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+Title:  Tales of Trail and Town
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+Author:  Bret Harte
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+March, 2000  [Etext #2550]
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+
+TALES OF TRAIL AND TOWN
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE ANCESTORS OF PETER ATHERLY
+
+TWO AMERICANS
+
+THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN
+
+THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK
+
+A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE
+
+THE YOUNGEST PROSPECTOR IN CALAVERAS
+
+A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS
+
+
+
+
+TALES OF TRAIL AND TOWN
+
+
+THE ANCESTORS OF PETER ATHERLY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It must be admitted that the civilizing processes of Rough and
+Ready were not marked by any of the ameliorating conditions of
+other improved camps.  After the discovery of the famous "Eureka"
+lead, there was the usual influx of gamblers and saloon-keepers;
+but that was accepted as a matter of course.  But it was thought
+hard that, after a church was built and a new school erected, it
+should suddenly be found necessary to have doors that locked,
+instead of standing shamelessly open to the criticism and
+temptation of wayfarers, or that portable property could no longer
+be left out at night in the old fond reliance on universal
+brotherhood.  The habit of borrowing was stopped with the
+introduction of more money into the camp, and the establishment of
+rates of interest; the poorer people either took what they wanted,
+or as indiscreetly bought on credit.  There were better clothes to
+be seen in its one long straggling street, but those who wore them
+generally lacked the grim virtue of the old pioneers, and the
+fairer faces that were to be seen were generally rouged.  There was
+a year or two of this kind of mutation, in which the youthful
+barbarism of Rough and Ready might have been said to struggle with
+adult civilized wickedness, and then the name itself disappeared.
+By an Act of the Legislature the growing town was called "Atherly,"
+after the owner of the Eureka mine,--Peter Atherly,--who had given
+largess to the town in its "Waterworks" and a "Gin Mill," as the
+new Atherly Hotel and its gilded bar-rooms were now called.  Even
+at the last moment, however, the new title of "Atherly" hung in the
+balance.  The romantic daughter of the pastor had said that Mr.
+Atherly should be called "Atherly of Atherly," an aristocratic
+title so strongly suggestive of an innovation upon democratic
+principles that it was not until it was discreetly suggested that
+everybody was still free to call him "Atherly, late of Rough and
+Ready," that opposition ceased.
+
+Possibly this incident may have first awakened him to the value of
+his name, and some anxiety as to its origin.  Roughly speaking,
+Atherly's father was only a bucolic emigrant from "Mizzouri," and
+his mother had done the washing for the camp on her first arrival.
+The Atherlys had suffered on their overland journey from drought
+and famine, with the addition of being captured by Indians, who had
+held them captive for ten months.  Indeed, Mr. Atherly, senior,
+never recovered from the effects of his captivity, and died shortly
+after Mrs. Atherly had given birth to twins, Peter and Jenny
+Atherly.  This was scant knowledge for Peter in the glorification
+of his name through his immediate progenitors; but "Atherly of
+Atherly" still sounded pleasantly, and, as the young lady had said,
+smacked of old feudal days and honors.  It was believed beyond
+doubt, even in their simple family records,--the flyleaf of a
+Bible,--that Peter Atherly's great-grandfather was an Englishman
+who brought over to his Majesty's Virginian possessions his only
+son, then a boy.  It was not established, however, to what class of
+deportation he belonged: whether he was suffering exile from
+religious or judicial conviction, or if he were only one of the
+articled "apprentices" who largely made up the American immigration
+of those days.  Howbeit, "Atherly" was undoubtedly an English name,
+even suggesting respectable and landed ancestry, and Peter Atherly
+was proud of it.  He looked somewhat askance upon his Irish and
+German fellow citizens, and talked a good deal about "race."  Two
+things, however, concerned him: he was not in looks certainly like
+any type of modern Englishman as seen either on the stage in San
+Francisco, or as an actual tourist in the mining regions, and his
+accent was undoubtedly Southwestern.  He was tall and dark, with
+deep-set eyes in a singularly immobile countenance; he had an erect
+but lithe and sinewy figure even for his thirty odd years, and
+might easily have been taken for any other American except for the
+single exception that his nose was distinctly Roman, and gave him a
+distinguished air.  There was a suggestion of Abraham Lincoln (and
+even of Don Quixote) in his tall, melancholy figure and length of
+limb, but nothing whatever that suggested an Englishman.
+
+It was shortly after the christening of Atherly town that an
+incident occurred which at first shook, and then the more firmly
+established, his mild monomania.  His widowed mother had been for
+the last two years an inmate of a private asylum for inebriates,
+through certain habits contracted while washing for the camp in the
+first year of her widowhood.  This had always been a matter of open
+sympathy to Rough and Ready; but it was a secret reproach hinted at
+in Atherly, although it was known that the rich Peter Atherly kept
+his mother liberally supplied, and that both he and his sister
+"Jinny" or Jenny Atherly visited her frequently.  One day he was
+telegraphed for, and on going to the asylum found Mrs. Atherly
+delirious and raving.  Through her son's liberality she had bribed
+an attendant, and was fast succumbing to a private debauch.  In the
+intervals of her delirium she called Peter by name, talked
+frenziedly and mysteriously of his "high connections"--alluded to
+himself and his sister as being of the "true breed"--and with a
+certain vigor of epithet, picked up in the familiarity of the camp
+during the days when she was known as "Old Ma'am Atherly" or "Aunt
+Sally," declared that they were "no corn-cracking Hoosiers,"
+"hayseed pikes," nor "northern Yankee scum," and that she should
+yet live to see them "holding their own lands again and the lands
+of their forefathers."  Quieted at last by opiates, she fell into a
+more lucid but scarcely less distressing attitude.  Recognizing
+her son again, as well as her own fast failing condition, she
+sarcastically thanked him for coming to "see her off," congratulated
+him that he would soon be spared the lie and expense of keeping her
+here on account of his pride, under the thin pretext of trying to
+"cure" her.  She knew that Sally Atherly of Rough and Ready wasn't
+considered fit company for "Atherly of Atherly" by his fine new
+friends.  This and much more in a voice mingling maudlin sentiment
+with bitter resentment, and with an ominous glitter in her bloodshot
+and glairy eyes.  Peter winced with a consciousness of the
+half-truth of her reproaches, but the curiosity and excitement
+awakened by the revelations of her frenzy were greater than his
+remorse.  He said quickly:--
+
+"You were speaking of father!--of his family--his lands and
+possessions.  Tell me again!"
+
+"Wot are ye givin' us?" she ejaculated in husky suspicion, opening
+upon him her beady eyes, in which the film of death was already
+gathering.
+
+"Tell me of father,--my father and his family! his great-
+grandfather!--the Atherlys, my relations--what you were saying.
+What do you know about them?"
+
+"THAT'S all ye wanter know--is it?  THAT'S what ye'r' comin' to the
+old washer-woman for--is it?" she burst out with the desperation of
+disgust.  "Well--give it up!  Ask me another!"
+
+"But, mother--the old records, you know!  The family Bible--what
+you once told us--me and Jinny!"
+
+Something gurgled in her throat like a chuckle.  With the energy of
+malevolence, she stammered: "There wasn't no records--there wasn't
+no family Bible! it's all a lie--you hear me!  Your Atherly that
+you're so proud of was just a British bummer who was kicked outer
+his family in England and sent to buzz round in Americky.  He
+honey-fogled me--Sally Magregor--out of a better family than his'n,
+in Kansas, and skyugled me away, but it was a straight out
+marriage, and I kin prove it.  It was in the St. Louis papers, and
+I've got it stored away safe enough in my trunk!  You hear me!  I'm
+shoutin'!  But he wasn't no old settler in Mizzouri--he wasn't
+descended from any settler, either!  He was a new man outer
+England--fresh caught--and talked down his throat.  And he fooled
+ME--the darter of an old family that was settled on the right bank
+of the Mizzouri afore Dan'l Boone came to Kentucky--with his new
+philanderings.  Then he broke up, and went all to pieces when we
+struck Californy, and left ME--Sally Magregor, whose father had
+niggers of his own--to wash for Rough and Ready!  THAT'S your
+Atherly!  Take him!  I don't want him--I've done with him!  I was
+done with him long afore--afore"--a cough checked her utterance,--
+"afore"--  She gasped again, but the words seemed to strangle in
+her throat.  Intent only on her words and scarcely heeding her
+sufferings, Peter was bending over her eagerly, when the doctor
+rudely pulled him away and lifted her to a sitting posture.  But
+she never spoke again.  The strongest restoratives quickly
+administered only left her in a state of scarcely breathing
+unconsciousness.
+
+"Is she dying?  Can't you bring her to," said the anxious Peter,
+"if only for a moment, doctor?"
+
+"I'm thinkin'," said the visiting doctor, an old Scotch army
+surgeon, looking at the rich Mr. Atherly with cool, professional
+contempt, "that your mother willna do any more washing for me as in
+the old time, nor give up her life again to support her bairns.
+And it isna my eentention to bring her back to pain for the
+purposes of geeneral conversation!"
+
+Nor, indeed, did she ever come back to any purpose, but passed away
+with her unfinished sentence.  And her limbs were scarcely decently
+composed by the attendants before Peter was rummaging the trunk in
+her room for the paper she had spoken of.  It was in an old work-
+box--a now faded yellow clipping from a newspaper, lying amidst
+spoils of cotton thread, buttons, and beeswax, which he even then
+remembered to have seen upon his mother's lap when she superadded
+the sewing on of buttons to her washing of the miners' shirts.  And
+his dark and hollow cheek glowed with gratified sentiment as he
+read the clipping.
+
+"We hear with regret of the death of Philip Atherly, Esq., of Rough
+and Ready, California.  Mr. Atherly will be remembered by some of
+our readers as the hero of the romantic elopement of Miss Sallie
+Magregor, daughter of Colonel 'Bob' Magregor, which created such a
+stir in well-to-do circles some thirty years ago.  It was known
+vaguely that the young couple had 'gone West,'--a then unknown
+region,--but it seems that after severe trials and tribulations on
+the frontier with savages, they emigrated early to Oregon, and
+then, on the outbreak of the gold fever, to California.  But it
+will be a surprise to many to know that it has just transpired that
+Mr. Atherly was the second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, an English
+baronet, and by the death of his brother might have succeeded to
+the property and title."
+
+He remained for some moments looking fixedly at the paper, until
+the commonplace paragraph imprinted itself upon his brain as no
+line of sage or poet had ever done, and then he folded it up and
+put it in his pocket.  In his exaltation he felt that even the
+mother he had never loved was promoted to a certain respect as his
+father's wife, although he was equally conscious of a new
+resentment against her for her contemptuous allusions to HIS
+father, and her evident hopeless inability to comprehend his
+position.  His mother, he feared, was indeed low!--but HE was his
+father's son!  Nevertheless, he gave her a funeral at Atherly, long
+remembered for its barbaric opulence and display.  Thirty
+carriages, procured from Sacramento at great expense, were freely
+offered to his friends to join in the astounding pageant.  A
+wonderful casket of iron and silver, brought from San Francisco,
+held the remains of the ex-washerwoman of Rough and Ready.  But a
+more remarkable innovation was the addition of a royal crown to the
+other ornamentation of the casket.  Peter Atherly's ideas of
+heraldry were very vague,--Sacramento at that time offered him no
+opportunity of knowing what were the arms of the Atherlys,--and the
+introduction of the royal crown seemed to satisfy Peter's mind as
+to what a crest MIGHT be, while to the ordinary democratic mind it
+simply suggested that the corpse was English!  Political criticism
+being thus happily averted, Mrs. Atherly's body was laid in the
+little cemetery, not far away from certain rude wooden crosses
+which marked the burial-place of wanderers whose very names were
+unknown, and in due time a marble shaft was erected over it.  But
+when, the next day, the county paper contained, in addition to the
+column-and-a-half description of the funeral, the more formal
+announcement of the death of "Mrs. Sallie Atherly, wife of the late
+Philip Atherly, second son of Sir Ashley Atherly, of England,"
+criticism and comment broke out.  The old pioneers of Rough and
+Ready felt that they had been imposed upon, and that in some vague
+way the unfortunate woman had made them the victims of a huge
+practical joke during all these years.  That she had grimly enjoyed
+their ignorance of her position they did not doubt.  "Why, I
+remember onct when I was sorter bullyraggin' her about mixin' up my
+duds with Doc Simmons's, and sendin' me Whiskey Dick's old rags,
+she turned round sudden with a kind of screech, and ran out into
+the brush.  I reckoned, at the time, that it was either 'drink' or
+feelin's, and could hev kicked myself for being sassy to the old
+woman, but I know now that all this time that air critter--that
+barrownet's daughter-in-law--was just laughin' herself into fits in
+the brush!  No, sir, she played this yer camp for all it was worth,
+year in and out, and we just gave ourselves away like speckled
+idiots! and now she's lyin' out thar in the bone yard, and keeps on
+p'intin' the joke, and a-roarin' at us in marble."
+
+Even the later citizens in Atherly felt an equal resentment against
+her, but from different motives.  That her drinking habits and her
+powerful vocabulary were all the effect of her aristocratic
+alliance they never doubted.  And, although it brought the virtues
+of their own superior republican sobriety into greater contrast,
+they felt a scandal at having been tricked into attending this
+gilded funeral of dissipated rank.  Peter Atherly found himself
+unpopular in his own town.  The sober who drank from his free
+"Waterworks," and the giddy ones who imbibed at his "Gin Mill,"
+equally criticised him.  He could not understand it; his peculiar
+predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere
+presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted
+facts?  He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral!
+Yet the criticism went on.  Presently it took the milder but more
+contagious form of ridicule.  In his own hotel, built with his own
+money, and in his own presence, he had heard a reckless frequenter
+of the bar-room decline some proffered refreshment on the ground
+that "he only drank with his titled relatives."  A local humorist,
+amidst the applause of an admiring crowd at the post-office window,
+had openly accused the postmaster of withholding letters to him
+from his only surviving brother, "the Dook of Doncherknow."  "The
+ole dooky never onct missed the mail to let me know wot's goin' on
+in me childhood's home," remarked the humorist plaintively; "and
+yer's this dod-blasted gov'ment mule of a postmaster keepin' me
+letters back!"  Letters with pretentious and gilded coats of arms,
+taken from the decorated inner lining of cigar-boxes, were posted
+to prominent citizens.  The neighboring and unregenerated
+settlement of Red Dog was more outrageous in its contribution.  The
+Red Dog "Sentinel," in commenting on the death of "Haulbowline
+Tom," a drunken English man-o'-war's man, said: "It may not be
+generally known that our regretted fellow citizen, while serving on
+H. M. S. Boxer, was secretly married to Queen Kikalu of the
+Friendly Group; but, unlike some of our prosperous neighbors, he
+never boasted of his royal alliance, and resisted with steady
+British pluck any invitation to share the throne.  Indeed, any
+allusion to the subject affected him deeply.  There are those among
+us who will remember the beautiful portrait of his royal bride
+tattooed upon his left arm with the royal crest and the crossed
+flags of the two nations."  Only Peter Atherly and his sister
+understood the sting inflicted either by accident or design in the
+latter sentence.  Both he and his sister had some singular
+hieroglyphic branded on their arms,--probably a reminiscence of
+their life on the plains in their infant Indian captivity.  But
+there was no mistaking the general sentiment.  The criticisms of a
+small town may become inevasible.  Atherly determined to take the
+first opportunity to leave Rough and Ready.  He was rich; his
+property was secure; there was no reason why he should stay where
+his family pretensions were a drawback.  And a further circumstance
+determined his resolution.
+
+He was awaiting his sister in his new house on a little crest above
+the town.  She had been at the time of her mother's death, and
+since, a private boarder in the Sacred Heart Convent at Santa Clara,
+whence she had been summoned to the funeral, but had returned the
+next day.  Few people had noticed in her brother's carriage the
+veiled figure which might have belonged to one of the religious
+orders; still less did they remember the dark, lank, heavy-browed
+girl who had sometimes been seen about Rough and Ready.  For she had
+her brother's melancholy, and greater reticence, and had continued
+of her own free will, long after her girlish pupilage at the
+convent, to live secluded under its maternal roof without taking
+orders.  A general suspicion that she was either a religious
+"crank," or considered herself too good to live in a mountain mining
+town, had not contributed to her brother's popularity.  In her
+abstraction from worldly ambitions she had, naturally, taken no part
+in her brother's family pretensions.  He had given her an
+independent allowance, and she was supposed to be equally a sharer
+in his good fortune.  Yet she had suddenly declared her intention of
+returning to Atherly, to consult him on affairs of importance.
+Peter was both surprised and eager; there was but little affection
+between them, but, preoccupied with his one idea, he was satisfied
+that she wanted to talk about the family.
+
+But he was amazed, disappointed, and disconcerted.  For Jenny
+Atherly, the sober recluse of Santa Clara, hidden in her sombre
+draperies at the funeral, was no longer to be recognized in the
+fashionable, smartly but somewhat over-dressed woman he saw before
+him.  In spite of her large features and the distinguishing Roman
+nose, like his own, she looked even pretty in her excitement.  She
+had left the convent, she was tired of the life there, she was
+satisfied that a religious vocation would not suit her.  In brief,
+she intended to enjoy herself like other women.  If he really felt
+a pride in the family he ought to take her out, like other
+brothers, and "give her a show."  He could do it there if he liked,
+and she would keep house for him.  If he didn't want to, she must
+have enough money to keep her fashionably in San Francisco.  But
+she wanted excitement, and that she WOULD HAVE!  She wanted to go
+to balls, theatres, and entertainments, and she intended to!  Her
+voice grew quite high, and her dark cheek glowed with some new-
+found emotion.
+
+Astounded as he was, Peter succumbed.  It was better that she
+should indulge her astounding caprice under his roof than
+elsewhere.  It would not do for the sister of an Atherly to provoke
+scandal.  He gave entertainments, picnics, and parties, and "Jinny"
+Atherly plunged into these mild festivities with the enthusiasm of
+a schoolgirl.  She not only could dance with feverish energy all
+night, but next day could mount a horse--she was a fearless rider--
+and lead the most accomplished horsemen.  She was a good shot, she
+walked with the untiring foot of a coyote, she threaded the woods
+with the instinct of a pioneer.  Peter regarded her with a singular
+mingling of astonishment and fear.  Surely she had not learned this
+at school!  These were not the teachings nor the sports of the good
+sisters!  He once dared to interrogate her regarding this change in
+her habits.  "I always FELT like it," she answered quickly, "but I
+kept it down.  I used sometimes to feel that I couldn't stand it
+any longer, but must rush out and do something," she said
+passionately; "but," she went on with furtive eyes, and a sudden
+wild timidity like that of a fawn, "I was afraid!  I was afraid IT
+WAS LIKE MOTHER!  It seemed to me to be HER blood that was rising
+in me, and I kept it down,--I didn't want to be like her,--and I
+prayed and struggled against it.  Did you," she said, suddenly
+grasping his hand, "ever feel like that?"
+
+But Peter never had.  His melancholy faith in his father's race had
+left no thought of his mother's blood mingling with it.  "But," he
+said gravely, "believing this, why did you change?"
+
+"Because I could hold out no longer.  I should have gone crazy.
+Times I wanted to take some of those meek nuns, some of those
+white-faced pupils with their blue eyes and wavy flaxen hair, and
+strangle them.  I couldn't strive and pray and struggle any longer
+THERE, and so I came here to let myself out!  I suppose when I get
+married--and I ought to, with my money--it may change me!  You
+don't suppose," she said, with a return of her wild-animal-like
+timidity, "it is anything that was in FATHER, in those ATHERLYS,--
+do you?"
+
+But Peter had no idea of anything but virtue in the Atherly blood;
+he had heard that the upper class of Europeans were fond of field
+sports and of hunting; it was odd that his sister should inherit
+this propensity and not he.  He regarded her more kindly for this
+evidence of race.  "You think of getting married?" he said more
+gently, yet with a certain brotherly doubt that any man could like
+her enough, even with her money.  "Is there any one here would--
+suit you?" he added diplomatically.
+
+"No--I hate them all!" she burst out.  "There isn't one I don't
+despise for his sickening, foppish, womanish airs."
+
+Nevertheless, it was quite evident that some of the men were
+attracted by her singular originality and a certain good
+comradeship in her ways.  And it was on one of their riding
+excursions that Peter noticed that she was singled out by a good-
+looking, blond-haired young lawyer of the town for his especial
+attentions.  As the cavalcade straggled in climbing the mountain,
+the young fellow rode close to her saddle-bow, and as the distance
+lengthened between the other stragglers, they at last were quite
+alone.  When the trail became more densely wooded, Peter quite lost
+sight of them.  But when, a few moments later, having lost the
+trail himself, they again appeared in the distance before him, he
+was so amazed that he unconsciously halted.  For the two horses
+were walking side by side, and the stranger's arm was round his
+sister's waist.
+
+Had Peter any sense of humor he might have smiled at this weakness
+in his Amazonian sister, but he saw only the serious, practical
+side of the situation, with, of course, its inevitable relation to
+his one controlling idea.  The young man was in good practice, and
+would have made an eligible husband to any one else.  But was he
+fit to mate with an Atherly?  What would those as yet unknown and
+powerful relatives say to it?  At the same time he could not help
+knowing that "Jinny," in the eccentricities of her virgin
+spinsterhood, might be equally objectionable to them, as she
+certainly was a severe trial to him here.  If she were off his
+hands he might be able to prosecute his search for his relatives
+with more freedom.  After all, there were mesalliances in all
+families, and being a woman she was not in the direct line.
+Instead, therefore, of spurring forward to join them, he lingered a
+little until they passed out of sight, and until he was joined by a
+companion from behind.  Him, too, he purposely delayed.  They were
+walking slowly, breathing their mustangs, when his companion
+suddenly uttered a cry of alarm, and sprang from his horse.  For on
+the trail before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with
+his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush.  He
+was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a
+livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small
+elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow from a riding-whip; happily
+the last idea was only in Peter's mind.  As they lifted him up he
+came slowly to consciousness.  He was bewildered and dazed at
+first, but as he began to speak the color came back freshly to his
+face.  He could not conceive, he stammered, what had happened.  He
+was riding with Miss Atherly, and he supposed his horse had slipped
+upon some withered pine needles and thrown him!  A spasm of pain
+crossed his face suddenly, and he lifted his hand to the top of his
+head.  Was he hurt THERE?  No, but perhaps his hair, which was
+flowing and curly, had caught in the branches--like Absalom's!  He
+tried to smile, and even begged them to assist him to his horse
+that he might follow his fair companion, who would be wondering
+where he was; but Peter, satisfied that he had received no serious
+injury, hurriedly enjoined him to stay, while he himself would
+follow his sister.  Putting spurs to his horse, he succeeded, in
+spite of the slippery trail, in overtaking her near the summit.  At
+the sound of his horse's hoofs she wheeled quickly, came dashing
+furiously towards him, and only pulled up at the sound of his
+voice.  But she had not time to change her first attitude and
+expression, which was something which perplexed and alarmed him.
+Her long lithe figure was half crouching, half clinging to the
+horse's back, her loosened hair flying over her shoulders, her dark
+eyes gleaming with an odd nymph-like mischief.  Her white teeth
+flashed as she recognized him, but her laugh was still mocking and
+uncanny.  He took refuge in indignation.
+
+"What has happened?" he said sharply.
+
+"The fool tried to kiss me!" she said simply.  "And I--I--let out
+at him--like mother!"
+
+Nevertheless, she gave him one of those shy, timid glances he had
+noticed before, and began coiling something around her fingers,
+with a suggestion of coy embarrassment, indescribably inconsistent
+with her previous masculine independence.
+
+"You might have killed him," said Peter angrily.
+
+"Perhaps I might!  OUGHT I have killed him, Peter?" she said
+anxiously, yet with the same winning, timid smile.  If she had not
+been his sister, he would have thought her quite handsome.
+
+"As it is," he said impetuously, "you have made a frightful scandal
+here."
+
+"HE won't say anything about it--will he?" she inquired shyly,
+still twisting the something around her finger.
+
+Peter did not reply; perhaps the young lawyer really loved her and
+would keep her secret!  But he was vexed, and there was something
+maniacal in her twisting fingers.  "What have you got there?" he
+said sharply.
+
+She shook the object in the air before her with a laugh.  "Only a
+lock of his hair," she said gayly; "but I didn't CUT it off!"
+
+"Throw it away, and come here!" he said angrily.
+
+But she only tucked the little blond curl into her waist belt and
+shook her head.  He urged his horse forward, but she turned and
+fled, laughing as he pursued her.  Being the better rider she could
+easily evade him whenever he got too near, and in this way they
+eventually reached the town and their house long before their
+companions.  But she was far enough ahead of her brother to be able
+to dismount and hide her trophy with childish glee before he
+arrived.
+
+She was right in believing that her unfortunate cavalier would make
+no revelation of her conduct, and his catastrophe passed as an
+accident.  But Peter could not disguise the fact that much of his
+unpopularity was shared by his sister.  The matrons of Atherly
+believed that she was "fast," and remembered more distinctly than
+ever the evil habits of her mother.  That she would, in the due
+course of time, "take to drink," they never doubted.  Her dancing
+was considered outrageous in its unfettered freedom, and her
+extraordinary powers of endurance were looked upon as "masculine"
+by the weaker girls whose partners she took from them.  She
+reciprocally looked down upon them, and made no secret of her
+contempt for their small refinements and fancies.  She affected
+only the society of men, and even treated them with a familiarity
+that was both fearless and scornful.  Peter saw that it was useless
+to face the opposition; Miss Atherly did not seem to encourage the
+renewal of the young lawyer's attentions, although it was evident
+that he was still attracted by her, nor did she seem to invite
+advances from others.  He must go away--and he would have to take
+her with him.  It seemed ridiculous that a woman of thirty, of
+masculine character, should require a chaperon in a brother of
+equal age; but Peter knew the singular blending of childlike
+ignorance with this Amazonian quality.  He had made his
+arrangements for an absence from Atherly of three or four years,
+and they departed together.  The young fair-haired lawyer came to
+the stage-coach office to see them off.  Peter could detect no
+sentiment in his sister's familiar farewell of her unfortunate
+suitor.  At New York, however, it was arranged that "Jinny" should
+stay with some friends whom they had made en route, and that, if
+she wished, she could come to Europe later, and join him in London.
+
+Thus relieved of one, Peter Atherly of Atherly started on his
+cherished quest of his other and more remote relations.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Peter Atherly had been four months in England, but knew little of
+the country until one summer afternoon when his carriage rolled
+along the well-ordered road between Nonningsby Station and Ashley
+Grange.
+
+In that four months he had consulted authorities, examined records,
+visited the Heralds' College, written letters, and made a few
+friends.  A rich American, tracing his genealogical tree, was not a
+new thing--even in that day--in London; but there was something
+original and simple in his methods, and so much that was grave,
+reserved, and un-American in his personality, that it awakened
+interest.  A recognition that he was a foreigner, but a puzzled
+doubt, however, of his exact nationality, which he found
+everywhere, at first pained him, but he became reconciled to it at
+about the same time that his English acquaintances abandoned their
+own reserve and caution before the greater reticence of this
+melancholy American, and actually became the questioners!  In this
+way his quest became known only as a disclosure of his own
+courtesy, and offers of assistance were pressed eagerly upon him.
+That was why Sir Edward Atherly found himself gravely puzzled, as
+he sat with his family solicitor one morning in the library of
+Ashley Grange.
+
+"Humph!" said Sir Edward.  "And you say he has absolutely no other
+purpose in making these inquiries?"
+
+"Positively none," returned the solicitor.  "He is even willing to
+sign a renunciation of any claim which might arise out of this
+information.  It is rather a singular case, but he seems to be a
+rich man and quite able to indulge his harmless caprices."
+
+"And you are quite sure he is Philip's son?"
+
+"Quite, from the papers he brings me.  Of course I informed him
+that even if he should be able to establish a legal marriage he
+could expect nothing as next of kin, as you had children of your
+own.  He seemed to know that already, and avowed that his only wish
+was to satisfy his own mind."
+
+"I suppose he wants to claim kinship and all that sort of thing for
+society's sake?"
+
+"I do not think so," said the solicitor dryly.  "I suggested an
+interview with you, but he seemed to think it quite unnecessary, if
+I could give him the information he required."
+
+"Ha!" said Sir Edward promptly, "we'll invite him here.  Lady
+Atherly can bring in some people to see him.  Is he--ahem--What is
+he like?  The usual American, I suppose?"
+
+"Not at all.  Quite foreign-looking--dark, and rather like an
+Italian.  There is no resemblance to Mr. Philip," he said, glancing
+at the painting of a flaxen-haired child fondling a greyhound under
+the elms of Ashley Park.
+
+"Ah!  Yes, yes!  Perhaps the mother was one of those Southern
+creoles, or mulattoes," said Sir Edward with an Englishman's
+tolerant regard for the vagaries of people who were clearly not
+English; "they're rather attractive women, I hear."
+
+"I think you do quite well to be civil to him," said the solicitor.
+"He seems to take an interest in the family, and being rich, and
+apparently only anxious to enhance the family prestige, you ought
+to know him.  Now, in reference to those mortgages on Appleby Farm,
+if you could get"--
+
+"Yes, yes!" said Sir Edward quickly; "we'll have him down here;
+and, I say! YOU'LL come too?"
+
+The solicitor bowed.  "And, by the way," continued Sir Edward,
+"there was a girl too,--wasn't there?  He has a sister, I believe?"
+
+"Yes, but he has left her in America."
+
+"Ah, yes!--very good--yes!--of course.  We'll have Lord Greyshott
+and Sir Roger and old Lady Everton,--she knows all about Sir Ashley
+and the family.  And--er--is he young or old?"
+
+"About thirty, I should say, Sir Edward."
+
+"Ah, well!  We'll have Lady Elfrida over from the Towers."
+
+Had Peter known of these preparations he might have turned back to
+Nonningsby without even visiting the old church in Ashley Park,
+which he had been told held the ashes of his ancestors.  For during
+these four months the conviction that he was a foreigner and that
+he had little or nothing in common with things here had been
+clearly forced upon him.  He could recognize some kinship in the
+manners and customs of the people to those he had known in the West
+and on the Atlantic coast, but not to his own individuality, and he
+seemed even more a stranger here--where he had expected to feel the
+thrill of consanguinity--than in the West.  He had accepted the
+invitation of the living Atherly for the sake of the Atherlys long
+dead and forgotten.  As the great quadrangle of stone and ivy
+lifted itself out of the park, he looked longingly towards the
+little square tower which peeped from between the yews nearer the
+road.  As the carriage drove up to the carved archway whence so
+many Atherlys had issued into the world, he could not believe that
+any of his blood had gone forth from it, or, except himself, had
+ever entered it before.  Once in the great house he felt like a
+prisoner as he wandered through the long corridors to his room;
+even the noble trees beyond his mullioned windows seemed of another
+growth than those he had known.
+
+There was no doubt that he created a sensation at Ashley Grange,
+not only from his singular kinship, but from his striking
+individuality.  The Atherlys and their guests were fascinated and
+freely admiring.  His very originality, which prevented them from
+comparing him with any English or American standard of excellence,
+gave them a comfortable assurance of safety in their admiration.
+His reserve, his seriousness, his simplicity, very unlike their
+own, and yet near enough to suggest a delicate flattery, was in his
+favor.  So was his naive frankness in regard to his status in the
+family, shown in the few words of greeting with Sir Ashley, and in
+his later simple yet free admissions regarding his obscure youth,
+his former poverty, and his present wealth.  He boasted of neither;
+he was disturbed by neither.  Standing alone, a stranger, for the
+first time in an assemblage of distinguished and titled men and
+women, he betrayed no consciousness; surrounded for the first time
+by objects which he knew his wealth could not buy, he showed the
+most unmistakable indifference,--the indifference of temperament.
+The ladies vied with each other to attack this unimpressible
+nature,--this profound isolation from external attraction.  They
+followed him about, they looked into his dark, melancholy eyes; it
+was impossible, they thought, that he could continue this superb
+acting forever.  A glance, a smile, a burst of ingenuous
+confidence, a covert appeal to his chivalry would yet catch him
+tripping.  But the melancholy eyes that had gazed at the treasures
+of Ashley Grange and the opulent ease of its guests without
+kindling, opened to their first emotion,--wonder!  At which Lady
+Elfrida, who had ingenuously admired him, hated him a little, as
+the first step towards a kindlier feeling.
+
+The next day, having declared his intention of visiting Ashley
+Church, and, as frankly, his intention of going there alone, he
+slipped out in the afternoon and made his way quietly through the
+park to the square ivied tower he had first seen.  In this tranquil
+level length of the wood there was the one spot, the churchyard,
+where, oddly enough, the green earth heaved into little billows as
+if to show the turbulence of that life which those who lay below
+them had lately quitted.  It was a relief to the somewhat studied
+and formal monotony of the well-ordered woodland,--every rood, of
+which had been paced by visitors, keepers, or poachers,--to find
+those decrepit and bending tombstones, lurching at every angle, or
+deeply sinking into the green sea of forgetfulness around them.
+All this, and the trodden paths of the villagers towards that
+common place of meeting, struck him as being more human than
+anything he had left behind him at the Grange.
+
+He entered the ivy-grown porch and stared for a moment at the half-
+legal official parochial notices posted on the oaken door,--his
+first obtrusive intimation of the combination of church and state,--
+and hesitated.  He was not prepared to find that this last
+resting-place of his people had something to do with taxes and
+tithes, and that a certain material respectability and security
+attended his votive sigh.  God and the reigning sovereign of the
+realm preserved a decorous alliance in the royal arms that appeared
+above the official notices.  Presently he pushed open the door
+gently and entered the nave.  For a moment it seemed to him as if
+the arched gloom of the woods he had left behind was repeated in
+the dim aisle and vaulted roof; there was an earthy odor, as if the
+church itself, springing from the fertilizing dust below, had taken
+root in the soil; the chequers of light from the faded stained-
+glass windows fell like the flicker of leaves on the pavement.  He
+paused before the cold altar, and started, for beside him lay the
+recumbent figure of a warrior pillowed on his helmet with the
+paraphernalia of his trade around him.  A sudden childish memory of
+the great Western plains, and the biers of the Indian "braves"
+raised on upright poles against the staring sky and above the
+sunbaked prairie, rushed upon him.  There, too, had lain the
+weapons of the departed chieftain; there, too, lay the Indian's
+"faithful hound," here simulated by the cross-legged crusader's
+canine effigy.  And now, strangest of all, he found that this
+unlooked-for recollection and remembrance thrilled him more at that
+moment than the dead before him.  Here they rested,--the Atherlys
+of centuries; recumbent in armor or priestly robes, upright in
+busts that were periwigged or hidden in long curls, above the
+marble record of their deeds and virtues.  Some of these records
+were in Latin,--an unknown tongue to Peter,--some in a quaint
+English almost as unintelligible; but none as foreign to him as the
+dead themselves.  Their banners waved above his head; their voices
+filled the silent church, but fell upon his vacant eye and duller
+ear.  He was none of them.
