to a final resolution.  She should leave the
+Priory at once, and abandon all idea of a matrimonial alliance with
+its heir!  Inconsistent as this might seem to her selfish, worldly
+nature, it was nevertheless in keeping with a certain pride and
+independence that was in her blood.  She did not love Lord
+Algernon, neither did she love her grandfather; she was equally
+willing to sacrifice either or both; she knew that neither Lord
+Algernon nor his father would make her connections an objection,
+however they might wish to keep the fact a secret, or otherwise
+dispose of them by pensions or emigration, but she could not bear
+to KNOW IT HERSELF!  She never could be happy as the mistress of
+Scrooby Priory with that knowledge; she did not idealize it as a
+principle!  Carefully weighing it by her own practical common
+sense, she said to herself that "it wouldn't pay."  The highest
+independence is often akin to the lowest selfishness; she did not
+dream that the same pride which kept her grandfather from the
+workhouse and support by his daughters, and had even kept him from
+communicating with his own son, now kept her from acknowledging
+them, even for the gift of a title and domain.  There was only one
+question before her: should she stay long enough to receive the
+proposal of Lord Algernon, and then decline it?  Why should she not
+snatch that single feminine joy out of the ashes of her burnt-up
+illusion?  She knew that an opportunity would be offered that
+afternoon.  The party were to take tea at Broxby Hall, and Lord
+Algernon was to drive her there in his dogcart.  Miss Desborough
+had gone up to her bedroom to put on a warmer cloak, and had rung
+twice or thrice impatiently for her maid.
+
+When the girl made her appearance, apologetic, voluble, and
+excited, Miss Desborough scarcely listened to her excuses, until a
+single word suddenly arrested her attention.  It was "old Debs."
+
+"What ARE you talking about?" said Sadie, pausing in the adjustment
+of her hat on her brown hair.
+
+"Old Debs, miss,--that's what they call him; an old park-keeper,
+just found dead in a pool of water in the fields; the grandfather
+of one of the servants here; and there's such an excitement in the
+servants' hall.  The gentlemen all knew it, too, for I heard Lord
+Algernon say that he was looking very queer lately, and might have
+had a fit; and Lord Beverdale has sent word to the coroner.  And
+only think, the people here are such fools that they daren't touch
+or move the poor man, and him lyin' there in the rain all the time,
+until the coroner comes!"
+
+Miss Desborough had been steadily regarding herself in the glass to
+see if she had turned pale.  She had.  She set her teeth together
+until the color partly returned.  But she kept her face away from
+the maid.  "That'll do," she said quietly.  "You can tell me all
+later.  I have some important news myself, and I may not go out
+after all.  I want you to take a note for me."  She went to her
+table, wrote a line in pencil, folded it, scribbled an address upon
+it, handed it to the girl, and gently pushed her from the room.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The consul was lingering on the terrace beside one of the
+carriages; at a little distance a groom was holding the nervous
+thoroughbred of Lord Algernon's dog-cart.  Suddenly he felt a touch
+on his shoulder, and Miss Desborough's maid put a note in his hand.
+It contained only a line:--
+
+
+Please come and see me in the library, but without making any fuss
+about it--at once.  S. D.
+
+
+The consul glanced around him; no one had apparently noticed the
+incident.  He slipped back into the house and made his way to the
+library.  It was a long gallery; at the further end Miss Desborough
+stood cloaked, veiled, and coquettishly hatted.  She was looking
+very beautiful and animated.  "I want you to please do me a great
+favor," she said, with an adorable smile, "as your own countrywoman,
+you know--for the sake of Fourth of July and Pumpkin Pie and the Old
+Flag!  I don't want to go to this circus to-day.  I am going to
+leave here to-night!  I am!  Honest Injin!  I want YOU to manage it.
+I want you to say that as consul you've received important news for
+me: the death of some relative, if you like; or better, something
+AFFECTING MY PROPERTY, you know," with a little satirical laugh.
+"I guess that would fetch 'em!  So go at once."
+
+"But really, Miss Desborough, do let us talk this over before you
+decide!" implored the bewildered consul.  "Think what a
+disappointment to your host and these ladies.  Lord Algernon
+expects to drive you there; he is already waiting!  The party was
+got up for you!"  Miss Desborough made a slight grimace.  "I mean
+you ought to sacrifice something--but I trust there is really
+nothing serious--to them!"
+
+"If YOU do not speak to them, I will!" said Miss Desborough firmly.
+"If you say what I tell you, it will come the more plausibly from
+you.  Come!  My mind is made up.  One of us must break the news!
+Shall it be you or I?"  She drew her cloak over her shoulders and
+made a step forwards.
+
+The consul saw she was determined.  "Then wait here till I return,
+but keep yourself out of sight," he said, and hurried away.
+Between the library and the terrace he conceived a plan.  His
+perplexity lent him a seriousness which befitted the gravity of the
+news he had to disclose.  "I am sorry to have to tell you," he
+said, taking Lord Beverdale aside, "that I was the unlucky bearer
+of some sad news to Miss Desborough this morning, through my
+consular letters--some matter concerning the death of a relation of
+hers, and some wearisome question of property.  I thought that it
+was of little importance, and that she would not take it seriously,
+but I find I was mistaken.  It may even oblige her to catch the
+London train to-night.  I promised to make her excuses to you for
+the present, and I'm afraid I must add my own to them, as she
+wishes me to stay and advise her in this matter, which requires
+some prompt action."
+
+Miss Desborough was right: the magic word "property" changed the
+slight annoyance on the earl's face to a sympathetic concern.
+"Dear me! I trust it is nothing really serious," he said.  "Of
+course, you will advise her, and, by the way, if my solicitor,
+Withers, who'll be here to-morrow, can do anything, you know, call
+him in.  I hope she'll be able to see me later.  It could not be a
+NEAR relation who died, I fancy; she has no brothers or sisters, I
+understand."
+
+"A cousin, I think; an old friend," said the consul hastily.  He
+heard Lord Beverdale say a few words to his companions, saw with a
+tinge of remorse a cloud settle upon Lord Algernon's fresh face, as
+he appealed in a whisper to old Lady Mesthyn, who leaned forward
+from the carriage, and said, "If the dear child thought I could be
+of any service, I should only be too glad to stay with her."
+
+"I knew she would appreciate Lady Mesthyn's sympathy," said the
+ingenious consul quickly, "but I really think the question is more
+a business one--and"--
+
+"Ah, yes," said the old lady, shaking her head, "it's dreadful, of
+course, but we must all think of THAT!"
+
+As the carriage drove away, the consul hurried back a little
+viciously to his fair countrywoman.  "There!" he said, "I have done
+it!  If I have managed to convey either the idea that you are a
+penniless orphan, or that I have official information that you are
+suspected of a dynamite conspiracy, don't blame me!  And now," he
+said, "as I have excused myself on the ground that I must devote
+myself to this dreadful business of yours, perhaps you'll tell me
+WHAT it really is."
+
+"Not a word more," said Miss Desborough; "except," she added,--
+checking her smile with a weary gesture,--"except that I want to
+leave this dreadful place at once!  There! don't ask me any more!"
+
+There could be no doubt of the girl's sincerity.  Nor was it the
+extravagant caprice of a petted idol.  What had happened?  He might
+have believed in a lovers' quarrel, but he knew that she and Lord
+Algernon could have had no private interview that evening.  He must
+perforce accept her silence, yet he could not help saying:--
+
+"You seemed to like the place so much last night.  I say, you
+haven't seen the Priory ghost, have you?"
+
+"The Priory ghost," she said quickly.  "What's that?"
+
+"The old monk who passes through the cloisters with the sacred oil,
+the bell, and the smell of incense whenever any one is to die here.
+By Jove! it would have been a good story to tell instead of this
+cock-and-bull one about your property.  And there WAS a death here
+to-day.  You'd have added the sibyl's gifts to your other charms."
+
+"Tell me about that old man," she said, looking past him out of the
+window.  "I was at his cottage this morning.  But, no! first let us
+go out.  You can take me for a walk, if you like.  You see I am all
+ready, and I'm just stifling here."
+
+They descended to the terrace together.  "Where would you like to
+go?" he asked.
+
+"To the village.  I may want to telegraph, you know."
+
+They turned into the avenue, but Miss Desborough stopped.
+
+"Is there not a shorter cut across the fields," she asked, "over
+there?"
+
+"There is," said the consul.
+
+They both turned into the footpath which led to the farm and stile.
+After a pause she said, "Did you ever talk with that poor old man?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then you don't know if he really was crazy, as they think."
+
+"No.  But they may have thought an old man's forgetfulness of
+present things and his habit of communing with the past was
+insanity.  For all that he was a plucky, independent old fellow,
+with a grim purpose that was certainly rational."
+
+"I suppose in his independence he would not have taken favors from
+these people, or anybody?"
+
+"I should think not."
+
+"Don't you think it was just horrid--their leaving him alone in the
+rain, when he might have been only in a fit?"
+
+"The doctor says he died suddenly of heart disease," said the
+consul.  "It might have happened at any moment and without
+warning."
+
+"Ah, that was the coroner's verdict, then," said Miss Desborough
+quickly.
+
+"The coroner did not think it necessary to have any inquest after
+Lord Beverdale's statement.  It wouldn't have been very joyous for
+the Priory party.  And I dare say he thought it might not be very
+cheerful for YOU."
+
+"How very kind!" said the young girl, with a quick laugh.  "But do
+you know that it's about the only thing human, original, and
+striking that has happened in this place since I've been here!  And
+so unexpected, considering how comfortably everything is ordered
+here beforehand."
+
+"Yet you seemed to like that kind of thing very well, last evening,"
+said the consul mischievously.
+
+"That was last night," retorted Miss Desborough; "and you know the
+line, 'Colors seen by candlelight do not look the same by day.'
+But I'm going to be very consistent to-day, for I intend to go over
+to that poor man's cottage again, and see if I can be of any
+service.  Will you go with me?"
+
+"Certainly," said the consul, mystified by his companion's
+extraordinary conduct, yet apparent coolness of purpose, and hoping
+for some further explanation.  Was she only an inexperienced flirt
+who had found herself on the point of a serious entanglement she
+had not contemplated?  Yet even then he knew she was clever enough
+to extricate herself in some other way than this abrupt and brutal
+tearing through the meshes.  Or was it possible that she really had
+any intelligence affecting her property?  He reflected that he knew
+very little of the Desboroughs, but on the other hand he knew that
+Beverdale knew them much better, and was a prudent man.  He had no
+right to demand her confidence as a reward for his secrecy; he must
+wait her pleasure.  Perhaps she would still explain; women seldom
+could resist the triumph of telling the secret that puzzled others.
+
+When they reached the village she halted before the low roof of
+Debs's cottage.  "I had better go in first," she said; "you can
+come in later, and in the meantime you might go to the station for
+me and find out the exact time that the express train leaves for
+the north."
+
+"But," said the astonished consul, "I thought you were going to
+London?"
+
+"No," said Miss Desborough quietly, "I am going to join some
+friends at Harrogate."
+
+"But that train goes much earlier than the train south, and--and
+I'm afraid Lord Beverdale will not have returned so soon."
+
+"How sad!" said Miss Desborough, with a faint smile, "but we must
+bear up under it, and--I'll write him.  I will be here until you
+return."
+
+She turned away and entered the cottage.  The granddaughter she had
+already seen and her sister, the servant at the Priory, were both
+chatting comfortably, but ceased as she entered, and both rose with
+awkward respect.  There was little to suggest that the body of
+their grandfather, already in a rough oak shell, was lying upon
+trestles beside them.
+
+"You have carried out my orders, I see," said Miss Desborough,
+laying down her parasol.
+
+"Ay, miss; but it was main haard gettin' et dooan so soon, and et
+cooast"--
+
+"Never mind the cost.  I've given you money enough, I think, and if
+I haven't, I guess I can give you more."
+
+"Ay, miss!  Abbut the pa'son 'ead gi' un a funeral for nowt."
+
+"But I understood you to say," said Miss Desborough, with an
+impatient flash of eye, "that your grandfather wished to be buried
+with his kindred in the north?"
+
+"Ay, miss," said the girl apologetically, "an naw 'ees savit th'
+munny.  Abbut e'd bean tickled 'ad 'ee knowed it!  Dear! dear! 'ee
+niver thowt et 'ud be gi'en by stranger an' not 'es ownt fammaly."
+
+"For all that, you needn't tell anybody it was given by ME," said
+Miss Desborough.  "And you'll be sure to be ready to take the train
+this afternoon--without delay."  There was a certain peremptoriness
+in her voice very unlike Miss Amelyn's, yet apparently much more
+effective with the granddaughter.
+
+"Ay, miss.  Then, if tha'll excoose mea, I'll go streight to 'oory
+oop sexten."
+
+She bustled away.  "Now," said Miss Desborough, turning to the
+other girl, "I shall take the same train, and will probably see you
+on the platform at York to give my final directions.  That's all.
+Go and see if the gentleman who came with me has returned from the
+station."
+
+The girl obeyed.  Left entirely alone, Miss Desborough glanced
+around the room, and then went quietly up to the unlidded coffin.
+The repose of death had softened the hard lines of the old man's
+mouth and brow into a resemblance she now more than ever
+understood.  She had stood thus only a few years before, looking at
+the same face in a gorgeously inlaid mahogany casket, smothered
+amidst costly flowers, and surrounded by friends attired in all the
+luxurious trappings of woe; yet it was the same face that was now
+rigidly upturned to the bare thatch and rafters of that crumbling
+cottage, herself its only companion.  She lifted her delicate veil
+with both hands, and, stooping down, kissed the hard, cold
+forehead, without a tremor.  Then she dropped her veil again over
+her dry eyes, readjusted it in the little, cheap, black-framed
+mirror that hung against the wall, and opened the door as the
+granddaughter returned.  The gentleman was just coming from the
+station.
+
+"Remember to look out for me at York," said Miss Desborough,
+extending her gloved hand.  "Good-by till then."  The young girl
+respectfully touched the ends of Miss Desborough's fingers, dropped
+a curtsy, and Miss Desborough rejoined the consul.
+
+"You have barely time to return to the Priory and see to your
+luggage," said the consul, "if you must go.  But let me hope that
+you have changed your mind."
+
+"I have not changed my mind," said Miss Desborough quietly, "and my
+baggage is already packed."  After a pause, she said thoughtfully,
+"I've been wondering"--
+
+"What?" said the consul eagerly.
+
+"I've been wondering if people brought up to speak in a certain
+dialect, where certain words have their own significance and color,
+and are part of their own lives and experience--if, even when they
+understand another dialect, they really feel any sympathy with it,
+or the person who speaks it?"
+
+"Apropos of"--asked the consul.
+
+"These people I've just left!  I don't think I quite felt with them,
+and I guess they didn't feel with me."
+
+"But," said the consul laughingly, "you know that we Americans
+speak with a decided dialect of our own, and attach the same occult
+meaning to it.  Yet, upon my word, I think that Lord Beverdale--or
+shall I say Lord Algernon?--would not only understand that American
+word 'guess' as you mean it, but would perfectly sympathize with
+you."
+
+Miss Desborough's eyes sparkled even through her veil as she
+glanced at her companion and said, "I GUESS NOT."
+
+As the "tea" party had not yet returned, it fell to the consul to
+accompany Miss Desborough and her maid to the station.  But here he
+was startled to find a collection of villagers upon the platform,
+gathered round two young women in mourning, and an ominous-looking
+box.  He mingled for a moment with the crowd, and then returned to
+Miss Desborough's side.
+
+"Really," he said, with a concern that was scarcely assumed, "I
+ought not to let you go.  The omens are most disastrous!  You came
+here to a death; you are going away with a funeral!"
+
+"Then it's high time I took myself off!" said the lady lightly.
+
+"Unless, like the ghostly monk, you came here on a mission, and
+have fulfilled it."
+
+"Perhaps I have.  Good-by!"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+In spite of the bright and characteristic letter which Miss
+Desborough left for her host,--a letter which mingled her peculiar
+shrewd sense with her humorous extravagance of expression,--the
+consul spent a somewhat uneasy evening under the fire of questions
+that assailed him in reference to the fair deserter.  But he kept
+loyal faith with her, adhering even to the letter of her
+instructions, and only once was goaded into more active mendacity.
+The conversation had turned upon "Debs," and the consul had
+remarked on the singularity of the name.  A guest from the north
+observed, however, that the name was undoubtedly a contraction.
+"Possibly it might have been 'Debborough,' or even the same name as
+our fair friend."
+
+"But didn't Miss Desborough tell you last night that she had been
+hunting up her people, with a family tree, or something like that?"
+said Lord Algernon eagerly.  "I just caught a word here and there,
+for you were both laughing."
+
+The consul smiled blandly.  "You may well say so, for it was all
+the most delightful piece of pure invention and utter extravagance.
+It would have amused her still more if she had thought you were
+listening and took it seriously!"
+
+"Of course; I see!" said the young fellow, with a laugh and a
+slight rise of color.  "I knew she was taking some kind of a rise
+out of YOU, and that remark reminded me of it."
+
+Nevertheless, within a year, Lord Algernon was happily married to
+the daughter of a South African millionaire, whose bridal offerings
+alone touched the sum of half a million.  It was also said that the
+mother was "impossible" and the father "unspeakable," the relations
+"inextinguishable;" but the wedding was an "occasion," and in the
+succeeding year of festivity it is presumed that the names of
+"Debs" and "Desborough" were alike forgotten.
+
+But they existed still in a little hamlet near the edge of a bleak
+northern moor, where they were singularly exalted on a soaring
+shaft of pure marble above the submerged and moss-grown tombstones
+of a simple country churchyard.  So great was the contrast between
+the modern and pretentious monument and the graves of the humbler
+forefathers of the village, that even the Americans who chanced to
+visit it were shocked at what they believed was the ostentatious
+and vulgar pride of one of their own countrywomen.  For on its
+pedestal was inscribed:--
+
+
+                  Sacred to the Memory
+                          of
+                  JOHN DEBS DESBOROUGH,
+                Formerly of this parish,
+        Who departed this life October 20th, 1892,
+                   At Scrooby Priory,
+              At the age of eighty-two years.
+      This monument was erected as a loving testimony
+                  by his granddaughter,
+          Sadie Desborough, of New York, U. S. A.
+
+              "And evening brings us home."
+
+
+
+SALOMY JANE'S KISS
+
+
+Only one shot had been fired.  It had gone wide of its mark,--the
+ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had left Red Pete, who had fired
+it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy.  For his hand had
+been cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden
+onset, and so the inevitable end had come.  He submitted sullenly
+to his captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the
+protracted struggle with a feeling not unlike relief.  Even the hot
+and revengeful victors were content.  They had taken their men
+alive.  At any time during the long chase they could have brought
+them down by a rifle shot, but it would have been unsportsmanlike,
+and have ended in a free fight, instead of an example.  And, for
+the matter of that, their doom was already sealed.  Their end, by a
+rope and a tree, although not sanctified by law, would have at
+least the deliberation of justice.  It was the tribute paid by the
+Vigilantes to that order which they had themselves disregarded in
+the pursuit and capture.  Yet this strange logic of the frontier
+sufficed them, and gave a certain dignity to the climax.
+
+"Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it NOW, and say
+it quick," said the ringleader.
+
+Red Pete glanced around him.  He had been run to earth at his own
+cabin in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly
+women and children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly
+at the twenty Vigilantes who surrounded them.  All were accustomed
+to scenes of violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only
+the suddenness of the onset and its quick result that had surprised
+them.  They looked on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment;
+there had been no fight to speak of--no spectacle!  A boy, nephew
+of Red Pete, got upon the rain-barrel to view the proceedings more
+comfortably; a tall, handsome, lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting
+neighbor, leaned against the doorpost, chewing gum.  Only a yellow
+hound was actively perplexed.  He could not make out if a hunt were
+just over or beginning, and ran eagerly backwards and forwards,
+leaping alternately upon the captives and the captors.
+
+The ringleader repeated his challenge.  Red Pete gave a reckless
+laugh and looked at his wife.
+
+At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward.  It seemed that she had much
+to say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader.
+His soul would roast in hell for that day's work!  He called
+himself a man, skunkin' in the open and afraid to show himself
+except with a crowd of other "Kiyi's" around a house of women and
+children.  Heaping insult upon insult, inveighing against his low
+blood, his ancestors, his dubious origin, she at last flung out a
+wild taunt of his invalid wife, the insult of a woman to a woman,
+until his white face grew rigid, and only that Western-American
+fetich of the sanctity of sex kept his twitching fingers from the
+lock of his rifle.  Even her husband noticed it, and with a half-
+authoritative "Let up on that, old gal," and a pat of his freed
+left hand on her back, took his last parting.  The ringleader,
+still white under the lash of the woman's tongue, turned abruptly
+to the second captive.  "And if YOU'VE got anybody to say 'good-by'
+to, now's your chance."
+
+The man looked up.  Nobody stirred or spoke.  He was a stranger
+there, being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known
+to no one.  Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood,
+of which father and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved
+horses and stole them, fully accepting the frontier penalty of life
+for the interference with that animal on which a man's life so
+often depended.  But he understood the good points of a horse, as
+was shown by the ones he bestrode--until a few days before the
+property of Judge Boompointer.  This was his sole distinction.
+
+The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the
+attitude of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part
+of his profession.  But it may have touched him that at that moment
+he was less than his companion and his virago wife.  However, he
+only shook his head.  As he did so his eye casually fell on the
+handsome girl by the doorpost, who was looking at him.  The
+ringleader, too, may have been touched by his complete loneliness,
+for HE hesitated.  At the same moment he saw that the girl was
+looking at his friendless captive.
+
+A grotesque idea struck him.
+
+"Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say 'good-by' to
+a dying man, and him a stranger," he said.
+
+There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that
+equally struck the apathetic crowd.  It was well known that Salomy
+Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off
+the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn.  Nevertheless, she
+slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody's
+astonishment, lounged with languid grace and outstretched hand
+towards the prisoner.  The color came into the gray reckless mask
+which the doomed man wore as her right hand grasped his left, just
+loosed by his captors.  Then she paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes
+grew bold, and fixed themselves upon him.  She took the chewing-gum
+from her mouth, wiped her red lips with the back of her hand, by a
+sudden lithe spring placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding
+to the saddle, threw her arms about his neck and pressed a kiss
+upon his lips.
+
+They remained thus for a hushed moment--the man on the threshold of
+death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty--linked
+together.  Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of
+the girl's act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten.  She
+slipped languidly to the ground; SHE was the focus of all eyes,--
+she only!  The ringleader saw it and his opportunity.  He shouted:
+"Time's up--Forward!" urged his horse beside his captives, and the
+next moment the whole cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into
+the darkening woods.
+
+Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of the
+committee, where the council was still sitting, and where both
+culprits were to expiate the offense of which that council had
+already found them guilty.  They rode in great and breathless
+haste,--a haste in which, strangely enough, even the captives
+seemed to join.  That haste possibly prevented them from noticing
+the singular change which had taken place in the second captive
+since the episode of the kiss.  His high color remained, as if it
+had burned through his mask of indifference; his eyes were quick,
+alert, and keen, his mouth half open as if the girl's kiss still
+lingered there.  And that haste had made them careless, for the
+horse of the man who led him slipped in a gopher-hole, rolled over,
+unseated his rider, and even dragged the bound and helpless second
+captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite mare.  In an instant they
+were all on their feet again, but in that supreme moment the second
+captive felt the cords which bound his arms had slipped to his
+wrists.  By keeping his elbows to his sides, and obliging the
+others to help him mount, it escaped their notice.  By riding close
+to his captors, and keeping in the crush of the throng, he further
+concealed the accident, slowly working his hands downwards out of
+his bonds.
+
+Their way lay through a sylvan wilderness, mid-leg deep in ferns,
+whose tall fronds brushed their horses' sides in their furious
+gallop and concealed the flapping of the captive's loosened cords.
+The peaceful vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph and
+shepherd than of human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast to this
+whirlwind rush of stern, armed men.  The westering sun pierced the
+subdued light and the tremor of leaves with yellow lances; birds
+started into song on blue and dove-like wings, and on either side
+of the trail of this vengeful storm could be heard the murmur of
+hidden and tranquil waters.  In a few moments they would be on the
+open ridge, whence sloped the common turnpike to "Sawyer's," a mile
+away.  It was the custom of returning cavalcades to take this hill
+at headlong speed, with shouts and cries that heralded their
+coming.  They withheld the latter that day, as inconsistent with
+their dignity; but, emerging from the wood, swept silently like an
+avalanche down the slope.  They were well under way, looking only
+to their horses, when the second captive slipped his right arm from
+the bonds and succeeded in grasping the reins that lay trailing on
+the horse's neck.  A sudden vaquero jerk, which the well-trained
+animal understood, threw him on his haunches with his forelegs
+firmly planted on the slope.  The rest of the cavalcade swept on;
+the man who was leading the captive's horse by the riata, thinking
+only of another accident, dropped the line to save himself from
+being dragged backwards from his horse.  The captive wheeled, and
+the next moment was galloping furiously up the slope.
+
+It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an experienced
+hand.  The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards before they
+could pull up; the freed captive had covered half that distance
+uphill.  The road was so narrow that only two shots could be fired,
+and these broke dust two yards ahead of the fugitive.  They had not
+dared to fire low; the horse was the more valuable animal.  The
+fugitive knew this in his extremity also, and would have gladly
+taken a shot in his own leg to spare that of his horse.  Five men
+were detached to recapture or kill him.  The latter seemed
+inevitable.  But he had calculated his chances; before they could
+reload he had reached the woods again; winding in and out between
+the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark.  They knew his horse
+was superior to their own; at the end of two hours they returned,
+for he had disappeared without track or trail.  The end was briefly
+told in the "Sierra Record:"--
+
+"Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded
+justice, was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing Vigilantes
+last week; his confederate, unfortunately, escaped on a valuable
+horse belonging to Judge Boompointer.  The judge had refused one
+thousand dollars for the horse only a week before.  As the thief,
+who is still at large, would find it difficult to dispose of so
+valuable an animal without detection, the chances are against
+either of them turning up again."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared.  Then
+she became aware that her brief popularity had passed.  Mrs. Red
+Pete, in stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping
+denunciation of the whole universe, possibly for simulating an
+emotion in which she herself was deficient.  The other women hated
+her for her momentary exaltation above them; only the children
+still admired her as one who had undoubtedly "canoodled" with a man
+"a-going to be hung"--a daring flight beyond their wildest
+ambition.  Salomy Jane accepted the change with charming unconcern.
+She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a hideous affair that
+would have ruined any other woman, but which only enhanced the
+piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings, letting the
+blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind, jumped
+on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
+white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a
+"So long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped
+and fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.
+
+Her father's house was four miles distant.  Contrasted with the
+cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
+"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
+and made it look like a low triangle.  It had a long barn and
+cattle sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stock-raiser and the
+owner of a "quarter section."  It had a sitting-room and a parlor
+organ, whose transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing."
+These things were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue importance,
+but the girl's reserve and inaccessibility to local advances were
+rather the result of a cool, lazy temperament and the preoccupation
+of a large, protecting admiration for her father, for some years a
+widower.  For Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in one or
+two feuds,--it was said, not without cause,--and it is possible
+that the pathetic spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a
+shotgun may have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her
+against the neighboring masculinity.  The thought that cattle,
+horses, and "quarter section" would one day be hers did not disturb
+her calm.  As for Mr. Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though
+somewhat "interfering," and, being one of "his own womankind,"
+therefore not without some degree of merit.
+
+"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
+Honeyfoglin' with a horse-thief, eh?" said Mr. Clay two days later
+at breakfast.
+
+"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said Salomy
+Jane unconcernedly, without looking round.
+
+"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it?  What are you goin' to
+tell HIM?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.
+
+"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
+particularly by Mr. Clay.  Salomy Jane looked up.
+
+"I'll tell him that when HE'S on his way to be hung, I'll kiss
+him,--not till then," said the young lady brightly.
+
+This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
+smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.
+
+"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a
+different color," he said grimly.
+
+Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork.  This was certainly a new
+and different phase of the situation.  She had never thought of it
+before, and, strangely enough, for the first time she became
+interested in the man.  "Got away?" she repeated.  "Did they let
+him off?"
+
+"Not much," said her father briefly.  "Slipped his cords, and going
+down the grade pulled up short, just like a vaquero agin a lassoed
+bull, almost draggin' the man leadin' him off his hoss, and then
+skyuted up the grade.  For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge
+Boompointer's he mout have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on
+their knees ef he liked!  Sarved 'em right, too.  Instead of
+stringin' him up afore the door, or shootin' him on sight, they
+must allow to take him down afore the hull committee 'for an
+example.'  'Example' be blowed!  Ther' 's example enough when some
+stranger comes unbeknownst slap onter a man hanged to a tree and
+plugged full of holes.  THAT'S an example, and HE knows what it
+means.  Wot more do ye want?  But then those Vigilantes is allus
+clingin' and hangin' onter some mere scrap o' the law they're
+pretendin' to despise.  It makes me sick!  Why, when Jake Myers
+shot your ole Aunt Viney's second husband, and I laid in wait for
+Jake afterwards in the Butternut Hollow, did I tie him to his hoss
+and fetch him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an example'
+before I plugged him?  No!" in deep disgust.  "No!  Why, I just
+meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes out, and I
+just rode up to him, and I said"--
+
+But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before.  Even one's
+dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration.  "I
+know, dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--
+did HE get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"
+
+"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
+away, too.  So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
+stranger' to Rube.  He won't swaller it."
+
+"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
+it, and say MORE; I'll tell him that ef HE manages to get away too,
+I'll marry him--there!  But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
+risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"
+
+Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
+perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun
+from the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow
+who had dropped a calf in the far pasture.  Inclined as he was to
+Reuben's wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was
+conscious that he was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent
+in the Clay family.  It certainly would be a kind of mesalliance.
+
+Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
+and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
+duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room
+to make her bed.  Here she was confronted with a possible prospect
+of that proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and
+on which she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious
+young man of refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-
+frame.  Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him
+and enjoyed, it, like your true humorist, and then, catching sight
+of her own handsome face in the little mirror, smiled again.  But
+wasn't it funny about that horse-thief getting off after all?  Good
+Lordy!  Fancy Reuben hearing he was alive and going round with that
+kiss of hers set on his lips!  She laughed again, a little more
+abstractedly.  And he had returned it like a man, holding her tight
+and almost breathless, and he going to be hung the next minute!
+Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by force, chance, or
+stratagem.  In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of the locality
+known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet kiss" from
+Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and fair
+play.  She had never been kissed like this before--she would never
+again; and yet the man was alive!  And behold, she could see in the
+mirror that she was blushing!
+
+She should hardly know him again.  A young man with very bright
+eyes, a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the
+face, and no beard; no, none that she could feel.  Yet he was not
+at all like Reuben, not a bit.  She took Reuben's picture from the
+window, and laid it on her workbox.  And to think she did not even
+know this young man's name!  That was queer.  To be kissed by a man
+whom she might never know!  Of course he knew hers.  She wondered
+if he remembered it and her.  But of course he was so glad to get
+off with his life that he never thought of anything else.  Yet she
+did not give more than four or five minutes to these speculations,
+and, like a sensible girl, thought of something else.  Once again,
+however, in opening the closet, she found the brown holland gown
+she had worn on the day before; thought it very unbecoming, and
+regretted that she had not worn her best gown on her visit to Red
+Pete's cottage.  On such an occasion she really might have been
+more impressive.
+
+When her father came home that night she asked him the news.  No,
+they had NOT captured the second horse-thief, who was still at
+large.  Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the
+despised law.  It remained, then, to see whether the horse-thief
+was fool enough to try to get rid of the animal.  Red Pete's body
+had been delivered to his widow.  Perhaps it would only be
+neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the funeral.  But Salomy
+Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly, nor yet did she explain
+to her father that, as the other man was still living, she did not
+care to undergo a second disciplining at the widow's hands.
+Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with that of the widow
+with a new and singular satisfaction.  It might have been Red Pete
+who had escaped.  But he had not the grit of the nameless one.  She
+had already settled his heroic quality.
+
+"Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy."
+
+Salomy Jane started.
+
+"Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking
+by yer today?"
+
+Salomy Jane had not.  But she became interested and self-reproachful,
+for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father's enemies.
+"He wouldn't dare to go by here unless he knew you were out," she
+said quickly.
+
+"That's what gets me," he said, scratching his grizzled head.
+"I've been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them
+Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer's Crossing.  He was a kind of
+friend o' Pete's wife.  That's why I thought yer might find out ef
+he'd been there."  Salomy Jane grew more self-reproachful at her
+father's self-interest in her "neighborliness."  "But that ain't
+all," continued Mr. Clay.  "Thar was tracks over the far pasture
+that warn't mine.  I followed them, and they went round and round
+the house two or three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin', and
+then I lost 'em in the woods again.  It's just like that sneakin'
+hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in wait for me and afraid to meet a
+man fair and square in the open."
+
+"You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a
+little prowlin'," said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in
+her dark eyes.  "Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon enough and
+let you know whar he's hiding."
+
+"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father decisively.
+"This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got
+more head for it than some men I know."
+
+Nevertheless, that night, after her father had gone to bed, Salomy
+Jane sat by the open window of the sitting-room in an apparent
+attitude of languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and
+ear.  It was a fine moonlit night.  Two pines near the door,
+solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest, cast long
+shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their spiced breath
+in the windows.  For there was no frivolity of vine or flower round
+Salomy Jane's bower.  The clearing was too recent, the life too
+practical for vanities like these.  But the moon added a vague
+elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the
+sheds, gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with
+merciful indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the
+gaunt scars of burnt vegetation before the door.  Even Salomy Jane
+was affected by it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn
+with the breath of the pines.  Then she suddenly sat upright.
+
+Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction
+of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her
+to determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty
+ground; her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the
+spot where the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a
+quarter of a mile from where she sat, and within the clearing.  It
+was no errant "stock," for the foot was shod with iron; it was a
+mounted trespasser by night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.