+
+Presently he was conscious of a footstep, so faint, so subtle, that
+it might have come from a peregrinating ghost.  He turned quickly
+and saw Lady Elfrida, half bold, yet half frightened, halting
+beside a pillar of the chancel.  But there was nothing of the dead
+about her: she was radiating and pulsating with the uncompromising
+and material freshness of English girlhood.  The wild rose in the
+hedgerow was not more tangible than her cheek, nor the summer sky
+more clearly cool and blue than her eyes.  The vigor of health and
+unfettered freedom of limb was in her figure from her buckled
+walking-shoe to her brown hair topped by a sailor hat.  The
+assurance and contentment of a well-ordered life, of secured
+position and freedom from vain anxieties or expectations, were
+visible in every line of her refined, delicate, and evenly quiescent
+features.  And yet Lady Elfrida, for the first time in her girlhood,
+felt a little nervous.
+
+Yet she was frank, too, with the frankness of those who have no
+thought of being misunderstood.  She said she had come there out of
+curiosity to see how he would "get on" with his ancestors.  She had
+been watching him from the chancel ever since he came,--and she was
+disappointed.  As far as emotion went she thought he had the
+advantage of the stoniest and longest dead of them all.  Perhaps he
+did not like them?  But he must be careful what he SAID, for some
+of her own people were there,--manifestly this one.  (She put the
+toe of her buckled shoe on the crusader Peter had just looked at.)
+And then there was another in the corner.  So she had a right to
+come there as well as he,--and she could act as cicerone!  This one
+was a De Brecy, one of King John's knights, who married an Atherly.
+(She swung herself into a half-sitting posture on the effigy of the
+dead knight, composed her straight short skirt over her trim
+ankles, and looked up in Peter's dark face.)  That would make them
+some kind of relations,--wouldn't it?  He must come over to Bentley
+Towers and see the rest of the De Brecys in the chapel there to-
+morrow.  Perhaps there might be some he liked better, and who
+looked more like him.  For there was no one here or at the Grange
+who resembled him in the least.
+
+He assented to the truth of this with such grave, disarming
+courtesy, and yet with such undisguised wonder,--as she appeared to
+talk with greater freedom to a stranger than an American girl
+would,--that she at once popped off the crusader, and accompanied
+him somewhat more demurely around the church.  Suddenly she stopped
+with a slight exclamation.
+
+They had halted before a tablet to the memory of a later Atherly,
+an officer of his Majesty's 100th Foot, who was killed at
+Braddock's defeat.  The tablet was supported on the one side by a
+weeping Fame, and on the other by a manacled North American Indian.
+She stammered and said: "You see there are other Atherlys who went
+to America even before your father," and then stopped with a sense
+of having made a slip.
+
+A wild and inexplicable resentment against this complacent
+historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter.  He knew that
+his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not
+help it!  His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes flashed, he
+almost trembled with excitement as he hurriedly pointed out to Lady
+Elfrida that the Indians were VICTORIOUS in that ill-fated
+expedition of the British forces, and that the captive savage was
+an allegorical lie.  So swift and convincing was his emotion that
+the young girl, knowing nothing of the subject and caring less,
+shared his indignation, followed him with anxious eyes, and their
+hands for an instant touched in innocent and generous sympathy.
+And then--he knew not how or why--a still more wild and terrible
+idea sprang up in his fancy.  He knew it was madness, yet for a
+moment he could only stand and grapple with it silently and
+breathlessly.  It was to seize this young and innocent girl, this
+witness of his disappointment, this complacent and beautiful type
+of all they valued here, and bear her away--a prisoner, a hostage--
+he knew not why--on a galloping horse in the dust of the prairie--
+far beyond the seas!  It was only when he saw her cheek flush and
+pale, when he saw her staring at him with helpless, frightened, but
+fascinated eyes,--the eyes of the fluttering bird under the spell
+of the rattlesnake,--that he drew his breath and turned bewildered
+away.  "And do you know, dear," she said with naive simplicity to
+her sister that evening, "that although he was an American, and
+everybody says that they don't care at all for those poor Indians,
+he was so magnanimous in his indignation that I fancied he looked
+like one of Cooper's heroes himself rather than an Atherly.  It was
+such a stupid thing for me to show him that tomb of Major Atherly,
+you know, who fought the Americans,--didn't he?--or was it later?--
+but I quite forgot he was an American."  And with this belief in
+her mind, and in the high expiation of a noble nature, she forbore
+her characteristic raillery, and followed him meekly, manacled in
+spirit like the allegorical figure, to the church porch, where they
+separated, to meet on the morrow.  But that morrow never came.
+
+For late in the afternoon a cable message reached him from
+California asking him to return to accept a nomination to Congress
+from his own district.  It determined his resolution, which for a
+moment at the church porch had wavered under the bright eyes of
+Lady Elfrida.  He telegraphed his acceptance, hurriedly took leave
+of his honestly lamenting kinsman, followed his dispatch to London,
+and in a few days was on the Atlantic.
+
+How he was received in California, how he found his sister married
+to the blond lawyer, how he recovered his popularity and won his
+election, are details that do not belong to this chronicle of his
+quest.  And that quest seems to have terminated forever with his
+appearance at Washington to take his seat as Congressman.
+
+It was the night of a levee at the White House.  The East Room was
+crowded with smartly dressed men and women of the capital, quaintly
+simple legislators from remote States in bygone fashions, officers
+in uniform, and the diplomatic circle blazing with orders.  The
+invoker of this brilliant assembly stood in simple evening dress
+near the door,--unattended and hedged by no formality.  He shook
+the hand of the new Congressman heartily, congratulated him by
+name, and turned smilingly to the next comer.  Presently there was
+a slight stir at one of the opposite doors, the crowd fell back,
+and five figures stalked majestically into the centre of the room.
+They were the leading chiefs of an Indian reservation coming to pay
+their respects to their "Great Father," the President.  Their
+costumes were a mingling of the picturesque with the grotesque; of
+tawdriness with magnificence; of artificial tinsel and glitter with
+the regal spoils of the chase; of childlike vanity with barbaric
+pride.  Yet before these the glittering orders and ribbons of the
+diplomats became dull and meaningless, the uniforms of the officers
+mere servile livery.  Their painted, immobile faces and plumed
+heads towered with grave dignity above the meaner crowd; their
+inscrutable eyes returned no response to the timid glances directed
+towards them.  They stood by themselves, alone and impassive,--yet
+their presence filled the room with the sense of kings.  The
+unostentatious, simple republican court suddenly seemed to have
+become royal.  Even the interpreter who stood between their remote
+dignity and the nearer civilized world acquired the status of a
+court chamberlain.
+
+When their "Great Father," apparently the less important personage,
+had smilingly received them, a political colleague approached Peter
+and took his arm.  "Gray Eagle would like to speak with you.  Come
+on!  Here's your chance!  You may be put on the Committee on Indian
+Relations, and pick up a few facts.  Remember we want a firm
+policy; no more palaver about the 'Great Father' and no more
+blankets and guns!  You know what we used to say out West, 'The
+only "Good Indian" is a dead one.'  So wade in, and hear what the
+old plug hat has to say."
+
+Peter permitted himself to be led to the group.  Even at that
+moment he remembered the figure of the Indian on the tomb at Ashley
+Grange, and felt a slight flash of satisfaction over the superior
+height and bearing of Gray Eagle.
+
+"How!" said Gray Eagle.  "How!" said the other four chiefs.  "How!"
+repeated Peter instinctively.  At a gesture from Gray Eagle the
+interpreter said: "Let your friend stand back; Gray Eagle has
+nothing to say to him.  He wishes to speak only with you."
+
+Peter's friend reluctantly withdrew, but threw a cautioning glance
+towards him.  "Ugh!" said Gray Eagle.  "Ugh!" said the other
+chiefs.  A few guttural words followed to the interpreter, who
+turned, and facing Peter with the monotonous impassiveness which he
+had caught from the chiefs, said: "He says he knew your father.  He
+was a great chief,--with many horses and many squaws.  He is dead."
+
+"My father was an Englishman,--Philip Atherly!" said Peter, with an
+odd nervousness creeping over him.
+
+The interpreter repeated the words to Grey Eagle, who, after a
+guttural "Ugh!" answered in his own tongue.
+
+"He says," continued the interpreter with a slight shrug, yet
+relapsing into his former impassiveness, "that your father was a
+great chief, and your mother a pale face, or white woman.  She was
+captured with an Englishman, but she became the wife of the chief
+while in captivity.  She was only released before the birth of her
+children, but a year or two afterwards she brought them as infants
+to see their father,--the Great Chief,--and to get the mark of
+their tribe.  He says you and your sister are each marked on the
+left arm."
+
+Then Gray Eagle opened his mouth and uttered his first English
+sentence.  "His father, big Injin, take common white squaw!
+Papoose no good,--too much white squaw mother, not enough big Injin
+father!  Look!  He big man, but no can bear pain!  Ugh!"
+
+The interpreter turned in time to catch Peter.  He had fainted.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A hot afternoon on the plains.  A dusty cavalcade of United States
+cavalry and commissary wagons, which from a distance preserved a
+certain military precision of movement, but on nearer view resolved
+itself into straggling troopers in twos and fours interspersed
+between the wagons, two noncommissioned officers and a guide riding
+ahead, who had already fallen into the cavalry slouch, but off to
+the right, smartly erect and cadet-like, the young lieutenant in
+command.  A wide road that had the appearance of being at once well
+traveled and yet deserted, and that, although well defined under
+foot, still seemed to disappear and lose itself a hundred feet
+ahead in the monotonous level.  A horizon that in that clear, dry,
+hazeless atmosphere never mocked you, yet never changed, but kept
+its eternal rim of mountains at the same height and distance from
+hour to hour and day to day.  Dust--a parching alkaline powder that
+cracked the skin--everywhere, clinging to the hubs and spokes of
+the wheels, without being disturbed by movement, incrusting the
+cavalryman from his high boots to the crossed sabres of his cap;
+going off in small puffs like explosions under the plunging hoofs
+of the horses, but too heavy to rise and follow them.  A reeking
+smell of horse sweat and boot leather that lingered in the road
+long after the train had passed.  An external silence broken only
+by the cough of a jaded horse in the suffocating dust, or the
+cracking of harness leather.  Within one of the wagons that seemed
+a miracle of military neatness and methodical stowage, a lazy
+conversation carried on by a grizzled driver and sunbrowned farrier.
+
+"'Who be you?' sezee.  'I'm Philip Atherly, a member of Congress,'
+sez the long, dark-complected man, sezee, 'and I'm on a commission
+for looking into this yer Injin grievance,' sezee.  'You may be God
+Almighty,' sez Nebraska Bill, sezee, 'but you look a d--d sight
+more like a hoss-stealin' Apache, and we don't want any of your
+psalm-singing, big-talkin' peacemakers interferin' with our ways of
+treatin' pizen,--you hear me?  I'm shoutin',' sezee.  With that the
+dark-complected man's eyes began to glisten, and he sorter squirmed
+all over to get at Bill, and Bill outs with his battery.--Whoa,
+will ye; what's up with YOU now?"  The latter remark was directed
+to the young spirited near horse he was driving, who was beginning
+to be strangely excited.
+
+"What happened then?" said the farrier lazily.
+
+"Well," continued the driver, having momentarily quieted his horse,
+"I reckoned it was about time for me to wheel into line, for
+fellers of the Bill stripe, out on the plains, would ez leave plug
+a man in citizen's clothes, even if he was the President himself,
+as they would drop on an Injin or a nigger.  'Look here, Bill,' sez
+I, 'I'm escortin' this stranger under gov'ment orders, and I'm
+responsible for him.  I ain't allowed to waste gov'ment powder and
+shot on YOUR kind onless I've orders, but if you'll wait till I
+strip off this shell* I'll lam the stuffin' outer ye, afore the
+stranger.'  With that Bill just danced with rage, but dassent fire,
+for HE knew, and I knew, that if he'd plugged me he'd been a dead
+frontiersman afore the next mornin'."
+
+
+* Cavalry jacket.
+
+
+"But you'd have had to give him up to the authorities, and a jury
+of his own kind would have set him free."
+
+"Not much!  If you hadn't just joined, you'd know that ain't the
+way o' 30th Cavalry," returned the driver.  "The kernel would have
+issued his orders to bring in Bill dead or alive, and the 30th
+would have managed to bring him in DEAD!  Then your jury might have
+sat on him!  Tell you what, chaps of the Bill stripe don't care
+overmuch to tackle the yaller braid."*
+
+
+* Characteristic trimming of cavalry jacket.
+
+
+"But what's this yer Congressman interferin' for, anyway?"
+
+"He's a rich Californian.  Thinks he's got a 'call,' I reckon, to
+look arter Injins, just as them Abolitionists looked arter slaves.
+And get hated just as they was by the folks here,--and as WE are,
+too, for the matter of that."
+
+"Well, I dunno," rejoined the farrier, "it don't seem nateral for
+white men to quarrel with each other about the way to treat an
+Injin, and that Injin lyin' in ambush to shoot 'em both.  And ef
+gov'ment would only make up its mind how to treat 'em, instead of
+one day pretendin' to be their 'Great Father' and treatin' them
+like babies, and the next makin' treaties with 'em like as they wos
+forriners, and the next sendin' out a handful of us to lick ten
+thousand of them--  Wot's the use of ONE regiment--even two--agin a
+nation--on their own ground?"
+
+"A nation,--and on their own ground,--that's just whar you've hit
+it, Softy.  That's the argument of that Congressman Atherly, as
+I've heard him talk with the kernel."
+
+"And what did the kernel say?"
+
+"The kernel reckoned it was his business to obey orders,--and so
+should you.  So shut your head!  If ye wanted to talk about
+gov'ment ye might say suthin' about its usin' us to convoy picnics
+and excursion parties around, who come out here to have a day's
+shootin', under some big-wig of a political boss or a railroad
+president, with a letter to the general.  And WE'RE told off to
+look arter their precious skins, and keep the Injins off 'em,--and
+they shootin' or skeerin' off the Injins' nat'ral game, and our
+provender!  Darn my skin ef there'll be much to scout for ef this
+goes on.  And b'gosh!--of they aren't now ringin' in a lot of
+titled forriners to hunt 'big game,' as they call it,--Lord This-
+and-That and Count So-and-So,--all of 'em with letters to the
+general from the Washington cabinet to show 'hospitality,' or from
+millionaires who've bin hobnobbin' with 'em in the old country.
+And darn my skin ef some of 'em ain't bringin' their wives and
+sisters along too.  There was a lord and lady passed through here
+under escort last week, and we're goin' to pick up some more of 'em
+at Fort Biggs tomorrow,--and I reckon some of us will be told off
+to act as ladies' maids or milliners.  Nothin' short of a good
+Injin scare, I reckon, would send them and us about our reg'lar
+business.  Whoa, then, will ye?  At it again, are ye?  What's gone
+of the d--d critter?"
+
+Here the fractious near horse was again beginning to show signs of
+disturbance and active terror.  His quivering nostrils were turned
+towards the wind, and he almost leaped the centre pole in his
+frantic effort to avoid it.  The eyes of the two men were turned
+instinctively in that direction.  Nothing was to be seen,--the
+illimitable plain and the sinking sun were all that met the eye.
+But the horse continued to struggle, and the wagon stopped.  Then
+it was discovered that the horse of an adjacent trooper was also
+laboring under the same mysterious excitement, and at the same
+moment wagon No. 3 halted.  The infection of some inexplicable
+terror was spreading among them.  Then two non-commissioned
+officers came riding down the line at a sharp canter, and were
+joined quickly by the young lieutenant, who gave an order.  The
+trumpeter instinctively raised his instrument to his lips, but was
+stopped by another order.
+
+And then, as seen by a distant observer, a singular spectacle was
+unfolded.  The straggling train suddenly seemed to resolve itself
+into a large widening circle of horsemen, revolving round and
+partly hiding the few heavy wagons that were being rapidly freed
+from their struggling teams.  These, too, joined the circle, and
+were driven before the whirling troopers.  Gradually the circle
+seemed to grow smaller under the "winding-up" of those evolutions,
+until the horseless wagons reappeared again, motionless, fronting
+the four points of the compass, thus making the radii of a smaller
+inner circle, into which the teams of the wagons as well as the
+troopers' horses were closely "wound up" and densely packed
+together in an immovable mass.  As the circle became smaller the
+troopers leaped from their horses,--which, however, continued to
+blindly follow each other in the narrower circle,--and ran to the
+wagons, carbines in hand.  In five minutes from the time of giving
+the order the straggling train was a fortified camp, the horses
+corralled in the centre, the dismounted troopers securely posted
+with their repeating carbines in the angles of the rude bastions
+formed by the deserted wagons, and ready for an attack.  The
+stampede, if such it was, was stopped.
+
+And yet no cause for it was to be seen!  Nothing in earth or sky
+suggested a reason for this extraordinary panic, or the marvelous
+evolution that suppressed it.  The guide, with three men in open
+order, rode out and radiated across the empty plain, returning as
+empty of result.  In an hour the horses were sufficiently calmed
+and fed, the camp slowly unwound itself, the teams were set to and
+were led out of the circle, and as the rays of the setting sun
+began to expand fanlike across the plain the cavalcade moved on.
+But between them and the sinking sun, and visible through its last
+rays, was a faint line of haze parallel with their track.  Yet even
+this, too, quickly faded away.
+
+Had the guide, however, penetrated half a mile further to the west
+he would have come upon the cause of the panic, and a spectacle
+more marvelous than that he had just witnessed.  For the
+illimitable plain with its monotonous prospect was far from being
+level; a hundred yards further on he would have slowly and
+imperceptibly descended into a depression nearly a mile in width.
+Here he not only would have completely lost sight of his own
+cavalcade, but have come upon another thrice its length.  For here
+was a trailing line of jog-trotting dusky shapes, some crouching on
+dwarf ponies half their size, some trailing lances, lodge-poles,
+rifles, women and children after them, all moving with a monotonous
+rhythmic motion as marked as the military precision of the other
+cavalcade, and always on a parallel line with it.  They had done so
+all day, keeping touch and distance by stealthy videttes that crept
+and crawled along the imperceptible slope towards the unconscious
+white men.  It was, no doubt, the near proximity of one of those
+watchers that had touched the keen scent of the troopers' horses.
+
+The moon came up; the two cavalcades, scarcely a mile apart, moved
+on in unison together.  Then suddenly the dusky caravan seemed to
+arise, stretch itself out, and swept away like a morning mist
+towards the west.  The bugles of Fort Biggs had just rung out.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Peter Atherly was up early the next morning pacing the veranda of
+the commandant's house at Fort Biggs.  It had been his intention to
+visit the new Indian Reservation that day, but he had just received
+a letter announcing an unexpected visit from his sister, who wished
+to join him.  He had never told her the secret of their Indian
+paternity, as it had been revealed to him from the scornful lips of
+Gray Eagle a year ago; he knew her strangely excitable nature;
+besides, she was a wife now, and the secret would have to be shared
+with her husband.  When he himself had recovered from the shock of
+the revelation, two things had impressed themselves upon his
+reserved and gloomy nature: a horror of his previous claim upon the
+Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own
+race.  He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one
+object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his
+position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy,
+should have given him this singular opportunity.
+
+Yet it was not an easy task or an enviable position.  He was
+obliged to divorce himself from his political party as well as keep
+clear of the wild schemes of impractical enthusiasts, too practical
+"contractors," and the still more helpless bigotry of Christian
+civilizers, who would have regenerated the Indian with a text which
+he did not understand and they were unable to illustrate by
+example.  He had expected the opposition of lawless frontiersmen
+and ignorant settlers--as roughly indicated in the conversation
+already recorded; indeed he had felt it difficult to argue his
+humane theories under the smoking roof of a raided settler's cabin,
+whose owner, however, had forgotten his own repeated provocations,
+or the trespass of which he was proud.  But Atherly's unaffected
+and unobtrusive zeal, his fixity of purpose, his undoubted courage,
+his self-abnegation, and above all the gentle melancholy and half-
+philosophical wisdom of this new missionary, won him the respect
+and assistance of even the most callous or the most skeptical of
+officials.  The Secretary of the Interior had given him carte
+blanche; the President trusted him, and it was said had granted him
+extraordinary powers.  Oddly enough it was only his own Californian
+constituency, who had once laughed at what they deemed his early
+aristocratic pretensions, who now found fault with his democratic
+philanthropy.  That a man who had been so well received in England--
+the news of his visit to Ashley Grange had been duly recorded--
+should sink so low as "to take up with the Injins" of his own
+country galled their republican pride.  A few of his personal
+friends regretted that he had not brought back from England more
+conservative and fashionable graces, and had not improved his
+opportunities.  Unfortunately there was no essentially English
+policy of trusting aborigines that they knew of.
+
+In his gloomy self-scrutiny he had often wondered if he ought not
+to openly proclaim his kinship with the despised race, but he was
+always deterred by the thought of his sister and her husband, as
+well as by the persistent doubt whether his advocacy of Indian
+rights with his fellow countrymen would be as well served by such a
+course.  And here again he was perplexed by a singular incident of
+his early missionary efforts which he had at first treated with
+cold surprise, but to which later reflection had given a new
+significance.  After Gray Eagle's revelation he had made a
+pilgrimage to the Indian country to verify the statements regarding
+his dead father,--the Indian chief Silver Cloud.  Despite the
+confusion of tribal dialects he was amazed to find that the Indian
+tongue came back to him almost as a forgotten boyish memory, so
+that he was soon able to do without an interpreter; but not until
+that functionary, who knew his secret, appeared one day as a more
+significant ambassador.  "Gray Eagle says if you want truly to be a
+brother to his people you must take a wife among them.  He loves
+you--take one of his!"  Peter, through whose veins--albeit of mixed
+blood--ran that Puritan ice so often found throughout the Great
+West, was frigidly amazed.  In vain did the interpreter assure him
+that the wife in question, Little Daybreak, was a wife only in
+name, a prudent reserve kept by Gray Eagle in the orphan daughter
+of a brother brave.  But Peter was adamant.  Whatever answer the
+interpreter returned to Gray Eagle he never knew.  But to his alarm
+he presently found that the Indian maiden Little Daybreak had been
+aware of Gray Eagle's offer, and had with pathetic simplicity
+already considered herself Peter's spouse.  During his stay at the
+encampment he found her sitting before his lodge every morning.  A
+girl of sixteen in years, a child of six in intellect, she flashed
+her little white teeth upon him when he lifted his tent flap,
+content to receive his grave, melancholy bow, or patiently trotted
+at his side carrying things he did not want, which she had taken
+from the lodge.  When he sat down to work, she remained seated at a
+distance, looking at him with glistening beady eyes like
+blackberries set in milk, and softly scratching the little bare
+brown ankle of one foot with the turned-in toes of the other, after
+an infantine fashion.  Yet after he had left--a still single man,
+solely though his interpreter's diplomacy, as he always believed--
+he was very worried as to the wisdom of his course.  Why should he
+not in this way ally himself to his unfortunate race irrevocably?
+Perhaps there was an answer somewhere in his consciousness which he
+dared not voice to himself.  Since his visit to the English
+Atherlys, he had put resolutely aside everything that related to
+that episode, which he now considered was an unhappy imposture.
+But there were times when a vision of Lady Elfrida, gazing at him
+with wondering, fascinated eyes, passed across his fancy; even the
+contact with his own race and his thoughts of their wrongs recalled
+to him the tomb of the soldier Atherly and the carven captive
+savage supporter.  He could not pass the upright supported bier of
+an Indian brave--slowly desiccating in the desert air--without
+seeing in the dead warrior's paraphernalia of arms and trophies
+some resemblance to the cross-legged crusader on whose marble
+effigy SHE had girlishly perched herself as she told the story of
+her ancestors.  Yet only the peaceful gloom and repose of the old
+church touched him now; even she, too, with all her glory of
+English girlhood, seemed to belong to that remote past.  She was
+part of the restful quiet of the church; the yews in the quaint old
+churchyard might have waved over her as well.
+
+Still, he was eager to see his sister, and if he should conclude to
+impart to her his secret, she might advise him.  At all events, he
+decided to delay his departure until her arrival, a decision with
+which the commanding officer concurred, as a foraging party had
+that morning discovered traces of Indians in the vicinity of the
+fort, and the lately arrived commissary train had reported the
+unaccountable but promptly prevented stampede.
+
+Unfortunately, his sister Jenny appeared accompanied by her
+husband, who seized an early opportunity to take Peter aside and
+confide to him his anxiety about her health, and the strange fits
+of excitement under which she occasionally labored.  Remembering
+the episode of the Californian woods three years ago, Peter stared
+at this good-natured, good-looking man, whose life he had always
+believed she once imperiled, and wondered more than ever at their
+strange union.
+
+"Do you ever quarrel?" asked Peter bluntly.
+
+"No," said the good-hearted fellow warmly, "never!  We have never
+had a harsh word; she's the dearest girl,--the best wife in the
+world to me, but"--he hesitated, "you know there are times when I
+think she confounds me with somebody else, and is strange!
+Sometimes when we are in company she stands alone and stares at
+everybody, without saying a word, as if she didn't understand them.
+Or else she gets painfully excited and dances all night until she
+is exhausted.  I thought, perhaps," he added timidly, "that you
+might know, and would tell me if she had any singular experience as
+a child,--any illness, or," he went on still more gently, "if
+perhaps her mother or father"--
+
+"No," interrupted Peter almost brusquely, with the sudden conviction
+that this was no time for revelation of his secret, "no, nothing."
+
+"The doctor says," continued Lascelles with that hesitating, almost
+mystic delicacy with which most gentlemen approach a subject upon
+which their wives talk openly, "that it may be owing to Jenny's
+peculiar state of health just now, you know, and that if--all went
+well, you know, and there should be--don't you see--a little
+child"--
+
+Peter interrupted him with a start.  A child!  Jenny's child!
+Silver Cloud's grandchild!  This was a complication he had not
+thought of.  No!  It was too late to tell his secret now.  He only
+nodded his head abstractedly and said coldly, "I dare say he is
+right."
+
+Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well.  Perhaps it was
+the excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe
+figure, nearly half a head taller than her husband's, was a
+striking one among the officers' wives in the commandant's sitting-
+room.  Her olive cheek glowed with a faint illuminating color;
+there was something even patrician in her slightly curved nose and
+high cheek bones, and her smile, rare even in her most excited
+moments, was, like her brother's, singularly fascinating.  The
+officers evidently thought so too, and when the young lieutenant of
+the commissary escort, fresh from West Point and Flirtation Walk,
+gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were slightly
+scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs.
+Lascelles received his attentions.  Even Peter was a little
+disturbed.  Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife's animation,
+and pleased at her success, gazed at her with unqualified
+admiration.  Indeed, he was so satisfied with her improvement, and
+so sanguine of her ultimate recovery, that he felt justified in
+leaving her with her brother and returning to Omaha by the regular
+mail wagon next day.  There was no danger to be apprehended in her
+accompanying Peter; they would have a full escort; the reservation
+lay in a direction unfrequented by marauding tribes; the road was
+the principal one used by the government to connect the fort with
+the settlements, and well traveled; the officers' wives had often
+journeyed thither.
+
+The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the
+journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and
+drew up before the house of the Indian agent.  Peter was relieved;
+he had been anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which
+might be produced on her excitable nature by a first view of her
+own kinsfolk, although she was still ignorant of her relationship.
+Her interest and curiosity, however, had nothing abnormal in it.
+But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon THEM at her
+first appearance.  A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her,
+and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she
+betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction
+that she drew close to him.  Knowing that his old interpreter and
+Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles
+away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced
+her as his sister.  But he presently found that the braves had
+added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen
+demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of
+the agent's wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination
+and inspection.  Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by
+the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.
+
+"Your sister is exciting quite a sensation here," he said.  "Do you
+know that some of these idiotic braves and the Medicine Man insist
+upon it that she's A SQUAW, and that you're keeping her in
+captivity against your plighted faith to them!  You'll excuse me,"
+he went on with an attempt to recover his gravity, "troubling you
+with their d--d fool talk, and you won't say anything to HER about
+it, but I thought you ought to know it on account of your position
+among 'em.  You don't want to lose their confidence, and you know
+how easily their skeery faculties are stampeded with an idea!"
+
+"Where is she now?" demanded Peter, with a darkening face.
+
+"Somewhere with the squaws, I reckon.  I thought she might be a
+little skeered of the braves, and I've kept them away.  SHE'S all
+right, you know; only if you intend to stay here long I'd"--
+
+But Peter was already striding away in the direction of a thicket
+of cottonwood where he heard the ripple of women's and children's
+voices.  When he had penetrated it, he found his sister sitting on
+a stump, surrounded by a laughing, gesticulating crowd of young
+girls and old women, with a tightly swaddled papoose in her lap.
+Some of them had already half mischievously, half curiously
+possessed themselves of her dust cloak, hat, parasol, and gloves,
+and were parading before her in their grotesque finery, apparently
+as much to her childish excited amusement as their own.  She was
+even answering their gesticulations with equivalent gestures in her
+attempt to understand them, and trying amidst shouts of laughter to
+respond to the monotonous chant of the old women who were
+zigzagging a dance before her.  With the gayly striped blankets
+lying on the ground, the strings of beads, wampum, and highly
+colored feathers hanging from the trees, and the flickering lights
+and shadows, it was an innocent and even idyllic picture, but the
+more experienced Peter saw in the performances only the uncertain
+temper and want of consecutive idea of playing animals, and the
+stolid unwinking papoose in his sister's lap gave his sentiment a
+momentary shock.
+
+Seeing him approach she ran to meet him, the squaws and children
+slinking away from his grave face.  "I have had such a funny time,
+Peter!  Only to think of it, I believe they've never seen men or
+women with decent clothes before,--of course the settlers' wives
+don't dress much,--and I believe they'd have had everything I
+possess if you hadn't come.  But they're TOO funny for anything.
+It was killing to see them put on my hat wrong side before, and try
+to make one out of my parasol.  But I like them a great deal better
+than those gloomy chiefs, and I think I understand them almost.
+And do you know, Peter, somehow I seem to have known them all
+before.  And those dear little papooses, aren't they ridiculously
+lovely.  I only wish"--she stopped, for Peter had somewhat
+hurriedly taken the Indian boy from her arms and restored it to the
+frightened mother.  A singular change came over her face, and she
+glanced at him quickly.  But she resumed, with a heightened color,
+"I like it ever so much better here than down at the fort.  And
+ever so much better than New York.  I don't wonder that you like
+them so much, Peter, and are so devoted to them.  Don't be angry,
+dear, because I let them have my things; I'm sure I never cared
+particularly for them, and I think it would be such fun to dress as
+they do."  Peter remembered keenly his sudden shock at her
+precipitate change to bright colors after leaving her novitiate at
+the Sacred Heart.  "I do hope," she went on eagerly, "that we are
+going to stay a long time here."
+
+"We are leaving to-morrow," he said curtly.  "I find I have urgent
+business at the fort."
+
+And they did leave.  None too soon, thought Peter and the Indian
+agent, as they glanced at the faces of the dusky chiefs who had
+gathered around the cabin.  Luckily the presence of their cavalry
+escort rendered any outbreak impossible, and the stoical
+taciturnity of the race kept Peter from any verbal insult.  But
+Mrs. Lascelles noticed their lowering dissatisfaction, and her eyes
+flashed.  "I wonder you don't punish them," she said simply.
+
+For a few days after their return she did not allude to her visit,
+and Peter was beginning to think that her late impressions were as
+volatile as they were childlike.  He devoted himself to his
+government report, and while he kept up his communications with the
+reservation and the agent, for the present domiciled himself at the
+fort.
+
+Colonel Bryce, the commandant though doubtful of civilians, was not
+slow to appreciate the difference of playing host to a man of
+Atherly's wealth and position and even found in Peter's reserve and
+melancholy an agreeable relief to the somewhat boisterous and
+material recreations of garrison life, and a gentle check upon the
+younger officers.  For, while Peter did not gamble or drink, there
+was yet an unobtrusive and gentle dignity in his abstention that
+relieved him from the attitude of a prig or an "example."  Mrs.
+Lascelles was popular with the officers, and accepted more
+tolerantly by the wives, since they recognized her harmlessness.
+Once or twice she was found apparently interested in the
+gesticulations of a few "friendlies" who had penetrated the parade
+ground of the fort to barter beads and wampum.  The colonel was
+obliged at last to caution her against this, as it was found that in
+her inexperience she had given them certain articles that were
+contraband of the rules, and finally to stop them from an intrusion
+which was becoming more frequent and annoying.  Left thus to
+herself, she relieved her isolation by walks beyond the precincts of
+the garrison, where she frequently met those "friendly" wanderers,
+chiefly squaws and children.  Here she was again cautioned by the
+commander,--
+
+"Don't put too much faith in those creatures, Mrs. Lascelles."
+
+Jenny elevated her black brows and threw up her arched nose like a
+charger.  "I'm not afraid of old women and children," she said
+loftily.
+
+"But I am," said the colonel gravely.  "It's a horrible thing to
+think of, but these feeble old women and innocent children are
+always selected to torture the prisoners taken by the braves, and,
+by Jove, they seem to like it."
+
+Thus restricted, Mrs. Lascelles fell back upon the attentions of
+Lieutenant Forsyth, whose gallantry was always as fresh as his
+smart cadet-like tunics, and they took some rides together.
+Whether it was military caution or the feminine discretion of the
+colonel's wife,--to the quiet amusement of the other officers,--a
+trooper was added to the riding party by the order of the colonel,
+and thereafter it consisted of three.  One night, however, the
+riders did not appear at dinner, and there was considerable
+uneasiness mingled with some gossip throughout the garrison.  It
+was already midnight before they arrived, and then with horses
+blown and trembling with exhaustion, and the whole party bearing
+every sign of fatigue and disturbance.  The colonel said a few
+sharp, decisive words to the subaltern, who, pale and reticent,
+plucked at his little moustache, but took the whole blame upon
+himself.  HE and Mrs. Lascelles had, he said, outridden the trooper
+and got lost; it was late when Cassidy (the trooper) found them,
+but it was no fault of HIS, and they had to ride at the top of
+their speed to cover the ground between them and the fort.  It was
+noticed that Mrs. Lascelles scarcely spoke to Forsyth, and turned
+abruptly away from the colonel's interrogations and went to her
+room.
+
+Peter, absorbed in his report, scarcely noticed the incident, nor
+the singular restraint that seemed to fall upon the little military
+household for a day or two afterwards.  He had accepted the
+lieutenant's story without comment or question; he knew his own
+sister too well to believe that she had lent herself to a
+flirtation with Forsyth; indeed, he had rather pitied the young
+officer when he remembered Lascelles' experience in his early
+courtship.  But he was somewhat astonished one afternoon to find
+the trooper Cassidy alone in his office.
+
+"Oi thought Oi'd make bould to have a word wid ye, sorr," he said,
+recovering from a stiff salute with his fingers nipping the cord of
+his trousers.  "It's not for meeself, sorr, although the ould man
+was harrd on me, nor for the leddy, your sister, but for the sake
+of the leftenant, sorr, who the ould man was harrdest on of all.