+
+She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than
+shelter, and passed out of the door.  A sudden impulse made her
+seize her father's shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not
+that she feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse.
+She made directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines
+as long as she could.  At the fringe she halted; whoever was there
+must pass her before reaching the house.
+
+Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature.  Everything was
+deadly still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon
+there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns, and
+then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight.  It was the
+horse-thief--the man she had kissed!
+
+For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect
+and stirred her temperate blood.  The news they had told her was
+NOT true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost!  He looked as
+white and spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same
+clothes, as when she saw him last.  He had evidently seen her
+approaching, and moved quickly to meet her.  But in his haste he
+stumbled slightly; she reflected suddenly that ghosts did not
+stumble, and a feeling of relief came over her.  And it was no
+assassin of her father that had been prowling around--only this
+unhappy fugitive.  A momentary color came into her cheek; her
+coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of sauciness
+in her voice that she said:--
+
+"I reckoned you were a ghost."
+
+"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I reckon
+I'd have come back here all the same."
+
+"It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a levity
+that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and
+half expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of
+a moment ago.  "Then it was YOU who was prowlin' round and makin'
+tracks in the far pasture?"
+
+"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."
+
+She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her
+own.  "Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely.  "HOW did you
+get here?"
+
+"You helped me!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes.  That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to
+get away.  I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or
+dead."
+
+Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the
+situation seemed to her now.  And every word he said she knew was
+the truth.  Yet her cool common sense struggled against it.
+
+"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be
+ketched again?" she said pertly.
+
+He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward
+as she resumed her self-possession.  His voice, too, was broken, as
+if by exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--
+
+"I'll tell you.  You did more for me than you think.  You made
+another man o' me.  I never had a man, woman, or child do to me
+what you did.  I never had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who
+picked me up 'on shares.'  I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'.
+I want to begin by doin' the square thing to you"--  He stopped,
+breathed hard, and then said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar,
+staked out.  I want to give him to you.  Judge Boompointer will
+give you a thousand dollars for him.  I ain't lyin'; it's God's
+truth!  I saw it on the handbill agin a tree.  Take him, and I'll
+get away afoot.  Take him.  It's the only thing I can do for you,
+and I know it don't half pay for what you did.  Take it; your
+father can get a reward for you, if you can't."
+
+Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man
+who made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by
+anything that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent
+with justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane
+nevertheless dissented, from another and weaker reason.
+
+"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
+starvin'.  I'll get suthin'."  She turned towards the house.
+
+"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand.  At
+the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting
+perhaps another kiss.  But he dropped her hand.  She turned again
+with a saucy gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and
+slipped away, the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the
+moonlight, until she reached the house.
+
+Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long dust-
+coat and hat of her father's to her burden.  They would serve as a
+disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she thought
+everybody must now know as she did.  Then she rejoined him
+breathlessly.  But he put the food and whiskey aside.
+
+"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral.  You'll
+find him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got
+lost and joined the other hosses."
+
+Then she burst out.  "But you--YOU--what will become of you?
+You'll be ketched!"
+
+"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice, "ef--ef"--
+
+"Ef what?" she said tremblingly.  "Ef you'll put the heart in me
+again,--as you did!" he gasped.
+
+She tried to laugh--to move away.  She could do neither.  Suddenly
+he caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned
+again and again.  Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two
+days before, but no longer the same.  For the cool, lazy Salomy
+Jane had been transformed into another woman--a passionate,
+clinging savage.  Perhaps something of her father's blood had
+surged within her at that supreme moment.  The man stood erect and
+determined.
+
+"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly.  It was a woman's quickest
+way of defining her feelings.
+
+"Dart."
+
+"Yer first name?"
+
+"Jack."
+
+"Let me go now, Jack.  Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup.
+I'll come again."
+
+He released her.  Yet she lingered a moment.  "Put on those
+things," she said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth,
+"and lie close till I come."  And then she sped away home.
+
+But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and
+something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back.  She
+stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been standing.  Had
+she seen him then, she might have returned.  But he had
+disappeared.  She gave her first sigh, and then ran quickly again.
+It must be nearly ten o'clock!  It was not very long to morning!
+
+She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods
+and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp "crack!"
+
+She stopped, paralyzed.  Another "crack!' followed, that echoed
+over to the far corral.  She recalled herself instantly and dashed
+off wildly to the woods again.
+
+As she ran she thought of one thing only.  He had been "dogged" by
+one of his old pursuers and attacked.  But there were two shots,
+and he was unarmed.  Suddenly she remembered that she had left her
+father's gun standing against the tree where they were talking.
+Thank God! she may again have saved him.  She ran to the tree; the
+gun was gone.  She ran hither and thither, dreading at every step
+to fall upon his lifeless body.  A new thought struck her; she ran
+to the corral.  The horse was not there!  He must have been able to
+regain it, and escaped, AFTER the shots had been fired.  She drew a
+long breath of relief, but it was caught up in an apprehension of
+alarm.  Her father, awakened from his sleep by the shots, was
+hurriedly approaching her.
+
+"What's up now, Salomy Jane?" he demanded excitedly.
+
+"Nothin'," said the girl with an effort.  "Nothin', at least, that
+I can find."  She was usually truthful because fearless, and a lie
+stuck in her throat; but she was no longer fearless, thinking of
+HIM.  "I wasn't abed; so I ran out as soon as I heard the shots
+fired," she answered in return to his curious gaze.
+
+"And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found," he said
+reproachfully.  "Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he fired them
+shots to lure me out, he might have potted me, without a show, a
+dozen times in the last five minutes."
+
+She had not thought since of her father's enemy!  It might indeed
+have been he who had attacked Jack.  But she made a quick point of
+the suggestion.  "Run in, dad, run in and find the gun; you've got
+no show out here without it."  She seized him by the shoulders from
+behind, shielding him from the woods, and hurried him, half
+expostulating, half struggling, to the house.
+
+But there no gun was to be found.  It was strange; it must have
+been mislaid in some corner!  Was he sure he had not left it in the
+barn?  But no matter now.  The danger was over; the Larrabee trick
+had failed; he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would
+make a search together.  At the same time she had inwardly resolved
+to rise before him and make another search of the wood, and
+perhaps--fearful joy as she recalled her promise!--find Jack alive
+and well, awaiting her!
+
+Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father.  But
+towards morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun
+was well up the horizon.  Far different was it with his daughter:
+she lay with her face to the window, her head half lifted to catch
+every sound, from the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her
+head to the far-off moan of the rising wind in the pine trees.
+Sometimes she fell into a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living
+over every moment of the stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's
+arm still around her, his kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered
+voice in her ears--the birth of her new life!  This was followed
+again by a period of agonizing dread--that he might even then be
+lying, his life ebbing away, in the woods, with her name on his
+lips, and she resting here inactive, until she half started from
+her bed to go to his succor.  And this went on until a pale opal
+glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler pink on the
+summit of the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly began to
+dress.  Still so sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that she
+lingered yet a moment to select the brown holland skirt and yellow
+sunbonnet she had worn when she first saw him.  And she had only
+seen him twice!  Only TWICE!  It would be cruel, too cruel, not to
+see him again!
+
+She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn
+breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a
+guttering candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust
+himself out of the house until she returned from her search, and
+leaving the note open on the table, swiftly ran out into the
+growing day.
+
+Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud
+knocking.  At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as
+his daughter's regular morning summons, and was responded to by a
+grunt of recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets.  Then
+he awoke with a start and a muttered oath, remembering the events
+of last night, and his intention to get up early, and rolled out of
+bed.  Becoming aware by this time that the knocking was at the
+outer door, and hearing the shout of a familiar voice, he hastily
+pulled on his boots, his jean trousers, and fastening a single
+suspender over his shoulder as he clattered downstairs, stood in
+the lower room.  The door was open, and waiting upon the threshold
+was his kinsman, an old ally in many a blood-feud--Breckenridge
+Clay!
+
+"You ARE a cool one, Mad!" said the latter in half-admiring
+indignation.
+
+"What's up?" said the bewildered Madison.
+
+"YOU ought to be, and scootin' out o' this," said Breckenridge
+grimly.  "It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but here Phil
+Larrabee's friends hev just picked him up, drilled through with
+slugs and deader nor a crow, and now they're lettin' loose
+Larrabee's two half-brothers on you.  And you must go like a derned
+fool and leave these yer things behind you in the bresh," he went
+on querulously, lifting Madison Clay's dust-coat, hat, and shotgun
+from his horse, which stood saddled at the door.  "Luckily I picked
+them up in the woods comin' here.  Ye ain't got more than time to
+get over the state line and among your folks thar afore they'll be
+down on you.  Hustle, old man!  What are you gawkin' and starin'
+at?"
+
+Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered--horror-stricken.
+The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him
+clearly--hopelessly!  The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in
+the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the
+disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the
+taking of his hat and coat for a disguise!  SHE had killed Phil
+Larrabee in that disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot!
+She, his own child, Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's
+crime; had disgraced him by usurping his right, and taking a mean
+advantage, by deceit, of a foe!
+
+"Gimme that gun," he said hoarsely.
+
+Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering
+suspicion.  Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been
+discharged.  It was true!  The gun dropped from his hand.
+
+"Look here, old man," said Breckenridge, with a darkening face,
+"there's bin no foul play here.  Thar's bin no hiring of men, no
+deputy to do this job.  YOU did it fair and square--yourself?"
+
+"Yes, by God!" burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice.  "Who says
+I didn't?"
+
+Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for
+the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his
+memory, Breckenridge said curtly, "Then wake up and 'lite' out, ef
+ye want me to stand by you."
+
+"Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss," said Madison slowly, yet
+not without a certain dignity of manner.  "I've suthin' to say to
+Salomy Jane afore I go."  He was holding her scribbled note, which
+he had just discovered, in his shaking hand.
+
+Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent relations
+of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away.  Left
+to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and
+straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her
+note, turned it over, and wrote on the back:--
+
+
+You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole father to
+find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too, by a low-down,
+underhanded, woman's trick!  I've said I done it, and took the
+blame myself, and all the sneakiness of it that folks suspect.  If
+I get away alive--and I don't care much which--you needn't foller.
+The house and stock are yours; but you ain't any longer the
+daughter of your disgraced father,
+
+MADISON CLAY.
+
+
+He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and
+a led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and
+triumphant.  "You're in nigger luck, Mad!  I found that stole hoss
+of Judge Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in
+the corral.  Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side
+of the state line."
+
+"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.
+
+"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take
+him.  I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell
+Judge Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when
+you're safe.  The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and
+call it quits.  So ef you've writ to Salomy Jane, come."
+
+Madison Clay no longer hesitated.  Salomy Jane might return at any
+moment,--it would be part of her "fool womanishness,"--and he was
+in no mood to see her before a third party.  He laid the note on
+the table, gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly
+believed he was leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped
+on the stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.
+
+But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view
+of the open door.  The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones,
+birds, and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at
+night by shy, stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by
+any of the Clay family.  It was known in the district that Clay had
+flown across the state line, his daughter was believed to have
+joined him the next day, and the house was supposed to be locked
+up.  It lay off the main road, and few passed that way.  The
+starving cattle in the corral at last broke bounds and spread over
+the woods.  And one night a stronger blast than usual swept through
+the house, carried the note from the table to the floor, where,
+whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.
+
+But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her,
+Salomy Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened.
+For as she entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she
+saw the figure of Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards
+her.  The unaffected cry of joy that rose from her lips died there
+as she caught sight of his face in the open light.
+
+"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm passionately.
+
+"No," he said.  "But I wouldn't mind that if"--
+
+"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard
+the shootin', but I DID come," she went on feverishly.  "I ran back
+here when I heard the two shots, but you were gone.  I went to the
+corral, but your hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got away."
+
+"I DID get away," said Dart gloomily.  "I killed the man, thinkin'
+he was huntin' ME, and forgettin' I was disguised.  He thought I
+was your father."
+
+"Yes," said the girl joyfully, "he was after dad, and YOU--you
+killed him."  She again caught his hand admiringly.
+
+But he did not respond.  Possibly there were points of honor which
+this horse-thief felt vaguely with her father.  "Listen," he said
+grimly.  "Others think it was your father killed him.  When I did
+it--for he fired at me first--I ran to the corral again and took my
+hoss, thinkin' I might be follered.  I made a clear circuit of the
+house, and when I found he was the only one, and no one was
+follerin', I come back here and took off my disguise.  Then I heard
+his friends find him in the wood, and I know they suspected your
+father.  And then another man come through the woods while I was
+hidin' and found the clothes and took them away."  He stopped and
+stared at her gloomily.
+
+But all this was unintelligible to the girl.  "Dad would have got
+the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so what's the
+difference?"
+
+"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his place."
+
+She did not understand, but turned her head to her master.  "Then
+you'll go back with me and tell him ALL?" she said obediently.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together.
+She foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he
+did not love as she did.  SHE would not have taken these risks
+against their happiness.
+
+But alas for ethics and heroism.  As they were issuing from the
+wood they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time
+to hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of
+Judge Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.
+
+Salomy Jane turned to her lover.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
+passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to
+lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal,
+fastidious parent.  But I am confronted by certain facts, on which
+this romance is based.  A month later a handbill was posted on one
+of the sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold
+by auction to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of
+Madison Clay, Esq., and it was sold accordingly.  Still later--by
+ten years--the chronicler of these pages visited a certain "stock"
+or "breeding farm," in the "Blue Grass Country," famous for the
+popular racers it has produced.  He was told that the owner was the
+"best judge of horse-flesh in the country."  "Small wonder," added
+his informant, "for they say as a young man out in California he
+was a horse-thief, and only saved himself by eloping with some rich
+farmer's daughter.  But he's a straight-out and respectable man
+now, whose word about horses can't be bought; and as for his wife,
+she's a beauty!  To see her at the 'Springs,' rigged out in the
+latest fashion, you'd never think she had ever lived out of New
+York or wasn't the wife of one of its millionaires."
+
+
+
+THE MAN AND THE MOUNTAIN
+
+
+He was such a large, strong man that, when he first set foot in the
+little parallelogram I called my garden, it seemed to shrink to
+half its size and become preposterous.  But I noticed at the same
+time that he was holding in the open palm of his huge hand the
+roots of a violet, with such infinite tenderness and delicacy that
+I would have engaged him as my gardener on the spot.  But this
+could not be, as he was already the proud proprietor of a market-
+garden and nursery on the outskirts of the suburban Californian
+town where I lived.  He would, however, come for two days in the
+week, stock and look after my garden, and impart to my urban
+intellect such horticultural hints as were necessary.  His name was
+"Rutli," which I presumed to be German, but which my neighbors
+rendered as "Rootleigh," possibly from some vague connection with
+his occupation.  His own knowledge of English was oral and
+phonetic.  I have a delightful recollection of a bill of his in
+which I was charged for "fioletz," with the vague addition of
+"maine cains."  Subsequent explanation proved it to be "many
+kinds."
+
+Nevertheless, my little garden bourgeoned and blossomed under his
+large, protecting hand.  I became accustomed to walk around his
+feet respectfully when they blocked the tiny paths, and to expect
+the total eclipse of that garden-bed on which he worked, by his
+huge bulk.  For the tiniest and most reluctant rootlet seemed to
+respond to his caressing paternal touch; it was a pretty sight to
+see his huge fingers tying up some slender stalk to its stick with
+the smallest thread, and he had a reverent way of laying a bulb or
+seed in the ground, and then gently shaping and smoothing a small
+mound over it, which made the little inscription on the stick above
+more like an affecting epitaph than ever.  Much of this gentleness
+may have been that apology for his great strength, common with
+large men; but his face was distinctly amiable, and his very light
+blue eyes were at times wistful and doglike in their kindliness.  I
+was soon to learn, however, that placability was not entirely his
+nature.
+
+The garden was part of a fifty vara lot of land, on which I was
+simultaneously erecting a house.  But the garden was finished
+before the house was, through certain circumstances very
+characteristic of that epoch and civilization.  I had purchased the
+Spanish title, the only LEGAL one, to the land, which, however, had
+been in POSSESSION of a "squatter."  But he had been unable to hold
+that possession against a "jumper,"--another kind of squatter who
+had entered upon it covertly, fenced it in, and marked it out in
+building sites.  Neither having legal rights, they could not invoke
+the law; the last man held possession.  There was no doubt that in
+due course of litigation and time both these ingenuous gentlemen
+would have been dispossessed in favor of the real owner,--myself,--
+but that course would be a protracted one.  Following the usual
+custom of the locality, I paid a certain sum to the jumper to yield
+up peaceably HIS possession of the land, and began to build upon
+it.  It might be reasonably supposed that the question was settled.
+But it was not.  The house was nearly finished when, one morning, I
+was called out of my editorial sanctum by a pallid painter, looking
+even more white-leaded than usual, who informed me that my house
+was in the possession of five armed men!  The entry had been made
+peaceably during the painters' absence to dinner under a wayside
+tree.  When they returned, they had found their pots and brushes in
+the road, and an intimation from the windows that their reentrance
+would be forcibly resisted as a trespass.