+Oi was of the parrty that rode with your sister."
+
+"Yes, yes, I remember, I heard the story," said Peter.  "She and
+Mr. Forsyth got lost."
+
+"Axin' your pardin, sorr, she didn't.  Mr. Forsyth loid.  Loid like
+an officer and a jintleman--as he is, God bless him--to save a
+leddy, more betoken your sister, sorr.  They never got lost, sorr.
+We was all three together from the toime we shtarted till we got
+back, and it's the love av God that we ever got back at all.  And
+it's breaking me hearrt, sorr, to see HIM goin' round with the
+black looks of everybody upon him, and he a-twirlin' his moustache
+and purtending not to mind."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Peter, uneasily.
+
+"Oi mane to be tellin' you what happened, sorr," said Cassidy
+stoutly.  "When we shtarted out Oi fell three files to the rear, as
+became me, so as not to be in the way o' their colloguing, but
+sorra a bit o' stragglin' was there, and Oi kept them afore me all
+the toime.  When we got to Post Oak Bottom the leddy p'ints her
+whip off to the roight, and sez she: 'It's a fine bit of turf
+there, Misther Forsyth,' invitin' like, and with that she gallops
+away to the right.  The leftenant follys her, and Oi closed up the
+rear.  So we rides away innoshent like amongst the trees, me
+thinkin' only it wor a mighty queer place for manoovrin', until we
+seed, just beyond us in the hollow, the smoke of an Injin camp and
+a lot of women and childer.  And Mrs. Lascelles gets off and goes
+to discoursin' and blarneying wid 'em: and Oi sees Mr. Forsyth
+glancin' round and lookin' oneasy.  Then he goes up and sez
+something to your sister, and she won't give him a hearin'.  And
+then he tells her she must mount and be off.  And she turns upon
+him, bedad, like a tayger, and bids him be off himself.  Then he
+comes to me and sez he, 'Oi don't like the look o' this, Cassidy,'
+sez he; 'the woods behind is full of braves,' sez he.  'Thrue for
+you, leftenant,' sez Oi, 'it's into a trap that the leddy hez led
+us, God save her!'  'Whisht,' he sez, 'take my horse, it's the
+strongest.  Go beside her, and when Oi say the word lift her up
+into the saddle before ye, and gallop like blazes.  Oi'll bring up
+the rear and the other horse.'  Wid that we changed horses and
+cantered up to where she was standing, and he gives the word when
+she isn't lookin', and Oi grabs her up--she sthrugglin' like mad
+but not utterin' a cry--and Oi lights out for the trail agin.  And
+sure enough the braves made as if they would folly, but the
+leftenant throws the reins of her horse over the horn of his
+saddle, and whips out his revolver and houlds 'em back till I've
+got well away to the trail again.  And then they let fly their
+arrows, and begorra the next thing a BULLET whizzes by him.  And
+then he knows they have arrms wid 'em and are 'hostiles,' and he
+rowls the nearest one over, wheelin' and fightin' and coverin' our
+retreat till we gets to the road agin.  And they daren't folly us
+out of cover.  Then the lady gets more sinsible, and the leftenant
+pershuades her to mount her horse agin.  But before we comes to the
+fort, he sez to me: 'Cassidy,' sez he, 'not a word o' this on
+account of the leddy.'  And I was mum, sorr, while he was shootin'
+off his mouth about him bein' lost and all that, and him bein'
+bully-ragged by the kernel, and me knowin' that but for him your
+sister wouldn't be between these walls here, and Oi wouldn't be
+talkin' to ye.  And shure, sorr, ye might be tellin's the kernel as
+how the leddy was took by the hysterics, and was that loony that
+she didn't know whatever she was sayin', and so get the leftenant
+in favor again."
+
+"I will speak with the colonel to-night," said Peter gloomily.
+
+"Lord save yer honor," returned the trooper gratefully, "and if ye
+could be sayin' that the LEDDY tould you,--it would only be the
+merest taste of a loi ye'd be tellin',--and you'd save me from
+breakin' me word to the leftenant."
+
+"I shall of course speak to my sister first," returned Peter, with
+a guilty consciousness that he had accepted the trooper's story
+mainly from his previous knowledge of his sister's character.
+Nevertheless, in spite of this foregone conclusion, he DID speak to
+her.  To his surprise she did not deny it.  Lieutenant Forsyth,--a
+vain and conceited fool,--whose silly attentions she had accepted
+solely that she might get recreation beyond the fort,--had presumed
+to tell her what SHE must do!  As if SHE was one of those stupid
+officers' wives or sisters!  And it never would have happened if
+he--Peter--had let her remain at the reservation with the Indian
+agent's wife, or if "Charley" (the gentle Lascelles) were here!  HE
+would have let her go, or taken her there.  Besides all the while
+she was among friends; HIS, Peter's own friends,--the people whose
+cause he was championing!  In vain did Peter try to point out to
+her that these "people" were still children in mind and impulse,
+and capable of vacillation or even treachery.  He remembered he was
+talking to a child in mind and impulse, who had shown the same
+qualities, and in trying to convince her of her danger he felt he
+was only voicing the common arguments of his opponents.
+
+He spoke also to the colonel, excusing her through her ignorance,
+her trust in his influence with the savages, and the general
+derangement of her health.  The colonel, relieved of his suspicions
+of a promising young officer, was gentle and sympathetic, but firm
+as to Peter's future course.  In a moment of caprice and
+willfulness she might imperil the garrison as she had her escort,
+and, more than that, she was imperiling Peter's influence with the
+Indians.  Absurd stories had come to his ears regarding the
+attitude of the reservation towards him.  He thought she ought to
+return home as quickly as possible.  Fortunately an opportunity
+offered.  The general commanding had advised him of the visit to
+the fort of a party of English tourists who had been shooting in
+the vicinity, and who were making the fort the farthest point of
+their western excursion.  There were three or four ladies in the
+party, and as they would be returning to the line of railroad under
+escort, she could easily accompany them.  This, added Colonel
+Carter, was also Mrs. Carter's opinion,--she was a woman of
+experience, and had a married daughter of her own.  In the mean
+time Peter had better not broach the subject to his sister, but
+trust to the arrival of the strangers, who would remain for a week,
+and who would undoubtedly divert Mrs. Lascelles' impressible mind,
+and eventually make the proposition more natural and attractive.
+
+In the interval Peter revisited the reservation, and endeavored to
+pacify the irritation that had sprung from his previous inspection.
+The outrage at Post Oak Bottom he was assured had no relation to
+the incident at the reservation, but was committed by some
+stragglers from other tribes who had not yet accepted the
+government bounty, yet had not been thus far classified as
+"hostile."  There had been no "Ghost Dancing" nor other indication
+of disturbance.  The colonel had not deemed it necessary to send
+out an exemplary force, or make a counter demonstration.  The
+incident was allowed to drop.  At the reservation Peter had ignored
+the previous conduct of the chiefs towards him; had with quiet
+courage exposed himself fully--unarmed and unattended--amongst
+them, and had as fully let it be known that this previous incident
+was the reason that his sister had not accompanied him on his
+second visit.  He left them at the close of the second day more
+satisfied in his mind, and perhaps in a more enthusiastic attitude
+towards his report.
+
+As he came within sound of the sunset bugles, he struck a narrower
+trail which led to the fort, through an oasis of oaks and
+cottonwoods and a small stream or "branch," which afterwards lost
+itself in the dusty plain.  He had already passed a few settler's
+cabins, a sutler's shop, and other buildings that had sprung up
+around this armed nucleus of civilization--which, in due season,
+was to become a frontier town.  But as yet the brief wood was wild
+and secluded; frequented only by the women and children of the
+fort, within whose protecting bounds it stood, and to whose formal
+"parade," and trim white and green cottage "quarters," it afforded
+an agreeable relief.  As he rode abstractedly forward under the low
+cottonwood vault he felt a strange influence stealing over him, an
+influence that was not only a present experience but at the same
+time a far-off memory.  The concave vault above deepened; the
+sunset light from the level horizon beyond streamed through the
+leaves as through the chequers of stained glass windows; through
+the two shafts before him stretched the pillared aisles of Ashley
+Church!  He was riding as in a dream, and when a figure suddenly
+slipped across his pathway from a column-like tree trunk, he woke
+with the disturbance and sense of unreality of a dream.  For he saw
+Lady Elfrida standing before him!
+
+It was not a mere memory conjured up by association, for although
+the figure, face, and attitude were the same, there were certain
+changes of costume which the eye of recollection noticed.  In place
+of the smart narrow-brimmed sailor hat he remembered, she was
+wearing a slouched cavalry hat with a gold cord around its crown,
+that, with all its becomingness and picturesque audacity, seemed to
+become characteristic and respectable, as a crest to her refined
+head, and as historic as a Lely canvas.  She wore a flannel shirt,
+belted in at her slight waist with a band of yellow leather,
+defining her small hips, and short straight pleatless skirts that
+fell to her trim ankles and buckled leather shoes.  She was fresh
+and cool, wholesome and clean, free and unfettered; indeed, her
+beauty seemed only an afterthought or accident.  So much so that
+when Peter saw her afterwards, amidst the billowy, gauzy, and
+challenging graces of the officer's wives, who were dressed in
+their best and prettiest frocks to welcome her, the eye turned
+naturally from that suggestion of enhancement to the girl who
+seemed to defy it.  She was clearly not an idealized memory, a
+spirit or a ghost, but naturalistic and rosy; he thought a trifle
+rosier, as she laughingly addressed him:--
+
+"I suppose it isn't quite fair to surprise you like that," she
+said, with an honest girlish hand-shake, "for you see I know all
+about you now, and what you are doing here, and even when you were
+expected; and I dare say you thought we were still in England, if
+you remembered us at all.  And we haven't met since that day at
+Ashley Church when I put my foot in it,--or rather on your pet
+protege's, the Indian's: you remember Major Atherly's tomb?  And to
+think that all the while we didn't know that you were a public man
+and a great political reformer, and had a fad like this.  Why, we'd
+have got up meetings for you, and my father would have presided,--
+he's always fond of doing these things,--and we'd have passed
+resolutions, and given you subscriptions, and Bibles, and flannel
+shirts, and revolvers--but I believe you draw the line at that.  My
+brother was saying only the other day that you weren't half praised
+enough for going in for this sort of thing when you were so rich,
+and needn't care.  And so that's why you rushed away from Ashley
+Grange,--just to come here and work out your mission?"
+
+His whole life, his first wild Californian dream, his English
+visit, the revelation of Gray Eagle, the final collapse of his old
+beliefs, were whirling through his brain to the music of this clear
+young voice.  And by some cruel irony of circumstance it seemed now
+to even mock his later dreams of expiation as it also called back
+his unhappy experience of the last week.
+
+"Have you--have you"--he stammered with a faint smile, "seen my
+sister?"
+
+"Not yet," said Lady Elfrida.  "I believe she is not well and is
+confined to her room; you will introduce me, won't you?" she added
+eagerly.  "Of course, when we heard that there was an Atherly here
+we inquired about you; and I told them you were a relation of
+ours," she went on with a half-mischievous shyness,--"you remember
+the de Bracys,--and they seemed surprised and rather curious.  I
+suppose one does not talk so much about these things over here, and
+I dare say you have so much to occupy your mind you don't talk of
+us in England."  With the quickness of a refined perception she saw
+a slight shade in his face, and changed the subject.  "And we have
+had such a jolly time; we have met so many pleasant people; and
+they've all been so awfully good to us, from the officials and
+officers down to the plainest working-man.  And all so naturally
+too--so different from us.  I sometimes think we have to work
+ourselves up to be civil to strangers."  "No," she went on gayly,
+in answer to his protesting gesture, and his stammered reminder of
+his own reception.  "No.  You came as a sort of kinsman, and Sir
+Edward knew all about you before he asked you down to the Grange--
+or even sent over for me from the Towers.  No! you Americans take
+people on their 'face value,' as my brother Reggy says, and we
+always want to know what are the 'securities.'  And then American
+men are more gallant, though," she declared mischievously, "I think
+you are an exception in that way.  Indeed," she went on, "the more
+I see of your countrymen the less you seem like them.  You are more
+like us,--more like an Englishman--indeed, more like an Englishman
+than most Englishmen,--I mean in the matter of reserve and all that
+sort of thing, you know.  It's odd,--isn't it?  Is your sister like
+you?"
+
+"You shall judge for yourself," said Peter with a gayety that was
+forced in proportion as his forebodings became more gloomy.  Would
+his sister's peculiarities--even her secret--be safe from the clear
+eyes of the young girl?
+
+"I know I shall like her," said Lady Elfrida, simply.  "I mean to
+make friends with her before we leave, and I hope to see a great
+deal of her; and," she said with a naive non sequitur, that,
+however, had its painful significance to Peter, "I do want you to
+show me some Indians--your Indians, you know YOUR friends.  I've
+seen some of them, of course; I am afraid I am a little prejudiced,
+for I did not like them.  You see my taste has to be educated, I
+suppose; but I thought them so foolishly vain and presuming."
+
+"That is their perfect childishness," said Peter quickly.  "It is
+not, I believe, considered a moral defect," he added bitterly.
+
+Lady Elfrida laughed, and yet at the same moment a look of appeal
+that was in itself quite as childlike shone in her blue eyes.
+"There, I have blundered again, I know; but I told you I have such
+ridiculous prejudices!  And I really want to like them as you do.
+Only," she laughed again, "it seems strange that YOU, of all men,
+should have interested yourself in people so totally different to
+you.  But what will be the result if your efforts are successful?
+Will they remain a distinct race?  Will you make citizens,
+soldiers, congressmen, governors of them?  Will they intermarry
+with the whites?  Is that a part of your plan?  I hope not!"
+
+It was a part of Peter's sensitive excitement that even through the
+unconscious irony of this speech he was noticing the difference
+between the young English girl's evident interest in a political
+problem and the utter indifference of his own countrywomen.  Here
+was a girl scarcely out of her teens, with no pretension to being a
+blue stocking, with half the aplomb of an American girl of her own
+age, gravely considering a question of political economy.  Oddly
+enough, it added to his other irritation, and he said almost
+abruptly, "Why not?"
+
+She took the question literally and with a little youthful
+timidity.  "But these mixed races never attain to anything, do
+they?  I thought that was understood.  But," she added with
+feminine quickness, "and I suppose it's again only a PERSONAL
+argument, YOU wouldn't like your sister to have married an Indian,
+would you?"
+
+The irony of the situation had reached its climax to Peter.  It
+didn't seem to be his voice that said, "I can answer by an argument
+still more personal.  I have even thought myself of marrying an
+Indian woman."
+
+It seemed to him that what he said was irrevocable, but he was
+desperate.  It seemed to him that in a moment more he would have
+told her his whole secret.  But the young girl drew back from him
+with a slight start of surprise.  There may have been something in
+the tone of his voice and in his manner that verged upon a
+seriousness she was never contemplating in her random talk; it may
+have been an uneasiness of some youthful imprudence in pressing the
+subject upon a man of his superiority, and that his abrupt climax
+was a rebuke.  But it was only for a moment; her youthful buoyancy,
+and, above all, a certain common sense that was not incompatible to
+her high nature, came to her rescue.  "But that," she said with
+quick mischievousness, "would be a SACRIFICE taken in the interest
+of these people, don't you see; and being a sacrifice, it's no
+argument."
+
+Peter saw his mistake, but there was something so innocent and
+delightful in the youthful triumph of this red-lipped logician,
+that he was forced to smile.  I have said that his smile was rare
+and fascinating, a concession wrung from his dark face and calm
+beardless lips that most people found irresistible, but it was odd,
+nevertheless, that Lady Elfrida now for the first time felt a
+sudden and not altogether unpleasant embarrassment over the very
+subject she had approached with such innocent fearlessness.  There
+was a new light in her eyes, a fresher color in her cheeks as she
+turned her face--she knew not why--away from him.  But it enabled
+her to see a figure approaching them from the fort.  And I grieve
+to say that, perhaps for the first time in her life, Lady Elfrida
+was guilty of an affected start.
+
+"Oh, here's Reggy coming to look for me.  I'd quite forgotten, but
+I'm so glad.  I want you to know my brother Reggy.  He was always
+so sorry he missed you at the Grange."
+
+The tall, young, good-looking brown Englishman who had sauntered up
+bestowed a far more critical glance upon Peter's horse than upon
+Peter, but nevertheless grasped his hand heartily as his sister
+introduced him.  Perhaps both men were equally undemonstrative,
+although the reserve of one was from temperament and the other from
+education.  Nevertheless Lord Reginald remarked, with a laugh, that
+it was awfully jolly to be there, and that it had been a beastly
+shame that he was in Scotland when Atherly was at the Grange.  That
+none of them had ever suspected till they came to the fort that he,
+Atherly, was one of those government chappies, and so awfully keen
+on Indian politics.  "Friddy" had been the first to find it out,
+but they thought she was chaffing.  At which "Friddy," who had
+suddenly resolved herself into the youthfulest of schoolgirls in
+the presence of her brother, put her parasol like an Indian club
+behind her back, and still rosy, beamed admiringly upon Reggy.
+Then the three, Peter leading his horse, moved on towards the fort,
+presently meeting "Georgy," the six-foot Guardsman cousin in
+extraordinary tweeds and flannel shirt; Lord Runnybroke, uncle of
+Friddy, middle-aged and flannel-shirted, a mighty hunter; Lady
+Runnybroke, in a brown duster, but with a stately head that
+suggested ostrich feathers; Moyler-Spence, M. P., with an eyeglass,
+and the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, closely attended by the always gallant
+Lieutenant Forsyth.  Peter began to feel a nervous longing to be
+alone on the burning plain and the empty horizon beyond them, until
+he could readjust himself to these new conditions, and glanced
+half-wearily around him.  But his eye met Friddy's, who seemed to
+have evoked this gathering with a wave of her parasol, like the
+fairy of a pantomime, and he walked on in silence.
+
+A day or two of unexpected pleasure passed for Peter.  In these new
+surroundings he found he could separate Lady Elfrida from his
+miserable past, and the conventional restraint of Ashley Grange.
+Again, the revelation of her familiar name Friddy seemed to make
+her more accessible and human to him than her formal title, and
+suited the girlish simplicity that lay at the foundation of her
+character, of which he had seen so little before.  At least so he
+fancied, and so excused himself; it was delightful to find her
+referring to him as an older friend; pleasant, indeed, to see that
+her family tacitly recognized it, and frequently appealed to him
+with the introduction, "Friddy says you can tell us," or "You and
+Friddy had better arrange it between you."  Even the dreaded
+introduction of his sister was an agreeable surprise, owing to Lady
+Elfrida's frank and sympathetic prepossession, which Jenny could
+not resist.  In a few moments they were walking together in serious
+and apparently confidential conversation.  For to Peter's wonder it
+was the "Lady Elfrida" side of the English girl's nature that
+seemed to have attracted Jenny, and not the playfulness of
+"Friddy," and he was delighted to see that the young girl had
+assumed a grave chaperonship of the tall Mrs. Lascelles that would
+have done credit to Mrs. Carter or Lady Runnybroke.  Had he been
+less serious he might have been amused, too, at the importance of
+his own position in the military outpost, through the arrival of
+the strangers.  That this grave political enthusiast and civilian
+should be on familiar terms with a young Englishwoman of rank was
+at first inconceivable to the officers.  And that he had never
+alluded to it before seemed to them still more remarkable.
+
+Nevertheless, there was much liveliness and good fellowship at the
+fort.  Captains and lieutenants down to the youngest "cub,"
+Forsyth, vied with each other to please the Englishmen, supplied
+them with that characteristic American humor and anecdote which it
+is an Englishman's privilege to bring away with him, and were
+picturesquely and chivalrously devoted in their attentions to the
+ladies, who were pleased and amused by it, though it is to be
+doubted if it increased their respect for the giver, although they
+were more grateful for it than the average American woman.  Lady
+Elfrida found the officers very entertaining and gallant.
+Accustomed to the English officer, and his somewhat bored way of
+treating his profession and his duties, she may have been amused at
+the zeal, earnestness, and enthusiasm of these youthful warriors,
+who aspired to appear as nothing but soldiers, when she contrasted
+them with her Guardsmen relatives who aspired to be everything else
+but that; but she kept it to herself.  It was a recognized,
+respectable, and even superior occupation for gentlemen in England;
+what it might be in America,--who knows?  She certainly found
+Peter, the civilian, more attractive, for there really was nothing
+English to compare him with, and she had something of the same
+feeling in her friendship for Jenny, except the patronage which
+Jenny seemed to solicit, and perhaps require, as a foreigner.
+
+One afternoon the English guests, accompanied by a few of their
+hosts and a small escort, were making a shooting expedition to the
+vicinity of Green Spring, when Peter, plunged in his report, looked
+up to find his sister entering his office.  Her face was pale, and
+there was something in her expression which reawakened his old
+anxiety.  Nevertheless he smiled, and said gently:--
+
+"Why are you not enjoying yourself with the others?"
+
+"I have a headache," she said, languidly, "but," lifting her eyes
+suddenly to his, "why are YOU not?  You are their good friend, you
+know,--even their relation."
+
+"No more than you are," he returned, with affected gayety.  "But
+look at the report--it is only half finished!  I have already been
+shirking it for them."
+
+"You mustn't let your devotion to the Indians keep you from your
+older friends," said Mrs. Lascelles, with an odd laugh.  "But you
+never told me about these people before, Peter; tell me now.  They
+were very kind to you, weren't they, on account of your
+relationship?"
+
+"Entirely on account of that," said Peter, with a sudden bitterness
+he could not repress.  "But they are very pleasant," he added
+quickly, "and very simple and unaffected, in spite of their rank;
+perhaps I ought to say, BECAUSE of it."
+
+"You mean they are kind to us because they feel themselves
+superior,--just as you are kind to the Indians, Peter."
+
+"I am afraid they have no such sense of political equality towards
+us, Jenny, as impels me to be just to the Indian," he said with
+affected lightness.  "But Lady Elfrida sympathizes with the
+Indians--very much."
+
+"She!"  The emphasis which his sister put upon the personal pronoun
+was unmistakable, but Peter ignored it, and so apparently did she,
+as she said the next moment in a different voice, "She's very
+pretty, don't you think?"
+
+"Very," said Peter coldly.
+
+There was a long pause.  Peter slightly fingered one of the sheets
+of his delayed report on his desk.  His sister looked up.  "I'm
+afraid I'm as bad as Lady Elfrida in keeping you from your Indians;
+but I had something to say to you.  No matter, another time will do
+when you're not so busy."
+
+"Please go on now," said Peter, with affected unconcern, yet with a
+feeling of uneasiness creeping over him.
+
+"It was only this," said Jenny, seating herself with her elbow on
+the desk and her chin in a cup-like hollow of her hand, "did you
+ever think that in the interests of these poor Indians, you know,
+purely for the sake of your belief in them, and just to show that
+you were above vulgar prejudices,--did you ever think you could
+marry one of them?"
+
+Two thoughts flashed quickly on Peter's mind,--first, that Lady
+Elfrida had repeated something of their conversation to his sister;
+secondly, that some one had told her of Little Daybreak.  Each was
+equally disturbing.  But he recovered himself quickly and said, "I
+might if I thought it was required.  But even a sacrifice is not
+always an example."
+
+"Then you think it would be a sacrifice?" she said, slowly raising
+her dark eyes to his.
+
+"If I did something against received opinion, against precedent,
+and for aught I know against even the prejudices of those I wish to
+serve, however lofty my intention was and however great the benefit
+to them in the end, it would still be a sacrifice in the present."
+He saw his own miserable logic and affected didactics, but he went
+on lightly, "But why do you ask such a question?  You haven't any
+one in your mind for me, have you?"
+
+She had risen thoughtfully and was moving towards the door.
+Suddenly she turned with a quick, odd vivacity: "Perhaps I had.
+Oh, Peter, there was such a lovely little squaw I saw the last time
+I was at Oak Bottom!  She was no darker than I am, but so
+beautiful.  Even in her little cotton gown and blanket, with only a
+string of beads around her throat, she was as pretty as any one
+here.  And I dare say she could be educated and appear as well as
+any white woman.  I should so like to have you see her.  I would
+have tried to bring her to the fort, but the braves are very
+jealous of their wives or daughters seeing white men, you know, and
+I was afraid of the colonel."
+
+She had spoken volubly and with a strange excitement, but even at
+the moment her face changed again, and as she left the office, with
+a quick laugh and parting gesture, there were tears in her eyes.
+
+Accustomed to her moods and caprices, Peter thought little of the
+intrusion, relieved as he was of his first fears.  She had come to
+him from loneliness and curiosity, and, perhaps, he thought with a
+sad smile, from a little sisterly jealousy of the young girl who
+had evinced such an interest in him, and had known him before.  He
+took up his pen and continued the interrupted paragraph of his
+report.
+
+"I am satisfied that much of the mischievous and extravagant
+prejudice against the half breed and all alliances of the white and
+red races springs from the ignorance of the frontiersman and his
+hasty generalization of facts.  There is no doubt that an
+intermixture of blood brings out purely superficial contrasts the
+more strongly, and that against the civilizing habits and even
+costumes of the half breed, certain Indian defects appear the more
+strongly as in the case of the color line of the quadroon and
+octoroon, but it must not be forgotten that these are only the
+contrasts of specific improvement, and the inference that the
+borrowed defects of a half breed exceed the original defects of the
+full-blooded aborigine is utterly illogical."  He stopped suddenly
+and laid down his pen with a heightened color; the bugle had blown,
+the guard was turning out to receive the commandant and his
+returning party, among whom was Friddy.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Through the illusions of depression and distance the "sink" of
+Butternut Creek seemed only an incrustation of blackish moss on the
+dull gray plain.  It was not until one approached within half a
+mile of it that it resolved itself into a copse of butternut-trees
+sunken below the distant levels.  Here once, in geological story,
+the waters of Butternut Creek, despairing of ever crossing the
+leagues of arid waste before them, had suddenly disappeared in the
+providential interposition of an area of looser soil, and so given
+up the effort and the ghost forever, their grave being marked by
+the butternut copse, chance-sown by bird or beast in the saturated
+ground.  In Indian legend the "sink" commemorated the equally
+providential escape of a great tribe who, surrounded by enemies,
+appealed to the Great Spirit for protection, and was promptly
+conveyed by subterraneous passages to the banks of the Great River
+a hundred miles away.  Its outer edges were already invaded by the
+dust of the plain, but within them ran cool recesses, a few
+openings, and the ashes of some long-forgotten camp-fires.  To-day
+its sombre shadows were relieved by bright colored dresses, the
+jackets of the drivers of a large sutler's wagon, whose white
+canvas head marked the entrance of the copse, and all the
+paraphernalia of a picnic.  It was a party gotten up by the foreign
+guests to the ladies of the fort, prepared and arranged by the
+active Lady Elfrida, assisted by the only gentleman of the party,
+Peter Atherly, who, from his acquaintance with the locality, was
+allowed to accompany them.  The other gentlemen, who with a large
+party of officers and soldiers were shooting in the vicinity, were
+sufficiently near for protection.  They would rejoin the ladies
+later.
+
+"It does not seem in the least as if we were miles away from any
+town or habitation," said Lady Runnybroke, complacently seating
+herself on a stump, "and I shouldn't be surprised to see a church
+tower through those trees.  It's very like the hazel copse at
+Longworth, you know.  Not at all what I expected."
+
+"For the matter of that neither are the Indians," said the Hon.
+Evelyn Rayne.  "Did you ever see such grotesque creatures in their
+cast-off boots and trousers?  They're no better than gypsies.  I
+wonder what Mr. Atherly can find in them."
+
+"And he a rich man, too,--they say he's got a mine in California
+worth a million,--to take up a craze like this," added the lively
+Mrs. Captain Joyce, "that's what gets me!  You know," she went on
+confidentially, "that cranks and reformers are always poor--it's
+quite natural; but I don't see what he, a rich man, expects to make
+by his reforms, I'm sure."
+
+"He'll get over it in time," said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, "they all
+do.  At least he expects to get the reforms he wants in a year, and
+then he's coming over to England again."
+
+"Indeed, how very nice," responded Lady Runnybroke quickly.  "Did
+he say so?"
+
+"No.  But Friddy says he is."
+
+The two officers' wives glanced at each other.  Lady Runnybroke put
+up her eyeglass in default of ostrich feathers, and said
+didactically, "I'm sure Mr. Atherly is very much in earnest, and
+sincerely devoted to his work.  And in a man of his wealth and
+position here it's most estimable.  My dear," she said, getting up
+and moving towards Mrs. Lascelles, "we were just saying how good
+and unselfish your brother was in his work for these poor people."
+
+But Jenny Lascelles must have been in one of those abstracted moods
+which so troubled her husband, for she seemed to be staring
+straight before her into the recesses of the wood.  In her there
+was a certain resemblance to the attitude of a listening animal.
+
+"I wish Mr. Atherly was a little more unselfish to US poor people,"
+said the Hon. Evelyn Kayne, "for he and Friddy have been nearly an
+hour looking for a place to spread our luncheon baskets.  I wish
+they'd leave the future of the brown races to look after itself and
+look a little more after us.  I'm famished."
+
+"I fancy they find it difficult to select a clear space for so
+large a party as we will be when the gentlemen come in," returned
+Lady Runnybroke, glancing in the direction of Jenny's abstracted
+eyes.
+
+"I suppose you must feel like chicken and salad, too, Lady
+Runnybroke," suggested Mrs. Captain Joyce.
+
+"I don't think I quite know HOW chicken and salad feel, dear," said
+Lady Runnybroke with a puzzled air, "but if that's one of your
+husband's delightful American stories, do tell us.  I never CAN get
+Runnybroke to tell me any, although he roars over them all.  And I
+dare say he gets them all wrong.  But look, here comes our luncheon."
+
+Peter and Lady Elfrida were advancing towards them.  The scrutiny
+of a dozen pairs of eyes--wondering, mischievous, critical,
+impertinent, or resentful--would have been a trying ordeal to any
+errant couple; but there was little if any change in Peter's grave
+and gentle demeanor, albeit his dark eyes were shining with a
+peculiar light, and Lady Elfrida had only the animation, color, and
+slight excitability that became the responsible leader of the
+little party.  They neither apologized or alluded to their delay.
+They had selected a spot on the other side of the copse, and the
+baskets could be sent around by the wagon; they had seen a slight
+haze on the plain towards the east which betokened the vicinity of
+the rest of the party, and they were about to propose that as the
+gentlemen were so near they had better postpone the picnic until
+they came up.  Lady Runnybroke smiled affably; the only thing she
+had noticed was that Lady Elfrida in joining them had gone directly
+to the side of the abstracted Jenny, and placed her arm around her
+waist.  At which Lady Runnybroke airily joined them.
+
+The surmises of Peter and Friddy appeared to be correct.  The
+transfer of the provisions and the party to the other side was
+barely concluded before they could see the gentlemen coming; they
+were riding a little more rapidly than when they had set out, and
+were arriving fully three hours before their time.  They burst upon
+the ladies a little boisterously but gayly; they had had a glorious
+time, but little sport; they had hurried back to join the ladies so
+as to be able to return with them betimes.  They were ravenously
+hungry; they wanted to fall to at once.  Only the officers' wives
+noticed that the two files of troopers DID NOT DISMOUNT, but filed
+slowly before the entrance to the woods.  Lady Elfrida as hostess
+was prettily distressed by it, but was told by Captain Joyce that
+it was "against rules," and that she could "feed" them at the fort.
+The officers' wives put a few questions in whispers, and were
+promptly frowned down.  Nevertheless, the luncheon was a successful
+festivity: the gentlemen were loud in the praises of their gracious
+hostess; the delicacies she had provided by express from distant
+stations, and much that was distinctly English and despoiled from
+her own stores, were gratefully appreciated by the officers of a
+remote frontier garrison.  Lady Elfrida's health was toasted by the
+gallant colonel in a speech that was the soul of chivalry.  Lord
+Runnybroke responded, perhaps without the American abandon, but
+with the steady conscientiousness of an hereditary legislator, but
+the M. P. summed up a slightly exaggerated but well meaning episode
+by pointing out that it was on occasions like this that the two
+nations showed their common ancestry by standing side by side.
+Only one thing troubled the rosy, excited, but still clear-headed
+Friddy; the plates were whisked away like magic after each
+delicacy, by the military servants, and vanished; the tables were
+in the same mysterious way cleared as rapidly as they were set, and
+any attempt to recall a dish was met by the declaration that it was
+already packed away in the wagon.  As they at last rose from the
+actually empty board, and saw even the tables disappear, Lady
+Elfrida plaintively protested that she felt as if she had been
+presiding over an Arabian Nights entertainment, served by genii,
+and she knew that they would all awaken hungry when they were well
+on their way back.  Nevertheless, in spite of this expedition, the
+officers lounged about smoking until every trace of the festivity
+had vanished.  Reggy found himself standing near Peter.  "You
+know," he said, confidentially, "I don't think the colonel has a
+very high opinion of your pets,--the Indians.  And, by Jove, if the
+'friendlies' are as nasty towards you as they were to us this
+morning, I wonder what you call the 'hostile' tribes."
+
+"Did you have any difficulty with them?" said Peter quickly.
+
+"No, not exactly, don't you know--we were too many, I fancy; but,
+by Jove, the beggars whenever we met them,--and we met one or two
+gypsy bands of them,--you know, they seemed to look upon us as
+TRESPASSERS, don't you know."
+
+"And you were, in point of fact," said Peter, smiling grimly.
+
+"Oh, I say, come now!" said Reggy, opening his eyes.  After a
+moment he laughed.  "Oh, yes, I see--of course, looking at it from
+their point of view.  By Jove, I dare say the beggars were right,
+you know; all the same,--don't you see,--YOUR people were poaching
+too."
+
+"So we were," said Peter gravely.
+
+But here, at a word from the major, the whole party debouched from
+the woods.  Everything appeared to be awaiting them,--the large
+covered carryall for the guests, and the two saddle horses for Mrs.
+Lascelles and Lady Elfrida, who had ridden there together.  Peter,
+also mounted, accompanied the carryall with two of the officers;
+the troopers and wagons brought up the rear.
+
+It was very hot, with little or no wind.  On this part of the plain
+the dust seemed lighter and finer, and rose with the wheels of the
+carryall and the horses of the escort, trailing a white cloud over
+the cavalcade like the smoke of an engine over a train.  It was
+with difficulty the troopers could be kept from opening out on both
+sides of the highway to escape it.  The whole atmosphere seemed
+charged with it; it even appeared in a long bank to the right,
+rising and obscuring the declining sun.  But they were already
+within sight of the fort and the little copse beside it.  Then
+trooper Cassidy trotted up to the colonel, who was riding in a
+dusty cloud beside the carryall, "Captain Fleetwood's compliments,
+sorr, and there are two sthragglers,--Mrs. Lascelles and the
+English lady."  He pointed to the rapidly flying figures of Jenny
+and Friddy making towards the wood.
+
+The colonel made a movement of impatience.  "Tell Mr. Forsyth to
+bring them back at once," he said.
+
+But here a feminine chorus of excuses and expostulations rose from
+the carryall.  "It's only Mrs. Lascelles going to show Friddy where
+the squaws and children bathe," said Lady Runnybroke, "it's near
+the fort, and they'll be there as quick as we shall."
+
+"One moment, colonel," said Peter, with mortified concern.  "It's
+another folly of my sister's! pray let me take it upon myself to
+bring them back."
+
+"Very well, but see you don't linger, and," turning to Cassidy, as
+Peter galloped away, he added, "you follow him."
+
+Peter kept the figures of the two women in view, but presently saw
+them disappear in the wood.  He had no fear for their safety, but
+he was indignant at this last untimely caprice of his sister.  He
+knew the idea had originated with her, and that the officers knew
+it, and yet she had made Lady Elfrida bear an equal share of the
+blame.  He reached the edge of the copse, entered the first
+opening, but he had scarcely plunged into its shadow and shut out
+the plain behind him before he felt his arms and knees quickly
+seized from behind.  So sudden and unexpected was the attack that
+he first thought his horse had stumbled against a coil of wild
+grapevine and was entangled, but the next moment he smelled the
+rank characteristic odor and saw the brown limbs of the Indian who
+had leaped on his crupper, while another rose at his horse's head.
+Then a warning voice in his ear said in the native tongue:--
+
+"If the great white medicine man calls to his fighting men, the
+pale-faced girl and the squaw he calls his sister die!  They are
+here, he understands."
+
+But Peter had neither struggled nor uttered a cry.  At that touch,
+and with the accents of that tongue in his ears, all his own Indian
+blood seemed to leap and tingle through his veins.  His eyes
+flashed; pinioned as he was he drew himself erect and answered
+haughtily in his captor's own speech:--
+
+"Good!  The great white medicine man obeys, for he and his sister
+have no fear.  But if the pale-face girl is not sent back to her
+people before the sun sets, then the yellow jackets will swarm the
+woods, and they will follow her trail to the death.  My brother is
+wise; let the girl go.  I have spoken."
+
+"My brother is very cunning too.  He would call to his fighting men
+through the lips of the pale-face girl."
+
+"He will not.  The great white medicine man does not lie to his red
+brother.  He will tell the pale-face girl to say to the chief of
+the yellow jackets that he and his sister are with his brothers,
+and all is peace.  But the pale-face girl must not see the great
+white medicine man in these bonds, nor as a captive!  I have
+spoken."
+
+The two Indians fell back.  There was so much of force and dignity
+in the man, so much of their own stoic calmness, that they at once
+mechanically loosened the thongs of plaited deer hide with which
+they had bound him, and side by side led him into the recesses of
+the wood.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+There was some astonishment, although little alarm at the fort,
+when Lady Elfrida returned accompanied by the orderly who had
+followed Peter to the wood, but without Peter and his sister.  The
+reason given was perfectly natural and conceivable.  Mrs. Lascelles
+had preceded Lady Elfrida in entering the wood and taken another
+opening, so that Lady Elfrida had found herself suddenly lost, and
+surrounded by two or three warriors in dreadful paint.  They
+motioned her to dismount, and said something she did not
+understand, but she declined, knowing that she had heard Mr.
+Atherly and the orderly following her, and feeling no fear.  And
+sure enough Mr. Atherly presently came up with a couple of braves,
+apologized to her for their mistake, but begged her to return to
+the fort at once and assure the colonel that everything was right,
+and that he and his sister were safe.  He was perfectly cool and
+collected and like himself; she blushed slightly, as she said she
+thought that he wished to impress upon her, for some reason she
+could not understand, that he did not want the colonel to send any
+assistance.  She was positive of that.  She told her story
+unexcitedly; it was evident that she had not been frightened, but
+Lady Runnybroke noticed that there was a shade of anxious
+abstraction in her face.
+
+When the officers were alone the colonel took hurried counsel of
+them.  "I think," said Captain Fleetwood, "that Lady Elfrida's
+story quite explains itself.  I believe this affair is purely a
+local one, and has nothing whatever to do with the suspicious
+appearances we noticed this afternoon, or the presence of so large
+a body of Indians near Butternut.  Had this been a hostile movement
+they would have scarcely allowed so valuable a capture as Lady
+Elfrida to escape them."
+
+"Unless they kept Atherly and his sister as a hostage," said
+Captain Joyce.
+
+"But Atherly is one of their friends; indeed he is their mediator
+and apostle, a non-combatant, and has their confidence," returned
+the colonel.  "It is much more reasonable to suppose that Atherly
+has noticed some disaffection among these 'friendlies,' and he
+fears that our sending a party to his assistance might precipitate
+a collision.  Or he may have reason to believe that this stopping
+of the two women under the very walls of the fort is only a feint
+to draw our attention from something more serious.  Did he know
+anything of our suspicions of the conduct of those Indians this
+morning?"
+
+"Not unless he gathered it from what Lord Reginald foolishly told
+him.  We said nothing, of course," returned Captain Fleetwood, with
+a soldier's habitual distrust of the wisdom of the civil arm.
+
+"That will do, gentlemen," said the colonel, as the officers
+dispersed; "send Cassidy here."
+
+The colonel was alone on the veranda as Cassidy came up.
+
+"You followed Mr. Atherly to-day?"
+
+"Yes sorr."
+
+"And you saw him when he gave the message to the young lady?"
+
+"Yes sorr."
+
+"Did you form any opinion from anything else you saw, of his object
+in sending that message?"
+
+"Only from what I saw of HIM."
+
+"Well, what was that?"
+
+"I saw him look afther the young leddy as she rode away, and then
+wheel about and go straight back into the wood."
+
+"And what did you think of that?" said the colonel, with a half
+smile.
+
+"I thought it was shacrifice, sorr."
+
+"What do you mean?" said the colonel sharply.
+
+"I mane, sorr," said Cassidy stoutly, "that he was givin' up hisself
+and his sister for that young leddy."
+
+The colonel looked at the sergeant.  "Ask Mr. Forsyth to come to me
+privately, and return here with him."
+
+As darkness fell, some half a dozen dismounted troopers, headed by
+Forsyth and Cassidy, passed quietly out of the lower gate and
+entered the wood.  An hour later the colonel was summoned from the
+dinner table, and the guests heard the quick rattle of a wagon
+turning out of the road gate--but the colonel did not return.  An
+indefinable uneasiness crept over the little party, which reached
+its climax in the summoning of the other officers, and the sudden
+flashing out of news.  The reconnoitring party had found the dead
+bodies of Peter Atherly and his sister on the plains at the edge of
+the empty wood.
+
+The women were gathered in the commandant's quarters, and for the
+moment seemed to have been forgotten.  The officers' wives talked
+with professional sympathy and disciplined quiet; the English
+ladies were equally sympathetic, but collected.  Lady Elfrida,
+rather white, but patient, asked a few questions in a voice whose
+contralto was rather deepened.  One and all wished to "do
+something"--anything "to help"--and one and all rebelled that the
+colonel had begged them to remain within doors.  There was an
+occasional quick step on the veranda, or the clatter of a hoof on
+the parade, a continued but subdued murmur from the whitewashed
+barracks, but everywhere a sense of keen restraint.
+
+When they emerged on the veranda again, the whole aspect of the
+garrison seemed to have changed in that brief time.  In the faint
+moonlight they could see motionless files of troopers filling the
+parade, the officers in belted tunics and slouched hats,--but
+apparently not the same men; the half lounging ease and lazy
+dandyism gone, a grim tension in all their faces, a set abstraction
+in all their acts.  Then there was the rolling of heavy wheels in
+the road, and the two horses of the ambulance appeared.  The
+sentries presented arms; the colonel took off his hat; the officers
+uncovered; the wagon wheeled into the parade; the surgeon stepped
+out.  He exchanged a single word with the colonel, and lifted the
+curtain of the ambulance.
+
+As the colonel glanced within, a deep but embarrassed voice fell
+upon his ear.  He turned quickly.  It was Lord Reginald, flushed
+and sympathetic.
+
+"He was a friend,--a relation of ours, you know," he stammered.
+"My sister would like--to look at him again."
+
+"Not now," said the colonel in a low voice.  The surgeon added
+something in a voice still lower, which scarcely reached the
+veranda.
+
+Lord Reginald turned away with a white face.
+
+"Fall back there!" Captain Fleetwood rode up.
+
+"All ready, sir."
+
+"One moment, captain," said the colonel quietly.  "File your first
+half company before that ambulance, and bid the men look in."
+
+The singular order was obeyed.  The men filed slowly forward, each
+in turn halting before the motionless wagon and its immobile
+freight.  They were men inured to frontier bloodshed and savage
+warfare; some halted and hurried on; others lingered, others turned
+to look again.  One man burst into a short laugh, but when the
+others turned indignantly upon him, they saw that in his face that
+held them in awe.  What they saw in the ambulance did not transpire;
+what they felt was not known.  Strangely enough, however, what they
+repressed themselves was mysteriously communicated to their horses,
+who snorted and quivered with eagerness and impatience as they rode
+back again.  The horse of the trooper who had laughed almost leaped
+into the air.  Only Sergeant Cassidy was communicative; he took a
+larger circuit in returning to his place, and managed to lean over
+and whisper hoarsely in the ear of a camp follower spectator, "Tell
+the young leddy that the torturin' divvils couldn't take the smile
+off him!"
+
+The little column filed out of the gateway into the road.  As
+Captain Fleetwood passed Colonel Carter the two men's eyes met.
+The colonel said quietly, "Good night, captain.  Let us have a good
+report from you."
+
+The captain replied only with his gauntleted hand against the brim
+of his slouched hat, but the next moment his voice was heard strong
+and clear enough in the road.  The little column trotted away as
+evenly as on parade.  But those who climbed the roof of the
+barracks a quarter of an hour later saw, in the moonlight, a white
+cloud drifting rapidly across the plain towards the west.  It was a
+small cloud in that bare, menacing, cruel, and illimitable waste;
+but in its breast was crammed a thunderbolt.
+
+It fell thirty miles away, blasting and scattering a thousand
+warriors and their camp, giving and taking no quarter, vengeful,
+exterminating, and complete.  Later there were different opinions
+about it and the horrible crime that had provoked it: the opposers
+of Peter's policy jubilant over the irony of the assassination of
+the Apostle of Peace, Peter's disciples as actively deploring the
+merciless and indiscriminating vengeance of the military; and so
+the problem that Peter had vainly attempted to solve was left an
+open question.  There were those, too, who believed that Peter had
+never sacrificed himself and his sister for the sake of another,
+but had provoked and incensed the savages by the blind arrogance of
+a reformer.  There were wild stories by scouts and interpreters how
+he had challenged his fate by an Indian bravado; how himself and
+his sister had met torture with an Indian stoicism, and how the
+Indian braves themselves at last in a turmoil of revulsion had
+dipped their arrows and lances in the heroic heart's blood of their
+victims, and worshiped their still palpitating flesh.
+
+But there was one honest loyal little heart that carried back--
+three thousand miles--to England the man as it had known and loved
+him.  Lady Elfrida Runnybroke never married; neither did she go
+into retirement, but lived her life and fulfilled her duties in her
+usual clear-eyed fashion.  She was particularly kind to all
+Americans,--barring, I fear, a few pretty-faced, finely-frocked
+title-hunters,--told stories of the Far West, and had theories of a
+people of which they knew little, cared less, and believed to be
+vulgar.  But I think she found a new pleasure in the old church at
+Ashley Grange, and loved to linger over the effigy of the old
+Crusader,--her kinsman, the swashbuckler De Bracy,--with a vague
+but pretty belief that devotion and love do not die with brave men,
+but live and flourish even in lands beyond the seas.
+
+
+TWO AMERICANS
+
+
+Perhaps if there was anything important in the migration of the
+Maynard family to Europe it rested solely upon the singular fact
+that Mr. Maynard did not go there in the expectation of marrying
+his daughter to a nobleman.  A Charleston merchant, whose house
+represented two honorable generations, had, thirty years ago, a
+certain self-respect which did not require extraneous aid and
+foreign support, and it is exceedingly probable that his intention
+of spending a few years abroad had no ulterior motive than pleasure
+seeking and the observation of many things--principally of the
+past--which his own country did not possess.  His future and that
+of his family lay in his own land, yet with practical common sense
+he adjusted himself temporarily to his new surroundings.  In doing
+so, he had much to learn of others, and others had something to
+learn of him; he found that the best people had a high simplicity
+equal to his own; he corrected their impressions that a Southerner
+had more or less negro blood in his veins, and that, although a
+slave owner, he did not necessarily represent an aristocracy.  With
+a distinguishing dialect of which he was not ashamed, a frank
+familiarity of approach joined to an invincible courtesy of manner,
+which made even his republican "Sir" equal to the ordinary address
+to royalty, he was always respected and seldom misunderstood.  When
+he was--it was unfortunate for those who misunderstood him.  His
+type was as distinctive and original as his cousin's, the
+Englishman, whom it was not the fashion then to imitate.  So that,
+whether in the hotel of a capital, the Kursaal of a Spa, or the
+humbler pension of a Swiss village, he was always characteristic.
+Less so was his wife, who, with the chameleon quality of her
+transplanted countrywomen, was already Parisian in dress; still
+less so his daughter, who had by this time absorbed the
+peculiarities of her French, German, and Italian governesses.  Yet
+neither had yet learned to evade their nationality--or apologize
+for it.
+
+Mr. Maynard and his family remained for three years in Europe, his
+stay having been prolonged by political excitement in his own State
+of South Carolina.  Commerce is apt to knock the insularity out of
+people; distance from one's own distinctive locality gives a wider
+range to the vision, and the retired merchant foresaw ruin in his
+State's politics, and from the viewpoint of all Europe beheld
+instead of the usual collection of individual States--his whole
+country.  But the excitement increasing, he was finally impelled to
+return in a faint hope of doing something to allay it, taking his
+wife with him, but leaving his daughter at school in Paris.  At
+about this time, however, a single cannon shot fired at the
+national flag on Fort Sumter shook the whole country, reverberated
+even in Europe, sending some earnest hearts back to do battle for
+State or country, sending others less earnest into inglorious
+exile, but, saddest of all! knocking over the school bench of a
+girl at the Paris pensionnat.  For that shot had also sunk
+Maynard's ships at the Charleston wharves, scattered his piled
+Cotton bales awaiting shipment at the quays, and drove him, a
+ruined man, into the "Home Guard" against his better judgment.
+Helen Maynard, like a good girl, had implored her father to let her
+return and share his risks.  But the answer was "to wait" until
+this nine days' madness of an uprising was over.  That madness
+lasted six years, outlived Maynard, whose gray, misdoubting head
+bit the dust at Ball's Bluff; outlived his colorless widow, and
+left Kelly a penniless orphan.
+
+Yet enough of her country was left in her to make her courageous
+and independent of her past.  They say that when she got the news
+she cried a little, and then laid the letter and what was left of
+her last monthly allowance in Madame Ablas' lap.  Madame was
+devastated.  "But you, impoverished and desolated angel, what of
+you?"  "I shall get some of it back," said the desolated angel with
+ingenuous candor, "for I speak better French and English than the
+other girls, and I shall teach THEM until I can get into the
+Conservatoire, for I have a voice.  You yourself have told papa
+so."  From such angelic directness there was no appeal.  Madame
+Ablas had a heart,--more, she had a French manageress's
+discriminating instinct.  The American schoolgirl was installed in
+a teacher's desk; her bosom friends and fellow students became her
+pupils.  To some of the richest, and they were mainly of her own
+country, she sold her smartest, latest dresses, jewels, and
+trinkets at a very good figure, and put the money away against the
+Conservatoire in the future.  She worked hard, she endured
+patiently everything but commiseration.  "I'd have you know, Miss,"
+she said to Miss de Laine, daughter of the famous house of Musslin,
+de Laine & Co., of New York, "that whatever my position HERE may
+be, it is not one to be patronized by a tapeseller's daughter.  My
+case is not such a very 'sad one,' thank you, and I prefer not to
+be spoken of as having seen 'better days' by people who haven't.
+There!  Don't rap your desk with your pencil when you speak to me,
+or I shall call out 'Cash!' before the whole class."  So
+regrettable an exhibition of temper naturally alienated certain of
+her compatriots who were unduly sensitive of their origin, and as
+they formed a considerable colony who were then reveling in the
+dregs of the Empire and the last orgies of a tottering court,
+eventually cost her her place.  A republican so aristocratic was
+not to be tolerated by the true-born Americans who paid court to De
+Morny for the phosphorescent splendors of St. Cloud and the
+Tuileries, and Miss Helen lost their favor.  But she had already
+saved enough money for the Conservatoire and a little attic in a
+very tall house in a narrow street that trickled into the ceaseless
+flow of the Rue Lafayette.  Here for four years she trotted
+backwards and forwards regularly to work with the freshness of
+youth and the inflexible set purpose of maturity.  Here, rain or
+shine, summer or winter, in the mellow season when the large cafes
+expanded under the white sunshine into an overflow of little tables
+on the pavement, or when the red glow of the Brasserie shone
+through frosty panes on the turned-up collars of pinched Parisians
+who hurried by, she was always to be seen.
+
+Half Paris had looked into her clear, gray eyes and passed on; a
+smaller and not very youthful portion of Paris had turned and
+followed her with small advantage to itself and happily no fear to
+her.  For even in her young womanhood she kept her child's loving
+knowledge of that great city; she even had an innocent camaraderie
+with street sweepers, kiosk keepers, and lemonade venders, and the
+sternness of conciergedom melted before her.  In this wholesome,
+practical child's experience she naturally avoided or overlooked
+what would not have interested a child, and so kept her freshness
+and a certain national shrewd simplicity invincible.  There is a
+story told of her girlhood that, one day playing in the Tuileries
+gardens, she was approached by a gentleman with a waxed mustache
+and a still more waxen cheek beneath his heavy-lidded eyes.  There
+was an exchange of polite amenities.
+
+"And your name, ma petite?"
+
+"Helen," responded the young girl naively.  "What's yours?"
+
+"Ah," said the kind gentleman, gallantly pulling at his mustache,
+"if you are Helen I am Paris."
+
+The young girl raised her clear eyes to his and said gravely, "I
+reckon your majesty is FRANCE!"
+
+She retained this childish fearlessness as the poor student of the
+Conservatoire; went alone all over Paris with her maiden skirts
+untarnished by the gilded dust of the boulevards or the filth of
+by-ways; knew all the best shops for her friends, and the cheapest
+for her own scant purchases; discovered breakfasts for a few sous
+with pale sempstresses, whose sadness she understood, and reckless
+chorus girls, whose gayety she didn't; she knew where the earliest
+chestnut buds were to be found in the Bois, when the slopes of the
+Buttes Chaumont were green, and which was the old woman who sold
+the cheapest flowers before the Madeleine.  Alone and independent,
+she earned the affection of Madame Bibelot, the concierge, and,
+what was more, her confidence.  Her outgoings and incomings were
+never questioned.  The little American could take care of herself.
+Ah, if her son Jacques were only as reasonable!  Miss Maynard might
+have made more friends had she cared; she might have joined hands
+with the innocent and light-hearted poverty of the coterie of her
+own artistic compatriots, but something in her blood made her
+distrust Bohemianism; her poverty was something to her too sacred
+for jest or companionship; her own artistic aim was too long and
+earnest for mere temporary enthusiasms.  She might have found
+friends in her own profession.  Her professor opened the sacred
+doors of his family circle to the young American girl.  She
+appreciated the delicacy, refinement, and cheerful equal
+responsibilities of that household, so widely different from the
+accepted Anglo-Saxon belief, but there were certain restrictions
+that rightly or wrongly galled her American habits of girlish
+freedom, and she resolutely tripped past the first etage four or
+five flights higher to her attic, the free sky, and independence!
+Here she sometimes met another kind of independence in Monsieur
+Alphonse, aged twenty two, and she who ought to have been Madame
+Alphonse, aged seventeen, and they often exchanged greetings on the
+landing with great respect towards each other, and, oddly enough,
+no confusion or distrait.  Later they even borrowed each other's
+matches without fear and without reproach, until one day Monsieur
+Alphonse's parents took him away, and the desolated soi-disant
+Madame Alphonse, in a cheerful burst of confidence, gave Helen her
+private opinion of monsieur, and from her seventeen years'
+experience warned the American infant of twenty against possible
+similar complications.
+
+One day--it was near the examination for prizes, and her funds were
+running low--she was obliged to seek one of those humbler
+restaurants she knew of for her frugal breakfast.  But she was not
+hungry, and after a few mouthfuls left her meal unfinished as a
+young man entered and half abstractedly took a seat at her table.
+She had already moved towards the comptoir to pay her few sous,
+when, chancing to look up in a mirror which hung above the counter,
+reflecting the interior of the cafe, she saw the stranger, after
+casting a hurried glance around him, remove from her plate the
+broken roll and even the crumbs she had left, and as hurriedly
+sweep them into his pocket-handkerchief.  There was nothing very
+strange in this; she had seen something like it before in these
+humbler cafes,--it was a crib for the birds in the Tuileries
+Gardens, or the poor artist's substitute for rubber in correcting
+his crayon drawing!  But there was a singular flushing of his
+handsome face in the act that stirred her with a strange pity, made
+her own cheek hot with sympathy, and compelled her to look at him
+more attentively.  The back that was turned towards her was broad-
+shouldered and symmetrical, and showed a frame that seemed to
+require stronger nourishment than the simple coffee and roll he had
+ordered and was devouring slowly.  His clothes, well made though
+worn, fitted him in a smart, soldier-like way, and accentuated his
+decided military bearing.  The singular use of his left hand in
+lifting his cup made her uneasy, until a slight movement revealed
+the fact that his right sleeve was empty and pinned to his coat.
+He was one-armed.  She turned her compassionate eyes aside, yet
+lingered to make a few purchases at the counter, as he paid his
+bill and walked away.  But she was surprised to see that he
+tendered the waiter the unexampled gratuity of a sou.  Perhaps he
+was some eccentric Englishman; he certainly did not look like a
+Frenchman.
+
+She had quite forgotten the incident, and in the afternoon had
+strolled with a few fellow pupils into the galleries of the Louvre.
+It was "copying-day," and as her friends loitered around the easels
+of the different students with the easy consciousness of being
+themselves "artists," she strolled on somewhat abstractedly before
+them.  Her own art was too serious to permit her much sympathy with
+another, and in the chatter of her companions with the young
+painters a certain levity disturbed her.  Suddenly she stopped.
+She had reached a less frequented room; there was a single easel at
+one side, but the stool before it was empty, and its late occupant
+was standing in a recess by the window, with his back towards her.
+He had drawn a silk handkerchief from his pocket.  She recognized
+his square shoulders, she recognized the handkerchief, and as he
+unrolled it she recognized the fragments of her morning's breakfast
+as he began to eat them.  It was the one-armed man.
+
+She remained so motionless and breathless that he finished his scant
+meal without noticing her, and even resumed his place before the
+easel without being aware of her presence.  The noise of approaching
+feet gave a fresh impulse to her own, and she moved towards him.
+But he was evidently accustomed to these interruptions, and worked
+on steadily without turning his head.  As the other footsteps passed
+her she was emboldened to take a position behind him and glance at
+his work.  It was an architectural study of one of Canaletto's
+palaces.  Even her inexperienced eyes were struck with its vigor and
+fidelity.  But she was also conscious of a sense of disappointment.
+Why was he not--like the others--copying one of the masterpieces?
+Becoming at last aware of a motionless woman behind him, he rose,
+and with a slight gesture of courtesy and a half-hesitating "Vous
+verrez mieux la, mademoiselle," moved to one side.
+
+"Thank you," said Miss Maynard in English, "but I did not want to
+disturb you."
+
+He glanced quickly at her face for the first time.  "Ah, you are
+English!" he said.
+
+"No.  I am American."
+
+His face lightened.  "So am I."
+
+"I thought so," she said.
+
+"From my bad French?"
+
+"No.  Because you did not look up to see if the woman you were
+polite to was old or young."
+
+He smiled.  "And you, mademoiselle,--you did not murmur a compliment
+to the copy over the artist's back."
+
+She smiled, too, yet with a little pang over the bread.  But she
+was relieved to see that he evidently had not recognized her.  "You
+are modest," she said; "you do not attempt masterpieces."
+
+"Oh, no!  The giants like Titian and Corregio must be served with
+both hands.  I have only one," he said half lightly, half sadly.
+
+"But you have been a soldier," she said with quick intuition.
+
+"Not much.  Only during our war,--until I was compelled to handle
+nothing larger than a palette knife.  Then I came home to New York,
+and, as I was no use there, I came here to study."
+
+"I am from South Carolina," she said quietly, with a rising color.
+
+He put his palette down, and glanced at her black dress.  "Yes,"
+she went on doggedly, "my father lost all his property, and was
+killed in battle with the Northerners.  I am an orphan,--a pupil of
+the Conservatoire."  It was never her custom to allude to her
+family or her lost fortunes; she knew not why she did it now, but
+something impelled her to rid her mind of it to him at once.  Yet
+she was pained at his grave and pitying face.
+
+"I am very sorry," he said simply.  Then, after a pause, he added,
+with a gentle smile, "At all events you and I will not quarrel here
+under the wings of the French eagles that shelter us both."
+
+"I only wanted to explain why I was alone in Paris," she said, a
+little less aggressively.
+
+He replied by unhooking his palette, which was ingeniously fastened
+by a strap over his shoulder under the missing arm, and opened a
+portfolio of sketches at his side.  "Perhaps they may interest you
+more than the copy, which I have attempted only to get at this
+man's method.  They are sketches I have done here."
+
+There was a buttress of Notre Dame, a black arch of the Pont Neuf,
+part of an old courtyard in the Faubourg St. Germain,--all very
+fresh and striking.  Yet, with the recollection of his poverty in
+her mind, she could not help saying, "But if you copied one of
+those masterpieces, you know you could sell it.  There is always a
+demand for that work."
+
+"Yes," he replied, "but these help me in my line, which is
+architectural study.  It is, perhaps, not very ambitious," he added
+thoughtfully, "but," brightening up again, "I sell these sketches,
+too.  They are quite marketable, I assure you."
+
+Helen's heart sank again.  She remembered now to have seen such
+sketches--she doubted not they were his--in the cheap shops in the
+Rue Poissoniere, ticketed at a few francs each.  She was silent as
+he patiently turned them over.  Suddenly she uttered a little cry.
+
+He had just uncovered a little sketch of what seemed at first sight
+only a confused cluster of roof tops, dormer windows, and chimneys,
+level with the sky-line.  But it was bathed in the white sunshine
+of Paris, against the blue sky she knew so well.  There, too, were
+the gritty crystals and rust of the tiles, the red, brown, and
+greenish mosses of the gutters, and lower down the more vivid
+colors of geraniums and pansies in flower-pots under the white
+dimity curtains which hid the small panes of garret windows; yet
+every sordid detail touched and transfigured with the poetry and
+romance of youth and genius.
+
+"You have seen this?" she said.
+
+"Yes; it is a study from my window.  One must go high for such
+effects.  You would be surprised if you could see how different the
+air and sunshine"--
+
+"No," she interrupted gently, "I HAVE seen it."
+
+"You?" he repeated, gazing at her curiously.
+
+Helen ran the point of her slim finger along the sketch until it
+reached a tiny dormer window in the left-hand corner, half-hidden
+by an irregular chimney-stack.  The curtains were closely drawn.
+Keeping her finger upon the spot, she said, interrogatively, "And
+you saw THAT window?"
+
+"Yes, quite plainly.  I remember it was always open, and the room
+seemed empty from early morning to evening, when the curtains were
+drawn."
+
+"It is my room," she said simply.
+
+Their eyes met with this sudden confession of their equal poverty.
+"And mine," he said gayly, "from which this view was taken, is in
+the rear and still higher up on the other street."
+
+They both laughed as if some singular restraint had been removed;
+Helen even forgot the incident of the bread in her relief.  Then
+they compared notes of their experiences, of their different
+concierges, of their housekeeping, of the cheap stores and the
+cheaper restaurants of Paris,--except one.  She told him her name,
+and learned that his was Philip, or, if she pleased, Major
+Ostrander.  Suddenly glancing at her companions, who were
+ostentatiously lingering at a little distance, she became conscious
+for the first time that she was talking quite confidentially to a
+very handsome man, and for a brief moment wished, she knew not why,
+that he had been plainer.  This momentary restraint was accented by
+the entrance of a lady and gentleman, rather distingue in dress and
+bearing, who had stopped before them, and were eying equally the
+artist, his work, and his companion with somewhat insolent
+curiosity.  Helen felt herself stiffening; her companion drew
+himself up with soldierly rigidity.  For a moment it seemed as if,
+under that banal influence, they would part with ceremonious
+continental politeness, but suddenly their hands met in a national
+handshake, and with a frank smile they separated.
+
+Helen rejoined her companions.
+
+"So you have made a conquest of the recently acquired but unknown
+Greek statue?" said Mademoiselle Renee lightly.  "You should take
+up a subscription to restore his arm, ma petite, if there is a
+modern sculptor who can do it.  You might suggest it to the two
+Russian cognoscenti, who have been hovering around him as if they
+wanted to buy him as well as his work.  Madame La Princesse is rich
+enough to indulge her artistic taste."
+
+"It is a countryman of mine," said Helen simply.
+
+"He certainly does not speak French," said mademoiselle mischievously.
+
+"Nor think it," responded Helen with equal vivacity.  Nevertheless,
+she wished she had seen him alone.
+
+She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises.
+But the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing,
+she drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole
+in the curtain, looked over the opposite roofs. She had seen them
+many times before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness,
+which as her view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter's
+sketch, must have been a transfigured memory of her own.  Then she
+glanced curiously along the line of windows level with hers.  All
+these, however, with their occasional revelations of the menage
+behind them, were also familiar to her, but now she began to wonder
+which was his.  A singular instinct at last impelled her to lift her
+eyes.  Higher in the corner house, and so near the roof that it
+scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand upright behind it,
+was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other roofs, and framed
+in that circular opening like a vignette was the handsome face of
+Major Ostrander.  His eyes seemed to be turned towards her window.
+Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a friendly
+nod.  But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn away
+quickly.
+
+Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near
+her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental
+on his part.  She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire.  In
+the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-
+cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and
+was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to
+accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:--
+
+"I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard."
+
+Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.
+
+"The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were
+pleased, however, to also stare at my work.  They offered me a
+fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches.  It didn't seem to me
+quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had
+forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply
+referred them to him."
+
+"No!" said Miss Helen indignantly; "you were not so foolish?"
+
+Ostrander laughed.
+
+"I'm afraid what you call my folly didn't avail, for they wanted
+what they saw in my portfolio."
+
+"Of course," said Helen.  "Why, that sketch of the housetop alone
+was worth a hundred times more than what you"--  She stopped; she
+did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added,
+"more than what any of those usurers would give."
+
+"I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,"
+he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.
+
+She did not see him again for several days.  The preparation for
+her examination left her no time, and her earnest concentration in
+her work fully preoccupied her thoughts.  She was surprised, but
+not disturbed, on the day of the awards to see him among the
+audience of anxious parents and relations.  Miss Helen Maynard did
+not get the first prize, nor yet the second; an accessit was her
+only award.  She did not know until afterwards that this had long
+been a foregone conclusion of her teachers on account of some
+intrinsic defect in her voice.  She did not know until long
+afterwards that the handsome painter's nervousness on that occasion
+had attracted even the sympathy of some of those who were near him.
+For she herself had been calm and collected.  No one else knew how
+crushing was the blow which shattered her hopes and made her three
+years of labor and privation a useless struggle.  Yet though no
+longer a pupil she could still teach; her master had found her a
+small patronage that saved her from destitution.  That night she
+circled up quite cheerfully in her usual swallow flight to her nest
+under the eaves, and even twittered on the landing a little over
+the condolences of the concierge--who knew, mon Dieu! what a beast
+the director of the Conservatoire was and how he could be bribed;
+but when at last her brown head sank on her pillow she cried--just
+a little.
+
+But what was all this to that next morning--the glorious spring
+morning which bathed all the roofs of Paris with warmth and hope,
+rekindling enthusiasm and ambition in the breast of youth, and
+gilding even much of the sordid dirt below.  It seemed quite
+natural that she should meet Major Ostrander not many yards away as
+she sallied out.  In that bright spring sunshine and the hopeful
+spring of their youth they even laughed at the previous day's
+disappointment.  Ah! what a claque it was, after all!  For himself,
+he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced Parisian girl
+who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the boards of
+the Grand Opera than his countrywoman!  The Conservatoire settled
+things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world!  America would come
+to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy there
+now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own.  Of course, Paris
+schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but,
+thank heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from
+her!  This and much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly
+found that they were both free for that day.  Why should they not
+take advantage of that rare weather and rarer opportunity to make a
+little suburban excursion?  But where?  There was the Bois, but
+that was still Paris.  Fontainebleau?  Too far; there were always
+artists sketching in the forest, and he would like for that day to
+"sink the shop."  Versailles?  Ah, yes!  Versailles!
+
+Thither they went.  It was not new to either of them.  Ostrander
+knew it as an artist and as an American reader of that French
+historic romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of
+the Oeil de Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Petit Trianon, and the
+sham heroics of a shifty court, to get to Lafayette.  Helen knew it
+as a child who had dodged these lessons from her patriotic father,
+but had enjoyed the woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly
+the restaurant at the park gates.  That day they took it like a boy
+and girl,--with the amused, omniscient tolerance of youth for a past
+so inferior to the present.  Ostrander thought this gray-eyed,
+independent American-French girl far superior to the obsequious
+filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled through those
+quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her fellow
+pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the
+Louvre.  Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the
+one-armed soldier-painter!
+
+All this was as yet free from either sentiment or passion, and was
+only the frank pride of friendship.  But, oddly enough, their mere
+presence and companionship seemed to excite in others that
+tenderness they had not yet felt themselves.  Family groups watched
+the handsome pair in their innocent confidences, and, with French
+exuberant recognition of sentiment, thought them the incarnation of
+Love.  Something in their manifest equality of condition kept even
+the vainest and most susceptible of spectators from attempted
+rivalry or cynical interruption.  And when at last they dropped
+side by side on a sun-warmed stone bench on the terrace, and Helen,
+inclining her brown head towards her companion, informed him of the
+difficulty she had experienced in getting gumbo soup, rice and
+chicken, corn cakes, or any of her favorite home dishes in Paris,
+an exhausted but gallant boulevardier rose from a contiguous bench,
+and, politely lifting his hat to the handsome couple, turned slowly
+away from what he believed were tender confidences he would not
+permit himself to hear.
+
+But the shadow of the trees began to lengthen, casting broad bars
+across the alle, and the sun sank lower to the level of their eyes.