+
+I honestly believe that Rutli was more concerned than myself over
+this dispossession.  While he loyally believed that I would get
+back my property, he was dreadfully grieved over the inevitable
+damage that would be done to the garden during this interval of
+neglect and carelessness.  I even think he would have made a truce
+with my enemies, if they would only have let him look after his
+beloved plants.  As it was, he kept a passing but melancholy
+surveillance of them, and was indeed a better spy of the actions of
+the intruders than any I could have employed.  One day, to my
+astonishment, he brought me a moss-rose bud from a bush which had
+been trained against a column of the veranda.  It appeared that he
+had called, from over the fence, the attention of one of the men to
+the neglected condition of the plant, and had obtained permission
+to "come in and tie it up."  The men, being merely hirelings of the
+chief squatter, had no personal feeling, and I was not therefore
+surprised to hear that they presently allowed Rutli to come in
+occasionally and look after his precious "slips."  If they had any
+suspicions of his great strength, it was probably offset by his
+peaceful avocation and his bland, childlike face.  Meantime, I had
+begun the usual useless legal proceeding, but had also engaged a
+few rascals of my own to be ready to take advantage of any want of
+vigilance on the part of my adversaries.  I never thought of Rutli
+in that connection any more than they had.
+
+A few Sundays later I was sitting in the little tea-arbor of
+Rutli's nursery, peacefully smoking with him.  Presently he took
+his long china-bowled pipe from his mouth, and, looking at me
+blandly over his yellow mustache, said:--
+
+"You vonts sometimes to go in dot house, eh?"
+
+I said, "Decidedly."
+
+"Mit a revolver, and keep dot house dose men out?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Vell!  I put you in dot house--today!"
+
+"Sunday?"
+
+"Shoost so!  It is a goot day!  On der Suntay DREE men vill out go
+to valk mit demselluffs, and visky trinken.  TWO," holding up two
+gigantic fingers, apparently only a shade or two smaller than his
+destined victims, "stay dere.  Dose I lift de fence over."
+
+I hastened to inform him that any violence attempted against the
+parties WHILE IN POSSESSION, although that possession was illegal,
+would, by a fatuity of the law, land him in the county jail.  I
+said I would not hear of it.
+
+"But suppose dere vos no fiolence?  Suppose dose men vos villin',
+eh?  How vos dot for high?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"So!  You shall NOT understand!  Dot is better.  Go away now and
+dell your men to coom dot house arount at halluff past dree.  But
+YOU coom, mit yourselluff alone, shoost as if you vos spazieren
+gehen, for a valk, by dat fence at dree!  Ven you shall dot front
+door vide open see, go in, and dere you vos!  You vill der rest
+leef to me!"
+
+It was in vain that I begged Rutli to divulge his plan, and pointed
+out again the danger of his technically breaking the law.  But he
+was firm, assuring me that I myself would be a witness that no
+assault would be made.  I looked into his clear, good-humored eyes,
+and assented.  I had a burning desire to right my wrongs, but I
+think I also had considerable curiosity.
+
+I passed a miserable quarter of an hour after I had warned my
+partisans, and then walked alone slowly down the broad leafy street
+towards the scene of contest.  I have a very vivid recollection of
+my conflicting emotions.  I did not believe that I would be killed;
+I had no distinct intention of killing any of my adversaries; but I
+had some considerable concern for my loyal friend Rutli, whom I
+foresaw might be in some peril from the revolver in my unpracticed
+hand.  If I could only avoid shooting HIM, I would be satisfied.  I
+remember that the bells were ringing for church,--a church of which
+my enemy, the chief squatter, was a deacon in good standing,--and I
+felt guiltily conscious of my revolver in my hip-pocket, as two or
+three church-goers passed me with their hymn-books in their hands.
+I walked leisurely, so as not to attract attention, and to appear
+at the exact time, a not very easy task in my youthful excitement.
+At last I reached the front gate with a beating heart.  There was
+no one on the high veranda, which occupied three sides of the low
+one-storied house, nor in the garden before it.  But the front door
+was open; I softly passed through the gate, darted up the veranda
+and into the house.  A single glance around the hall and bare,
+deserted rooms, still smelling of paint, showed me it was empty,
+and with my pistol in one hand and the other on the lock of the
+door, I stood inside, ready to bolt it against any one but Rutli.
+But where was HE?
+
+The sound of laughter and a noise like skylarking came from the
+rear of the house and the back yard.  Then I suddenly heard Rutli's
+heavy tread on the veranda, but it was slow, deliberate, and so
+exaggerated in its weight that the whole house seemed to shake with
+it.  Then from the window I beheld an extraordinary sight!  It was
+Rutli, swaying from side to side, but steadily carrying with
+outstretched arms two of the squatter party, his hands tightly
+grasping their collars.  Yet I believe his touch was as gentle as
+with the violets.  His face was preternaturally grave; theirs, to
+my intense astonishment, while they hung passive from his arms,
+wore that fatuous, imbecile smile seen on the faces of those who
+lend themselves to tricks of acrobats and strong men in the arena.
+He slowly traversed the whole length of one side of the house,
+walked down the steps to the gate, and then gravely deposited them
+OUTSIDE.  I heard him say, "Dot vins der pet, ain't it?" and
+immediately after the sharp click of the gate-latch.
+
+Without understanding a thing that had happened, I rightly
+conceived this was the cue for my appearance with my revolver at
+the front door.  As I opened it I still heard the sound of
+laughter, which, however, instantly stopped at a sentence from
+Rutli, which I could not hear.  There was an oath, the momentary
+apparition of two furious and indignant faces over the fence; but
+these, however, seemed to be instantly extinguished and put down by
+the enormous palms of Rutli clapped upon their heads.  There was a
+pause, and then Rutli turned around and quietly joined me in the
+doorway.  But the gate was not again opened until the arrival of my
+partisans, when the house was clearly in my possession.
+
+Safe inside with the door bolted, I turned eagerly to Rutli for an
+explanation.  It then appeared that during his occasional visits to
+the garden he had often been an object of amusement and criticism
+to the men on account of his size, which seemed to them ridiculously
+inconsistent with his great good humor, gentleness, and delicacy of
+touch.  They had doubted his strength and challenged his powers.  He
+had responded once or twice before, lifting weights or even carrying
+one of his critics at arm's length for a few steps.  But he had
+reserved his final feat for this day and this purpose.  It was for a
+bet, which they had eagerly accepted, secure in their belief in his
+simplicity, the sincerity of his motives in coming there, and glad
+of the opportunity of a little Sunday diversion.  In their security
+they had not locked the door when they came out, and had not noticed
+that HE had opened it.  This was his simple story.  His only comment,
+"I haf von der pet, but I dinks I shall nod gollect der money."  The
+two men did not return that afternoon, nor did their comrades.
+Whether they wisely conceived that a man who was so powerful in play
+might be terrible in earnest; whether they knew that his act, in
+which they had been willing performers, had been witnessed by
+passing citizens, who supposed it was skylarking; or whether their
+employer got tired of his expensive occupation, I never knew.  The
+public believed the latter; Rutli, myself, and the two men he had
+evicted alone kept our secret.
+
+From that time Rutli and I became firm friends, and, long after I
+had no further need of his services in the recaptured house, I often
+found myself in the little tea-arbor of his prosperous nursery.  He
+was frugal, sober, and industrious; small wonder that in that
+growing town he waxed rich, and presently opened a restaurant in the
+main street, connected with his market-garden, which became famous.
+His relations to me never changed with his changed fortunes; he was
+always the simple market-gardener and florist who had aided my first
+housekeeping, and stood by me in an hour of need.  Of all things
+regarding himself he was singularly reticent; I do not think he had
+any confidants or intimates, even among his own countrymen, whom I
+believed to be German.  But one day he quite accidentally admitted
+he was a Swiss.  As a youthful admirer of the race I was delighted,
+and told him so, with the enthusiastic addition that I could now
+quite understand his independence, with his devoted adherence to
+another's cause.  He smiled sadly, and astonished me by saying that
+he had not heard from Switzerland since he left six years ago.  He
+did not want to hear anything; he even avoided his countrymen lest
+he should.  I was confounded.
+
+"But," I said, "surely you have a longing to return to your
+country; all Swiss have!  You will go back some day just to breathe
+the air of your native mountains."
+
+"I shall go back some days," said Rutli, "after I have made mooch,
+mooch money, but not for dot air."
+
+"What for, then?"
+
+"For revenge--to get efen."
+
+Surprised, and for a moment dismayed as I was, I could not help
+laughing.  "Rutli and revenge!"  Impossible!  And to make it the
+more absurd, he was still smoking gently and regarding me with
+soft, complacent eyes.  So unchanged was his face and manner that
+he might have told me he was going back to be married.
+
+"You do not oonderstand," he said forgivingly.  "Some days I shall
+dell to you id.  Id is a story.  You shall make it yourselluff for
+dose babers dot you write.  It is not bretty, berhaps, ain't it,
+but it is droo.  And de endt is not yet."
+
+Only that Rutli never joked, except in a ponderous fashion with
+many involved sentences, I should have thought he was taking a
+good-humored rise out of me.  But it was not funny.  I am afraid I
+dismissed it from my mind as a revelation of something weak and
+puerile, quite inconsistent with his practical common sense and
+strong simplicity, and wished he had not alluded to it.  I never
+asked him to tell me the story.  It was a year later, and only when
+he had invited me to come to the opening of a new hotel, erected by
+him at a mountain spa of great resort, that he himself alluded to it.
+
+The hotel was a wonderful affair, even for those days, and Rutli's
+outlay of capital convinced me that by this time he must have made
+the "mooch money" he coveted.  Something of this was in my mind
+when we sat by the window of his handsomely furnished private
+office, overlooking the pines of a Californian canyon.  I asked him
+if the scenery was like Switzerland.
+
+"Ach! no!" he replied; "but I vill puild a hotel shoost like dis
+dare."
+
+"Is that a part of your revenge?" I asked, with a laugh.
+
+"Ah! so! a bart."
+
+I felt relieved; a revenge so practical did not seem very malicious
+or idiotic.  After a pause he puffed contemplatively at his pipe,
+and then said, "I dell you somedings of dot story now."
+
+He began.  I should like to tell it in his own particular English,
+mixed with American slang, but it would not convey the simplicity
+of the narrator.  He was the son of a large family who had lived
+for centuries in one of the highest villages in the Bernese
+Oberland.  He attained his size and strength early, but with a
+singular distaste to use them in the rough regular work on the
+farm, although he was a great climber and mountaineer, and, what
+was at first overlooked as mere boyish fancy, had an insatiable
+love and curious knowledge of plants and flowers.  He knew the
+haunts of Edelweiss, Alpine rose, and blue gentian, and had brought
+home rare and unknown blossoms from under the icy lips of glaciers.
+But as he did this when his time was supposed to be occupied in
+looking after the cows in the higher pastures and making cheeses,
+there was trouble in that hard-working, practical family.  A giant
+with the tastes and disposition of a schoolgirl was an anomaly in a
+Swiss village.  Unfortunately again, he was not studious; his
+record in the village school had been on a par with his manual
+work, and the family had not even the consolation of believing that
+they were fostering a genius.  In a community where practical
+industry was the highest virtue, it was not strange, perhaps, that
+he was called "lazy" and "shiftless;" no one knew the long climbs
+and tireless vigils he had undergone in remote solitudes in quest
+of his favorites, or, knowing, forgave him for it.  Abstemious,
+frugal, and patient as he was, even the crusts of his father's
+table were given him grudgingly.  He often went hungry rather than
+ask the bread he had failed to earn.  How his great frame was
+nurtured in those days he never knew; perhaps the giant mountains
+recognized some kin in him and fed and strengthened him after their
+own fashion.  Even his gentleness was confounded with cowardice.
+"Dot vos de hardtest," he said simply; "it is not goot to be
+opligit to half crush your brudder, ven he would make a laugh of
+you to your sweetheart."  The end came sooner than he expected,
+and, oddly enough, through this sweetheart.  "Gottlieb," she said
+to him one day, "the English Fremde who stayed here last night met
+me when I was carrying some of those beautiful flowers you gave me.
+He asked me where they were to be found, and I told him only YOU
+knew.  He wants to see you; go to him.  It may be luck to you."
+Rutli went.  The stranger, an English Alpine climber of scientific
+tastes, talked with him for an hour.  At the end of that time, to
+everybody's astonishment, he engaged this hopeless idler as his
+personal guide for three months, at the sum of five francs a day!
+It was inconceivable, it was unheard of!  The Englander was as mad
+as Gottlieb, whose intellect had always been under suspicion!  The
+schoolmaster pursed up his lips, the pastor shook his head; no good
+could come of it; the family looked upon it as another freak of
+Gottlieb's, but there was one big mouth less to feed and more room
+in the kitchen, and they let him go.  They parted from him as
+ungraciously as they had endured his presence.
+
+Then followed two months of sunshine in Rutli's life--association
+with his beloved plants, and the intelligent sympathy and direction
+of a cultivated man.  Even in altitudes so dangerous that they had
+to take other and more experienced guides, Rutli was always at his
+master's side.  That savant's collection of Alpine flora excelled
+all previous ones; he talked freely with Rutli of further work in
+the future, and relaxed his English reserve so far as to confide to
+him that the outcome of their collection and observation might be a
+book.  He gave a flower a Latin name, in which even the ignorant
+and delighted Rutli could distinguish some likeness to his own.
+But the book was never compiled.  In one of their later and more
+difficult ascents they and their two additional guides were
+overtaken by a sudden storm.  Swept from their feet down an ice-
+bound slope, Rutli alone of the roped-together party kept a
+foothold on the treacherous incline.  Here this young Titan, with
+bleeding fingers clenched in a rock cleft, sustained the struggles
+and held up the lives of his companions by that precious thread for
+more than an hour.  Perhaps he might have saved them, but in their
+desperate efforts to regain their footing the rope slipped upon a
+jagged edge of outcrop and parted as if cut by a knife.  The two
+guides passed without an outcry into obscurity and death; Rutli,
+with a last despairing exertion, dragged to his own level his
+unconscious master, crippled by a broken leg.
+
+Your true hero is apt to tell his tale simply.  Rutli did not dwell
+upon these details, nor need I.  Left alone upon a treacherous ice
+slope in benumbing cold, with a helpless man, eight hours
+afterwards he staggered, half blind, incoherent, and inarticulate,
+into a "shelter" hut, with the dead body of his master in his
+stiffened arms.  The shelter-keepers turned their attention to
+Rutli, who needed it most.  Blind and delirious, with scarce a
+chance for life, he was sent the next day to a hospital, where he
+lay for three months, helpless, imbecile, and unknown.  The dead
+body of the Englishman was identified, and sent home; the bodies of
+the guides were recovered by their friends; but no one knew aught
+of Rutli, even his name.  While the event was still fresh in the
+minds of those who saw him enter the hut with the body of his
+master, a paragraph appeared in a Berne journal recording the
+heroism of this nameless man.  But it could not be corroborated nor
+explained by the demented hero, and was presently forgotten.  Six
+months from the day he had left his home he was discharged cured.
+He had not a kreutzer in his pocket; he had never drawn his wages
+from his employer; he had preferred to have it in a lump sum that
+he might astonish his family on his return.  His eyes were still
+weak, his memory feeble; only his great physical strength remained
+through his long illness.  A few sympathizing travelers furnished
+him the means to reach his native village, many miles away.  He
+found his family had heard of the loss of the Englishman and the
+guides, and had believed he was one of them.  Already he was
+forgotten.
+
+"Ven you vos once peliefed to be det," said Rutli, after a
+philosophic pause and puff, "it vos not goot to ondeceif beoples.
+You oopset somedings, soomdimes always.  Der hole dot you hef made
+in der grount, among your frients and your family, vos covered up
+alretty.  You are loocky if you vill not fint some vellars
+shtanding upon id!  My frent, ven you vos DINK det, SHTAY det, BE
+det, and you vill lif happy!"
+
+"But your sweetheart?" I said eagerly.
+
+A slight gleam of satire stole into Rutli's light eyes.  "My
+sweetheart, ven I vos dinks det, is der miller engaged do bromply!
+It is mooch better dan to a man dot vos boor and plint and grazy!
+So!  Vell, der next day I pids dem goot-py, und from der door I
+say, 'I am det now; but ven I next comes pack alife, I shall dis
+village py! der lants, der houses all togedders.  And den for
+yourselluffs look oudt!'"
+
+"Then that's your revenge?  That is what you really intend to do?"
+I said, half laughing, yet with an uneasy recollection of his
+illness and enfeebled mind.
+
+"Yes.  Look here!  I show you somedings."  He opened a drawer of
+his desk and took out what appeared to be some diagrams, plans, and
+a small water-colored map, like a surveyor's tracing.  "Look," he
+said, laying his finger on the latter, "dat is a map from my
+fillage.  I hef myselluff made it out from my memory.  Dot,"
+pointing to a blank space, "is der mountain side high up, so far.