+They were quite surprised, on looking around a few moments later,
+to discover that the gardens were quite deserted, and Ostrander, on
+consulting his watch, found that they had just lost a train which
+the other pleasure-seekers had evidently availed themselves of.  No
+matter; there was another train an hour later; they could still
+linger for a few moments in the brief sunset and then dine at the
+local restaurant before they left.  They both laughed at their
+forgetfulness, and then, without knowing why, suddenly lapsed into
+silence.  A faint wind blew in their faces and trilled the thin
+leaves above their heads.  Nothing else moved.  The long windows of
+the palace in that sunset light seemed to glisten again with the
+incendiary fires of the Revolution, and then went out blankly and
+abruptly.  The two companions felt that they possessed the terrace
+and all its memories as completely as the shadows who had lived and
+died there.
+
+"I am so glad we have had this day together," said the painter,
+with a very conscious breaking of the silence, "for I am leaving
+Paris to-morrow."
+
+Helen raised her eyes quickly to his.
+
+"For a few days only," he continued.  "My Russian customers--
+perhaps I ought to say my patrons--have given me a commission to
+make a study of an old chateau which the princess lately bought."
+
+A swift recollection of her fellow pupil's raillery regarding the
+princess's possible attitude towards the painter came over her and
+gave a strange artificiality to her response.
+
+"I suppose you will enjoy it very much," she said dryly.
+
+"No," he returned with the frankness that she had lacked.  "I'd
+much rather stay in Paris, but," he added with a faint smile, "it's
+a question of money, and that is not to be despised.  Yet I--I--
+somehow feel that I am deserting you,--leaving you here all alone
+in Paris."
+
+"I've been all alone for four years," she said, with a bitterness
+she had never felt before, "and I suppose I'm accustomed to it."
+
+Nevertheless she leaned a little forward, with her fawn-colored
+lashes dropped over her eyes, which were bent upon the ground and
+the point of the parasol she was holding with her little gloved
+hands between her knees.  He wondered why she did not look up; he
+did not know that it was partly because there were tears in her
+eyes and partly for another reason.  As she had leaned forward his
+arm had quite unconsciously moved along the back of the bench where
+her shoulders had rested, and she could not have resumed her
+position except in his half embrace.
+
+He had not thought of it.  He was lost in a greater abstraction.
+That infinite tenderness,--far above a woman's,--the tenderness of
+strength and manliness towards weakness and delicacy, the
+tenderness that looks down and not up, was already possessing him.
+An instinct of protection drew him nearer this bowed but charming
+figure, and if he then noticed that the shoulders were pretty, and
+the curves of the slim waist symmetrical, it was rather with a
+feeling of timidity and a half-consciousness of unchivalrous
+thought.  Yet why should he not try to keep the brave and honest
+girl near him always?  Why should he not claim the right to protect
+her?  Why should they not--they who were alone in a strange land--
+join their two lonely lives for mutual help and happiness?
+
+A sudden perception of delicacy, the thought that he should have
+spoken before her failure at the Conservatoire had made her feel
+her helplessness, brought a slight color to his cheek.  Would it
+not seem to her that he was taking an unfair advantage of her
+misfortune?  Yet it would be so easy now to slip a loving arm
+around her waist, while he could work for her and protect her with
+the other.  THE OTHER!  His eye fell on his empty sleeve.  Ah, he
+had forgotten that!  He had but ONE arm!
+
+He rose up abruptly,--so abruptly that Helen, rising too, almost
+touched the arm that was hurriedly withdrawn.  Yet in that
+accidental contact, which sent a vague tremor through the young
+girl's frame, there was still time for him to have spoken.  But he
+only said:--
+
+"Perhaps we had better dine."
+
+She assented quickly,--she knew not why,--with a feeling of relief.
+They walked very quietly and slowly towards the restaurant.  Not a
+word of love had been spoken; not even a glance of understanding
+had passed between them.  Yet they both knew by some mysterious
+instinct that a crisis of their lives had come and gone, and that
+they never again could be to each other as they were but a brief
+moment ago.  They talked very sensibly and gravely during their
+frugal meal; the previous spectator of their confidences would have
+now thought them only simple friends and have been as mistaken as
+before.  They talked freely of their hopes and prospects,--all save
+one!  They even spoke pleasantly of repeating their little
+expedition after his return from the country, while in their secret
+hearts they had both resolved never to see each other again.  Yet
+by that sign each knew that this was love, and were proud of each
+other's pride, which kept it a secret.
+
+The train was late, and it was past ten o'clock when they at last
+appeared before the concierge of Helen's home.  During their
+journey, and while passing though the crowds at the station and in
+the streets, Ostrander had exhibited a new and grave guardianship
+over the young girl, and, on the first landing, after a
+scrutinizing and an almost fierce glance at one or two of Helen's
+odd fellow lodgers, he had extended his protection so far as to
+accompany her up the four flights to the landing of her apartment.
+Here he took leave of her with a grave courtesy that half pained,
+half pleased her.  She watched his broad shoulders and dangling
+sleeve as he went down the stairs, and then quickly turned, entered
+her room, and locked the door.  The smile had faded from her lips.
+Going to the window, she pressed her hot forehead against the cool
+glass and looked out upon the stars nearly level with the black
+roofs around her.  She stood there some moments until another star
+appeared higher up against the roof ridge, the star she was looking
+for.  But here the glass pane before her eyes became presently dim
+with moisture; she was obliged to rub it out with her handkerchief;
+yet, somehow, it soon became clouded, at which she turned sharply
+away and went to bed.
+
+But Miss Helen did not know that when she had looked after the
+retreating figure of her protector as he descended the stairs that
+night that he was really carrying away on those broad shoulders the
+character she had so laboriously gained during her four years'
+solitude.  For when she came down the next morning the concierge
+bowed to her with an air of easy, cynical abstraction, the result
+of a long conversation with his wife the night before.  He had
+taken Helen's part with a kindly cynicism.  "Ah! what would you--it
+was bound to come.  The affair of the Conservatoire had settled
+that.  The poor child could not starve; penniless, she could not
+marry.  Only why consort with other swallows under the eaves when
+she could have had a gilded cage on the first etage?"  But girls
+were so foolish--in their first affair; then it was always LOVE!
+The second time they were wiser.  And this maimed warrior and
+painter was as poor as she.  A compatriot, too; well, perhaps that
+saved some scandal; one could never know what the Americans were
+accustomed to do.  The first floor, which had been inclined to be
+civil to the young teacher, was more so, but less respectful; one
+or two young men were tentatively familiar until they looked in her
+gray eyes and remembered the broad shoulders of the painter.  Oddly
+enough, only Mademoiselle Fifine, of her own landing, exhibited any
+sympathy with her, and for the first time Helen was frightened.
+She did not show it, however, only she changed her lodgings the
+next day.  But before she left she had a few moments' conversation
+with the concierge and an exchange of a word or two with some of
+her fellow lodgers.  I have already hinted that the young lady had
+great precision of statement; she had a pretty turn for handling
+colloquial French and an incisive knowledge of French character.
+She left No. 34, Rue de Frivole, working itself into a white rage,
+but utterly undecided as to her real character.
+
+But all this and much more was presently blown away in the hot
+breath that swept the boulevards at the outburst of the Franco-
+German War, and Miss Helen Maynard disappeared from Paris with many
+of her fellow countrymen.  The excitement reached even a quaint old
+chateau in Brittany where Major Ostrander was painting.  The woman
+who was standing by his side as he sat before his easel on the
+broad terrace observed that he looked disturbed.
+
+"What matters?" she said gently.  "You have progressed so well in
+your work that you can finish it elsewhere.  I have no great desire
+to stay in France with a frontier garrisoned by troops while I have
+a villa in Switzerland where you could still be my guest.  Paris
+can teach you nothing more, my friend; you have only to create now--
+and be famous."
+
+"I must go to Paris," he said quietly.  "I have friends--
+countrymen--there, who may want me now."
+
+"If you mean the young singer of the Rue de Frivole, you have
+compromised her already.  You can do her no good."
+
+"Madame!"
+
+The pretty face which he had been familiar with for the past six
+weeks somehow seemed to change its character.  Under the mask of
+dazzling skin he fancied he saw the high cheek-bones and square
+Tartar angle; the brilliant eyes were even brighter than before,
+but they showed more of the white than he had ever seen in them.
+
+Nevertheless she smiled, with an equally stony revelation of her
+white teeth, yet said, still gently, "Forgive me if I thought our
+friendship justified me in being frank,--perhaps too frank for my
+own good."
+
+She stopped as if half expecting an interruption; but as he
+remained looking wonderingly at her, she bit her lip, and went on:
+"You have a great career before you.  Those who help you must do so
+without entangling you; a chain of roses may be as impeding as
+lead.  Until you are independent, you--who may in time compass
+everything yourself--will need to be helped.  You know," she added
+with a smile, "you have but one arm."
+
+"In your kindness and appreciation you have made me forget it," he
+stammered.  Yet he had a swift vision of the little bench at
+Versailles where he had NOT forgotten it, and as he glanced around
+the empty terrace where they stood he was struck with a fateful
+resemblance to it.
+
+"And I should not remind you now of it," she went on, "except to
+say that money can always take its place.  As in the fairy story,
+the prince must have a new arm made of gold."  She stopped, and
+then suddenly coming closer to him said, hurriedly and almost
+fiercely, "Can you not see that I am advising you against my
+interests,--against myself?  Go, then, to Paris, and go quickly,
+before I change my mind.  Only if you do not find your friends
+there, remember you have always ONE here."  Before he could reply,
+or even understand that white face, she was gone.
+
+He left for Paris that afternoon.  He went directly to the Rue de
+Frivole; his old resolution to avoid Helen was blown to the winds
+in the prospect of losing her utterly.  But the concierge only knew
+that mademoiselle had left a day or two after monsieur had
+accompanied her home.  And, pointedly, there was another gentleman
+who had inquired eagerly--and bountifully as far as money went--for
+any trace of the young lady.  It was a Russe.  The concierge smiled
+to himself at Ostrander's flushed cheek.  It served this one-armed,
+conceited American poseur right.  Mademoiselle was wiser in this
+SECOND affair.
+
+Ostrander did not finish his picture.  The princess sent him a
+cheque, which he coldly returned.  Nevertheless he had acquired
+through his Russian patronage a local fame which stood him well
+with the picture dealers,--in spite of the excitement of the war.
+But his heart was no longer in his work; a fever of unrest seized
+him, which at another time might have wasted itself in mere
+dissipation.  Some of his fellow artists had already gone into the
+army.  After the first great reverses he offered his one arm and
+his military experience to that Paris which had given him a home.
+The old fighting instinct returned to him with a certain
+desperation he had never known before.  In the sorties from Paris
+the one-armed American became famous, until a few days before the
+capitulation, when he was struck down by a bullet through the lung,
+and left in a temporary hospital.  Here in the whirl and terror of
+Commune days he was forgotten, and when Paris revived under the
+republic he had disappeared as completely as his compatriot Helen.
+
+But Miss Helen Maynard had been only obscured and not extinguished.
+At the first outbreak of hostilities a few Americans had still kept
+giddy state among the ruins of the tottering empire.  A day or two
+after she left the Rue de Frivole she was invited by one of her
+wealthy former schoolmates to assist with her voice and talent at
+one of their extravagant entertainments.  "You will understand,
+dear," said Miss de Laine, with ingenious delicacy, as she eyed her
+old comrade's well-worn dress, "that Poppa expects to pay you
+professional prices, and it may be an opening for you among our
+other friends."
+
+"I should not come otherwise, dear," said Miss Helen with equal
+frankness.  But she played and sang very charmingly to the
+fashionable assembly in the Champs Elysees,--so charmingly, indeed,
+that Miss de Laine patronizingly expatiated upon her worth and her
+better days in confidence to some of the guests.
+
+"A most deserving creature," said Miss de Laine to the dowager
+duchess of Soho, who was passing through Paris on her way to
+England; "you would hardly believe that Poppa knew her father when
+he was one of the richest men in South Carolina."
+
+"Your father seems to have been very fortunate," said the duchess
+quietly, "and so are YOU.  Introduce me."
+
+This not being exactly the reply that Miss de Laine expected, she
+momentarily hesitated: but the duchess profited by it to walk over
+to the piano and introduce herself.  When she rose to go she
+invited Helen to luncheon with her the next day.  "Come early, my
+dear, and we'll have a long talk."  Helen pointed out hesitatingly
+that she was practically a guest of the de Laines.  "Ah, well,
+that's true, my dear; then you may bring one of them with you."
+
+Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied.  She had a long
+talk with the dowager.  "I am not rich, my dear, like your friends,
+and cannot afford to pay ten napoleons for a song.  Like you I have
+seen 'better days.'  But this is no place for you, child, and if
+you can bear with an old woman's company for a while I think I can
+find you something to do."  That evening Helen left for England
+with the duchess, a piece of "ingratitude, indelicacy, and
+shameless snobbery," which Miss de Laine was never weary of
+dilating upon.  "And to think I introduced her, though she was a
+professional!"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+It was three years after.  Paris, reviving under the republic, had
+forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony,
+emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.
+
+It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the
+window of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the
+wonderful lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies,
+heard the practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at
+the same moment that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand
+on her shoulder.
+
+"We are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear."
+
+"Why, we were there only last week!" said Helen.
+
+"Undoubtedly," returned the duchess dryly, "and we may luncheon
+there next week and the next following.  And," she added, looking
+into her companion's gray eyes, "it rests with YOU to stay there if
+you choose."
+
+Helen stared at her protector.
+
+"My dear," continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helen's
+waist, "Sir James has honored ME--as became my relations to YOU--
+with his confidences.  As you haven't given me YOURS I suppose you
+have none, and that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James
+wishes to marry you."
+
+The unmistakable astonishment in the girl's eye satisfied the
+duchess even before her voice.
+
+"But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!" said the young girl
+quickly.
+
+"On the contrary, my dear, he knows EVERYTHING about you.  I have
+been particular in telling him all I know--and some things even YOU
+don't know and couldn't tell him.  For instance, that you are a
+very nice person.  Come, my dear, don't look so stupefied, or I
+shall really think there's something in it that I don't know.  It's
+not a laughing nor a crying matter yet--at present it's only
+luncheon again with a civil man who has three daughters and a place
+in the county.  Don't make the mistake, however, of refusing him
+before he offers--whatever you do afterwards."
+
+"But"--stammered Helen.
+
+"But--you are going to say that you don't love him and have never
+thought of him as a husband," interrupted the duchess; "I read it
+in your face,--and it's a very proper thing to say."
+
+"It is so unexpected," urged Helen.
+
+"Everything is unexpected from a man in these matters," said the
+duchess.  "We women are the only ones that are prepared."
+
+"But," persisted Helen, "if I don't want to marry at all?"
+
+"I should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were
+eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you."  She paused, and
+then drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine
+tenderness, "As long as I live, dear, you know that you have a home
+here.  But I am an old woman living on the smallest of settlements.
+Death is as inevitable to me as marriage should be to you."
+
+Nevertheless, they did not renew the conversation, and later
+received the greetings of their host at Moreland Hall with a
+simplicity and frankness that were, however, perfectly natural and
+unaffected in both women.  Sir James,--a tall, well-preserved man
+of middle age, with the unmistakable bearing of long years of
+recognized and unchallenged position,--however, exhibited on this
+occasion that slight consciousness of weakness and susceptibility
+to ridicule which is apt to indicate the invasion of the tender
+passion in the heart of the average Briton.  His duty as host
+towards the elder woman of superior rank, however, covered his
+embarrassment, and for a moment left Helen quite undisturbed to
+gaze again upon the treasures of the long drawing-room of Moreland
+Hall with which she was already familiar.  There were the half-
+dozen old masters, whose respectability had been as recognized
+through centuries as their owner's ancestors; there were the
+ancestors themselves,--wigged, ruffled, and white-handed, by
+Vandyke, Lely, Romney, and Gainsborough; there were the uniform,
+expressionless ancestresses in stiff brocade or short-waisted,
+clinging draperies, but all possessing that brilliant coloring
+which the gray skies outside lacked, and which seemed to have
+departed from the dresses of their descendants.  The American girl
+had sometimes speculated upon what might have been the appearance
+of the lime-tree walk, dotted with these gayly plumaged folk, and
+wondered if the tyranny of environment had at last subdued their
+brilliant colors.  And a new feeling touched her.  Like most of her
+countrywomen, she was strongly affected by the furniture of life;
+the thought that all that she saw there MIGHT BE HERS; that she
+might yet stand in succession to these strange courtiers and
+stranger shepherdesses, and, like them, look down from the canvas
+upon the intruding foreigner, thrilled her for a moment with a
+half-proud, half-passive sense of yielding to what seemed to be her
+fate.  A narrow-eyed, stiff-haired Dutch maid of honor before whom
+she was standing gazed at her with staring vacancy.  Suddenly she
+started.  Before the portrait upon a fanciful easel stood a small
+elaborately framed sketch in oils.  It was evidently some recently
+imported treasure.  She had not seen it before.  As she moved
+quickly forward, she recognized at a glance that it was Ostrander's
+sketch from the Paris grenier.
+
+The wall, the room, the park beyond, even the gray sky, seemed to
+fade away before her.  She was standing once more at her attic
+window looking across the roofs and chimney stacks upward to the
+blue sky of Paris.  Through a gap in the roofs she could see the
+chestnut-trees trilling in the little square; she could hear the
+swallows twittering in the leaden troughs of the gutter before her;
+the call of the chocolate vender or the cry of a gamin floated up
+to her from the street below, or the latest song of the cafe
+chantant was whistled by the blue-bloused workman on the
+scaffolding hard by.  The breath of Paris, of youth, of blended
+work and play, of ambition, of joyous freedom, again filled her and
+mingled with the scent of the mignonette that used to stand on the
+old window-ledge.
+
+"I am glad you like it.  I have only just put it up."
+
+It was the voice of Sir James--a voice that had regained a little
+of its naturalness--a calm, even lazy English voice--confident from
+the experience of years of respectful listeners.  Yet it somehow
+jarred upon her nerves with its complacency and its utter
+incongruousness to her feelings.  Nevertheless, the impulse to know
+more about the sketch was the stronger.
+
+"Do you mean you have just bought it?" asked Helen.  "It's not
+English?"
+
+"No," said Sir James, gratified with his companion's interest.  "I
+bought it in Paris just after the Commune."
+
+"From the artist?" continued Helen, in a slightly constrained
+voice.
+
+"No," said Sir James, "although I knew the poor chap well enough.
+You can easily see that he was once a painter of great promise.  I
+rather think it was stolen from him while he was in hospital by
+those incendiary wretches.  I recognized it, however, and bought
+for a few francs from them what I would have paid HIM a thousand
+for."
+
+"In hospital?" repeated Helen dazedly.
+
+"Yes," said Sir James.  "The fact is it was the ending of the usual
+Bohemian artist's life.  Though in this case the man was a real
+artist,--and I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours."
+
+"In hospital?" again repeated Helen.  "Then he was poor?"
+
+"Reckless, I should rather say; he threw himself into the fighting
+before Paris and was badly wounded.  But it was all the result of
+the usual love affair--the girl, they say, ran off with the usual
+richer man.  At all events, it ruined him for painting; he never
+did anything worth having afterwards."
+
+"And now?" said Helen in the same unmoved voice.
+
+Sir James shrugged his shoulders.  "He disappeared.  Probably he'll
+turn up some day on the London pavement--with chalks.  That sketch,
+by the way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio--
+though he never would part with it.  I rather fancy, don't you
+know, that the girl had something to do with it.  It's a
+wonderfully realistic sketch, don't you see; and I shouldn't wonder
+if it was the girl herself who lived behind one of those queer
+little windows in the roof there."
+
+"She did live there," said Helen in a low voice.
+
+Sir James uttered a vague laugh.  Helen looked around her.  The
+duchess had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library,
+and in full view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her
+glass to her eye, some books upon the shelves.
+
+"I mean," said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, "that the young
+girl did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the
+right nor the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his
+misfortunes to her."  She hesitated, not from any sense of her
+indiscretion, but to recover from a momentary doubt if the girl
+were really her own self--but only for a moment.
+
+"Then you knew the painter, as I did?" he said in astonishment.
+
+"Not as YOU did," responded Helen.  She drew nearer the picture,
+and, pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:--
+
+"Do you see that small window with the mignonette?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"That was MY room.  His was opposite.  He told me so when I first
+saw the sketch.  I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other,
+and I believe him to have been a truthful, honorable man."
+
+"But what were you doing there?  Surely you are joking?" said Sir
+James, with a forced smile.
+
+"I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could
+afford to live."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Alone."
+
+"And the man was"--
+
+"Major Ostrander was my friend.  I even think I have a better right
+to call him that than you had."
+
+Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat.  "Of
+course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, don't you know, when I
+spoke."  He looked around him as if to evade a scene.  "Ah! suppose
+we ask the duchess to look at the sketch; I don't think she's seen
+it."  He began to move in the direction of the library.
+
+"She had better wait," said Helen quietly.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"Until"--hesitated Helen smilingly.
+
+"Until?  I am afraid I don't understand," said Sir James stiffly,
+coloring with a slight suspicion.
+
+"Until you have APOLOGIZED."
+
+"Of course," said Sir James, with a half-hysteric laugh.  "I do.
+You understand I only repeated a story that was told me, and had no
+idea of connecting YOU with it.  I beg your pardon, I'm sure.  I
+er--er--in fact," he added suddenly, the embarrassed smile fading
+from his face as he looked at her fixedly, "I remember now it must
+have been the concierge of the house, or the opposite one, who told
+me.  He said it was a Russian who carried off that young girl.  Of
+course it was some made-up story."
+
+"I left Paris with the duchess," said Helen quietly, "before the
+war."
+
+"Of course.  And she knows all about your friendship with this
+man."
+
+"I don't think she does.  I haven't told her.  Why should I?"
+returned Helen, raising her clear eyes to his.
+
+"Really, I don't know," stammered Sir James.  "But here she is.  Of
+course if you prefer it, I won't say anything of this to her."
+
+Helen gave him her first glance of genuine emotion; it happened,
+however, to be scorn.
+
+"How odd!" she said, as the duchess leisurely approached them, her
+glass still in her eye.  "Sir James, quite unconsciously, has just
+been showing me a sketch of my dear old mansarde in Paris.  Look!
+That little window was my room.  And, only think of it, Sir James
+bought it of an old friend of mine, who painted it from the
+opposite attic, where he lived.  And quite unconsciously, too."
+
+"How very singular!" said the duchess; "indeed, quite romantic!"
+
+"Very!" said Sir James.
+
+"Very!" said Helen.
+
+The tone of their voices was so different that the duchess looked
+from one to the other.
+
+"But that isn't all," said Helen with a smile, "Sir James actually
+fancied"--
+
+"Will you excuse me for a moment?" said Sir James, interrupting,
+and turning hastily to the duchess with a forced smile and a
+somewhat heightened color.  "I had forgotten that I had promised
+Lady Harriet to drive you over to Deep Hill after luncheon to meet
+that South American who has taken such a fancy to your place, and I
+must send to the stables."
+
+As Sir James disappeared, the duchess turned to Helen.  "I see what
+has happened, dear; don't mind me, for I frankly confess I shall
+now eat my luncheon less guiltily than I feared.  But tell me, HOW
+did you refuse him?"
+
+"I didn't refuse him," said Helen.  "I only prevented his asking
+me."
+
+"How?"
+
+Then Helen told her all,--everything except her first meeting with
+Ostrander at the restaurant.  A true woman respects the pride of
+those she loves more even than her own, and while Helen felt that
+although that incident might somewhat condone her subsequent
+romantic passion in the duchess's eyes, she could not tell it.
+
+The duchess listened in silence.
+
+"Then you two incompetents have never seen each other since?" she
+asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"But you hope to?"
+
+"I cannot speak for HIM," said Helen.
+
+"And you have never written to him, and don't know whether he is
+alive or dead?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I have been nursing in my bosom for three years at one and
+the same time a brave, independent, matter-of-fact young person and
+the most idiotic, sentimental heroine that ever figured in a
+romantic opera or a country ballad."  Helen did not reply.  "Well,
+my dear," said the duchess after a pause, "I see that you are
+condemned to pass your days with me in some cheap hotel on the
+continent."  Helen looked up wonderingly.  "Yes," she continued, "I
+suppose I must now make up my mind to sell my place to this gilded
+South American, who has taken a fancy to it.  But I am not going to
+spoil my day by seeing him NOW.  No; we will excuse ourselves from
+going to Deep Hill to-day, and we will go back home quietly after
+luncheon.  It will be a mercy to Sir James."
+
+"But," said Helen earnestly, "I can go back to my old life, and
+earn my own living."
+
+"Not if I can help it," said the duchess grimly.  "Your independence
+has made you a charming companion to me, I admit; but I shall see
+that it does not again spoil your chances of marrying. Here comes
+Sir James.  Really, my dear, I don't know which one of you looks the
+more relieved."
+
+On their way back through the park Helen again urged the duchess to
+give up the idea of selling Hamley Court, and to consent to her
+taking up her old freedom and independence once more.  "I shall
+never, never forget your loving kindness and protection," continued
+the young girl, tenderly.  "You will let me come to you always when
+you want me; but you will let me also shape my life anew, and work
+for my living."  The duchess turned her grave, half humorous face
+towards her.  "That means you have determined to seek HIM.  Well!
+Perhaps if you give up your other absurd idea of independence, I
+may assist you.  And now I really believe, dear, that there is that
+dreadful South American," pointing to a figure that was crossing
+the lawn at Hamley Court, "hovering round like a vulture.  Well, I
+can't see him to-day if he calls, but YOU may.  By the way, they
+say he is not bad-looking, was a famous general in the South
+American War, and is rolling in money, and comes here on a secret
+mission from his government.  But I forget--the rest of our life is
+to be devoted to seeking ANOTHER.  And I begin to think I am not a
+good matchmaker."
+
+Helen was in no mood for an interview with the stranger, whom, like
+the duchess, she was inclined to regard as a portent of fate and
+sacrifice.  She knew her friend's straitened circumstances, which
+might make such a sacrifice necessary to insure a competency for
+her old age, and, as Helen feared also, a provision for herself.
+She knew the strange tenderness of this masculine woman, which had
+survived a husband's infidelities and a son's forgetfulness, to be
+given to her, and her heart sank at the prospect of separation,
+even while her pride demanded that she should return to her old
+life again.  Then she wondered if the duchess was right; did she
+still cherish the hope of meeting Ostrander again?  The tears she
+had kept back all that day asserted themselves as she flung open
+the library door and ran across the garden into the myrtle walk.
+"In hospital!"  The words had been ringing in her ears though Sir
+James's complacent speech, through the oddly constrained luncheon,
+through the half-tender, half-masculine reasoning of her companion.
+He HAD loved her--he had suffered and perhaps thought her false.
+Suddenly she stopped.  At the further end of the walk the ominous
+stranger whom she wished to avoid was standing looking towards the
+house.
+
+How provoking!  She glanced again; he was leaning against a tree
+and was obviously as preoccupied as she was herself.  He was
+actually sketching the ivy-covered gable of the library.  What
+presumption!  And he was sketching with his left hand.  A sudden
+thrill of superstition came over her.  She moved eagerly forward
+for a better view of him.  No! he had two arms!
+
+But his quick eye had already caught sight of her, and before she
+could retreat she could see that he had thrown away his sketch-book
+and was hastening eagerly toward her.  Amazed and confounded she
+would have flown, but her limbs suddenly refused their office, and
+as he at last came near her with the cry of "Helen!" upon his lips,
+she felt herself staggering, and was caught in his arms.
+
+"Thank God," he said.  "Then she HAS let you come to me!"
+
+She disengaged herself slowly and dazedly from him and stood
+looking at him with wondering eyes.  He was bronzed and worn; there
+was the second arm: but still it was HE.  And with the love, which
+she now knew he had felt, looking from his honest eyes!
+
+"SHE has let me come!" she repeated vacantly.  "Whom do you mean?"
+
+"The duchess."
+
+"The duchess?"
+
+"Yes."  He stopped suddenly, gazing at her blank face, while his
+own grew ashy white.  "Helen!  For God's sake tell me!  You have
+not accepted him?"
+
+"I have accepted no one," she stammered, with a faint color rising
+to her cheeks.  "I do not understand you."
+
+A look of relief came over him.  "But," he said amazedly, "has not
+the duchess told you how I happen to be here?  How, when you
+disappeared from Paris long ago--with my ambition crushed, and
+nothing left to me but my old trade of the fighter--I joined a
+secret expedition to help the Chilian revolutionists?  How I, who
+might have starved as a painter, gained distinction as a partisan
+general, and was rewarded with an envoyship in Europe?  How I came
+to Paris to seek you?  How I found that even the picture--your
+picture, Helen--had been sold.  How, in tracing it here, I met the
+duchess at Deep Hill, and learning you were with her, in a moment
+of impulse told her my whole story.  How she told me that though
+she was your best friend, you had never spoken of me, and how she
+begged me not to spoil your chance of a good match by revealing
+myself, and so awakening a past--which she believed you had
+forgotten.  How she implored me at least to let her make a fair
+test of your affections and your memory, and until then to keep
+away from you--and to spare you, Helen; and for your sake, I
+consented.  Surely she has told this, NOW!"
+
+"Not a word," said Helen blankly.
+
+"Then you mean to say that if I had not haunted the park to-day, in
+the hope of seeing you, believing that as you would not recognize
+me with this artificial arm, I should not break my promise to her,--
+you would not have known I was even living."
+
+"No!--yes!--stay!"  A smile broke over her pale face and left it
+rosy.  "I see it all now.  Oh, Philip, don't you understand?  She
+wanted only to try us!"
+
+There was a silence in the lonely wood, broken only by the trills
+of a frightened bird whose retreat was invaded.
+
+"Not now!  Please!  Wait!  Come with me!"
+
+The next moment she had seized Philip's left hand, and, dragging
+him with her, was flying down the walk towards the house.  But as
+they neared the garden door it suddenly opened on the duchess, with
+her glasses to her eyes, smiling.
+
+The General Don Felipe Ostrander did not buy Hamley Court, but he
+and his wife were always welcome guests there.  And Sir James, as
+became an English gentleman,--amazed though he was at Philip's
+singular return, and more singular incognito,--afterwards gallantly
+presented Philip's wife with Philip's first picture.
+
+
+
+THE JUDGMENT OF BOLINAS PLAIN
+
+
+The wind was getting up on the Bolinas Plain.  It had started the
+fine alkaline dust along the level stage road, so that even that
+faint track, the only break in the monotony of the landscape,
+seemed fainter than ever.  But the dust cloud was otherwise a
+relief; it took the semblance of distant woods where there was no
+timber, of moving teams where there was no life.  And as Sue
+Beasley, standing in the doorway of One Spring House that
+afternoon, shading her sandy lashes with her small red hand,
+glanced along the desolate track, even HER eyes, trained to the
+dreary prospect, were once or twice deceived.
+
+"Sue!"
+
+It was a man's voice from within.  Sue took no notice of it, but
+remained with her hand shading her eyes.
+
+"Sue!  Wot yer yawpin' at thar?"
+
+"Yawpin'" would seem to have been the local expression for her
+abstraction, since, without turning her head, she answered slowly
+and languidly: "Reckoned I see'd som' un on the stage road.  But
+'tain't nothin' nor nobody."
+
+Both voices had in their accents and delivery something of the
+sadness and infinite protraction of the plain.  But the woman's had
+a musical possibility in its long-drawn cadence, while the man's
+was only monotonous and wearying.  And as she turned back into the
+room again, and confronted her companion, there was the like
+difference in their appearance.  Ira Beasley, her husband, had
+suffered from the combined effects of indolence, carelessness,
+misadventure, and disease.  Two of his fingers had been cut off by
+a scythe, his thumb and part of his left ear had been blown away by
+an overcharged gun; his knees were crippled by rheumatism, and one
+foot was lame from ingrowing nails,--deviations that, however, did
+not tend to correct the original angularities of his frame.  His
+wife, on the other hand, had a pretty figure, which still retained--
+they were childless--the rounded freshness of maidenhood.  Her
+features were irregular, yet not without a certain piquancy of
+outline; her hair had the two shades sometimes seen in imperfect
+blondes, and her complexion the sallowness of combined exposure and
+alkaline assimilation.
+
+She had lived there since, an angular girl of fifteen, she had been
+awkwardly helped by Ira from the tail-board of the emigrant wagon
+in which her mother had died two weeks before, and which was making
+its first halt on the Californian plains, before Ira's door.  On
+the second day of their halt Ira had tried to kiss her while she
+was drawing water, and had received the contents of the bucket
+instead,--the girl knowing her own value.  On the third day Ira had
+some conversation with her father regarding locations and stock.
+On the fourth day this conversation was continued in the presence
+of the girl; on the fifth day the three walked to Parson Davies'
+house, four miles away, where Ira and Sue were married.  The
+romance of a week had taken place within the confines of her
+present view from the doorway; the episode of her life might have
+been shut in in that last sweep of her sandy lashes.
+
+Nevertheless, at that moment some instinct, she knew not what,
+impelled her when her husband left the room to put down the dish
+she was washing, and, with the towel lapped over her bare pretty
+arms, to lean once more against the doorpost, lazily looking down
+the plain.  A cylindrical cloud of dust trailing its tattered skirt
+along the stage road suddenly assaulted the house, and for an
+instant enveloped it.  As it whirled away again something emerged,
+or rather dropped from its skirts behind the little cluster of low
+bushes which encircled the "One Spring."  It was a man.
+
+"Thar!  I knew it was suthin'," she began aloud, but the words
+somehow died upon her lips.  Then she turned and walked towards the
+inner door, wherein her husband had disappeared,--but here stopped
+again irresolutely.  Then she suddenly walked through the outer
+door into the road and made directly for the spring.  The figure of
+a man crouching, covered with dust, half rose from the bushes when
+she reached them.  She was not frightened, for he seemed utterly
+exhausted, and there was a singular mixture of shame, hesitation,
+and entreaty in his broken voice as he gasped out:--
+
+"Look here!--I say! hide me somewhere, won't you?  Just for a
+little.  You see--the fact is--I'm chased!  They're hunting me
+now,--they're just behind me.  Anywhere will do till they go by!
+Tell you all about it another time.  Quick!  Please do!"
+
+In all this there was nothing dramatic nor even startling to her.
+Nor did there seem to be any present danger impending to the man.
+He did not look like a horse-thief nor a criminal.  And he had
+tried to laugh, half-apologetically, half-bitterly,--the
+consciousness of a man who had to ask help of a woman at such a
+moment.
+
+She gave a quick glance towards the house.  He followed her eyes,
+and said hurriedly: "Don't tell on me.  Don't let any one see me.
+I'm trusting you.
+
+"Come," she said suddenly.  "Get on THIS side."
+
+He understood her, and slipped to her side, half-creeping, half-
+crouching like a dog behind her skirts, but keeping her figure
+between him and the house as she moved deliberately towards the
+barn, scarce fifty yards away.  When she reached it she opened the
+half-door quickly, said: "In there--at the top--among the hay"--
+closed it, and was turning away, when there came a faint rapping
+from within.  She opened the door again impatiently; the man said
+hastily: "Wanted to tell you--it was a man who insulted a WOMAN!  I
+went for him, you see--and"--
+
+But she shut the door sharply.  The fugitive had made a blunder.