+It is no goot until I vill a tunnel make or der grade lefel.  Dere
+vas mine fader's house, dere vos der church, der schoolhouse, dot
+vos de burgomaster's house," he went on, pointing to the respective
+plots in this old curving parallelogram of the mountain shelf.  "So
+was the fillage when I leave him on the 5th of March, eighteen
+hundred and feefty.  Now you shall see him shoost as I vill make
+him ven I go back."  He took up another plan, beautifully drawn and
+colored, and evidently done by a professional hand.  It was a
+practical, yet almost fairylike transformation of the same spot!
+The narrow mountain shelf was widened by excavation, and a
+boulevard stretched on either side.  A great hotel, not unlike the
+one in which we sat, stood in an open terrace, with gardens and
+fountains--the site of his father's house.  Blocks of pretty
+dwellings, shops, and cafes filled the intermediate space.  I laid
+down the paper.
+
+"How long have you had this idea?"
+
+"Efer since I left dere, fifteen years ago."
+
+"But your father and mother may be dead by this time?"
+
+"So, but dere vill be odders.  Und der blace--it vill remain."
+
+"But all this will cost a fortune, and you are not sure"--
+
+"I know shoost vot id vill gost, to a cend."
+
+"And you think you can ever afford to carry out your idea?"
+
+"I VILL affort id.  Ven you shall make yet some moneys and go to
+Europe, you shall see.  I VILL infite you dere first.  Now coom and
+look der house around."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+I did NOT make "some moneys," but I DID go to Europe.  Three years
+after this last interview with Rutli I was coming from Interlaken
+to Berne by rail.  I had not heard from him, and I had forgotten
+the name of his village, but as I looked up from the paper I was
+reading, I suddenly recognized him in the further end of the same
+compartment I occupied.  His recognition of me was evidently as
+sudden and unexpected.  After our first hand-grasp and greeting, I
+said:--
+
+"And how about our new village?"
+
+"Dere is no fillage."
+
+"What!  You have given up the idea?"
+
+"Yes.  There is no fillage, olt or new."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+He looked at me a moment.  "You have not heard?"
+
+"No."
+
+He gently picked up a little local guidebook that lay in my lap,
+and turning its leaves, pointed to a page, and read as follows:--
+
+"5 M. beyond, the train passes a curve R., where a fine view of the
+lake may be seen.  A little to the R. rises the steep slopes of the
+----, the scene of a terrible disaster.  At three o'clock on March
+5, 1850, the little village of ----, lying midway of the slope,
+with its population of 950 souls, was completely destroyed by a
+landslip from the top of the mountain.  So sudden was the
+catastrophe that not a single escape is recorded.  A large portion
+of the mountain crest, as will be observed when it is seen in
+profile, descended to the valley, burying the unfortunate village
+to a depth variously estimated at from 1000 ft. to 1800 ft.  The
+geological causes which produced this extraordinary displacement
+have been fully discussed, but the greater evidence points to the
+theory of subterranean glaciers.  5 M. beyond ---- the train
+crosses the R. bridge."
+
+I laid down the guide-book in breathless astonishment.
+
+"And you never heard of this in all these years?"
+
+"Nefer!  I asked no questions, I read no pooks.  I have no ledders
+from home."
+
+"And yet you"--  I stopped, I could not call him a fool; neither
+could I, in the face of his perfect composure and undisturbed eyes,
+exhibit a concern greater than his own.  An uneasy recollection of
+what he confessed had been his mental condition immediately after
+his accident came over me.  Had he been the victim of a strange
+hallucination regarding his house and family all these years?  Were
+these dreams of revenge, this fancy of creating a new village, only
+an outcome of some shock arising out of the disaster itself, which
+he had long since forgotten?
+
+He was looking from the window.  "Coom," he said, "ve are near der
+blace.  I vill show id to you."  He rose and passed out to the rear
+platform.  We were in the rear car, and a new panorama of the lake
+and mountains flashed upon us at every curve of the line.  I
+followed him.  Presently he pointed to what appeared to be a sheer
+wall of rock and stunted vegetation towering two or three thousand
+feet above us, which started out of a gorge we were passing.  "Dere
+it vos!" he said.  I saw the vast stretch of rock face rising
+upward and onward, but nothing else.  No debris, no ruins, nor even
+a swelling or rounding of the mountain flank over that awful tomb.
+Yet, stay! as we dashed across the gorge, and the face of the
+mountain shifted, high up, the sky-line was slightly broken as if a
+few inches, a mere handful, of the crest was crumbled away.  And
+then--both gorge and mountain vanished.
+
+I was still embarrassed and uneasy, and knew not what to say to
+this man at my side, whose hopes and ambition had been as quickly
+overthrown and buried, and whose life-dream had as quickly
+vanished.  But he himself, taking his pipe from his lips, broke the
+silence.
+
+"It vos a narrow esgabe!"
+
+"What was?"
+
+"Vy, dis dings.  If I had stayed in my fader's house, I vould haf
+been det for goot, and perried too!  Somedimes dose dings cooms
+oudt apout right, don't id?"
+
+Unvanquished philosopher!  As we stood there looking at the flying
+landscape and sinking lesser hills, one by one the great snow peaks
+slowly arose behind them, lifting themselves, as if to take a last
+wondering look at the man they had triumphed over, but had not
+subdued.
+
+
+
+THE PASSING OF ENRIQUEZ
+
+
+When Enriquez Saltillo ran away with Miss Mannersley, as already
+recorded in these chronicles,* her relatives and friends found it
+much easier to forgive that ill-assorted union than to understand
+it.  For, after all, Enriquez was the scion of an old Spanish-
+Californian family, and in due time would have his share of his
+father's three square leagues, whatever incongruity there was
+between his lively Latin extravagance and Miss Mannersley's Puritan
+precision and intellectual superiority.  They had gone to Mexico;
+Mrs. Saltillo, as was known, having an interest in Aztec
+antiquities, and he being utterly submissive to her wishes.  For
+myself from my knowledge of Enriquez's nature, I had grave doubts
+of his entire subjugation, although I knew the prevailing opinion
+was that Mrs. Saltillo's superiority would speedily tame him.
+Since his brief and characteristic note apprising me of his
+marriage, I had not heard from him.  It was, therefore, with some
+surprise, a good deal of reminiscent affection, and a slight twinge
+of reproach that, two years after, I looked up from some proofs, in
+the sanctum of the "Daily Excelsior," to recognize his handwriting
+on a note that was handed to me by a yellow Mexican boy.
+
+
+* See "The Devotion of Enriquez," in Selected Stories by Bret Harte
+Gutenberg #1312.
+
+
+A single glance at its contents showed me that Mrs. Saltillo's
+correct Bostonian speech had not yet subdued Enriquez's peculiar
+Spanish-American slang:--
+
+"Here we are again,--right side up with care,--at 1110 Dupont
+Street, Telegraph Hill.  Second floor from top.  'Ring and push.'
+'No book agents need apply.'  How's your royal nibs?  I kiss your
+hand!  Come at six,--the band shall play at seven,--and regard your
+friend 'Mees Boston,' who will tell you about the little old nigger
+boys, and your old Uncle 'Ennery."
+
+Two things struck me: Enriquez had not changed; Mrs. Saltillo had
+certainly yielded up some of her peculiar prejudices.  For the
+address given, far from being a fashionable district, was known as
+the "Spanish quarter," which, while it still held some old Spanish
+families, was chiefly given over to half-castes and obscurer
+foreigners.  Even poverty could not have driven Mrs. Saltillo to
+such a refuge against her will; nevertheless, a good deal of
+concern for Enriquez's fortune mingled with my curiosity, as I
+impatiently waited for six o'clock to satisfy it.
+
+It was a breezy climb to 1110 Dupont Street; and although the
+street had been graded, the houses retained their airy elevation,
+and were accessible only by successive flights of wooden steps to
+the front door, which still gave perilously upon the street, sixty
+feet below.  I now painfully appreciated Enriquez's adaptation of
+the time-honored joke about the second floor.  An invincible smell
+of garlic almost took my remaining breath away as the door was
+opened to me by a swarthy Mexican woman, whose loose camisa seemed
+to be slipping from her unstable bust, and was held on only by the
+mantua-like shawl which supplemented it, gripped by one brown hand.
+Dizzy from my ascent to that narrow perch, which looked upon
+nothing but the distant bay and shores of Contra Costa, I felt as
+apologetic as if I had landed from a balloon; but the woman greeted
+me with a languid Spanish smile and a lazy display of white teeth,
+as if my arrival was quite natural.  Don Enriquez, "of a fact," was
+not himself in the casa, but was expected "on the instant."  "Donna
+Urania" was at home.
+
+"Donna Urania"?  For an instant I had forgotten that Mrs. Saltillo's
+first name was Urania, so pleasantly and spontaneously did it fall
+from the Spanish lips.  Nor was I displeased at this chance of
+learning something of Don Enriquez's fortunes and the Saltillo
+menage before confronting my old friend.  The servant preceded me to
+the next floor, and, opening a door, ushered me into the lady's
+presence.
+
+I had carried with me, on that upward climb, a lively recollection
+of Miss Mannersley as I had known her two years before.  I
+remembered her upright, almost stiff, slight figure, the graceful
+precision of her poses, the faultless symmetry and taste of her
+dress, and the atmosphere of a fastidious and wholesome cleanliness
+which exhaled from her.  In the lady I saw before me, half
+reclining in a rocking-chair, there was none of the stiffness and
+nicety.  Habited in a loose gown of some easy, flexible, but rich
+material, worn with that peculiarly indolent slouch of the Mexican
+woman, Mrs. Saltillo had parted with half her individuality.  Even
+her arched feet and thin ankles, the close-fitting boots or small
+slippers of which were wont to accent their delicacy, were now lost
+in a short, low-quartered kid shoe of the Spanish type, in which
+they moved loosely.  Her hair, which she had always worn with a
+certain Greek simplicity, was parted at one side.  Yet her face,
+with its regularity of feature, and small, thin, red-lipped mouth,
+was quite unchanged; and her velvety brown eyes were as beautiful
+and inscrutable as ever.
+
+With the same glance I had taken in her surroundings, quite as
+incongruous to her former habits.  The furniture, though of old and
+heavy mahogany, had suffered from careless alien hands, and was
+interspersed with modern and unmatchable makeshifts, yet preserving
+the distinctly scant and formal attitude of furnished lodgings.  It
+was certainly unlike the artistic trifles and delicate refinements
+of her uncle's drawing-room, which we all knew her taste had
+dictated and ruled.  The black and white engravings, the outlined
+heads of Minerva and Diana, were excluded from the walls for two
+cheap colored Catholic prints,--a soulless Virgin, and the mystery
+of the Bleeding Heart.  Against the wall, in one corner, hung the
+only object which seemed a memento of their travels,--a singular-
+looking upright Indian "papoose-case" or cradle, glaringly
+decorated with beads and paint, probably an Aztec relic.  On a
+round table, the velvet cover of which showed marks of usage and
+abusage, there were scattered books and writing materials; and my
+editorial instinct suddenly recognized, with a thrill of
+apprehension, the loose leaves of an undoubted manuscript.  This
+circumstance, taken with the fact of Donna Urania's hair being
+parted on one side, and the general negligee of her appearance, was
+a disturbing revelation.
+
+My wandering eye apparently struck her, for after the first
+greeting she pointed to the manuscript with a smile.
+
+"Yes; that is THE manuscript.  I suppose Enriquez told you all
+about it?  He said he had written."
+
+I was dumfounded.  I certainly had not understood ALL of Enriquez's
+slang; it was always so decidedly his own, and peculiar.  Yet I
+could not recall any allusion to this.
+
+"He told me something of it, but very vaguely," I ventured to say
+deprecatingly; "but I am afraid that I thought more of seeing my
+old friend again than of anything else."
+
+"During our stay in Mexico," continued Mrs. Saltillo, with
+something of her old precision, "I made some researches into Aztec
+history, a subject always deeply interesting to me, and I thought I
+would utilize the result by throwing it on paper.  Of course it is
+better fitted for a volume of reference than for a newspaper, but
+Enriquez thought you might want to use it for your journal."
+
+I knew that Enriquez had no taste for literature, and had even
+rather depreciated it in the old days, with his usual extravagance;
+but I managed to say very pleasantly that I was delighted with his
+suggestion and should be glad to read the manuscript.  After all,
+it was not improbable that Mrs. Saltillo, who was educated and
+intelligent, should write well, if not popularly.  "Then Enriquez
+does not begrudge you the time that your work takes from him," I
+added laughingly.  "You seem to have occupied your honeymoon
+practically."
+
+"We quite comprehend our respective duties," said Mrs. Saltillo
+dryly; "and have from the first.  We have our own lives to live,
+independent of my uncle and Enriquez's father.  We have not only
+accepted the responsibility of our own actions, but we both feel
+the higher privilege of creating our own conditions without
+extraneous aid from our relatives."
+
+It struck me that this somewhat exalted statement was decidedly a
+pose, or a return of Urania Mannersley's old ironical style.  I
+looked quietly into her brown, near-sighted eyes; but, as once
+before, my glance seemed to slip from their moist surface without
+penetrating the inner thought beneath.  "And what does Enriquez do
+for HIS part?" I asked smilingly.
+
+I fully expected to hear that the energetic Enriquez was utilizing
+his peculiar tastes and experiences by horse-breaking, stock-
+raising, professional bull-fighting, or even horse-racing, but was
+quite astonished when she answered quietly:--
+
+"Enriquez is giving himself up to geology and practical metallurgy,
+with a view to scientific, purely scientific, mining."
+
+Enriquez and geology!  In that instant all I could remember of it
+were his gibes at the "geologian," as he was wont to term Professor
+Dobbs, a former admirer of Miss Mannersley's.  To add to my
+confusion Mrs. Saltillo at the same moment absolutely voiced my
+thought.
+
+"You may remember Professor Dobbs," she went on calmly, "one of the
+most eminent scientists over here, and a very old Boston friend.
+He has taken Enriquez in hand.  His progress is most satisfactory;
+we have the greatest hopes of him."
+
+"And how soon do you both hope to have some practical results of
+his study?" I could not help asking a little mischievously; for I
+somehow resented the plural pronoun in her last sentence.
+
+"Very soon," said Mrs. Saltillo, ignoring everything but the
+question.  "You know Enriquez's sanguine temperament.  Perhaps he
+is already given to evolving theories without a sufficient basis of
+fact.  Still, he has the daring of a discoverer.  His ideas of the
+oolitic formation are not without originality, and Professor Dobbs
+says that in his conception of the Silurian beach there are gleams
+that are distinctly precious."
+
+I looked at Mrs. Saltillo, who had reinforced her eyes with her old
+piquant pince-nez, but could detect no irony in them.  She was
+prettily imperturbable, that was all.  There was an awkward
+silence.  Then it was broken by a bounding step on the stairs, a
+wide-open fling of the door, and Enriquez pirouetted into the room:
+Enriquez, as of old, unchanged from the crown of his smooth, coal-
+black hair to the tips of his small, narrow Arabian feet; Enriquez,
+with his thin, curling mustache, his dancing eyes set in his
+immovable face, just as I had always known him!
+
+He affected to lapse against the door for a minute, as if staggered
+by a resplendent vision.  Then he said:--
+
+"What do I regard?  Is it a dream, or have I again got them--thees
+jimjams?  My best friend and my best--I mean my ONLY--wife!
+Embrace me!"
+
+He gave me an enthusiastic embrace and a wink like sheet-lightning,
+passed quickly to his wife, before whom he dropped on one knee,
+raised the toe of her slipper to his lips, and then sank on the
+sofa in simulated collapse, murmuring, "Thees is too mooch of white
+stone for one day!"
+
+Through all this I saw his wife regarding him with exactly the same
+critically amused expression with which she had looked upon him in
+the days of their strange courtship.  She evidently had not tired
+of his extravagance, and yet I feel as puzzled by her manner as
+then.  She rose and said: "I suppose you have a good deal to say to
+each other, and I will leave you by yourselves."  Turning to her
+husband, she added, "I have already spoken about the Aztec
+manuscript."
+
+The word brought Enriquez to his feet again.  "Ah!  The little old
+nigger--you have read?"  I began to understand.  "My wife, my best
+friend, and the little old nigger, all in one day.  Eet is
+perfect!"  Nevertheless, in spite of this ecstatic and overpowering
+combination, he hurried to take his wife's hand; kissing it, he led
+her to a door opening into another room, made her a low bow to the
+ground as she passed out, and then rejoined me.
+
+"So these are the little old niggers you spoke of in your note," I
+said, pointing to the manuscript.  "Deuce take me if I understood
+you!"
+
+"Ah, my leetle brother, it is YOU who have changed!" said Enriquez
+dolorously.  "Is it that you no more understand American, or have
+the 'big head' of the editor?  Regard me!  Of these Aztecs my wife
+have made study.  She have pursued the little nigger to his cave,
+his grotto, where he is dead a thousand year.  I have myself
+assist, though I like it not, because thees mummy, look you,
+Pancho, is not lively.  And the mummy who is not dead, believe me!
+even the young lady mummy, you shall not take to your heart.  But
+my wife"--he stopped, and kissed his hand toward the door whence
+she had flitted--"ah, SHE is wonderful!  She has made the story of
+them, the peecture of them, from the life and on the instant!  You
+shall take them, my leetle brother, for your journal; you shall
+announce in the big letter: 'Mooch Importance.  The Aztec, He is
+Found.'  'How He Look and Lif.'  'The Everlasting Nigger.'  You
+shall sell many paper, and Urania shall have scoop in much
+spondulics and rocks.  Hoop-la!  For--you comprehend?--my wife and
+I have settled that she shall forgif her oncle; I shall forgif my
+father; but from them we take no cent, not a red, not a scad!  We
+are independent!  Of ourselves we make a Fourth of July.  United we
+stand; divided we shall fall over!  There you are!  Bueno!"
+
+It was impossible to resist his wild, yet perfectly sincere,
+extravagance, his dancing black eyes and occasional flash of white
+teeth in his otherwise immovable and serious countenance.
+Nevertheless, I managed to say:--
+
+"But how about yourself, Enriquez, and this geology, you know?"
+
+His eyes twinkled.  "Ah, you shall hear.  But first you shall take
+a drink.  I have the very old Bourbon.  He is not so old as the
+Aztec, but, believe me, he is very much liflier.  Attend!  Hol'
+on!"  He was already rummaging on a shelf, but apparently without
+success; then he explored a buffet, with no better results, and
+finally attacked a large drawer, throwing out on the floor, with
+his old impetuosity, a number of geological specimens, carefully
+labeled.  I picked up one that had rolled near me.  It was labeled
+"Conglomerate sandstone."  I picked up another: it had the same
+label.
+
+"Then you are really collecting?" I said, with astonishment.
+
+"Ciertamente," responded Enriquez,--"what other fool shall I look?
+I shall relate of this geology when I shall have found this beast
+of a bottle.  Ah, here he have hide!"  He extracted from a drawer a
+bottle nearly full of spirits,--tippling was not one of Enriquez's
+vices.  "You shall say 'when.'  'Ere's to our noble selfs!"
+
+When he had drunk, I picked up another fragment of his collection.
+It had the same label.  "You are very rich in 'conglomerate
+sandstone,'" I said.  "Where do you find it?"
+
+"In the street," said Enriquez, with great calmness.
+
+"In the street?" I echoed.
+
+"Yes, my friend!  He ees call the 'cobblestone,' also the 'pouding-
+stone,' when he ees at his home in the country.  He ees also a
+small 'boulder.'  I pick him up; I crack him; he made three
+separate piece of conglomerate sandstone.  I bring him home to my
+wife in my pocket.  She rejoice; we are happy.  When comes the
+efening, I sit down and make him a label; while my wife, she sit
+down and write of the Aztec.  Ah, my friend, you shall say of the
+geology it ees a fine, a BEAUTIFUL study; but the study of the
+wife, and what shall please her, believe me, ees much finer!
+Believe your old Uncle 'Ennery every time!  On thees question he
+gets there; he gets left, nevarre!"
+
+"But Professor Dobbs, your geologian, what does HE say to this
+frequent recurrence of the conglomerate sandstone period in your
+study?" I asked quickly.
+
+"He say nothing.  You comprehend?  He ees a profound geologian, but
+he also has the admiration excessif for my wife Urania."  He
+stopped to kiss his hand again toward the door, and lighted a
+cigarette.  "The geologian would not that he should break up the
+happy efening of his friends by thees small detail.  He put aside
+his head--so; he say, 'A leetle freestone, a leetle granite, now
+and then, for variety; they are building in Montgomery Street.'  I
+take the hint, like a wink to the horse that has gone blind.  I
+attach to myself part of the edifice that is erecting himself in
+Montgomery Street.  I crack him; I bring him home.  I sit again at
+the feet of my beautiful Urania, and I label him 'Freestone,'
+'Granite;' but I do not say 'from Parrott's Bank'--eet is not
+necessary for our happiness."
+
+"And you do this sort of thing only because you think it pleases
+your wife?" I asked bluntly.
+
+"My friend," rejoined Enriquez, perching himself on the back of the
+sofa, and caressing his knees as he puffed his cigarette
+meditatively, "you have ask a conundrum.  Gif to me an easier one!
+It is of truth that I make much of these thing to please Urania.
+But I shall confess all.  Behold, I appear to you, my leetle
+brother, in my camisa--my shirt!  I blow on myself; I gif myself
+away."
+
+He rose gravely from the sofa, and drew a small box from one of the
+drawers of the wardrobe.  Opening it, he discovered several
+specimens of gold-bearing quartz, and one or two scales of gold.
+"Thees," he said, "friend Pancho, is my own geology; for thees I am
+what you see.  But I say nothing to Urania; for she have much
+disgust of mere gold,--of what she calls 'vulgar mining,'--and
+believe me, a fear of the effect of 'speculation' upon my
+temperamento--you comprehend my complexion, my brother?  Reflect
+upon it, Pancho!  I, who am the filosofo, if that I am anything!"
+He looked at me with great levity of eye and supernatural gravity
+of demeanor.  "But eet ees the jealous affection of the wife, my
+friend, for which I make play to her with the humble leetle
+pouding-stone rather than the gold quartz that affrights."
+
+"But what do you want with them, if you have no shares in anything
+and do not speculate?" I asked.
+
+"Pardon!  That ees where you slip up, my leetle friend."  He took
+from the same drawer a clasped portfolio, and unlocked it,
+producing half a dozen prospectuses and certificates of mining
+shares.  I stood aghast as I recognized the names of one or two
+extravagant failures of the last ten years,--"played-out" mines
+that had been galvanized into deceptive life in London, Paris, and
+New York, to the grief of shareholders abroad and the laughter of
+the initiated at home.  I could scarcely keep my equanimity.  "You
+do not mean to say that you have any belief or interest in this
+rubbish?" I said quickly.
+
+"What you call 'rubbish,' my good Pancho, ees the rubbish that the
+American speculator have dump himself upon them in the shaft, the
+rubbish of the advertisement, of the extravagant expense, of the
+salary, of the assessment, of the 'freeze-out.'  For thees, look
+you, is the old Mexican mine.  My grandfather and hees father have
+both seen them work before you were born, and the American knew not
+there was gold in California."
+
+I knew he spoke truly.  One or two were original silver mines in
+the south, worked by peons and Indian slaves, a rope windlass, and
+a venerable donkey.
+
+"But those were silver mines," I said suspiciously, "and these are
+gold specimens."
+
+"They are from the same mother," said the imperturbable Enriquez,--
+"the same mine.  The old peons worked him for SILVER, the precious
+dollar that buy everything, that he send in the galleon to the
+Philippines for the silk and spice!  THAT is good enough for HIM!
+For the gold he made nothing, even as my leetle wife Urania.  And
+regard me here!  There ees a proverb of my father's which say that
+'it shall take a gold mine to work a silver mine,' so mooch more he
+cost.  You work him, you are lost!  Naturalmente, if you turn him
+round, if it take you only a silver mine to work a gold mine, you
+are gain.  Thees ees logic!"
+
+The intense gravity of his face at this extraordinary deduction
+upset my own.  But as I was never certain that Enriquez was not
+purposely mystifying me, with some ulterior object, I could not
+help saying a little wickedly:--
+
+"Yes, I understand all that; but how about this geologian?  Will he
+not tell your wife?  You know he was a great admirer of hers."
+
+"That shall show the great intelligence of him, my Pancho.  He will
+have the four S's,' especially the secreto!"
+
+There could be no serious discussion in his present mood.  I
+gathered up the pages of his wife's manuscript, said lightly that,
+as she had the first claim upon my time, I should examine the Aztec
+material and report in a day or two.  As I knew I had little chance
+in the hands of these two incomprehensibles together, I begged him
+not to call his wife, but to convey my adieus to her, and, in spite
+of his embraces and protestations, I managed to get out of the
+room.  But I had scarcely reached the front door when I heard
+Enriquez's voice and his bounding step on the stairs.  In another
+moment his arm was round my neck.
+
+"You must return on the instant!  Mother of God!  I haf forget, SHE
+haf forget, WE all haf forget!  But you have not seen him!"
+
+"Seen whom?"
+
+"El nino, the baby!  You comprehend, pig!  The criaturica, the
+leetle child of ourselfs!"
+
+"The baby?" I said confusedly.  "IS there--is there a BABY?"
+
+"You hear him?" said Enriquez, sending an appealing voice upward.
+"You hear him, Urania?  You comprehend.  This beast of a leetle
+brother demands if there ees one!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said, hurriedly reascending the stairs.  On
+the landing I met Mrs. Saltillo, but as calm, composed, and precise
+as her husband was extravagant and vehement.  "It was an oversight
+of Enriquez's," she said quietly, reentering the room with us; "and
+was all the more strange, as the child was in the room with you all
+the time."
+
+She pointed to the corner of the wall, where hung what I had
+believed to be an old Indian relic.  To my consternation, it WAS a
+bark "papoose-case," occupied by a LIVING child, swathed and
+bandaged after the approved Indian fashion.  It was asleep, I
+believe, but it opened a pair of bright huckleberry eyes, set in
+the smallest of features, that were like those of a carved ivory
+idol, and uttered a "coo" at the sound of its mother's voice.  She
+stood on one side with unruffled composure, while Enriquez threw
+himself into an attitude before it, with clasped hands, as if it
+had been an image of the Holy Child.  For myself, I was too
+astounded to speak; luckily, my confusion was attributed to the
+inexperience of a bachelor.
+
+"I have adopted," said Mrs. Saltillo, with the faintest touch of
+maternal pride in her manner, "what I am convinced is the only
+natural and hygienic mode of treating the human child.  It may be
+said to be a reversion to the aborigine, but I have yet to learn
+that it is not superior to our civilized custom.  By these bandages
+the limbs of the infant are kept in proper position until they are
+strong enough to support the body, and such a thing as malformation
+is unknown.  It is protected by its cradle, which takes the place
+of its incubating-shell, from external injury, the injudicious
+coddling of nurses, the so-called 'dancings' and pernicious
+rockings.  The supine position, as in the adult, is imposed only at
+night.  By the aid of this strap it may be carried on long
+journeys, either by myself or by Enriquez, who thus shares with me,
+as he fully recognizes, its equal responsibility and burden."
+
+"It--certainly does not--cry," I stammered.
+
+"Crying," said Mrs. Saltillo, with a curve of her pretty red lip.
+"is the protest of the child against insanitary and artificial
+treatment.  In its upright, unostentatious cradle it is protected
+against that injudicious fondling and dangerous promiscuous
+osculation to which, as an infant in human arms, it is so often
+subjected.  Above all, it is kept from that shameless and
+mortifying publicity so unjust to the weak and unformed animal.
+The child repays this consideration by a gratifying silence.  It
+cannot be expected to understand our thoughts, speech, or actions;
+it cannot participate in our pleasures.  Why should it be forced
+into premature contact with them, merely to feed our vanity or
+selfishness?  Why should we assume our particular parental accident
+as superior to the common lot?  If we do not give our offspring
+that prominence before our visitors so common to the young wife and
+husband, it is for that reason solely; and this may account for
+what seemed the forgetfulness of Enriquez in speaking of it or
+pointing it out to you.  And I think his action in calling you back
+to see it was somewhat precipitate.  As one does not usually
+introduce an unknown and inferior stranger without some previous
+introduction, he might have asked you if you wished to see the baby
+before he recalled you."
+
+I looked from Urania's unfathomable eyes to Enriquez's impenetrable
+countenance.  I might have been equal to either of them alone, but
+together they were invincible.  I looked hopelessly at the baby.
+With its sharp little eyes and composed face, it certainly was a
+marvelous miniature of Enriquez.  I said so.
+
+"It would be singular if it was not," said Mrs. Saltillo dryly;
+"and as I believe it is by no means an uncommon fact in human
+nature, it seems to me strange that people should insist upon it as
+a discovery.  It is an inheritance, however, that in due time
+progress and science will no doubt interrupt, to the advancement of
+the human race.  I need not say that both Enriquez and myself look
+forward to it with confident tranquillity."
+
+There was clearly nothing for me to do now but to shake hands again
+and take my leave.  Yet I was so much impressed with the unreality
+of the whole scene that when I reached the front door I had a
+strong impulse to return suddenly and fall in upon them in their
+relaxed and natural attitudes.  They could not keep up this pose
+between themselves; and I half expected to see their laughing faces
+at the window, as I glanced up before wending my perilous way to
+the street.
+
+I found Mrs. Saltillo's manuscript well written and, in the
+narrative parts, even graphic and sparkling.  I suppressed some
+general remarks on the universe, and some correlative theories of
+existence, as not appertaining particularly to the Aztecs, and as
+not meeting any unquenchable thirst for information on the part of
+the readers of the "Daily Excelsior."  I even promoted my fair
+contributor to the position of having been commissioned, at great
+expense, to make the Mexican journey especially for the "Excelsior."
+This, with Mrs. Saltillo's somewhat precise preraphaelite drawings
+and water-colors, vilely reproduced by woodcuts, gave quite a
+sensational air to her production, which, divided into parts, for
+two or three days filled a whole page of the paper.  I am not aware
+of any particular service that it did to ethnology; but, as I
+pointed out in the editorial column, it showed that the people of
+California were not given over by material greed to the exclusion of
+intellectual research; and as it was attacked instantly in long
+communications from one or two scientific men, it thus produced more
+copy.
+
+Briefly, it was a boom for the author and the "Daily Excelsior."  I
+should add, however, that a rival newspaper intimated that it was
+also a boom for Mrs. Saitillo's HUSBAND, and called attention to
+the fact that a deserted Mexican mine, known as "El Bolero," was
+described graphically in the Aztec article among the news, and
+again appeared in the advertising columns of the same paper.  I
+turned somewhat indignantly to the file of the "Excelsior," and,
+singularly enough, found in the elaborate prospectus of a new gold-
+mining company the description of the El Bolero mine as a QUOTATION
+from the Aztec article, with extraordinary inducements for the
+investment of capital in the projected working of an old mine.  If
+I had had any difficulty in recognizing in the extravagant style
+the flamboyant hand of Enriquez in English writing, I might have
+read his name plainly enough displayed as president of the company.
+It was evidently the prospectus of one of the ventures he had shown
+me.  I was more amused than indignant at the little trick he had
+played upon my editorial astuteness.  After all, if I had thus
+benefited the young couple I was satisfied.  I had not seen them
+since my first visit, as I was very busy,--my communications with
+Mrs. Saltillo had been carried on by letters and proofs,--and when
+I did finally call at their house, it was only to find that they
+were visiting at San Jose.  I wondered whether the baby was still
+hanging on the wall, or, if he was taken with them, who carried
+him.
+
+A week later the stock of El Bolero was quoted at par.  More than
+that, an incomprehensible activity had been given to all the
+deserted Mexican mines, and people began to look up scrip hitherto
+thrown aside as worthless.  Whether it was one of those extraordinary
+fevers which attacked Californian speculation in the early days, or
+whether Enriquez Saltillo had infected the stock-market with his
+own extravagance, I never knew; but plans as wild, inventions as
+fantastic, and arguments as illogical as ever emanated from his own
+brain, were set forth "on 'Change" with a gravity equal to his own.
+The most reasonable hypothesis was that it was the effect of the
+well-known fact that the Spanish Californian hitherto had not been a
+mining speculator, nor connected in any way with the gold production
+on his native soil, deeming it inconsistent with his patriarchal
+life and landed dignity, and that when a "son of one of the oldest
+Spanish families, identified with the land and its peculiar character
+for centuries, lent himself to its mineral exploitations,"--I beg to
+say that I am quoting from the advertisement in the "Excelsior,"--
+"it was a guerdon of success."  This was so far true that in a week
+Enriquez Saltillo was rich, and in a fair way to become a millionaire.
+
+
+It was a hot afternoon when I alighted from the stifling Wingdam
+coach, and stood upon the cool, deep veranda of the Carquinez
+Springs Hotel.  After I had shaken off the dust which had lazily
+followed us, in our descent of the mountain road, like a red smoke,
+occasionally overflowing the coach windows, I went up to the room I
+had engaged for my brief holiday.  I knew the place well, although
+I could see that the hotel itself had lately been redecorated and
+enlarged to meet the increasing requirements of fashion.  I knew
+the forest of enormous redwoods where one might lose one's self in
+a five minutes' walk from the veranda.  I knew the rocky trail that
+climbed the mountain to the springs, twisting between giant
+boulders.  I knew the arid garden, deep in the wayside dust, with
+its hurriedly planted tropical plants, already withering in the dry
+autumn sunshine, and washed into fictitious freshness, night and
+morning by the hydraulic irrigating-hose.  I knew, too, the cool,
+reposeful night winds that swept down from invisible snow-crests
+beyond, with the hanging out of monstrous stars, that too often
+failed to bring repose to the feverish guests.  For the
+overstrained neurotic workers who fled hither from the baking
+plains of Sacramento, or from the chill sea-fogs of San Francisco,
+never lost the fierce unrest that had driven them here.