+The importation of her own uncertain sex into the explanation did
+not help him.  She kept on towards the house, however, without the
+least trace of excitement or agitation in her manner, entered the
+front door again, walked quietly to the door of the inner room,
+glanced in, saw that her husband was absorbed in splicing a riata,
+and had evidently not missed her, and returned quietly to her dish-
+washing.  With this singular difference: a few moments before she
+had seemed inattentive and careless of what she was doing, as if
+from some abstraction; now, when she was actually abstracted, her
+movements were mechanically perfect and deliberate.  She carefully
+held up a dish and examined it minutely for cracks, rubbing it
+cautiously with the towel, but seeing all the while only the man
+she had left in the barn.  A few moments elapsed.  Then there came
+another rush of wind around the house, a drifting cloud of dust
+before the door, the clatter of hoofs, and a quick shout.
+
+Her husband reached the door, from the inner room, almost as
+quickly as she did.  They both saw in the road two armed mounted
+men--one of whom Ira recognized as the sheriff's deputy.
+
+"Has anybody been here, just now?" he asked sharply.
+
+"No."
+
+"Seen anybody go by?" he continued.
+
+"No.  What's up?"
+
+"One of them circus jumpers stabbed Hal Dudley over the table in
+Dolores monte shop last night, and got away this morning.  We
+hunted him into the plain and lost him somewhere in this d----d
+dust."
+
+"Why, Sue reckoned she saw suthin' just now," said Ira, with a
+flash of recollection.  "Didn't ye, Sue?"
+
+"Why the h-ll didn't she say it before?--I beg your pardon, ma'am;
+didn't see you; you'll excuse haste."
+
+Both the men's hats were in their hands, embarrassed yet gratified
+smiles on their faces, as Sue came forward.  There was the faintest
+of color in her sallow cheek, a keen brilliancy in her eyes; she
+looked singularly pretty.  Even Ira felt a slight antenuptial
+stirring through his monotonously wedded years.
+
+The young woman walked out, folding the towel around her red hands
+and forearms--leaving the rounded whiteness of bared elbow and
+upper arm in charming contrast--and looked gravely past the
+admiring figures that nearly touched her own.  "It was somewhar
+over thar," she said lazily, pointing up the road in the opposite
+direction to the barn, "but I ain't sure it WAS any one."
+
+"Then he'd already PASSED the house afore you saw him?" said the
+deputy.
+
+"I reckon--if it WAS him," returned Sue.
+
+"He must have got on," said the deputy; "but then he runs like a
+deer; it's his trade."
+
+"Wot trade?"
+
+"Acrobat."
+
+"Wot's that?"
+
+The two men were delighted at this divine simplicity.  "A man who
+runs, jumps, climbs--and all that sort, in the circus."
+
+"But isn't he runnin', jumpin', and climbin' away from ye now?" she
+continued with adorable naivete.
+
+The deputy smiled, but straightened in the saddle.  "We're bound to
+come up with him afore he reaches Lowville; and between that and
+this house it's a dead level, where a gopher couldn't leave his
+hole without your spottin' him a mile off!  Good-by!"  The words
+were addressed to Ira, but the parting glance was directed to the
+pretty wife as the two men galloped away.
+
+An odd uneasiness at this sudden revelation of his wife's
+prettiness and its evident effect upon his visitors came over Ira.
+It resulted in his addressing the empty space before his door with,
+"Well, ye won't ketch much if ye go on yawpin' and dawdlin' with
+women-folks like this;" and he was unreasonably delighted at the
+pretty assent of disdain and scorn which sparkled in his wife's
+eyes as she added:--
+
+"Not much, I reckon!"
+
+"That's the kind of official trash we have to pay taxes to keep
+up," said Ira, who somehow felt that if public policy was not
+amenable to private sentiment there was no value in free
+government.  Mrs. Beasley, however, complacently resumed her dish-
+washing, and Ira returned to his riata in the adjoining room.  For
+quite an interval there was no sound but the occasional click of a
+dish laid upon its pile, with fingers that, however, were firm and
+untremulous.  Presently Sue's low voice was heard.
+
+"Wonder if that deputy caught anything yet.  I've a good mind to
+meander up the road and see."
+
+But the question brought Ira to the door with a slight return of
+his former uneasiness.  He had no idea of subjecting his wife to
+another admiring interview.  "I reckon I'll go myself," he said
+dubiously; "YOU'D better stay and look after the house."
+
+Her eyes brightened as she carried a pile of plates to the dresser;
+it was possible she had foreseen this compromise.  "Yes," she said
+cheerfully, "you could go farther than me."
+
+Ira reflected.  He could also send them about their business if
+they thought of returning.  He lifted his hat from the floor, took
+his rifle down carefully from its pegs, and slouched out into the
+road.  Sue watched him until he was well away, then flew to the
+back door, stopping only an instant to look at her face in a small
+mirror on the wall,--yet without noticing her new prettiness,--then
+ran to the barn.  Casting a backward glance at the diminishing
+figure of her husband in the distance, she threw open the door and
+shut it quickly behind her.  At first the abrupt change from the
+dazzling outer plain to the deep shadows of the barn bewildered
+her.  She saw before her a bucket half filled with dirty water, and
+a quantity of wet straw littering the floor; then lifting her eyes
+to the hay-loft, she detected the figure of the fugitive, unclothed
+from the waist upward, emerging from the loose hay in which he had
+evidently been drying himself.  Whether it was the excitement of
+his perilous situation, or whether the perfect symmetry of his
+bared bust and arms--unlike anything she had ever seen before--
+clothed him with the cold ideality of a statue, she could not say,
+but she felt no shock of modesty; while the man, accustomed to the
+public half-exposure in tights and spangles, was more conscious of
+detected unreadiness than of shame.
+
+"Gettin' the dust off me," he said, in hurried explanation; "be
+down in a second."  Indeed, in another moment he had resumed his
+shirt and flannel coat, and swung himself to the floor with a like
+grace and dexterity, that was to her the revelation of a descending
+god.  She found herself face to face with him,--his features
+cleansed of dirt and grime, his hair plastered in wet curls on his
+low forehead.  It was a face of cheap adornment, not uncommon in
+his profession--unintelligent, unrefined, and even unheroic; but
+she did not know that.  Overcoming a sudden timidity, she
+nevertheless told him briefly and concisely of the arrival and
+departure of his pursuers.
+
+His low forehead wrinkled.  "Thar's no getting away until they come
+back," he said without looking at her.  "Could ye keep me in here
+to-night?"
+
+"Yes," she returned simply, as if the idea had already occurred to
+her; "but you must lie low in the loft."
+
+"And could you"--he hesitated, and went on with a forced smile--
+"you see, I've eaten nothing since last night.  Could you"--
+
+"I'll bring you something," she said quickly, nodding her head.
+
+"And if you had"--he went on more hesitatingly, glancing down at
+his travel-torn and frayed garments--"anything like a coat, or any
+other clothing?  It would disguise me also, you see, and put 'em
+off the track."
+
+She nodded her head again rapidly: she had thought of that too;
+there was a pair of doeskin trousers and a velvet jacket left by a
+Mexican vaquero who had bought stock from them two years ago.
+Practical as she was, a sudden conviction that he would look well
+in the velvet jacket helped her resolve.
+
+"Did they say"--he said, with his forced smile and uneasy glance--
+"did they--tell you anything about me?"
+
+"Yes," she said abstractedly, gazing at him.
+
+"You see," he began hurriedly, "I'll tell you how it was."
+
+"No, don't!" she said quickly.  She meant it.  She wanted no facts
+to stand between her and this single romance of her life.  "I must
+go and get the things," she added, turning away, "before he gets
+back."
+
+"Who's HE?" asked the man.
+
+She was about to reply, "My husband," but without knowing why
+stopped and said, "Mr. Beasley," and then ran off quickly to the
+house.
+
+She found the vaquero's clothes, took some provisions, filled a
+flask of whiskey in the cupboard, and ran back with them, her mouth
+expanded to a vague smile, and pulsating like a schoolgirl.  She
+even repressed with difficulty the ejaculation "There!" as she
+handed them to him.  He thanked her, but with eyes fixed and
+fascinated by the provisions.  She understood it with a new sense
+of delicacy, and saying, "I'll come again when he gets back," ran
+off and returned to the house, leaving him alone to his repast.
+
+Meantime her husband, lounging lazily along the high road, had
+precipitated the catastrophe he wished to avoid.  For his slouching
+figure, silhouetted against the horizon on that monotonous level,
+had been the only one detected by the deputy sheriff and the
+constable, his companion, and they had charged down within fifty
+yards of him before they discovered their mistake.  They were not
+slow in making this an excuse for abandoning their quest as far as
+Lowville: in fact, after quitting the distraction of Mrs. Beasley's
+presence they had, without in the least suspecting the actual
+truth, become doubtful if the fugitive had proceeded so far.  He
+might at that moment be snugly ensconced behind some low wire-grass
+ridge, watching their own clearly defined figures, and waiting only
+for the night to evade them.  The Beasley house seemed a proper
+place of operation in beating up the field.  Ira's cold reception
+of the suggestion was duly disposed of by the deputy.  "I have the
+RIGHT, ye know," he said, with a grim pleasantry, "to summon ye as
+my posse to aid and assist me in carrying out the law; but I ain't
+the man to be rough on my friends, and I reckon it will do jest as
+well if I 'requisition' your house."  The dreadful recollection
+that the deputy had the power to detail him and the constable to
+scour the plain while he remained behind in company with Sue
+stopped Ira's further objections.  Yet, if he could only get rid of
+her while the deputy was in the house,--but then his nearest
+neighbor was five miles away!  There was nothing left for him to do
+but to return with the men and watch his wife keenly.  Strange to
+say, there was a certain stimulus in this which stirred his
+monotonous pulses and was not without a vague pleasure.  There is a
+revelation to some natures in newly awakened jealousy that is a
+reincarnation of love.
+
+As they came into the house a slight circumstance, which an hour
+ago would have scarcely touched his sluggish sensibilities, now
+appeared to corroborate his fear.  His wife had changed her cuffs
+and collar, taken off her rough apron, and evidently redressed her
+hair.  This, with the enhanced brightness of her eyes, which he had
+before noticed, convinced him that it was due to the visit of the
+deputy.  There was no doubt that the official was equally attracted
+and fascinated by her prettiness, and although her acceptance of
+his return was certainly not a cordial one, there was a kind of
+demure restraint and over-consciousness in her manner that might be
+coquetry.  Ira had vaguely observed this quality in other young
+women, but had never experienced it in his brief courtship.  There
+had been no rivalry, no sexual diplomacy nor insincerity in his
+capture of the motherless girl who had leaped from the tail-board
+of her father's wagon almost into his arms, and no man had since
+come between them.  The idea that Sue should care for any other
+than himself had been simply inconceivable to his placid, matter-
+of-fact nature.  That their sacrament was final he had never
+doubted.  If his two cows, bought with his own money or reared by
+him, should suddenly have developed an inclination to give milk to
+a neighbor, he would not have been more astonished.  But THEY could
+have been brought back with a rope, and without a heart throb.
+
+Passion of this kind, which in a less sincere society restricts its
+expression to innuendo or forced politeness, left the rustic Ira
+only dumb and lethargic.  He moved slowly and abstractedly around
+the room, accenting his slight lameness more than ever, or dropped
+helplessly into a chair, where he sat, inanely conscious of the
+contiguity of his wife and the deputy, and stupidly expectant of--
+he knew not what.  The atmosphere of the little house seemed to him
+charged with some unwholesome electricity.  It kindled his wife's
+eyes, stimulating the deputy and his follower to coarse
+playfulness, enthralled his own limbs to the convulsive tightening
+of his fingers around the rungs of his chair.  Yet he managed to
+cling to his idea of keeping his wife occupied, and of preventing
+any eyeshot between her and her guests, or the indulgence of
+dangerously flippant conversation, by ordering her to bring some
+refreshment.  "What's gone o' the whiskey bottle?" he said, after
+fumbling in the cupboard.
+
+Mrs. Beasley did not blench.  She only gave her head a slight toss.
+"Ef you men can't get along with the coffee and flapjacks I'm going
+to give ye, made with my own hands, ye kin just toddle right along
+to the first bar, and order your tangle-foot there.  Ef it's a
+barkeeper you're looking for, and not a lady, say so!"
+
+The novel audacity of this speech, and the fact that it suggested
+that preoccupation he hoped for, relieved Ira for a moment, while
+it enchanted the guests as a stroke of coquettish fascination.
+Mrs. Beasley triumphantly disappeared in the kitchen, slipped off
+her cuffs and set to work, and in a few moments emerged with a tray
+bearing the cakes and steaming coffee.  As neither she nor her
+husband ate anything (possibly owing to an equal preoccupation) the
+guests were obliged to confine their attentions to the repast
+before them.  The sun, too, was already nearing the horizon, and
+although its nearly level beams acted like a powerful search-light
+over the stretching plain, twilight would soon put an end to the
+quest.  Yet they lingered.  Ira now foresaw a new difficulty: the
+cows were to be brought up and fodder taken from the barn; to do
+this he would be obliged to leave his wife and the deputy together.
+I do not know if Mrs. Beasley divined his perplexity, but she
+carelessly offered to perform that evening function herself.  Ira's
+heart leaped and sank again as the deputy gallantly proposed to
+assist her.  But here rustic simplicity seemed to be equal to the
+occasion.  "Ef I propose to do Ira's work," said Mrs. Beasley, with
+provocative archness, "it's because I reckon he'll do more good
+helpin' you catch your man than you'll do helpin' ME!  So clear
+out, both of ye!"  A feminine audacity that recalled the deputy to
+himself, and left him no choice but to accept Ira's aid.  I do not
+know whether Mrs. Beasley felt a pang of conscience as her husband
+arose gratefully and limped after the deputy; I only know that she
+stood looking at them from the door, smiling and triumphant.
+
+Then she slipped out of the back door again, and ran swiftly to the
+barn, fastening on her clean cuffs and collar as she ran.  The
+fugitive was anxiously awaiting her, with a slight touch of
+brusqueness in his eagerness.
+
+"Thought you were never coming!" he said.
+
+She breathlessly explained, and showed him through the half-opened
+door the figures of the three men slowly spreading and diverging
+over the plain, like the nearly level sun-rays they were following.
+The sunlight fell also on her panting bosom, her electrified sandy
+hair, her red, half-opened mouth, and short and freckled upper lip.
+The relieved fugitive turned from the three remoter figures to the
+one beside him, and saw, for the first time, that it was fair.  At
+which he smiled, and her face flushed and was irradiated.
+
+Then they fell to talk,--he grateful, boastful,--as the distant
+figures grew dim; she quickly assenting, but following his
+expression rather than his words, with her own girlish face and
+brightening eyes.  But what he said, or how he explained his
+position, with what speciousness he dwelt upon himself, his wrongs,
+and his manifold manly virtues, is not necessary for us to know,
+nor was it, indeed, for her to understand.  Enough for her that she
+felt she had found the one man of all the world, and that she was
+at that moment protecting him against all the world!  He was the
+unexpected, spontaneous gift to her, the companion her childhood
+had never known, the lover she had never dreamed of, even the child
+of her unsatisfied maternal yearnings.  If she could not comprehend
+all his selfish incoherences, she felt it was her own fault; if she
+could not follow his ignorant assumptions, she knew it was SHE who
+was deficient; if she could not translate his coarse speech, it was
+because it was the language of a larger world from which she had
+been excluded.  To this world belonged the beautiful limbs she
+gazed on,--a very different world from that which had produced the
+rheumatic deformities and useless mayhem of her husband, or the
+provincially foppish garments of the deputy.  Sitting in the
+hayloft together, where she had mounted for greater security, they
+forgot themselves in his monologue of cheap vaporing, broken only
+by her assenting smiles and her half-checked sighs.  The sharp
+spices of the heated pine-shingles over their heads and the
+fragrance of the clover-scented hay filled the close air around
+them.  The sun was falling with the wind, but they heeded it not;
+until the usual fateful premonition struck the woman, and saying "I
+must go now," she only half-unconsciously precipitated the end.
+For, as she rose, he caught first her hand and then her waist, and
+attempted to raise the face that was suddenly bending down as if
+seeking to hide itself in the hay.  It was a brief struggle, ending
+in a submission as sudden, and their lips met in a kiss, so eager
+that it might have been impending for days instead of minutes.
+
+"Oh, Sue! where are ye?"
+
+It was her husband's voice, out of a darkness that they only then
+realized.  The man threw her aside with a roughness that
+momentarily shocked her above any sense of surprise or shame: SHE
+would have confronted her husband in his arms,--glorified and
+translated,--had he but kept her there.  Yet she answered, with a
+quiet, level voice that astonished her lover, "Here!  I'm just
+coming down!" and walked coolly to the ladder.  Looking over, and
+seeing her husband with the deputy standing in the barnyard, she
+quickly returned, put her finger to her lips, made a gesture for
+her companion to conceal himself in the hay again, and was turning
+away, when, perhaps shamed by her superior calmness, he grasped her
+hand tightly and whispered, "Come again tonight, dear; do!"  She
+hesitated, raised her hand suddenly to her lips, and then quickly
+disengaging it, slipped down the ladder.
+
+"Ye haven't done much work yet as I kin see," said Ira wearily.
+"Whitey and Red Tip [the cows] are hangin' over the corral, just
+waitin'."
+
+"The yellow hen we reckoned was lost is sittin' in the hayloft, and
+mustn't be disturbed," said Mrs. Beasley, with decision; "and ye'll
+have to take the hay from the stack to-night.  And," with an arch
+glance at the deputy, "as I don't see that you two have done much
+either, you're just in time to help fodder down."
+
+Setting the three men to work with the same bright audacity, the
+task was soon completed--particularly as the deputy found no
+opportunity for exclusive dalliance with Mrs. Beasley.  She shut
+the barn door herself, and led the way to the house, learning
+incidentally that the deputy had abandoned the chase, was to occupy
+a "shake-down" on the kitchen-floor that night with the constable,
+and depart at daybreak.  The gloom of her husband's face had
+settled into a look of heavy resignation and alternate glances of
+watchfulness, which only seemed to inspire her with renewed
+vivacity.  But the cooking of supper withdrew her disturbing
+presence for a time from the room, and gave him some relief.  When
+the meal was ready he sought further surcease from trouble in
+copious draughts of whiskey, which she produced from a new bottle,
+and even pressed upon the deputy in mischievous contrition for her
+previous inhospitality.
+
+"Now I know that it wasn't whiskey only ye came for, I'll show you
+that Sue Beasley is no slouch of a barkeeper either," she said.
+
+Then, rolling her sleeves above her pretty arms, she mixed a
+cocktail in such delightful imitation of the fashionable
+barkeeper's dexterity that her guests were convulsed with
+admiration.  Even Ira was struck with this revelation of a
+youthfulness that five years of household care had checked, but
+never yet subdued.  He had forgotten that he had married a child.
+Only once, when she glanced at the cheap clock on the mantel, had
+he noticed another change, more remarkable still from its very
+inconsistency with her burst of youthful spirits.  It was another
+face that he saw,--older and matured with an intensity of
+abstraction that struck a chill to his heart.  It was not HIS Sue
+that was standing there, but another Sue, wrought, as it seemed to
+his morbid extravagance, by some one else's hand.
+
+Yet there was another interval of relief when his wife, declaring
+she was tired, and even jocosely confessing to some effect of the
+liquor she had pretended to taste, went early to bed.  The deputy,
+not finding the gloomy company of the husband to his taste,
+presently ensconced himself on the floor, before the kitchen fire,
+in the blankets that she had provided.  The constable followed his
+example.  In a few moments the house was silent and sleeping, save
+for Ira sitting alone, with his head sunk on his chest and his
+hands gripping the arms of his chair before the dying embers of his
+hearth.
+
+He was trying, with the alternate quickness and inaction of an
+inexperienced intellect and an imagination morbidly awakened, to
+grasp the situation before him.  The common sense that had hitherto
+governed his life told him that the deputy would go to-morrow, and
+that there was nothing in his wife's conduct to show that her
+coquetry and aberration would not pass as easily.  But it recurred
+to him that she had never shown this coquetry or aberration to HIM
+during their own brief courtship,--that she had never looked or
+acted like this before.  If this was love, she had never known it;
+if it was only "women's ways," as he had heard men say, and so
+dangerously attractive, why had she not shown it to him?  He
+remembered that matter-of-fact wedding, the bride without timidity,
+without blushes, without expectation beyond the transference of her
+home to his.  Would it have been different with another man?--with
+the deputy, who had called this color and animation to her face?
+What did it all mean?  Were all married people like this?  There
+were the Westons, their neighbors,--was Mrs. Weston like Sue?  But
+he remembered that Mrs. Weston had run away with Mr. Weston from
+her father's house.  It was what they called "a love match."  Would
+Sue have run away with him?  Would she now run away with--?
+
+The candle was guttering as he rose with a fierce start--his first
+impulse of anger--from the table.  He took another gulp of whiskey.
+It tasted like water; its fire was quenched in the greater heat of
+his blood.  He would go to bed.  Here a new and indefinable
+timidity took possession of him; he remembered the strange look in
+his wife's face.  It seemed suddenly as if the influence of the
+sleeping stranger in the next room had not only isolated her from
+him, but would make his presence in her bedroom an intrusion on
+their hidden secrets.  He had to pass the open door of the kitchen.
+The head of the unconscious deputy was close to Ira's heavy boot.
+He had only to lift his heel to crush that ruddy, good-looking,
+complacent face.  He hurried past him, up the creaking stairs.  His
+wife lay still on one side of the bed, apparently asleep, her face
+half-hidden in her loosened, fluffy hair.  It was well; for in the
+vague shyness and restraint that was beginning to take possession
+of him he felt he could not have spoken to her, or, if he had, it
+would have been only to voice the horrible, unformulated things
+that seemed to choke him.  He crept softly to the opposite side of
+the bed, and began to undress.  As he pulled off his boots and
+stockings, his eye fell upon his bare, malformed feet.  This caused
+him to look at his maimed hand, to rise, drag himself across the
+floor to the mirror, and gaze upon his lacerated ear.  She, this
+prettily formed woman lying there, must have seen it often; she
+must have known all these years that he was not like other men,--
+not like the deputy, with his tight riding-boots, his soft hand,
+and the diamond that sparkled vulgarly on his fat little finger.  A
+cold sweat broke over him.  He drew on his stockings again, lifted
+the outer counterpane, and, half undressed, crept under it,
+wrapping its corner around his maimed hand, as if to hide it from
+the light.  Yet he felt that he saw things dimly; there was a
+moisture on his cheeks and eyelids he could not account for; it
+must be the whiskey "coming out."
+
+His wife lay very still; she scarcely seemed to breathe.  What if
+she should never breathe again, but die as the old Sue he knew, the
+lanky girl he had married, unchanged and uncontaminated?  It would
+be better than this.  Yet at the same moment the picture was before
+him of her pretty simulation of the barkeeper, of her white bared
+arms and laughing eyes, all so new, so fresh to him!  He tried to
+listen to the slow ticking of the clock, the occasional stirring of
+air through the house, and the movement, like a deep sigh, which
+was the regular, inarticulate speech of the lonely plain beyond,
+and quite distinct from the evening breeze.  He had heard it often,
+but, like so many things he had learned that day, he never seemed
+to have caught its meaning before.  Then, perhaps, it was his
+supine position, perhaps some cumulative effect of the whiskey he
+had taken, but all this presently became confused and whirling.
+Out of its gyrations he tried to grasp something, to hear voices
+that called him to "wake," and in the midst of it he fell into a
+profound sleep.
+
+The clock ticked, the wind sighed, the woman at his side lay
+motionless for many minutes.
+
+Then the deputy on the kitchen floor rolled over with an appalling
+snort, struggled, stretched himself, and awoke.  A healthy animal,
+he had shaken off the fumes of liquor with a dry tongue and a
+thirst for water and fresh air.  He raised his knees and rubbed his
+eyes.  The water bucket was missing from the corner.  Well, he knew
+where the spring was, and a turn out of the close and stifling
+kitchen would do him good.  He yawned, put on his boots softly,
+opened the back door, and stepped out.  Everything was dark, but
+above and around him, to the very level of his feet, all apparently
+pricked with bright stars.  The bulk of the barn rose dimly before
+him on the right, to the left was the spring.  He reached it,
+drank, dipped his head and hands in it, and arose refreshed.  The
+dry, wholesome breath that blew over this flat disk around him,
+rimmed with stars, did the rest.  He began to saunter slowly back,
+the only reminiscence of his evening's potations being the figure
+he recalled of his pretty hostess, with bare arms and lifted
+glasses, imitating the barkeeper.  A complacent smile straightened
+his yellow mustache.  How she kept glancing at him and watching
+him, the little witch!  Ha! no wonder!  What could she find in the
+surly, slinking, stupid brute yonder?  (The gentleman here alluded
+to was his host.)  But the deputy had not been without a certain
+provincial success with the fair.  He was true to most men, and
+fearless to all.  One may not be too hard upon him at this moment
+of his life.
+
+For as he was passing the house he stopped suddenly.  Above the
+dry, dusty, herbal odors of the plain, above the scent of the new-
+mown hay within the barn, there was distinctly another fragrance,--
+the smell of a pipe.  But where?  Was it his host who had risen to
+take the outer air?  Then it suddenly flashed upon him that Beasley
+did NOT smoke, nor the constable either.  The smell seemed to come
+from the barn.  Had he followed out the train of ideas thus
+awakened, all might have been well; but at this moment his
+attention was arrested by a far more exciting incident to him,--the
+draped and hooded figure of Mrs. Beasley was just emerging from the
+house.  He halted instantly in the shadow, and held his breath as
+she glided quickly across the intervening space and disappeared in
+the half-opened door of the barn.  Did she know he was there?  A
+keen thrill passed over him; his mouth broadened into a breathless
+smile.  It was his last! for, as he glided forward to the door, the
+starry heavens broke into a thousand brilliant fragments around
+him, the earth gave way beneath his feet, and he fell forward with
+half his skull shot away.
+
+Where he fell there he lay without an outcry, with only one
+movement,--the curved and grasping fingers of the fighter's hand
+towards his guarded hip.  Where he fell there he lay dead, his face
+downwards, his good right arm still curved around across his back.
+Nothing of him moved but his blood,--broadening slowly round him in
+vivid color, and then sluggishly thickening and darkening until it
+stopped too, and sank into the earth, a dull brown stain.  For an
+instant the stillness of death followed the echoless report, then
+there was a quick and feverish rustling within the barn, the
+hurried opening of a window in the loft, scurrying footsteps,
+another interval of silence, and then out of the farther darkness
+the sounds of horse-hoofs in the muffled dust of the road.  But not
+a sound or movement in the sleeping house beyond.
+
+
+The stars at last paled slowly, the horizon lines came back,--a
+thin streak of opal fire.  A solitary bird twittered in the bush
+beside the spring.  Then the back door of the house opened, and the
+constable came forth, half-awakened and apologetic, and with the
+bewildered haste of a belated man.  His eyes were level, looking
+for his missing leader as he went on, until at last he stumbled and
+fell over the now cold and rigid body.  He scrambled to his feet
+again, cast a hurried glance around him,--at the half-opened door
+of the barn, at the floor littered with trampled hay.  In one
+corner lay the ragged blouse and trousers of the fugitive, which
+the constable instantly recognized.  He went back to the house, and
+reappeared in a few moments with Ira, white, stupefied, and
+hopelessly bewildered; clear only in his statement that his wife
+had just fainted at the news of the catastrophe, and was equally
+helpless in her own room.  The constable--a man of narrow ideas but
+quick action--saw it all.  The mystery was plain without further
+evidence.  The deputy had been awakened by the prowling of the
+fugitive around the house in search of a horse.  Sallying out, they
+had met, and Ira's gun, which stood in the kitchen, and which the
+deputy had seized, had been wrested from him and used with fatal
+effect at arm's length, and the now double assassin had escaped on
+the sheriff's horse, which was missing.  Turning the body over to
+the trembling Ira, he saddled his horse and galloped to Lowville
+for assistance.
+
+These facts were fully established at the hurried inquest which met
+that day.  There was no need to go behind the evidence of the
+constable, the only companion of the murdered man and first
+discoverer of the body.  The fact that he, on the ground floor, had
+slept through the struggle and the report, made the obliviousness
+of the couple in the room above a rational sequence.  The dazed Ira
+was set aside, after half a dozen contemptuous questions; the
+chivalry of a Californian jury excused the attendance of a
+frightened and hysterical woman confined to her room.  By noon they
+had departed with the body, and the long afternoon shadows settled
+over the lonely plain and silent house.  At nightfall Ira appeared
+at the door, and stood for some moments scanning the plain; he was
+seen later by two packers, who had glanced furtively at the scene
+of the late tragedy, sitting outside his doorway, a mere shadow in
+the darkness; and a mounted patrol later in the night saw a light
+in the bedroom window where the invalid Mrs. Beasley was confined.
+But no one saw her afterwards.  Later, Ira explained that she had
+gone to visit a relative until her health was restored.  Having few
+friends and fewer neighbors, she was not missed; and even the
+constable, the sole surviving guest who had enjoyed her brief
+eminence of archness and beauty that fatal night, had quite
+forgotten her in his vengeful quest of the murderer.  So that
+people became accustomed to see this lonely man working in the
+fields by day, or at nightfall gazing fixedly from his doorway.  At
+the end of three months he was known as the recluse or "hermit" of
+Bolinas Plain; in the rapid history-making of that epoch it was
+forgotten that he had ever been anything else.
+
+But Justice, which in those days was apt to nod over the affairs of
+the average citizen, was keenly awake to offenses against its own
+officers; and it chanced that the constable, one day walking
+through the streets of Marysville, recognized the murderer and
+apprehended him.  He was removed to Lowville.  Here, probably
+through some modest doubt of the ability of the County Court, which
+the constable represented, to deal with purely circumstantial
+evidence, he was not above dropping a hint to the local Vigilance
+Committee, who, singularly enough, in spite of his resistance, got
+possession of the prisoner.  It was the rainy season, and business
+was slack; the citizens of Lowville were thus enabled to give so
+notorious a case their fullest consideration, and to assist
+cheerfully at the ultimate hanging of the prisoner, which seemed to
+be a foregone conclusion.
+
+But herein they were mistaken.  For when the constable had given
+his evidence, already known to the county, there was a disturbance
+in the fringe of humanity that lined the walls of the assembly room
+where the committee was sitting, and the hermit of Bolinas Plain
+limped painfully into the room.  He had evidently walked there: he
+was soaked with rain and plastered with mud; he was exhausted and
+inarticulate.  But as he staggered to the witness-bench, and
+elbowed the constable aside, he arrested the attention of every
+one.  A few laughed, but were promptly silenced by the court.  It
+was a reflection upon its only virtue,--sincerity.
+
+"Do you know the prisoner?" asked the judge.
+
+Ira Beasley glanced at the pale face of the acrobat, and shook his
+head.
+
+"Never saw him before," he said faintly.
+
+"Then what are you doing here?" demanded the judge sternly.
+
+Ira collected himself with evident effort, and rose to his halting
+feet.  First he moistened his dry lips, then he said, slowly and
+distinctly, "Because I killed the deputy of Bolinas."
+
+With the thrill which ran through the crowded room, and the relief
+that seemed to come upon him with that utterance, he gained
+strength and even a certain dignity.
+
+"I killed him," he went on, turning his head slowly around the
+circle of eager auditors with the rigidity of a wax figure,
+"because he made love to my wife.  I killed him because he wanted
+to run away with her.  I killed him because I found him waiting for
+her at the door of the barn at the dead o' night, when she'd got
+outer bed to jine him.  He hadn't no gun.  He hadn't no fight.  I
+killed him in his tracks.  That man," pointing to the prisoner,
+"wasn't in it at all."  He stopped, loosened his collar, and,
+baring his rugged throat below his disfigured ear, said: "Now take
+me out and hang me!"
+
+"What proof have we of this?  Where's your wife?  Does she
+corroborate it?"
+
+A slight tremor ran over him.
+
+"She ran away that night, and never came back again.  Perhaps," he
+added slowly, "because she loved him and couldn't bear me; perhaps,
+as I've sometimes allowed to myself, gentlemen, it was because she
+didn't want to bear evidence agin me."
+
+In the silence that followed the prisoner was heard speaking to one
+that was near him.  Then he rose.  All the audacity and confidence
+that the husband had lacked were in HIS voice.  Nay, there was even
+a certain chivalry in his manner which, for the moment, the rascal
+really believed.
+
+"It's true!" he said.  "After I stole the horse to get away, I
+found that woman running wild down the road, cryin' and sobbin'.
+At first I thought she'd done the shooting.  It was a risky thing
+for me to do, gentlemen; but I took her up on the horse and got her
+away to Lowville.  It was that much dead weight agin my chances,
+but I took it.  She was a woman and--I ain't a dog!"
+
+He was so exalted and sublimated by his fiction that for the first
+time the jury was impressed in his favor.  And when Ira Beasley
+limped across the room, and, extending his maimed hand to the
+prisoner, said, "Shake!" there was another dead silence.
+
+It was broken by the voice of the judge addressing the constable.
+
+"What do you know of the deputy's attentions to Mrs. Beasley?  Were
+they enough to justify the husband's jealousy?  Did he make love to
+her?"
+
+The constable hesitated.  He was a narrow man, with a crude sense
+of the principles rather than the methods of justice.  He
+remembered the deputy's admiration; he now remembered, even more
+strongly, the object of that admiration, simulating with her pretty
+arms the gestures of the barkeeper, and the delight it gave them.
+He was loyal to his dead leader, but he looked up and down, and
+then said, slowly and half-defiantly: "Well, judge, he was a MAN."
+
+Everybody laughed.  That the strongest and most magic of all human
+passions should always awake levity in any public presentment of or
+allusion to it was one of the inconsistencies of human nature which
+even a lynch judge had to admit.  He made no attempt to control the
+tittering of the court, for he felt that the element of tragedy was
+no longer there.  The foreman of the jury arose and whispered to
+the judge amid another silence.  Then the judge spoke:--
+
+"The prisoner and his witness are both discharged.  The prisoner to
+leave the town within twenty-four hours; the witness to be
+conducted to his own house at the expense of, and with the thanks
+of, the Committee."
+
+They say that one afternoon, when a low mist of rain had settled
+over the sodden Bolinas Plain, a haggard, bedraggled, and worn-out
+woman stepped down from a common "freighting wagon" before the
+doorway where Beasley still sat; that, coming forward, he caught
+her in his arms and called her "Sue;" and they say that they lived
+happily together ever afterwards.  But they say--and this requires
+some corroboration--that much of that happiness was due to Mrs.
+Beasley's keeping forever in her husband's mind her own heroic
+sacrifice in disappearing as a witness against him, her own
+forgiveness of his fruitless crime, and the gratitude he owed to
+the fugitive.
+
+
+
+THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF ALKALI DICK
+
+
+He was a "cowboy."  A reckless and dashing rider, yet mindful of
+his horse's needs; good-humored by nature, but quick in quarrel;
+independent of circumstance, yet shy and sensitive of opinion;
+abstemious by education and general habit, yet intemperate in
+amusement; self-centred, yet possessed of a childish vanity,--taken
+altogether, a characteristic product of the Western plains, which
+he never should have left.
+
+But reckless adventure after adventure had brought him into
+difficulties, from which there was only one equally adventurous
+escape: he joined a company of Indians engaged by Buffalo Bill to
+simulate before civilized communities the sports and customs of the
+uncivilized.  In divers Christian arenas of the nineteenth century
+he rode as a northern barbarian of the first might have disported
+before the Roman populace, but harmlessly, of his own free will,
+and of some little profit to himself.  He threw his lasso under the
+curious eyes of languid men and women of the world, eager for some
+new sensation, with admiring plaudits from them and a half
+contemptuous egotism of his own.  But outside of the arena he was
+lonely, lost, and impatient for excitement.
+
+An ingenious attempt to "paint the town red" did not commend itself
+as a spectacle to the householders who lived in the vicinity of
+Earl's Court, London, and Alkali Dick was haled before a
+respectable magistrate by a serious policeman, and fined as if he
+had been only a drunken coster.  A later attempt at Paris to
+"incarnadine" the neighborhood of the Champs de Mars, and "round
+up" a number of boulevardiers, met with a more disastrous result,--
+the gleam of steel from mounted gendarmes, and a mandate to his
+employers.
+
+So it came that one night, after the conclusion of the performance,
+Alkali Dick rode out of the corral gate of the Hippodrome with his
+last week's salary in his pocket and an imprecation on his lips.
+He had shaken the sawdust of the sham arena from his high, tight-
+fitting boots; he would shake off the white dust of France, and the
+effeminate soil of all Europe also, and embark at once for his own
+country and the Far West!
+
+A more practical and experienced man would have sold his horse at
+the nearest market and taken train to Havre, but Alkali Dick felt
+himself incomplete on terra firma without his mustang,--it would be
+hard enough to part from it on embarking,--and he had determined to
+ride to the seaport.
+
+The spectacle of a lithe horseman, clad in a Rembrandt sombrero,
+velvet jacket, turnover collar, almost Van Dyke in its proportions,
+white trousers and high boots, with long curling hair falling over
+his shoulders, and a pointed beard and mustache, was a picturesque
+one, but still not a novelty to the late-supping Parisians who
+looked up under the midnight gas as he passed, and only recognized
+one of those men whom Paris had agreed to designate as "Booflo-
+bils," going home.
+
+At three o'clock he pulled up at a wayside cabaret, preferring it
+to the publicity of a larger hotel, and lay there till morning.
+The slight consternation of the cabaret-keeper and his wife over
+this long-haired phantom, with glittering, deep-set eyes, was
+soothed by a royally-flung gold coin, and a few words of French
+slang picked up in the arena, which, with the name of Havre,
+comprised Dick's whole knowledge of the language.  But he was
+touched with their ready and intelligent comprehension of his
+needs, and their genial if not so comprehensive loquacity.  Luckily
+for his quick temper, he did not know that they had taken him for a
+traveling quack-doctor going to the Fair of Yvetot, and that madame
+had been on the point of asking him for a magic balsam to prevent
+migraine.
+
+He was up betimes and away, giving a wide berth to the larger towns;
+taking byways and cut-offs, yet always with the Western pathfinder's
+instinct, even among these alien, poplar-haunted plains, low-banked
+willow-fringed rivers, and cloverless meadows. The white sun shining
+everywhere,--on dazzling arbors, summer-houses, and trellises; on
+light green vines and delicate pea-rows; on the white trousers,
+jackets, and shoes of smart shopkeepers or holiday makers; on the
+white headdresses of nurses and the white-winged caps of the
+Sisters of St. Vincent,--all this grew monotonous to this native of
+still more monotonous wastes.  The long, black shadows of short,
+blue-skirted, sabotted women and short, blue-bloused, sabotted men
+slowly working in the fields, with slow oxen, or still slower heavy
+Norman horses; the same horses gayly bedecked, dragging slowly not
+only heavy wagons, but their own apparently more monstrous weight
+over the white road, fretted his nervous Western energy, and made
+him impatient to get on.
+
+At the close of the second day he found some relief on entering a
+trackless wood,--not the usual formal avenue of equidistant trees,
+leading to nowhere, and stopping upon the open field,--but
+apparently a genuine forest as wild as one of his own "oak
+bottoms."  Gnarled roots and twisted branches flung themselves
+across his path; his mustang's hoofs sank in deep pits of moss and
+last year's withered leaves; trailing vines caught his heavy-
+stirruped feet, or brushed his broad sombrero; the vista before him
+seemed only to endlessly repeat the same sylvan glade; he was in
+fancy once more in the primeval Western forest, and encompassed by
+its vast, dim silences.  He did not know that he had in fact only
+penetrated an ancient park which in former days resounded to the
+winding fanfare of the chase, and was still, on stated occasions,
+swept over by accurately green-coated Parisians and green-plumed
+Dianes, who had come down by train!  To him it meant only unfettered
+and unlimited freedom.
+
+He rose in his stirrups, and sent a characteristic yell ringing
+down the dim aisles before him.  But, alas! at the same moment, his
+mustang, accustomed to the firmer grip of the prairie, in lashing
+out, stepped upon a slimy root, and fell heavily, rolling over his
+clinging and still unlodged rider.  For a few moments both lay
+still.  Then Dick extricated himself with an oath, rose giddily,
+dragged up his horse,--who, after the fashion of his race, was
+meekly succumbing to his reclining position,--and then became aware
+that the unfortunate beast was badly sprained in the shoulder, and
+temporarily lame.  The sudden recollection that he was some miles
+from the road, and that the sun was sinking, concentrated his
+scattered faculties.  The prospect of sleeping out in that summer
+woodland was nothing to the pioneer-bred Dick; he could make his
+horse and himself comfortable anywhere--but he was delaying his
+arrival at Havre.  He must regain the high road,--or some wayside
+inn.  He glanced around him; the westering sun was a guide for his
+general direction; the road must follow it north or south; he would
+find a "clearing" somewhere.  But here Dick was mistaken; there
+seemed no interruption of, no encroachment upon this sylvan tract,
+as in his western woods.  There was no track or trail to be found;
+he missed even the ordinary woodland signs that denoted the path of
+animals to water.  For the park, from the time a Northern Duke had
+first alienated it from the virgin forest, had been rigidly
+preserved.
+
+Suddenly, rising apparently from the ground before him, he saw the
+high roof-ridges and tourelles of a long, irregular, gloomy
+building.  A few steps further showed him that it lay in a cup-like
+depression of the forest, and that it was still a long descent from
+where he had wandered to where it stood in the gathering darkness.
+His mustang was moving with great difficulty; he uncoiled his
+lariat from the saddle-horn, and, selecting the most open space,
+tied one end to the trunk of a large tree,--the forty feet of
+horsehair rope giving the animal a sufficient degree of grazing
+freedom.
+
+Then he strode more quickly down the forest side towards the
+building, which now revealed its austere proportions, though Dick
+could see that they were mitigated by a strange, formal flower-
+garden, with quaint statues and fountains.  There were grim black
+allees of clipped trees, a curiously wrought iron gate, and twisted
+iron espaliers.  On one side the edifice was supported by a great
+stone terrace, which seemed to him as broad as a Parisian
+boulevard.  Yet everywhere it appeared sleeping in the desertion
+and silence of the summer twilight.  The evening breeze swayed the
+lace curtains at the tall windows, but nothing else moved.  To the
+unsophisticated Western man it looked like a scene on the stage.
+
+His progress was, however, presently checked by the first sight of
+preservation he had met in the forest,--a thick hedge, which
+interfered between him and a sloping lawn beyond.  It was up to his
+waist, yet he began to break his way through it, when suddenly he
+was arrested by the sound of voices.  Before him, on the lawn, a
+man and woman, evidently servants, were slowly advancing, peering
+into the shadows of the wood which he had just left.  He could not
+understand what they were saying, but he was about to speak and
+indicate by signs his desire to find the road when the woman,
+turning towards her companion, caught sight of his face and
+shoulders above the hedge.  To his surprise and consternation, he
+saw the color drop out of her fresh cheeks, her round eyes fix in
+their sockets, and with a despairing shriek she turned and fled
+towards the house.  The man turned at his companion's cry, gave the
+same horrified glance at Dick's face, uttered a hoarse "Sacre!"
+crossed himself violently, and fled also.
+
+Amazed, indignant, and for the first time in his life humiliated,
+Dick gazed speechlessly after them.  The man, of course, was a
+sneaking coward; but the woman was rather pretty.  It had not been
+Dick's experience to have women run from him!  Should he follow
+them, knock the silly fellow's head against a tree, and demand an
+explanation?  Alas, he knew not the language!  They had already
+reached the house and disappeared in one of the offices.  Well! let
+them go--for a mean "lowdown" pair of country bumpkins:--HE wanted
+no favors from them!
+
+He turned back angrily into the forest to seek his unlucky beast.
+The gurgle of water fell on his ear; hard by was a spring, where at
+least he could water the mustang.  He stooped to examine it; there
+was yet light enough in the sunset sky to throw back from that
+little mirror the reflection of his thin, oval face, his long,
+curling hair, and his pointed beard and mustache.  Yes! this was
+his face,--the face that many women in Paris had agreed was
+romantic and picturesque.  Had those wretched greenhorns never seen
+a real man before?  Were they idiots, or insane?  A sudden
+recollection of the silence and seclusion of the building suggested
+certainly an asylum,--but where were the keepers?
+
+It was getting darker in the wood; he made haste to recover his
+horse, to drag it to the spring, and there bathe its shoulder in
+the water mixed with whiskey taken from his flask.  His saddle-bag
+contained enough bread and meat for his own supper; he would camp
+for the night where he was, and with the first light of dawn make
+his way back through the wood whence he came.  As the light slowly
+faded from the wood he rolled himself in his saddle-blanket and lay
+down.
+
+But not to sleep.  His strange position, the accident to his horse,
+an unusual irritation over the incident of the frightened
+servants,--trivial as it might have been to any other man,--and,
+above all, an increasing childish curiosity, kept him awake and
+restless.  Presently he could see also that it was growing lighter
+beyond the edge of the wood, and that the rays of a young crescent
+moon, while it plunged the forest into darkness and impassable
+shadow, evidently was illuminating the hollow below.  He threw
+aside his blanket, and made his way to the hedge again.  He was
+right; he could see the quaint, formal lines of the old garden more
+distinctly,--the broad terrace, the queer, dark bulk of the house,
+with lights now gleaming from a few of its open windows.
+
+Before one of these windows opening on the terrace was a small,
+white, draped table with fruits, cups, and glasses, and two or
+three chairs.  As he gazed curiously at these new signs of life and
+occupation, he became aware of a regular and monotonous tap upon
+the stone flags of the terrace.  Suddenly he saw three figures
+slowly turn the corner of the terrace at the further end of the
+building, and walk towards the table.  The central figure was that
+of an elderly woman, yet tall and stately of carriage, walking with
+a stick, whose regular tap he had heard, supported on the one side
+by an elderly Cure in black soutaine, and on the other by a tall
+and slender girl in white.
+
+They walked leisurely to the other end of the terrace, as if
+performing a regular exercise, and returned, stopping before the
+open French window; where, after remaining in conversation a few
+moments, the elderly lady and her ecclesiastical companion entered.
+The young girl sauntered slowly to the steps of the terrace, and
+leaning against a huge vase as she looked over the garden, seemed
+lost in contemplation.  Her face was turned towards the wood, but
+in quite another direction from where he stood.
+
+There was something so gentle, refined, and graceful in her figure,
+yet dominated by a girlish youthfulness of movement and gesture,
+that Alkali Dick was singularly interested.  He had probably never
+seen an ingenue before; he had certainly never come in contact with
+a girl of that caste and seclusion in his brief Parisian experience.
+He was sorely tempted to leave his hedge and try to obtain a nearer
+view of her.  There was a fringe of lilac bushes running from the
+garden up the slope; if he could gain their shadows, he could
+descend into the garden.  What he should do after his arrival he had
+not thought; but he had one idea--he knew not why--that if he
+ventured to speak to her he would not be met with the abrupt rustic
+terror he had experienced at the hands of the servants.  SHE was not
+of that kind!  He crept through the hedge, reached the lilacs, and
+began the descent softly and securely in the shadow.  But at the
+same moment she arose, called in a youthful voice towards the open
+window, and began to descend the steps.  A half-expostulating reply
+came from the window, but the young girl answered it with the
+laughing, capricious confidence of a spoiled child, and continued
+her way into the garden.  Here she paused a moment and hung over a
+rose-tree, from which she gathered a flower, afterwards thrust into
+her belt.  Dick paused, too, half-crouching, half-leaning over a
+lichen-stained, cracked stone pedestal from which the statue had
+long been overthrown and forgotten.
+
+To his surprise, however, the young girl, following the path to the
+lilacs, began leisurely to ascend the hill, swaying from side to
+side with a youthful movement, and swinging the long stalk of a
+lily at her side.  In another moment he would be discovered!  Dick
+was frightened; his confidence of the moment before had all gone;
+he would fly,--and yet, an exquisite and fearful joy kept him
+motionless.  She was approaching him, full and clear in the
+moonlight.  He could see the grace of her delicate figure in the
+simple white frock drawn at the waist with broad satin ribbon, and
+its love-knots of pale blue ribbons on her shoulders; he could see
+the coils of her brown hair, the pale, olive tint of her oval
+cheek, the delicate, swelling nostril of her straight, clear-cut
+nose; he could even smell the lily she carried in her little hand.
+Then, suddenly, she lifted her long lashes, and her large gray eyes
+met his.
+
+Alas! the same look of vacant horror came into her eyes, and fixed
+and dilated their clear pupils.  But she uttered no outcry,--there
+was something in her blood that checked it; something that even
+gave a dignity to her recoiling figure, and made Dick flush with
+admiration.  She put her hand to her side, as if the shock of the
+exertion of her ascent had set her heart to beating, but she did
+not faint.  Then her fixed look gave way to one of infinite
+sadness, pity, and pathetic appeal.  Her lips were parted; they
+seemed to be moving, apparently in prayer.  At last her voice came,
+wonderingly, timidly, tenderly: "Mon Dieu! c'est donc vous?  Ici?
+C'est vous que Marie a crue voir!  Que venez-vous faire ici, Armand
+de Fontonelles?  Repondez!"
+
+Alas, not a word was comprehensible to Dick; nor could he think of
+a word to say in reply.  He made an uncouth, half-irritated, half-
+despairing gesture towards the wood he had quitted, as if to
+indicate his helpless horse, but he knew it was meaningless to the
+frightened yet exalted girl before him.  Her little hand crept to
+her breast and clutched a rosary within the folds of her dress, as
+her soft voice again arose, low but appealingly:
+
+"Vous souffrez!  Ah, mon Dieu!  Peuton vous secourir?  Moi-meme--
+mes prieres pourraient elles interceder pour vous?  Je supplierai
+le ciel de prendre en pitie l'ame de mon ancetre.  Monsieur le Cure
+est la,--je lui parlerai.  Lui et ma mere vous viendront en aide."
+
+She clasped her hands appealingly before him.
+
+Dick stood bewildered, hopeless, mystified; he had not understood a
+word; he could not say a word.  For an instant he had a wild idea
+of seizing her hand and leading her to his helpless horse, and then
+came what he believed was his salvation,--a sudden flash of
+recollection that he had seen the word he wanted, the one word that
+would explain all, in a placarded notice at the Cirque of a
+bracelet that had been LOST,--yes, the single word "PERDU."  He
+made a step towards her, and in a voice almost as faint as her own,
+stammered, "PERDU!"
+
+With a little cry, that was more like a sigh than an outcry, the
+girl's arms fell to her side; she took a step backwards, reeled,
+and fainted away.
+
+Dick caught her as she fell.  What had he said!--but, more than
+all, what should he do now?  He could not leave her alone and
+helpless,--yet how could he justify another disconcerting
+intrusion?  He touched her hands; they were cold and lifeless; her
+eyes were half closed; her face as pale and drooping as her lily.
+Well, he must brave the worst now, and carry her to the house, even
+at the risk of meeting the others and terrifying them as he had
+her.  He caught her up,--he scarcely felt her weight against his
+breast and shoulder,--and ran hurriedly down the slope to the
+terrace, which was still deserted.  If he had time to place her on
+some bench beside the window within their reach, he might still fly
+undiscovered!  But as he panted up the steps of the terrace with
+his burden, he saw that the French window was still open, but the
+light seemed to have been extinguished.  It would be safer for her
+if he could place her INSIDE the house,--if he but dared to enter.
+He was desperate, and he dared!
+
+He found himself alone, in a long salon of rich but faded white and
+gold hangings, lit at the further end by two tall candles on either
+side of the high marble mantel, whose rays, however, scarcely
+reached the window where he had entered.  He laid his burden on a
+high-backed sofa.  In so doing, the rose fell from her belt.  He
+picked it up, put it in his breast, and turned to go.  But he was
+arrested by a voice from the terrace:--
+
+"Renee!"
+
+It was the voice of the elderly lady, who, with the Cure at her
+side, had just appeared from the rear of the house, and from the
+further end of the terrace was looking towards the garden in search
+of the young girl.  His escape in that way was cut off.  To add to
+his dismay, the young girl, perhaps roused by her mother's voice,
+was beginning to show signs of recovering consciousness.  Dick
+looked quickly around him.  There was an open door, opposite the
+window, leading to a hall which, no doubt, offered some exit on the
+other side of the house.  It was his only remaining chance!  He
+darted through it, closed it behind him, and found himself at the
+end of a long hall or picture-gallery, strangely illuminated
+through high windows, reaching nearly to the roof, by the moon,
+which on that side of the building threw nearly level bars of light
+and shadows across the floor and the quaint portraits on the wall.
+
+But to his delight he could see at the other end a narrow, lance-
+shaped open postern door showing the moonlit pavement without--
+evidently the door through which the mother and the Cure had just
+passed out.  He ran rapidly towards it.  As he did so he heard the
+hurried ringing of bells and voices in the room he had quitted--the
+young girl had evidently been discovered--and this would give him
+time.  He had nearly reached the door, when he stopped suddenly--
+his blood chilled with awe!  It was his turn to be terrified--he
+was standing, apparently, before HIMSELF!
+
+His first recovering thought was that it was a mirror--so accurately
+was every line and detail of his face and figure reflected.  But a
+second scrutiny showed some discrepancies of costume, and he saw it
+was a panelled portrait on the wall.  It was of a man of his own
+age, height, beard, complexion, and features, with long curls like
+his own, falling over a lace Van Dyke collar, which, however, again
+simulated the appearance of his own hunting-shirt.  The broad-
+brimmed hat in the picture, whose drooping plume was lost in shadow,
+was scarcely different from Dick's sombrero. But the likeness of the
+face to Dick was marvelous--convincing!  As he gazed at it, the
+wicked black eyes seemed to flash and kindle at his own,--its lip
+curled with Dick's own sardonic humor!
+
+He was recalled to himself by a step in the gallery.  It was the
+Cure who had entered hastily, evidently in search of one of the
+servants.  Partly because it was a man and not a woman, partly from
+a feeling of bravado--and partly from a strange sense, excited by
+the picture, that he had some claim to be there, he turned and
+faced the pale priest with a slight dash of impatient devilry that
+would have done credit to the portrait.  But he was sorry for it
+the next moment!
+
+The priest, looking up suddenly, discovered what seemed to him to
+be the portrait standing before its own frame and glaring at him.
+Throwing up his hands with an averted head and an "EXORCIS--!" he
+wheeled and scuffled away.  Dick seized the opportunity, darted
+through the narrow door on to the rear terrace, and ran, under
+cover of the shadow of the house, to the steps into the garden.
+Luckily for him, this new and unexpected diversion occupied the
+inmates too much with what was going on in the house to give them
+time to search outside.  Dick reached the lilac hedge, tore up the
+hill, and in a few moments threw himself, panting, on his blanket.
+In the single look he had cast behind, he had seen that the half-
+dark salon was now brilliantly lighted--where no doubt the whole
+terrified household was now assembled.  He had no fear of being
+followed; since his confrontation with his own likeness in the
+mysterious portrait, he understood everything.  The apparently
+supernatural character of his visitation was made plain; his
+ruffled vanity was soothed--his vindication was complete.  He
+laughed to himself and rolled about, until in his suppressed
+merriment the rose fell from his bosom, and--he stopped!  Its
+freshness and fragrance recalled the innocent young girl he had
+frightened.  He remembered her gentle, pleading voice, and his
+cheek flushed.  Well, he had done the best he could in bringing her
+back to the house--at the risk of being taken for a burglar--and
+she was safe now!  If that stupid French parson didn't know the
+difference between a living man and a dead and painted one, it
+wasn't his fault.  But he fell asleep with the rose in his fingers.
+
+He was awake at the first streak of dawn.  He again bathed his
+horse's shoulder, saddled, but did not mount him, as the beast,
+although better, was still stiff, and Dick wished to spare him for
+the journey to still distant Havre, although he had determined to
+lie over that night at the first wayside inn.  Luckily for him, the
+disturbance at the chateau had not extended to the forest, for Dick
+had to lead his horse slowly and could not have escaped; but no
+suspicion of external intrusion seemed to have been awakened, and
+the woodland was, evidently, seldom invaded.
+
+By dint of laying his course by the sun and the exercise of a
+little woodcraft, in the course of two hours he heard the creaking
+of a hay-cart, and knew that he was near a traveled road.  But to
+his discomfiture he presently came to a high wall, which had
+evidently guarded this portion of the woods from the public.  Time,
+however, had made frequent breaches in the stones; these had been
+roughly filled in with a rude abatis of logs and treetops pointing
+towards the road.  But as these were mainly designed to prevent
+intrusion into the park rather than egress from it, Dick had no
+difficulty in rolling them aside and emerging at last with his
+limping steed upon the white high-road.  The creaking cart had
+passed; it was yet early for traffic, and Dick presently came upon
+a wine-shop, a bakery, a blacksmith's shop, laundry, and a somewhat
+pretentious cafe and hotel in a broader space which marked the
+junction of another road.
+
+Directly before it, however, to his consternation, were the
+massive, but timeworn, iron gates of a park, which Dick did not
+doubt was the one in which he had spent the previous night.  But it
+was impossible to go further in his present plight, and he boldly
+approached the restaurant.  As he was preparing to make his usual
+explanatory signs, to his great delight he was addressed in a
+quaint, broken English, mixed with forgotten American slang, by the
+white-trousered, black-alpaca coated proprietor.  More than that--
+he was a Social Democrat and an enthusiastic lover of America--had
+he not been to "Bos-town" and New York, and penetrated as far west
+as "Booflo," and had much pleasure in that beautiful and free
+country?  Yes! it was a "go-a-'ed" country--you "bet-your-lif'."
+One had reason to say so: there was your electricity--your street
+cars--your "steambots"--ah! such steambots--and your "r-rail-r-
+roads."  Ah! observe! compare your r-rail-r-roads and the buffet of
+the Pullman with the line from Paris, for example--and where is
+one?  Nowhere!  Actually, positively, without doubt, nowhere!
+
+Later, at an appetizing breakfast--at which, to Dick's great
+satisfaction, the good man had permitted and congratulated himself
+to sit at table with a free-born American--he was even more
+loquacious.  For what then, he would ask, was this incompetence,
+this imbecility, of France?  He would tell.  It was the vile
+corruption of Paris, the grasping of capital and companies, the
+fatal influence of the still clinging noblesse, and the insidious
+Jesuitical power of the priests.  As for example, Monsieur "the
+Booflo-bil" had doubtless noticed the great gates of the park
+before the cafe?  It was the preserve,--the hunting-park of one of
+the old grand seigneurs, still kept up by his descendants, the
+Comtes de Fontonelles--hundreds of acres that had never been
+tilled, and kept as wild waste wilderness,--kept for a day's
+pleasure in a year!  And, look you! the peasants starving around
+its walls in their small garden patches and pinched farms!  And the
+present Comte de Fontonelles cascading gold on his mistresses in
+Paris; and the Comtesse, his mother, and her daughter living there
+to feed and fatten and pension a brood of plotting, black-cowled
+priests.  Ah, bah! where was your Republican France, then?  But a
+time would come.  The "Booflo-bil" had, without doubt, noticed, as
+he came along the road, the breaches in the wall of the park?
+
+Dick, with a slight dry reserve, "reckoned that he had."
+
+"They were made by the scythes and pitchforks of the peasants in
+the Revolution of '93, when the count was emigre, as one says with
+reason 'skedadelle,' to England.  Let them look the next time that
+they burn not the chateau,--'bet your lif'!'"
+
+"The chateau," said Dick, with affected carelessness.  "Wot's the
+blamed thing like?"
+
+It was an old affair,--with armor and a picture-gallery,--and
+bricabrac.  He had never seen it.  Not even as a boy,--it was kept
+very secluded then.  As a man--you understand--he could not ask the
+favor.  The Comtes de Fontonelles and himself were not friends.
+The family did not like a cafe near their sacred gates,--where had
+stood only the huts of their retainers.  The American would observe
+that he had not called it "Cafe de Chateau," nor "Cafe de
+Fontonelles,"--the gold of California would not induce him.  Why
+did he remain there?  Naturally, to goad them!  It was a principle,
+one understood.  To GOAD them and hold them in check!  One kept a
+cafe,--why not?  One had one's principles,--one's conviction,--that
+was another thing!  That was the kind of "'air-pin"--was it not?--
+that HE, Gustav Ribaud, was like!
+
+Yet for all his truculent socialism, he was quick, obliging, and
+charmingly attentive to Dick and his needs.  As to Dick's horse, he
+should have the best veterinary surgeon--there was an incomparable
+one in the person of the blacksmith--see to him, and if it were an
+affair of days, and Dick must go, he himself would be glad to
+purchase the beast, his saddle, and accoutrements.  It was an
+affair of business,--an advertisement for the cafe!  He would ride
+the horse himself before the gates of the park.  It would please
+his customers.  Ha! he had learned a trick or two in free America.
+
+Dick's first act had been to shave off his characteristic beard and
+mustache, and even to submit his long curls to the village barber's
+shears, while a straw hat, which he bought to take the place of his
+slouched sombrero, completed his transformation.  His host saw in
+the change only the natural preparation of a voyager, but Dick had
+really made the sacrifice, not from fear of detection, for he had
+recovered his old swaggering audacity, but from a quick distaste he
+had taken to his resemblance to the portrait.  He was too genuine a
+Westerner, and too vain a man, to feel flattered at his resemblance
+to an aristocratic bully, as he believed the ancestral De Fontonelles
+to be.  Even his momentary sensation as he faced the Cure in the
+picture-gallery was more from a vague sense that liberties had been
+taken with his, Dick's, personality, than that he had borrowed
+anything from the portrait.
+
+But he was not so clear about the young girl.  Her tender,
+appealing voice, although he knew it had been addressed only to a
+vision, still thrilled his fancy.  The pluck that had made her
+withstand her fear so long--until he had uttered that dreadful
+word--still excited his admiration.  His curiosity to know what
+mistake he had made--for he knew it must have been some frightful
+blunder--was all the more keen, as he had no chance to rectify it.
+What a brute she must have thought him--or DID she really think him
+a brute even then?--for her look was one more of despair and pity!
+Yet she would remember him only by that last word, and never know
+that he had risked insult and ejection from her friends to carry
+her to her place of safety.  He could not bear to go across the
+seas carrying the pale, unsatisfied face of that gentle girl ever
+before his eyes!  A sense of delicacy--new to Dick, but always the
+accompaniment of deep feeling--kept him from even hinting his story
+to his host, though he knew--perhaps BECAUSE he knew--that it would
+gratify his enmity to the family.  A sudden thought struck Dick.
+He knew her house, and her name.  He would write her a note.
+Somebody would be sure to translate it for her.
+
+He borrowed pen, ink, and paper, and in the clean solitude of his
+fresh chintz bedroom, indited the following letter:--
+
+
+DEAR MISS FONTONELLES,--Please excuse me for having skeert you.  I
+hadn't any call to do it, I never reckoned to do it--it was all
+jest my derned luck; I only reckoned to tell you I was lost--in
+them blamed woods--don't you remember?--"lost"--PERDOO!--and then
+you up and fainted!  I wouldn't have come into your garden, only,
+you see, I'd just skeered by accident two of your helps, reg'lar
+softies, and I wanted to explain.  I reckon they allowed I was that
+man that that picture in the hall was painted after.  I reckon they
+took ME for him--see?  But he ain't MY style, nohow, and I never
+saw the picture at all until after I'd toted you, when you fainted,
+up to your house, or I'd have made my kalkilations and acted
+according.  I'd have laid low in the woods, and got away without
+skeerin' you.  You see what I mean?  It was mighty mean of me, I
+suppose, to have tetched you at all, without saying, "Excuse me,
+miss," and toted you out of the garden and up the steps into your
+own parlor without asking your leave.  But the whole thing tumbled
+so suddent.  And it didn't seem the square thing for me to lite out
+and leave you lying there on the grass.  That's why!  I'm sorry I
+skeert that old preacher, but he came upon me in the picture hall
+so suddent, that it was a mighty close call, I tell you, to get off
+without a shindy.  Please forgive me, Miss Fontonelles.  When you
+get this, I shall be going back home to America, but you might
+write to me at Denver City, saying you're all right.  I liked your
+style; I liked your grit in standing up to me in the garden until
+you had your say, when you thought I was the Lord knows what--
+though I never understood a word you got off--not knowing French.
+But it's all the same now.  Say!  I've got your rose!
+
+Yours very respectfully,
+
+RICHARD FOUNTAINS.
+
+
+Dick folded the epistle and put it in his pocket.  He would post it
+himself on the morning before he left.  When he came downstairs he
+found his indefatigable host awaiting him, with the report of the
+veterinary blacksmith.  There was nothing seriously wrong with the
+mustang, but it would be unfit to travel for several days.  The
+landlord repeated his former offer.  Dick, whose money was pretty
+well exhausted, was fain to accept, reflecting that SHE had never
+seen the mustang and would not recognize it.  But he drew the line
+at the sombrero, to which his host had taken a great fancy.  He had
+worn it before HER!
+
+Later in the evening Dick was sitting on the low veranda of the
+cafe, overlooking the white road.  A round white table was beside
+him, his feet were on the railing, but his eyes were resting beyond
+on the high, mouldy iron gates of the mysterious park.  What he was
+thinking of did not matter, but he was a little impatient at the
+sudden appearance of his host--whom he had evaded during the
+afternoon--at his side.  The man's manner was full of bursting
+loquacity and mysterious levity.
+
+Truly, it was a good hour when Dick had arrived at Fontonelles,--
+"just in time."  He could see now what a world of imbeciles was
+France.  What stupid ignorance ruled, what low cunning and low tact
+could achieve,--in effect, what jugglers and mountebanks,
+hypocritical priests and licentious and lying noblesse went to make
+up existing society.  Ah, there had been a fine excitement, a
+regular coup d'theatre at Fontonelles,--the chateau yonder; here at
+the village, where the news was brought by frightened grooms and
+silly women!  He had been in the thick of it all the afternoon!  He
+had examined it,--interrogated them like a juge d'instruction,--
+winnowed it, sifted it.  And what was it all?  An attempt by these
+wretched priests and noblesse to revive in the nineteenth century--
+the age of electricity and Pullman cars--a miserable mediaeval
+legend of an apparition, a miracle!  Yes; one is asked to believe
+that at the chateau yonder was seen last night three times the
+apparition of Armand de Fontonelles!
+
+Dick started.  "Armand de Fontonelles!"  He remembered that she had
+repeated that name.
+
+"Who's he?" he demanded abruptly.
+
+"The first Comte de Fontonelles!  When monsieur knows that the
+first comte has been dead three hundred years, he will see the
+imbecility of the affair!"
+
+"Wot did he come back for?" growled Dick.
+
+"Ah! it was a legend.  Consider its artfulness!  The Comte Armand
+had been a hard liver, a dissipated scoundrel, a reckless beast,
+but a mighty hunter of the stag.  It was said that on one of these
+occasions he had been warned by the apparition of St. Hubert; but
+he had laughed,--for, observe, HE always jeered at the priests too;
+hence this story!--and had declared that the flaming cross seen
+between the horns of the sacred stag was only the torch of a
+poacher, and he would shoot it!  Good! the body of the comte, dead,
+but without a wound, was found in the wood the next day, with his
+discharged arquebus in his hand.  The Archbishop of Rouen refused
+his body the rites of the Church until a number of masses were said
+every year and--paid for!  One understands! one sees their 'little
+game;' the count now appears,--he is in purgatory!  More masses,--
+more money!  There you are.  Bah!  One understands, too, that the
+affair takes place, not in a cafe like this,--not in a public
+place,--but at a chateau of the noblesse, and is seen by"--the
+proprietor checked the characters on his fingers--TWO retainers;
+one young demoiselle of the noblesse, daughter of the chatelaine
+herself; and, my faith, it goes without saying, by a fat priest,
+the Cure!  In effect, two interested ones!  And the priest,--his
+lie is magnificent!  Superb!  For he saw the comte in the picture-
+gallery,--in effect, stepping into his frame!"
+
+"Oh, come off the roof," said Dick impatiently; "they must have
+seen SOMETHING, you know.  The young lady wouldn't lie!"
+
+Monsieur Ribaud leaned over, with a mysterious, cynical smile, and
+lowering his voice said:--
+
+"You have reason to say so.  You have hit it, my friend.  There WAS
+a something!  And if we regard the young lady, you shall hear.  The
+story of Mademoiselle de Fontonelles is that she has walked by
+herself alone in the garden,--you observe, ALONE--in the moonlight,
+near the edge of the wood.  You comprehend?  The mother and the
+Cure are in the house,--for the time effaced!  Here at the edge of
+the wood--though why she continues, a young demoiselle, to the edge
+of the wood does not make itself clear--she beholds her ancestor,
+as on a pedestal, young, pale, but very handsome and exalte,--
+pardon!"
+
+"Nothing," said Dick hurriedly; "go on!"
+
+"She beseeches him why!  He says he is lost!  She faints away, on
+the instant, there--regard me!--ON THE EDGE OF THE WOOD, she says.
+But her mother and Monsieur le Cure find her pale, agitated,
+distressed, ON THE SOFA IN THE SALON.  One is asked to believe that
+she is transported through the air--like an angel--by the spirit of
+Armand de Fontonelles.  Incredible!"
+
+"Well, wot do YOU think?" said Dick sharply.
+
+The cafe proprietor looked around him carefully, and then lowered
+his voice significantly:--
+
+"A lover!"
+
+"A what?" said Dick, with a gasp.