+Unaccustomed to leisure, their enforced idleness impelled them to
+seek excitement in the wildest gayeties; the bracing mountain air
+only reinvigorated them to pursue pleasure as they had pursued the
+occupations they had left behind.  Their sole recreations were
+furious drives over break-neck roads; mad, scampering cavalcades
+through the sedate woods; gambling parties in private rooms, where
+large sums were lost by capitalists on leave; champagne suppers;
+and impromptu balls that lasted through the calm, reposeful night
+to the first rays of light on the distant snowline.  Unimaginative
+men, in their temporary sojourn they more often outraged or
+dispossessed nature in her own fastnesses than courted her for
+sympathy or solitude.  There were playing-cards left lying behind
+boulders, and empty champagne bottles forgotten in forest depths.
+
+I remembered all this when, refreshed by a bath, I leaned from the
+balcony of my room and watched the pulling up of a brake, drawn by
+six dusty, foam-bespattered horses, driven by a noted capitalist.
+As its hot, perspiring, closely veiled yet burning-faced fair
+occupants descended, in all the dazzling glory of summer toilets,
+and I saw the gentlemen consult their watches with satisfaction,
+and congratulate their triumphant driver, I knew the characteristic
+excitement they had enjoyed from a "record run," probably for a
+bet, over a mountain road in a burning sun.
+
+"Not bad, eh?  Forty-four minutes from the summit!"
+
+The voice seemed at my elbow.  I turned quickly, to recognize an
+acquaintance, a young San Francisco broker, leaning from the next
+balcony to mine.  But my attention was just then preoccupied by the
+face and figure, which seemed familiar to me, of a woman who was
+alighting from the brake.
+
+"Who is that?" I asked; "the straight slim woman in gray, with the
+white veil twisted round her felt hat?"
+
+"Mrs. Saltillo," he answered; "wife of 'El Bolero' Saltillo, don't
+you know.  Mighty pretty woman, if she is a little stiffish and set
+up."
+
+Then I had not been mistaken!  "Is Enriquez--is her husband--here?"
+I asked quickly.
+
+The man laughed.  "I reckon not.  This is the place for other
+people's husbands, don't you know."
+
+Alas! I DID know; and as there flashed upon me all the miserable
+scandals and gossip connected with this reckless, frivolous
+caravansary, I felt like resenting his suggestion.  But my
+companion's next words were more significant:--
+
+"Besides, if what they say is true, Saltillo wouldn't be very
+popular here."
+
+"I don't understand," I said quickly.
+
+"Why, after all that row he had with the El Bolero Company."
+
+"I never heard of any row," I said, in astonishment.
+
+The broker laughed incredulously.  "Come! and YOU a newspaper man!
+Well, maybe they DID try to hush it up, and keep it out of the
+papers, on account of the stock.  But it seems he got up a reg'lar
+shindy with the board, one day; called 'em thieves and swindlers,
+and allowed he was disgracing himself as a Spanish hidalgo by
+having anything to do with 'em.  Talked, they say, about Charles V.
+of Spain, or some other royal galoot, giving his ancestors the land
+in trust!  Clean off his head, I reckon.  Then shunted himself off
+the company, and sold out.  You can guess he wouldn't be very
+popular around here, with Jim Bestley, there," pointing to the
+capitalist who had driven the brake, "who used to be on the board
+with him.  No, sir.  He was either lying low for something, or was
+off his head.  Think of his throwing up a place like that!"
+
+"Nonsense!" I said indignantly.  "He is mercurial, and has the
+quick impulsiveness of his race, but I believe him as sane as any
+who sat with him on the board.  There must be some mistake, or you
+haven't got the whole story."  Nevertheless, I did not care to
+discuss an old friend with a mere acquaintance, and I felt secretly
+puzzled to account for his conduct, in the face of his previous
+cleverness in manipulating the El Bolero, and the undoubted
+fascination he had previously exercised over the stockholders.  The
+story had, of course, been garbled in repetition.  I had never
+before imagined what might be the effect of Enriquez's peculiar
+eccentricities upon matter-of-fact people,--I had found them only
+amusing,--and the broker's suggestion annoyed me.  However, Mrs.
+Saltillo was here in the hotel, and I should, of course, meet her.
+Would she be as frank with me?
+
+I was disappointed at not finding her in the drawing-room or on the
+veranda; and the heat being still unusually oppressive, I strolled
+out toward the redwoods, hesitating for a moment in the shade
+before I ran the fiery gauntlet of the garden.  To my surprise, I
+had scarcely passed the giant sentinels on its outskirts before I
+found that, from some unusual condition of the atmosphere, the cold
+undercurrent of air which generally drew through these pillared
+aisles was withheld that afternoon; it was absolutely hotter than
+in the open, and the wood was charged throughout with the acrid
+spices of the pine.  I turned back to the hotel, reascended to my
+bedroom, and threw myself in an armchair by the open window.  My
+room was near the end of a wing; the corner room at the end was
+next to mine, on the same landing.  Its closed door, at right
+angles to my open one, gave upon the staircase, but was plainly
+visible from where I sat.  I remembered being glad that it was
+shut, as it enabled me without offense to keep my own door open.
+
+The house was very quiet.  The leaves of a catalpa, across the
+roadway, hung motionless.  Somebody yawned on the veranda below.  I
+threw away my half-finished cigar, and closed my eyes.  I think I
+had not lost consciousness for more than a few seconds before I was
+awakened by the shaking and thrilling of the whole building.  As I
+staggered to my feet, I saw the four pictures hanging against the
+wall swing outwardly from it on their cords, and my door swing back
+against the wall.  At the same moment, acted upon by the same
+potential impulse, the door of the end room in the hall, opposite
+the stairs, also swung open.  In that brief moment I had a glimpse
+of the interior of the room, of two figures, a man and a woman, the
+latter clinging to her companion in abject terror.  It was only for
+an instant, for a second thrill passed through the house, the
+pictures clattered back against the wall, the door of the end room
+closed violently on its strange revelation, and my own door swung
+back also.  Apprehensive of what might happen, I sprang toward it,
+but only to arrest it an inch or two before it should shut, when,
+as my experience had taught me, it might stick by the subsidence of
+the walls.  But it did stick ajar, and remained firmly fixed in
+that position.  From the clattering of the knob of the other door,
+and the sound of hurried voices behind it, I knew that the same
+thing had happened there when that door had fully closed.
+
+I was familiar enough with earthquakes to know that, with the
+second shock or subsidence of the earth, the immediate danger was
+passed, and so I was able to note more clearly what else was
+passing.  There was the usual sudden stampede of hurrying feet, the
+solitary oath and scream, the half-hysterical laughter, and
+silence.  Then the tumult was reawakened to the sound of high
+voices, talking all together, or the impatient calling of absentees
+in halls and corridors.  Then I heard the quick swish of female
+skirts on the staircase, and one of the fair guests knocked
+impatiently at the door of the end room, still immovably fixed.  At
+the first knock there was a sudden cessation of the hurried
+whisperings and turning of the doorknob.
+
+"Mrs. Saltillo, are you there?  Are you frightened?" she called.
+
+"Mrs. Saltillo"!  It was SHE, then, who was in the room!  I drew
+nearer my door, which was still fixed ajar.  Presently a voice,--
+Mrs. Saltillo's voice,--with a constrained laugh in it, came from
+behind the door: "Not a bit.  I'll come down in a minute."
+
+"Do," persisted the would-be intruder.  "It's all over now, but
+we're all going out into the garden; it's safer."
+
+"All right," answered Mrs. Saltillo.  "Don't wait, dear.  I'll
+follow.  Run away, now."
+
+The visitor, who was evidently still nervous, was glad to hurry
+away, and I heard her retreating step on the staircase.  The
+rattling of the door began again, and at last it seemed to yield to
+a stronger pull, and opened sufficiently to allow Mrs. Saltillo to
+squeeze through.  I withdrew behind my door.  I fancied that it
+creaked as she passed, as if, noticing it ajar, she had laid an
+inquiring hand upon it.  I waited, but she was not followed by any
+one.  I wondered if I had been mistaken.  I was going to the bell-
+rope to summon assistance to move my own door when a sudden
+instinct withheld me.  If there was any one still in that room, he
+might come from it just as the servant answered my call, and a
+public discovery would be unavoidable.  I was right.  In another
+instant the figure of a man, whose face I could not discern,
+slipped out of the room, passed my door, and went stealthily down
+the staircase.
+
+Convinced of this, I resolved not to call public attention to my
+being in my own room at the time of the incident; so I did not
+summon any one, but, redoubling my efforts, I at last opened the
+door sufficiently to pass out, and at once joined the other guests
+in the garden.  Already, with characteristic recklessness and
+audacity, the earthquake was made light of; the only dictate of
+prudence had resolved itself into a hilarious proposal to "camp
+out" in the woods all night, and have a "torch-light picnic."  Even
+then preparations were being made for carrying tents, blankets, and
+pillows to the adjacent redwoods; dinner and supper, cooked at
+campfires, were to be served there on stumps of trees and fallen
+logs.  The convulsion of nature had been used as an excuse for one
+of the wildest freaks of extravagance that Carquinez Springs had
+ever known.  Perhaps that quick sense of humor which dominates the
+American male in exigencies of this kind kept the extravagances
+from being merely bizarre and grotesque, and it was presently known
+that the hotel and its menage were to be appropriately burlesqued
+by some of the guests, who, attired as Indians, would personate the
+staff, from the oracular hotel proprietor himself down to the smart
+hotel clerk.
+
+During these arrangements I had a chance of drawing near Mrs.
+Saltillo.  I fancied she gave a slight start as she recognized me;
+but her greetings were given with her usual precision.  "Have you
+been here long?" she asked.
+
+"I have only just come," I replied laughingly; "in time for the
+shock."
+
+"Ah, you felt it, then?  I was telling these ladies that our
+eminent geologist, Professor Dobbs, assured me that these seismic
+disturbances in California have a very remote centre, and are
+seldom serious."
+
+"It must be very satisfactory to have the support of geology at
+such a moment," I could not help saying, though I had not the
+slightest idea whose the figure was that I had seen, nor, indeed,
+had I recognized it among the guests.  She did not seem to detect
+any significance in my speech, and I added: "And where is Enriquez?
+He would enjoy this proposed picnic to-night."
+
+"Enriquez is at Salvatierra Rancho, which he lately bought from his
+cousin."
+
+"And the baby?  Surely, here is a chance for you to hang him up on
+a redwood tonight, in his cradle."
+
+"The boy," said Mrs. Saltillo quickly, "is no longer in his cradle;
+he has passed the pupa state, and is now free to develop his own
+perfected limbs.  He is with his father.  I do not approve of
+children being submitted to the indiscriminate attentions of a
+hotel.  I am here myself only for that supply of ozone indicated
+for brain exhaustion."
+
+She looked so pretty and prim in her gray dress, so like her old
+correct self, that I could not think of anything but her mental
+attitude, which did not, by the way, seem much like mental
+depression.  Yet I was aware that I was getting no information of
+Enriquez's condition or affairs, unless the whole story told by the
+broker was an exaggeration.  I did not, however, dare to ask more
+particularly.
+
+"You remember Professor Dobbs?" she asked abruptly.
+
+This recalled a suspicion awakened by my vision, so suddenly that I
+felt myself blushing.  She did not seem to notice it, and was
+perfectly composed.
+
+"I do remember him.  Is he here?"
+
+"He is; that is what makes it so particularly unfortunate for me.
+You see, after that affair of the board, and Enriquez's withdrawal,
+although Enriquez may have been a little precipitate in his
+energetic way, I naturally took my husband's part in public; for
+although we preserve our own independence inviolable, we believe in
+absolute confederation as against society."
+
+"But what has Professor Dobbs to do with the board?" I interrupted.
+
+"The professor was scientific and geological adviser to the board,
+and it was upon some report or suggestion of his that Enriquez took
+issue, against the sentiment of the board.  It was a principle
+affecting Enriquez's Spanish sense of honor."
+
+"Do tell me all about it," I said eagerly; "I am very anxious to
+know the truth."
+
+"As I was not present at the time," said Mrs. Saltillo, rebuking my
+eagerness with a gentle frigidity, "I am unable to do so.  Anything
+else would be mere hearsay, and more or less ex parte.  I do not
+approve of gossip."
+
+"But what did Enriquez tell you?  You surely know that."
+
+"THAT, being purely confidential, as between husband and wife,--
+perhaps I should say partner and partner,--of course you do not
+expect me to disclose.  Enough that I was satisfied with it.  I
+should not have spoken to you about it at all, but that, through
+myself and Enriquez, you are an acquaintance of the professor's,
+and I might save you the awkwardness of presenting yourself with
+him.  Otherwise, although you are a friend of Enriquez, it need not
+affect your acquaintance with the professor."
+
+"Hang the professor!" I ejaculated.  "I don't care a rap for HIM."
+
+"Then I differ with you," said Mrs. Saltillo, with precision.  "He
+is distinctly an able man, and one cannot but miss the contact of
+his original mind and his liberal teachings."
+
+Here she was joined by one of the ladies, and I lounged away.  I
+dare say it was very mean and very illogical, but the unsatisfactory
+character of this interview made me revert again to the singular
+revelation I had seen a few hours before.  I looked anxiously for
+Professor Dobbs; but when I did meet him, with an indifferent nod of
+recognition, I found I could by no means identify him with the
+figure of her mysterious companion.  And why should I suspect him at
+all, in the face of Mrs. Saltillo's confessed avoidance of him?
+Who, then, could it have been?  I had seen them but an instant, in
+the opening and the shutting of a door.  It was merely the shadowy
+bulk of a man that flitted past my door, after all.  Could I have
+imagined the whole thing?  Were my perceptive faculties--just
+aroused from slumber, too insufficiently clear to be relied upon?
+Would I not have laughed had Urania, or even Enriquez himself, told
+me such a story?
+
+As I reentered the hotel the clerk handed me a telegram.  "There's
+been a pretty big shake all over the country," he said eagerly.
+"Everybody is getting news and inquiries from their friends.
+Anything fresh?"  He paused interrogatively as I tore open the
+envelope.  The dispatch had been redirected from the office of the
+"Daily Excelsior."  It was dated, "Salvatierra Rancho," and
+contained a single line: "Come and see your old uncle 'Ennery."
+
+There was nothing in the wording of the message that was unlike
+Enriquez's usual light-hearted levity, but the fact that he should
+have TELEGRAPHED it to me struck me uneasily.  That I should have
+received it at the hotel where his wife and Professor Dobbs were
+both staying, and where I had had such a singular experience,
+seemed to me more than a mere coincidence.  An instinct that the
+message was something personal to Enriquez and myself kept me from
+imparting it to Mrs. Saltillo.  After worrying half the night in
+our bizarre camp in the redwoods, in the midst of a restless
+festivity which was scarcely the repose I had been seeking at
+Carquinez Springs, I resolved to leave the next day for Salvatierra
+Rancho.  I remembered the rancho,--a low, golden-brown, adobe-
+walled quadrangle, sleeping like some monstrous ruminant in a
+hollow of the Contra Costa Range.  I recalled, in the midst of this
+noisy picnic, the slumberous coolness of its long corridors and
+soundless courtyard, and hailed it as a relief.  The telegram was a
+sufficient excuse for my abrupt departure.  In the morning I left,
+but without again seeing either Mrs. Saltillo or the professor.
+
+It was late the next afternoon when I rode through the canada that
+led to the rancho.  I confess my thoughts were somewhat gloomy, in
+spite of my escape from the noisy hotel; but this was due to the
+sombre scenery through which I had just ridden, and the monotonous
+russet of the leagues of wild oats.  As I approached the rancho, I
+saw that Enriquez had made no attempt to modernize the old casa,
+and that even the garden was left in its lawless native luxuriance,
+while the rude tiled sheds near the walled corral contained the old
+farming implements, unchanged for a century, even to the ox-carts,
+the wheels of which were made of a single block of wood.  A few
+peons, in striped shirts and velvet jackets, were sunning
+themselves against a wall, and near them hung a half-drained
+pellejo, or goatskin water-bag.  The air of absolute shiftlessness
+must have been repellent to Mrs. Saltillo's orderly precision, and
+for a moment I pitied her.  But it was equally inconsistent with
+Enriquez's enthusiastic ideas of American progress, and the
+extravagant designs he had often imparted to me of the improvements
+he would make when he had a fortune.  I was feeling uneasy again,
+when I suddenly heard the rapid clack of unshod hoofs on a rocky
+trail that joined my own.  At the same instant a horseman dashed
+past me at full speed.  I had barely time to swerve my own horse
+aside to avoid a collision, yet in that brief moment I recognized
+the figure of Enriquez.  But his face I should have scarcely known.
+It was hard and fixed.  His upper lip and thin, penciled mustache
+were drawn up over his teeth, which were like a white gash in his
+dark face.  He turned into the courtyard of the rancho.  I put
+spurs to my horse, and followed, in nervous expectation.  He turned
+in his saddle as I entered.  But the next moment he bounded from
+his horse, and, before I could dismount, flew to my side and
+absolutely lifted me from the saddle to embrace me.  It was the old
+Enriquez again; his face seemed to have utterly changed in that
+brief moment.
+
+"This is all very well, old chap," I said; "but do you know that
+you nearly ran me down, just now, with that infernal half-broken
+mustang?  Do you usually charge the casa at that speed?"
+
+"Pardon, my leetle brother!  But here you shall slip up.  The
+mustang is not HALF-broken; he is not broke at all!  Look at his
+hoof--never have a shoe been there.  For myself--attend me!  When I
+ride alone, I think mooch; when I think mooch I think fast; my idea
+he go like a cannon-ball!  Consequent, if I ride not thees horse
+like the cannon-ball, my thought HE arrive first, and where are
+you?  You get left!  Believe me that I fly thees horse, thees old
+Mexican plug, and your de' uncle 'Ennery and his leetle old idea
+arrive all the same time, and on the instant."
+
+It WAS the old Enriquez!  I perfectly understood his extravagant
+speech and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if
+others did.
+
+"Tak'-a-drink!" he said, all in one word.  "You shall possess the
+old Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz!  Name your poison,
+gentlemen!"
+
+He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the
+veranda, and seated me before a small round table still covered
+with the chocolate equipage of the morning.  A little dried-up old
+Indian woman took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.
+
+"Mirar the leetle old one!" said Enriquez, with unflinching
+gravity.  "Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh!  She is not truly
+an Aztec, but she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS!
+Possibly she haf not the beauty which ravishes, which devastates.
+But she shall attent you to the hot water, to the bath.  Thus shall
+you be protect, my leetle brother, from scandal."
+
+"Enriquez," I burst out suddenly, "tell me about yourself.  Why did
+you leave the El Bolero board?  What was the row about?"
+
+Enriquez's eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.
+
+"Ah," he said, "you have heard?"
+
+"Something; but I want to know the truth from you."
+
+He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass
+hammock, on which he sat, swinging his feet.  Then, pointing to
+another hammock, he said: "Tranquillize yourself there.  I will
+relate; but, truly, it ees nothing."
+
+He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments seemed
+quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his finger-
+ends--everywhere, in fact, but his mouth.  That and his mustache
+remained fixed.  Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with
+his little finger:--
+
+"First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row.  The
+other themself make the row, the shindig.  They make the dance, the
+howl, the snap of the finger, the oath, the 'Helen blazes,' the
+'Wot the devil,' the 'That be d--d,' the bad language; they
+themselves finger the revolver, advance the bowie-knife, throw off
+the coat, square off, and say 'Come on.'  I remain as you see me
+now, little brother--tranquil."  He lighted another cigarette, made
+his position more comfortable in the hammock, and resumed: "The
+Professor Dobbs, who is the geologian of the company, made a report
+for which he got two thousand dollar.  But thees report--look you,
+friend Pancho--he is not good for the mine.  For in the hole in the
+ground the Professor Dobbs have found a 'hoss.'"
+
+"A what?" I asked.
+
+"A hoss," repeated Enriquez, with infinite gravity.  "But not,
+leetle Pancho, the hoss that run, the hoss that buck-jump, but what
+the miner call a 'hoss,' a something that rear up in the vein and
+stop him.  You pick around the hoss; you pick under him; sometimes
+you find the vein, sometimes you do not.  The hoss rear up, and
+remain!  Eet ees not good for the mine.  The board say, 'D--- the
+hoss!'  'Get rid of the hoss.'  'Chuck out the hoss.'  Then they
+talk together, and one say to the Professor Dobbs: 'Eef you cannot
+thees hoss remove from the mine, you can take him out of the
+report.'  He look to me, thees professor.  I see nothing; I remain
+tranquil.  Then the board say: 'Thees report with the hoss in him
+is worth two thousand dollar, but WITHOUT the hoss he is worth five
+thousand dollar.  For the stockholder is frighted of the rearing
+hoss.  It is of a necessity that the stockholder should remain
+tranquil.  Without the hoss the report is good; the stock shall
+errise; the director shall sell out, and leave the stockholder the
+hoss to play with.'  The professor he say, 'Al-right;' he scratch
+out the hoss, sign his name, and get a check for three thousand
+dollar."
+
+"Then I errise--so!"  He got up from the hammock, suiting the
+action to the word, and during the rest of his narrative, I
+honestly believe, assumed the same attitude and deliberate
+intonation he had exhibited at the board.  I could even fancy I saw
+the reckless, cynical faces of his brother directors turned upon
+his grim, impassive features.  "I am tranquil.  I smoke my
+cigarette.  I say that for three hundred year my family have held
+the land of thees mine; that it pass from father to son, and from
+son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that NEVARRE
+THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT!  I say it was a gift by a Spanish
+Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel,
+and not for the cheat and the swindle!  I say that this mine was
+worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the
+cheat and swindler.  I say that if they have struck the hoss in the
+mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss
+that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a
+hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out by a Yankee
+geologian; and that hoss is Enriquez Saltillo!"
+
+He paused, and laid aside his cigarette.
+
+"Then they say, 'Dry up,' and 'Sell out;' and the great bankers
+say, 'Name your own price for your stock, and resign.'  And I say,
+'There is not enough gold in your bank, in your San Francisco, in
+the mines of California, that shall buy a Spanish gentleman.  When
+I leave, I leave the stock at my back; I shall take it, nevarre!
+Then the banker he say, 'And you will go and blab, I suppose?'  And
+then, Pancho, I smile, I pick up my mustache--so! and I say:
+'Pardon, senor, you haf mistake, The Saltillo haf for three hundred
+year no stain, no blot upon him.  Eet is not now--the last of the
+race--who shall confess that he haf sit at a board of disgrace and
+dishonor!'  And then it is that the band begin to play, and the
+animals stand on their hind leg and waltz, and behold, the row he
+haf begin!"
+
+I ran over to him, and fairly hugged him.  But he put me aside with
+a gentle and philosophical calm.  "Ah, eet is nothing, Pancho.  It
+is, believe me, all the same a hundred years to come, and where are
+you, then?  The earth he turn round, and then come el temblor, the
+earthquake, and there you are!  Bah! eet is not of the board that I
+have asked you to come; it is something else I would tell you.  Go
+and wash yourself of thees journey, my leetle brother, as I have"--
+looking at his narrow, brown, well-bred hands--"wash myself of the
+board.  Be very careful of the leetle old woman, Pancho; do not
+wink to her of the eye!  Consider, my leetle brother, for one
+hundred and one year he haf been as a nun, a saint!  Disturb not
+her tranquillity."
+
+Yes, it was the old Enriquez; but he seemed graver,--if I could use
+that word of one of such persistent gravity; only his gravity
+heretofore had suggested a certain irony rather than a melancholy
+which I now fancied I detected.  And what was this "something else"
+he was to "tell me later"?  Did it refer to Mrs. Saltillo?  I had
+purposely waited for him to speak of her, before I should say
+anything of my visit to Carquinez Springs.  I hurried through my
+ablutions in the hot water, brought in a bronze jar on the head of
+the centenarian handmaid; and even while I was smiling over
+Enriquez's caution regarding this aged Ruth, I felt I was getting
+nervous to hear his news.
+
+I found him in his sitting-room, or study,--a long, low apartment
+with small, deep windows like embrasures in the outer adobe wall,
+but glazed in lightly upon the veranda.  He was sitting quite
+abstractedly, with a pen in his hand, before a table, on which a
+number of sealed envelopes were lying.  He looked SO formal and
+methodical for Enriquez.
+
+"You like the old casa, Pancho?" he said in reply to my praise of
+its studious and monastic gloom.  "Well, my leetle brother, some
+day that is fair--who knows?--it may be at your disposicion; not of
+our politeness, but of a truth, friend Pancho.  For, if I leave it
+to my wife"--it was the first time he had spoken of her--"for my
+leetle child," he added quickly, "I shall put in a bond, an
+obligacion, that my friend Pancho shall come and go as he will."
+
+"The Saltillos are a long-lived race," I laughed.  "I shall be a
+gray-haired man, with a house and family of my own by that time."
+But I did not like the way he had spoken.
+
+"Quien sabe?" he only said, dismissing the question with the
+national gesture.  After a moment he added: "I shall tell you
+something that is strrange, so strrange that you shall say, like
+the banker say, 'Thees Enriquez, he ees off his head; he ees a
+crank, a lunatico;' but it ees a FACT; believe me, I have said!"
+
+He rose, and, going to the end of the room, opened a door.  It
+showed a pretty little room, femininely arranged in Mrs. Saltillo's
+refined taste.  "Eet is pretty; eet is the room of my wife.  Bueno!
+attend me now."  He closed the door, and walked back to the table.
+"I have sit here and write when the earthquake arrive.  I have feel
+the shock, the grind of the walls on themselves, the tremor, the
+stagger, and--that--door--he swing open!"
+
+"The door?" I said, with a smile that I felt was ghastly.
+
+"Comprehend me," he said quickly; "it ees not THAT which ees
+strrange.  The wall lift, the lock slip, the door he fell open; it
+is frequent; it comes so ever when the earthquake come.  But eet is
+not my wife's room I see; it is ANOTHER ROOM, a room I know not.
+My wife Urania, she stand there, of a fear, of a tremble; she
+grasp, she cling to someone.  The earth shake again; the door shut.
+I jump from my table; I shake and tumble to the door.  I fling him
+open.  Maravilloso! it is the room of my wife again.  She is NOT
+there; it is empty; it is nothing!"
+
+I felt myself turning hot and cold by turns.  I was horrified, and--
+and I blundered.  "And who was the other figure?" I gasped.
+
+"Who?" repeated Enriquez, with a pause, a fixed look at me, and a
+sublime gesture.  "Who SHOULD it be, but myself, Enriquez Saltillo?"
+
+A terrible premonition that this was a chivalrous LIE, that it was
+NOT himself he had seen, but that our two visions were identical,
+came upon me.  "After all," I said, with a fixed smile, "if you
+could imagine you saw your wife, you could easily imagine you saw
+yourself too.  In the shock of the moment you thought of HER
+naturally, for then she would as naturally seek your protection.
+You have written for news of her?"
+
+"No," said Enriquez quietly.
+
+"No?" I repeated amazedly.
+
+"You understand, Pancho!  Eef it was the trick of my eyes, why
+should I affright her for the thing that is not?  If it is the
+truth, and it arrive to ME, as a warning, why shall I affright her
+before it come?"
+
+"Before WHAT comes?  What is it a warning of?" I asked impetuously.
+
+"That we shall be separated!  That I go, and she do not."
+
+To my surprise, his dancing eyes had a slight film over them.  "I
+don't understand you," I said awkwardly.
+
+"Your head is not of a level, my Pancho.  Thees earthquake he
+remain for only ten seconds, and he fling open the door.  If he
+remain for twenty seconds, he fling open the wall, the hoose
+toomble, and your friend Enriquez is feenish."
+
+"Nonsense!" I said.  "Professor--I mean the geologists--say that
+the centre of disturbance of these Californian earthquakes is some
+far-away point in the Pacific and there never will be any serious
+convulsions here."
+
+"Ah, the geologist," said Enriquez gravely, "understand the hoss
+that rear in the mine, and the five thousand dollar, believe me, no
+more.  He haf lif here three year.  My family haf lif here three
+hundred.  My grandfather saw the earth swallow the church of San
+Juan Baptista."
+
+I laughed, until, looking up, I was shocked to see for the first
+time that his dancing eyes were moist and shining.  But almost
+instantly he jumped up, and declared that I had not seen the garden
+and the corral, and, linking his arm in mine, swept me like a
+whirlwind into the patio.  For an hour or two he was in his old
+invincible spirits.  I was glad I had said nothing of my visit to
+Carquinez Springs and of seeing his wife; I determined to avoid it
+as long as possible; and as he did not again refer to her, except
+in the past, it was not difficult.  At last he infected me with his
+extravagance, and for a while I forgot even the strangeness of his
+conduct and his confidences.  We walked and talked together as of
+old.  I understood and enjoyed him perfectly, and it was not
+strange that in the end I began to believe that this strange
+revelation was a bit of his extravagant acting, got up to amuse me.
+The coincidence of his story with my own experience was not, after
+all, such a wonderful thing, considering what must have been the
+nervous and mental disturbance produced by the earthquake.  We
+dined together, attended only by Pedro, an old half-caste body-
+servant.  It was easy to see that the household was carried on
+economically, and, from a word or two casually dropped by Enriquez,
+it appeared that the rancho and a small sum of money were all that
+he retained from his former fortune when he left the El Bolero.
+The stock he kept intact, refusing to take the dividend upon it
+until that collapse of the company should occur which he
+confidently predicted, when he would make good the swindled
+stockholders.  I had no reason to doubt his perfect faith in this.
+
+The next morning we were up early for a breezy gallop over the
+three square miles of Enriquez's estate.  I was astounded, when I
+descended to the patio, to find Enriquez already mounted, and
+carrying before him, astride of the horn of his saddle, a small
+child,--the identical papoose of my memorable first visit.  But the
+boy was no longer swathed and bandaged, although, for security, his
+plump little body was engirt by the same sash that encircled his
+father's own waist.  I felt a stirring of self-reproach; I had
+forgotten all about him!  To my suggestion that the exercise might
+be fatiguing to him, Enriquez shrugged his shoulders:--
+
+"Believe me, no!  He is ever with me when I go on the pasear.  He
+is not too yonge.  For he shall learn 'to rride, to shoot, and to
+speak the truth,' even as the Persian chile.  Eet ees all I can gif
+to him."
+
+Nevertheless, I think the boy enjoyed it, and I knew he was safe
+with such an accomplished horseman as his father.  Indeed, it was a
+fine sight to see them both careering over the broad plain,
+Enriquez with jingling spurs and whirling riata, and the boy, with
+a face as composed as his father's, and his tiny hand grasping the
+end of the flapping rein with a touch scarcely lighter than the
+skillful rider's own.  It was a lovely morning; though warm and
+still, there was a faint haze--a rare thing in that climate--on the
+distant range.  The sun-baked soil, arid and thirsty from the long
+summer drought, and cracked into long fissures, broke into puffs of
+dust, with a slight detonation like a pistol-shot, at each stroke
+of our pounding hoofs.  Suddenly my horse swerved in full gallop,
+almost lost his footing, "broke," and halted with braced fore feet,
+trembling in every limb.  I heard a shout from Enriquez at the same
+instant, and saw that he too had halted about a hundred paces from
+me, with his hand uplifted in warning, and between us a long chasm
+in the dry earth, extending across the whole field.  But the
+trembling of the horse continued until it communicated itself to
+me.  I was shaking, too, and, looking about for the cause, when I
+beheld the most weird and remarkable spectacle I had ever
+witnessed.  The whole llano, or plain, stretching to the horizon-
+line, was DISTINCTLY UNDULATING!  The faint haze of the hills was
+repeated over its surface, as if a dust had arisen from some
+grinding displacement of the soil.  I threw myself from my horse,
+but the next moment was fain to cling to him, as I felt the thrill
+under my very feet.  Then there was a pause, and I lifted my head
+to look for Enriquez.  He was nowhere to be seen!  With a terrible
+recollection of the fissure that had yawned between us, I sprang to
+the saddle again, and spurred the frightened beast toward that
+point.  BUT IT WAS GONE, TOO!  I rode backward and forward
+repeatedly along the line where I had seen it only a moment before.
+The plain lay compact and uninterrupted, without a crack or
+fissure.  The dusty haze that had arisen had passed as mysteriously
+away; the clear outline of the valley returned; the great field was
+empty!
+
+Presently I was aware of the sound of galloping hoofs.  I remembered
+then--what I had at first forgotten--that a few moments before we
+had crossed an arroyo, or dried bed of a stream, depressed below the
+level of the field.  How foolish that I had not remembered!  He had
+evidently sought that refuge; there were his returning hoofs.  I
+galloped toward it, but only to meet a frightened vaquero, who had
+taken that avenue of escape to the rancho.
+
+"Did you see Don Enriquez?" I asked impatiently.
+
+I saw that the man's terror was extreme, and his eyes were staring
+in their sockets.  He hastily crossed himself:--
+
+"Ah, God, yes!"
+
+"Where is he?" I demanded.
+
+"Gone!"
+
+"Where?"
+
+He looked at me with staring, vacant eyes, and, pointing to the
+ground, said in Spanish: "He has returned to the land of his
+fathers!"
+
+We searched for him that day and the next, when the country was
+aroused and his neighbors joined in a quest that proved useless.
+Neither he nor his innocent burden was ever seen again of men.
+Whether he had been engulfed by mischance in some unsuspected
+yawning chasm in that brief moment, or had fulfilled his own
+prophecy by deliberately erasing himself for some purpose known
+only to himself, no one ever knew.  His country-people shook their
+heads and said "it was like a Saltillo."  And the few among his
+retainers who knew him and loved him, whispered still more
+ominously: "He will yet return to his land to confound the
+Americanos."
+
+Yet the widow of Enriquez did NOT marry Professor Dobbs.  But she
+too disappeared from California, and years afterward I was told
+that she was well known to the ingenuous Parisians as the usual
+wealthy widow "from South America."
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg etext of Stories in Light and Shadow.
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