+
+"A lover!" repeated Ribaud.  "You comprehend!  Mademoiselle has no
+dot,--the property is nothing,--the brother has everything.  A
+Mademoiselle de Fontonelles cannot marry out of her class, and the
+noblesse are all poor.  Mademoiselle is young,--pretty, they say,
+of her kind.  It is an intolerable life at the old chateau;
+mademoiselle consoles herself!"
+
+Monsieur Ribaud never knew how near he was to the white road below
+the railing at that particular moment.  Luckily, Dick controlled
+himself, and wisely, as Monsieur Ribaud's next sentence showed him.
+
+"A romance,--an innocent, foolish liaison, if you like,--but, all
+the same, if known of a Mademoiselle de Fontonelles, a compromising,
+a fatal entanglement.  There you are.  Look! for this, then, all
+this story of cock and bulls and spirits!  Mademoiselle has been
+discovered with her lover by some one.  This pretty story shall stop
+their mouths!"
+
+"But wot," said Dick brusquely, "wot if the girl was really skeert
+at something she'd seen, and fainted dead away, as she said she
+did,--and--and"--he hesitated--"some stranger came along and picked
+her up?"
+
+Monsieur Ribaud looked at him pityingly.
+
+"A Mademoiselle de Fontonelle is picked up by her servants, by her
+family, but not by the young man in the woods, alone.  It is even
+more compromising!"
+
+"Do you mean to say," said Dick furiously, "that the ragpickers and
+sneaks that wade around in the slumgallion of this country would
+dare to spatter that young gal?"
+
+"I mean to say, yes,--assuredly, positively yes!" said Ribaud,
+rubbing his hands with a certain satisfaction at Dick's fury.  "For
+you comprehend not the position of la jeune fille in all France!
+Ah! in America the young lady she go everywhere alone; I have seen
+her--pretty, charming, fascinating--alone with the young man.  But
+here, no, never!  Regard me, my friend.  The French mother, she say
+to her daughter's fiance, 'Look! there is my daughter.  She has
+never been alone with a young man for five minutes,--not even with
+you.  Take her for your wife!'  It is monstrous! it is impossible!
+it is so!"
+
+There was a silence of a few minutes, and Dick looked blankly at
+the iron gates of the park of Fontonelles.  Then he said: "Give me
+a cigar."
+
+Monsieur Ribaud instantly produced his cigar case.  Dick took a
+cigar, but waved aside the proffered match, and entering the cafe,
+took from his pocket the letter to Mademoiselle de Fontonelles,
+twisted it in a spiral, lighted it at a candle, lit his cigar with
+it, and returning to the veranda held it in his hand until the last
+ashes dropped on the floor.  Then he said, gravely, to Ribaud:--
+
+"You've treated me like a white man, Frenchy, and I ain't goin'
+back on yer--though your ways ain't my ways--nohow; but I reckon in
+this yer matter at the shotto you're a little too previous!  For
+though I don't as a gin'ral thing take stock in ghosts, I BELIEVE
+EVERY WORD THAT THEM FOLK SAID UP THAR.  And," he added, leaning
+his hand somewhat heavily on Ribaud's shoulder, "if you're the man
+I take you for, you'll believe it too!  And if that chap, Armand de
+Fontonelles, hadn't hev picked up that gal at that moment, he would
+hev deserved to roast in hell another three hundred years!  That's
+why I believe her story.  So you'll let these yer Fontonelles keep
+their ghosts for all they're worth; and when you next feel inclined
+to talk about that girl's LOVER, you'll think of me, and shut your
+head!  You hear me, Frenchy, I'm shoutin'!  And don't you forget it!"
+
+Nevertheless, early the next morning, Monsieur Ribaud accompanied
+his guest to the railway station, and parted from him with great
+effusion.  On his way back an old-fashioned carriage with a
+postilion passed him.  At a sign from its occupant, the postilion
+pulled up, and Monsieur Ribaud, bowing to the dust, approached the
+window, and the pale, stern face of a dignified, white-haired woman
+of sixty that looked from it.
+
+"Has he gone?" said the lady.
+
+"Assuredly, madame; I was with him at the station."
+
+"And you think no one saw him?"
+
+"No one, madame, but myself."
+
+"And--what kind of a man was he?"
+
+Monsieur Ribaud lifted his shoulders, threw out his hands
+despairingly, yet with a world of significance, and said:--
+
+"An American."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The carriage drove on and entered the gates of the chateau.  And
+Monsieur Ribaud, cafe proprietor and Social Democrat, straightened
+himself in the dust and shook his fist after it.
+
+
+
+A NIGHT ON THE DIVIDE
+
+
+With the lulling of the wind towards evening it came on to snow--
+heavily, in straight, quickly succeeding flakes, dropping like
+white lances from the sky.  This was followed by the usual Sierran
+phenomenon.  The deep gorge, which, as the sun went down, had
+lapsed into darkness, presently began to reappear; at first the
+vanished trail came back as a vividly whitening streak before them;
+then the larches and pines that ascended from it like buttresses
+against the hillsides glimmered in ghostly distinctness, until at
+last the two slopes curved out of the darkness as if hewn in
+marble.  For the sudden storm, which extended scarcely two miles,
+had left no trace upon the steep granite face of the high cliffs
+above; the snow, slipping silently from them, left them still
+hidden in the obscurity of night.  In the vanished landscape the
+gorge alone stood out, set in a chaos of cloud and storm through
+which the moonbeams struggled ineffectually.
+
+It was this unexpected sight which burst upon the occupants of a
+large covered "station wagon" who had chanced upon the lower end of
+the gorge.  Coming from a still lower altitude, they had known
+nothing of the storm, which had momentarily ceased, but had left a
+record of its intensity in nearly two feet of snow.  For some
+moments the horses floundered and struggled on, in what the
+travelers believed to be some old forgotten drift or avalanche,
+until the extent and freshness of the fall became apparent.  To add
+to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not comprehending
+its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt to
+return the way they came.  To go on, however, was impossible.  In
+this quandary they looked about them in vain for some other exit
+from the gorge.  The sides of that gigantic white furrow terminated
+in darkness.  Hemmed in from the world in all directions, it might
+have been their tomb.
+
+But although THEY could see nothing beyond their prison walls, they
+themselves were perfectly visible from the heights above them.  And
+Jack Tenbrook, quartz miner, who was sinking a tunnel in the rocky
+ledge of shelf above the gorge, stepping out from his cabin at ten
+o'clock to take a look at the weather before turning in, could
+observe quite distinctly the outline of the black wagon, the
+floundering horses, and the crouching figures by their side,
+scarcely larger than pygmies on the white surface of the snow, six
+hundred feet below him.  Jack had courage and strength, and the
+good humor that accompanies them, but he contented himself for a
+few moments with lazily observing the travelers' discomfiture.  He
+had taken in the situation with a glance; he would have helped a
+brother miner or mountaineer, although he knew that it could only
+have been drink or bravado that brought HIM into the gorge in a
+snowstorm, but it was very evident that these were "greenhorns," or
+eastern tourists, and it served their stupidity and arrogance
+right!  He remembered also how he, having once helped an Eastern
+visitor catch the mustang that had "bucked" him, had been called
+"my man," and presented with five dollars; he recalled how he had
+once spread the humble resources of his cabin before some straying
+members of the San Francisco party who were "opening" the new
+railroad, and heard the audible wonder of a lady that a civilized
+being could live so "coarsely"?  With these recollections in his
+mind, he managed to survey the distant struggling horses with a
+fine sense of humor, not unmixed with self-righteousness.  There
+was no real danger in the situation; it meant at the worst a delay
+and a camping in the snow till morning, when he would go down to
+their assistance.  They had a spacious traveling equipage, and
+were, no doubt, well supplied with furs, robes, and provisions for
+a several hours' journey; his own pork barrel was quite empty, and
+his blankets worn.  He half smiled, extended his long arms in a
+decided yawn, and turned back into his cabin to go to bed.  Then he
+cast a final glance around the interior.  Everything was all right;
+his loaded rifle stood against the wall; he had just raked ashes
+over the embers of his fire to keep it intact till morning.  Only
+one thing slightly troubled him; a grizzly bear, two-thirds grown,
+but only half tamed, which had been given to him by a young lady
+named "Miggles," when that charming and historic girl had decided
+to accompany her paralytic lover to the San Francisco hospital, was
+missing that evening.  It had been its regular habit to come to the
+door every night for some sweet biscuit or sugar before going to
+its lair in the underbrush behind the cabin.  Everybody knew it
+along the length and breadth of Hemlock Ridge, as well as the fact
+of its being a legacy from the fair exile.  No rifle had ever yet
+been raised against its lazy bulk or the stupid, small-eyed head
+and ruff of circling hairs made more erect by its well-worn leather
+collar.  Consoling himself with the thought that the storm had
+probably delayed its return, Jack took off his coat and threw it on
+his bunk.  But from thinking of the storm his thoughts naturally
+returned again to the impeded travelers below him, and he half
+mechanically stepped out in his shirt-sleeves for a final look at
+them.
+
+But here something occurred that changed his resolution entirely.
+He had previously noticed only the three foreshortened, crawling
+figures around the now stationary wagon bulk.  They were now
+apparently making arrangements to camp for the night.  But another
+figure had been added to the group, and as it stood perched upon a
+wagon seat laid on the snow Jack could see that its outline was not
+bifurcated like the others.  But even that general suggestion was
+not needed! the little head, the symmetrical curves visible even at
+that distance, were quite enough to indicate that it was a woman!
+The easy smile faded from Jack's face, and was succeeded by a look
+of concern and then of resignation.  He had no choice now; he MUST
+go!  There was a woman there, and that settled it.  Yet he had
+arrived at this conclusion from no sense of gallantry, nor, indeed,
+of chivalrous transport, but as a matter of simple duty to the sex.
+He was giving up his sleep, was going down six hundred feet of
+steep trail to offer his services during the rest of the night as
+much as a matter of course as an Eastern man would have offered his
+seat in an omnibus to a woman, and with as little expectation of
+return for his courtesy.
+
+Having resumed his coat, with a bottle of whiskey thrust into its
+pocket, he put on a pair of india-rubber boots reaching to his
+thighs, and, catching the blanket from his bunk, started with an
+axe and shovel on his shoulder on his downward journey.  When the
+distance was half completed he shouted to the travelers below; the
+cry was joyously answered by the three men; he saw the fourth
+figure, now unmistakably that of a slender youthful woman, in a
+cloak, helped back into the wagon, as if deliverance was now sure
+and immediate.  But Jack on arriving speedily dissipated that
+illusive hope; they could only get through the gorge by taking off
+the wheels of the wagon, placing the axle on rude sledge-runners of
+split saplings, which, with their assistance, he would fashion in a
+couple of hours at his cabin and bring down to the gorge.  The only
+other alternative would be for them to come to his cabin and remain
+there while he went for assistance to the nearest station, but that
+would take several hours and necessitate a double journey for the
+sledge if he was lucky enough to find one.  The party quickly
+acquiesced in Jack's first suggestion.
+
+"Very well," said Jack, "then there's no time to be lost; unhitch
+your horses and we'll dig a hole in that bank for them to stand in
+out of the snow."  This was speedily done.  "Now," continued Jack,
+"you'll just follow me up to my cabin; it's a pretty tough climb,
+but I'll want your help to bring down the runners."
+
+Here the man who seemed to be the head of the party--of middle age
+and a superior, professional type--for the first time hesitated.
+"I forgot to say that there is a lady with us,--my daughter," he
+began, glancing towards the wagon.
+
+"I reckoned as much," interrupted Jack simply, "and I allowed to
+carry her up myself the roughest part of the way.  She kin make
+herself warm and comf'ble in the cabin until we've got the runners
+ready."
+
+"You hear what our friend says, Amy?" suggested the gentleman,
+appealingly, to the closed leather curtains of the wagon.
+
+There was a pause.  The curtain was suddenly drawn aside, and a
+charming little head and shoulders, furred to the throat and topped
+with a bewitching velvet cap, were thrust out.  In the obscurity
+little could be seen of the girl's features, but there was a
+certain willfulness and impatience in her attitude.  Being in the
+shadow, she had the advantage of the others, particularly of Jack,
+as his figure was fully revealed in the moonlight against the
+snowbank.  Her eyes rested for a moment on his high boots, his
+heavy mustache, so long as to mingle with the unkempt locks which
+fell over his broad shoulders, on his huge red hands streaked with
+black grease from the wagon wheels, and some blood, stanched with
+snow, drawn from bruises in cutting out brambles in the brush; on--
+more awful than all--a monstrous, shiny "specimen" gold ring
+encircling one of his fingers,--on the whiskey bottle that
+shamelessly bulged from his side pocket, and then--slowly dropped
+her dissatisfied eyelids.
+
+"Why can't I stay HERE?" she said languidly.  "It's quite nice and
+comfortable."
+
+"Because we can't leave you alone, and we must go with this
+gentleman to help him."
+
+Miss Amy let the tail of her eye again creep shudderingly over this
+impossible Jack.  "I thought the--the gentleman was going to help
+US," she said dryly.
+
+"Nonsense, Amy, you don't understand," said her father impatiently.
+"This gentleman is kind enough to offer to make some sledge-runners
+for us at his cabin, and we must help him."
+
+"But I can stay here while you go.  I'm not afraid."
+
+"Yes, but you're ALONE here, and something might happen."
+
+"Nothing could happen," interrupted Jack, quickly and cheerfully.
+He had flushed at first, but he was now considering that the
+carrying of a lady as expensively attired and apparently as
+delicate and particular as this one might be somewhat difficult.
+"There's nothin' that would hurt ye here," he continued, addressing
+the velvet cap and furred throat in the darkness, "and if there was
+it couldn't get at ye, bein', so to speak, in the same sort o' fix
+as you.  So you're all right," he added positively.
+
+Inconsistently enough, the young lady did not accept this as
+gratefully as might have been imagined, but Jack did not see the
+slight flash of her eye as, ignoring him, she replied markedly to
+her father, "I'd much rather stop here, papa."
+
+"And," continued Jack, turning also to her father, "you can keep
+the wagon and the whole gorge in sight from the trail all the way
+up.  So you can see that everything's all right.  Why, I saw YOU
+from the first."  He stopped awkwardly, and added, "Come along; the
+sooner we're off the quicker the job's over."
+
+"Pray don't delay the gentleman and--the job," said Miss Amy
+sweetly.
+
+Reassured by Jack's last suggestion, her father followed him with
+the driver and the second man of the party, a youngish and somewhat
+undistinctive individual, but to whose gallant anxieties Miss Amy
+responded effusively.  Nevertheless, the young lady had especially
+noted Jack's confession that he had seen them when they first
+entered the gorge.  "And I suppose," she added to herself mentally,
+"that he sat there with his boozing companions, laughing and
+jeering at our struggles."
+
+But when the sound of her companions' voices died away, and their
+figures were swallowed up in the darkness behind the snow, she
+forgot all this, and much else that was mundane and frivolous, in
+the impressive and majestic solitude which seemed to descend upon
+her from the obscurity above.
+
+At first it was accompanied with a slight thrill of vague fear, but
+this passed presently into that profound peace which the mountains
+alone can give their lonely or perturbed children.  It seemed to
+her that Nature was never the same, on the great plains where men
+and cities always loomed into such ridiculous proportions, as when
+the Great Mother raised herself to comfort them with smiling
+hillsides, or encompassed them and drew them closer in the loving
+arms of her mountains.  The long white canada stretched before her
+in a purity that did not seem of the earth; the vague bulk of the
+mountains rose on either side of her in a mystery that was not of
+this life.  Yet it was not oppressive; neither was its restfulness
+and quiet suggestive of obliviousness and slumber; on the contrary,
+the highly rarefied air seemed to give additional keenness to her
+senses; her hearing had become singularly acute; her eyesight
+pierced the uttermost extremity of the gorge, lit by the full moon
+that occasionally shone through slowly drifting clouds.  Her nerves
+thrilled with a delicious sense of freedom and a strange desire to
+run or climb.  It seemed to her, in her exalted fancy, that these
+solitudes should be peopled only by a kingly race, and not by such
+gross and material churls as this mountaineer who helped them.
+And, I grieve to say,--writing of an idealist that WAS, and a
+heroine that IS to be,--she was getting outrageously hungry.
+
+There were a few biscuits in her traveling-bag, and she remembered
+that she had been presented with a small jar of California honey at
+San Jose.  This she took out and opened on the seat before her, and
+spreading the honey on the biscuits, ate them with a keen schoolgirl
+relish and a pleasant suggestion of a sylvan picnic in spite of the
+cold.  It was all very strange; quite an experience for her to speak
+of afterwards.  People would hardly believe that she had spent an
+hour or two, all alone, in a deserted wagon in a mountain snow pass.
+It was an adventure such as one reads of in the magazines.  Only
+something was lacking which the magazines always supplied,--something
+heroic, something done by somebody.  If that awful-looking
+mountaineer--that man with the long hair and mustache, and that
+horrible gold ring,--why such a ring?--was only different!  But he
+was probably gorging beefsteak or venison with her father and Mr.
+Waterhouse,--men were always such selfish creatures!--and had quite
+forgotten all about her.  It would have been only decent for them to
+have brought her down something hot; biscuits and honey were
+certainly cloying, and somehow didn't agree with the temperature.
+She was really half starved!  And much they cared!  It would just
+serve them right if something DID happen to her,--or SEEM to happen
+to her,--if only to frighten them.  And the pretty face that was
+turned up in the moonlight wore a charming but decided pout.
+
+Good gracious, what was that?  The horses were either struggling or
+fighting in their snow shelters.  Then one with a frightened neigh
+broke from its halter and dashed into the road, only to be plunged
+snorting and helpless into the drifts.  Then the other followed.
+How silly!  Something had frightened them.  Perhaps only a rabbit
+or a mole; horses were such absurdly nervous creatures!  However,
+it is just as well; somebody would see them or hear them,--that
+neigh was quite human and awful,--and they would hurry down to see
+what was the matter.  SHE couldn't be expected to get out and look
+after the horses in the snow.  Anyhow, she WOULDN'T!  She was a
+good deal safer where she was; it might have been rats or mice
+about that frightened them!  Goodness!
+
+She was still watching with curious wonder the continued fright of
+the animals, when suddenly she felt the wagon half bumped, half
+lifted from behind.  It was such a lazy, deliberate movement that
+for a moment she thought it came from the party, who had returned
+noiselessly with the runners.  She scrambled over to the back seat,
+unbuttoned the leather curtain, lifted it, but nothing was to be
+seen.  Consequently, with feminine quickness, she said, "I see you
+perfectly, Mr. Waterhouse--don't be silly!"  But at this moment
+there was another shock to the wagon, and from beneath it arose
+what at first seemed to her to be an uplifting of the drift itself,
+but, as the snow was shaken away from its heavy bulk, proved to be
+the enormous head and shoulders of a bear!
+
+Yet even then she was not WHOLLY frightened, for the snout that
+confronted her had a feeble inoffensiveness; the small eyes were
+bright with an eager, almost childish curiosity rather than a
+savage ardor, and the whole attitude of the creature lifted upon
+its hind legs was circus-like and ludicrous rather than aggressive.
+She was enabled to say with some dignity, "Go away! Shoo!" and to
+wave her luncheon basket at it with exemplary firmness.  But here
+the creature laid one paw on the back seat as if to steady itself,
+with the singular effect of collapsing the whole side of the wagon,
+and then opened its mouth as if in some sort of inarticulate reply.
+But the revelation of its red tongue, its glistening teeth, and,
+above all, the hot, suggestive fume of its breath, brought the
+first scream from the lips of Miss Amy.  It was real and
+convincing; the horses joined in it; the three screamed together!
+The bear hesitated for an instant, then, catching sight of the
+honey-pot on the front seat, which the shrinking-back of the young
+girl had disclosed, he slowly reached forward his other paw and
+attempted to grasp it.  This exceedingly simple movement, however,
+at once doubled up the front seat, sent the honey-pot a dozen feet
+into the air, and dropped Miss Amy upon her knees in the bed of the
+wagon.  The combined mental and physical shock was too much for
+her; she instantly and sincerely fainted; the last thing in her
+ears amidst this wreck of matter being the "wheep" of a bullet and
+the sharp crack of a rifle.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+She recovered her consciousness in the flickering light of a fire
+of bark, that played upon the rafters of a roof thatched with bark
+and upon a floor of strewn and shredded bark.  She even suspected
+she was lying upon a mattress of bark underneath the heavy bearskin
+she could feel and touch.  She had a delicious sense of warmth,
+and, mingled with this strange spicing of woodland freedom, even a
+sense of home protection.  And surely enough, looking around, she
+saw her father at her side.
+
+He briefly explained the situation.  They had been at first
+attracted by the cry of the frightened horses and their plunging,
+which they could see distinctly, although they saw nothing else.
+"But, Mr. Tenbrook"--
+
+"Mr. Who?" said Amy, staring at the rafters.
+
+"The owner of this cabin--the man who helped us--caught up his gun,
+and, calling us to follow, ran like lightning down the trail.  At
+first we followed blindly, and unknowingly, for we could only see
+the struggling horses, who, however, seemed to be ALONE, and the
+wagon from which you did not seem to have stirred.  Then, for the
+first time, my dear child, we suddenly saw your danger.  Imagine
+how we felt as that hideous brute rose up in the road and began
+attacking the wagon.  We called on Tenbrook to fire, but for some
+inconceivable reason he did not, although he still kept running at
+the top of his speed.  Then we heard you shriek--"
+
+"I didn't shriek, papa; it was the horses."
+
+"My child, I knew your voice."
+
+"Well, it was only a VERY LITTLE scream--because I had tumbled."
+The color was coming back rapidly to her pink cheeks.
+
+"And, then, at your scream, Tenbrook fired!--it was a wonderful
+shot for the distance, so everybody says--and killed the bear,
+though Tenbrook says it oughtn't to.  I believe he wanted to
+capture the creature alive.  They've queer notions, those hunters.
+And then, as you were unconscious, he brought you up here."
+
+"WHO brought me?"
+
+"Tenbrook; he's as strong as a horse.  Slung you up on his shoulders
+like a feather pillow."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"And then, as the wagon required some repairing from the brute's
+attack, we concluded to take it leisurely, and let you rest here
+for a while."
+
+"And where is--where are THEY?"
+
+"At work on the wagon.  I determined to stay with you, though you
+are perfectly safe here."
+
+"I suppose I ought--to thank--this man, papa?"
+
+"Most certainly, though of course, I have already done so.  But he
+was rather curt in reply.  These half-savage men have such singular
+ideas.  He said the beast would never have attacked you except for
+the honey-pot which it scented.  That's absurd."
+
+"Then it's all my fault?"
+
+"Nonsense!  How could YOU know?"
+
+"And I've made all this trouble.  And frightened the horses.  And
+spoilt the wagon.  And made the man run down and bring me up here
+when he didn't want to!"
+
+"My dear child!  Don't be idiotic!  Amy!  Well, really!"
+
+For the idiotic one was really wiping two large tears from her
+lovely blue eyes.  She subsided into an ominous silence, broken by
+a single sniffle.  "Try to go to sleep, dear; you've had quite a
+shock to your nerves, added her father soothingly.  She continued
+silent, but not sleeping.
+
+"I smell coffee."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"You've been having coffee, papa?"
+
+"We DID have some, I think," said the wretched man apologetically,
+though why he could not determine.
+
+"Before I came up? while the bear was trying to eat me?"
+
+"No, after."
+
+"I've a horrid taste in my mouth.  It's the honey.  I'll never eat
+honey again.  Never!"
+
+"Perhaps it's the whiskey."
+
+"What?"
+
+"The whiskey.  You were quite faint and chilled, you know.  We gave
+you some."
+
+"Out of--that--black--bottle?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Another silence.
+
+"I'd like some coffee.  I don't think he'd begrudge me that, if he
+did save my life."
+
+"I dare say there's some left."  Her father at once bestirred
+himself and presently brought her some coffee in a tin cup.  It was
+part of Miss Amy's rapid convalescence, or equally of her
+debilitated condition, that she made no comment on the vessel.  She
+lay for some moments looking curiously around the cabin; she had no
+doubt it had a worse look in the daylight, but somehow the
+firelight brought out a wondrous luxury of color in the bark floor
+and thatching.  Besides, it was not "smelly," as she feared it
+would be; on the contrary the spicy aroma of the woods was always
+dominant.  She remembered that it was this that always made a
+greasy, oily picnic tolerable.  She raised herself on her elbow,
+seeing which her father continued confidently, "Perhaps, dear, if
+you sat up for a few moments you might be strong enough presently
+to walk down with me to the wagon.  It would save time."
+
+Amy instantly lay down again.  "I don't know what you can be
+thinking of, papa.  After this shock really I don't feel as if I
+could STAND alone, much less WALK.  But, of course," with pathetic
+resignation, "if you and Mr. Waterhouse supported me, perhaps I
+might crawl a few steps at a time."
+
+"Nonsense, Amy.  Of course, this man Tenbrook will carry you down
+as he brought you up.  Only I thought,--but there are steps,
+they're coming now.  No!--only HE."
+
+The sound of crackling in the underbrush was followed by a
+momentary darkening of the open door of the cabin.  It was the tall
+figure of the mountaineer.  But he did not even make the pretense
+of entering; standing at the door he delivered his news to the
+interior generally.  It was to the effect that everything was
+ready, and the two other men were even then harnessing the horses.
+Then he drew back into the darkness.
+
+"Papa," said Amy, in a sudden frightened voice, "I've lost my
+bracelet."
+
+"Haven't you dropped it somewhere there in the bunk?" asked her
+father.
+
+"No.  It's on the floor of the wagon.  I remember now it fell off
+when I tumbled!  And it will be trodden upon and crushed!  Couldn't
+you run down, ahead of me, and warn them, papa, dear?  Mr. Tenbrook
+will have to go so slowly with me."  She tumbled out of the bunk
+with singular alacrity, shook herself and her skirts into
+instantaneous gracefulness, and fitted the velvet cap on her
+straying hair.  Then she said hurriedly, "Run quick, papa dear, and
+as you go, call him in and say I am quite ready."
+
+Thus adjured, the obedient parent disappeared in the darkness.
+With him also disappeared Miss Amy's singular alacrity.  Sitting
+down carefully again on the edge of the bunk, she leaned against
+the post with a certain indefinable languor that was as touching as
+it was graceful.  I need not tell any feminine readers that there
+was no dissimulation in all this,--no coquetry, no ostentation,--
+and that the young girl was perfectly sincere!  But the masculine
+reader might like to know that the simple fact was that, since she
+had regained consciousness, she had been filled with remorse for
+her capricious and ungenerous rejection of Tenbrook's proffered
+service.  More than that, she felt she had periled her life in that
+moment of folly, and that this man--this hero--had saved her.  For
+hero he was, even if he did not fulfill her ideal,--it was only SHE
+that was not a heroine.  Perhaps if he had been more like what she
+wished she would have felt this less keenly; love leaves little
+room for the exercise of moral ethics.  So Miss Amy Forester, being
+a good girl at bottom, and not exactly loving this man, felt
+towards him a frank and tender consideration which a more romantic
+passion would have shrunk from showing.  Consequently, when
+Tenbrook entered a moment later, he found Amy paler and more
+thoughtful, but, as he fancied, much prettier than before, looking
+up at him with eyes of the sincerest solicitude.
+
+Nevertheless, he remained standing near the door, as if indicating
+a possible intrusion, his face wearing a look of lowering
+abstraction.  It struck her that this might be the effect of his
+long hair and general uncouthness, and this only spurred her to a
+fuller recognition of his other qualities.
+
+"I am afraid," she began, with a charming embarrassment, "that
+instead of resting satisfied with your kindness in carrying me up
+here, I will have to burden you again with my dreadful weakness,
+and ask you to carry me down also.  But all this seems so little
+after what you have just done and for which I can never, NEVER hope
+to thank you!"  She clasped her two little hands together, holding
+her gloves between, and brought them down upon her lap in a gesture
+as prettily helpless as it was unaffected.
+
+"I have done scarcely anything," he said, glancing away towards the
+fire, "and--your father has thanked me."
+
+"You have saved my life!"
+
+"No! no!" he said quickly.  "Not that!  You were in no danger,
+except from my rifle, had I missed."
+
+"I see," she said eagerly, with a little posthumous thrill at
+having been after all a kind of heroine, "and it was a wonderful
+shot, for you were so careful not to touch me."
+
+"Please don't say any more," he said, with a slight movement of
+half awkwardness, half impatience.  "It was a rough job, but it's
+over now."
+
+He stopped and chafed his red hands abstractedly together.  She
+could see that he had evidently just washed them--and the glaring
+ring was more in evidence than ever.  But the thought gave her an
+inspiration.
+
+"You'll at least let me shake hands with you!" she said, extending
+both her own with childish frankness.
+
+"Hold on, Miss Forester," he said, with sudden desperation.  "It
+ain't the square thing!  Look here!  I can't play this thing on
+you!--I can't let you play it on me any longer!  You weren't in any
+danger,--you NEVER were!  That bear was only a half-wild thing I
+helped to ra'r myself!  It's taken sugar from my hand night after
+night at the door of this cabin as it might have taken it from
+yours here if it was alive now.  It slept night after night in the
+brush, not fifty yards away.  The morning's never come yet--till
+now," he said hastily, to cover an odd break in his voice, "when it
+didn't brush along the whole side of this cabin to kinder wake me
+up and say 'So long,' afore it browsed away into the canyon.  Thar
+ain't a man along the whole Divide who didn't know it; thar ain't a
+man along the whole Divide that would have drawn a bead or pulled a
+trigger on it till now.  It never had an enemy but the bees; it
+never even knew why horses and cattle were frightened of it.  It
+wasn't much of a pet, you'd say, Miss Forester; it wasn't much to
+meet a lady's eye; but we of the woods must take our friends where
+we find 'em and of our own kind.  It ain't no fault of yours, Miss,
+that you didn't know it; it ain't no fault of yours what happened;
+but when it comes to your THANKING me for it, why--it's--it's
+rather rough, you see--and gets me."  He stopped short as
+desperately and as abruptly as he had begun, and stared blankly at
+the fire.
+
+A wave of pity and shame swept over the young girl and left its
+high tide on her cheek.  But even then it was closely followed by
+the feminine instinct of defence and defiance.  The REAL hero--the
+GENTLEMAN--she reasoned bitterly, would have spared her all this
+knowledge.
+
+"But why," she said, with knitted brows, "why, if you knew it was
+so precious and so harmless--why did you fire upon it?"
+
+"Because," he said almost fiercely, turning upon her, "because you
+SCREAMED, and THEN I KNEW IT HAD FRIGHTENED YOU!"  He stopped
+instantly as she momentarily recoiled from him, but the very
+brusqueness of his action had dislodged a tear from his dark eyes
+that fell warm on the back of her hand, and seemed to blot out the
+indignity.  "Listen, Miss," he went on hurriedly, as if to cover up
+his momentary unmanliness.  "I knew the bear was missing to-night,
+and when I heard the horses scurrying about I reckoned what was up.
+I knew no harm could come to you, for the horses were unharnessed
+and away from the wagon.  I pelted down that trail ahead of them
+all like grim death, calkilatin' to get there before the bear; they
+wouldn't have understood me; I was too high up to call to the
+creature when he did come out, and I kinder hoped you wouldn't see
+him.  Even when he turned towards the wagon, I knew it wasn't YOU
+he was after, but suthin' else, and I kinder hoped, Miss, that you,
+being different and quicker-minded than the rest, would see it too.
+All the while them folks were yellin' behind me to fire--as if I
+didn't know my work.  I was half-way down--and then you screamed!
+And then I forgot everything,--everything but standing clear of
+hitting you,--and I fired.  I was that savage that I wanted to
+believe that he'd gone mad, and would have touched you, till I got
+down there and found the honey-pot lying alongside of him.  But
+there,--it's all over now!  I wouldn't have let on a word to you
+only I couldn't bear to take YOUR THANKS for it, and I couldn't
+bear to have you thinking me a brute for dodgin' them."  He
+stopped, walked to the fire, leaned against the chimney under the
+shallow pretext of kicking the dull embers into a blaze, which,
+however, had only the effect of revealing his two glistening eyes
+as he turned back again and came towards her.  "Well," he said,
+with an ineffectual laugh, "it's all over now, it's all in the
+day's work, I reckon,--and now, Miss, if you're ready, and will
+just fix yourself your own way so as to ride easy, I'll carry you
+down."  And slightly bending his strong figure, he dropped on one
+knee beside her with extended arms.
+
+Now it is one thing to be carried up a hill in temperate,
+unconscious blood and practical business fashion by a tall,
+powerful man with steadfast, glowering eyes, but quite another
+thing to be carried down again by the same man, who has been
+crying, and when you are conscious that you are going to cry too,
+and your tears may be apt to mingle.  So Miss Amy Forester said:
+"Oh, wait, please!  Sit down a moment.  Oh, Mr. Tenbrook, I am so
+very, very sorry," and, clapping her hand to her eyes, burst into
+tears.
+
+"Oh, please, please don't, Miss Forester," said Jack, sitting down
+on the end of the bunk with frightened eyes, "please don't do that!
+It ain't worth it.  I'm only a brute to have said anything."
+
+"No, no!  You are SO noble, SO forgiving!" sobbed Miss Forester,
+"and I have made you go and kill the only thing you cared for, that
+was all your own."
+
+"No, Miss,--not all my own, either,--and that makes it so rough.
+For it was only left in trust with me by a friend.  It was her only
+companion."
+
+"HER only companion?" echoed Miss Forester, sharply lifting her
+bowed head.
+
+"Except," said Jack hurriedly, miscomprehending the emphasis with
+masculine fatuity,--"except the dying man for whom she lived and
+sacrificed her whole life.  She gave me this ring, to always remind
+me of my trust.  I suppose," he added ruefully, looking down upon
+it, "it's no use now.  I'd better take it off."
+
+Then Amy eyed the monstrous object with angelic simplicity.  "I
+certainly should," she said with infinite sweetness; "it would only
+remind you of your loss.  But," she added, with a sudden, swift,
+imploring look of her blue eyes, "if you could part with it to me,
+it would be such a reminder and token of--of your forgiveness."
+
+Jack instantly handed it to her.  "And now," he said, "let me carry
+you down."
+
+"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that--I had better try to walk,"
+and she rose to her feet.
+
+"Then I shall know that you have not forgiven me," said Jack sadly.
+
+"But I have no right to trouble"--
+
+Alas! she had no time to finish her polite objection, for the next
+moment she felt herself lifted in the air, smelled the bark thatch
+within an inch of her nose, saw the firelight vanish behind her,
+and subsiding into his curved arms as in a hammock, the two passed
+forth into the night together.
+
+"I can't find, your bracelet anywhere, Amy," said her father, when
+they reached the wagon.
+
+"It was on the floor in the lint," said Amy reproachfully.  "But,
+of course, you never thought of that!"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+My pen halts with some diffidence between two conclusions to this
+veracious chronicle.  As they agree in result, though not in theory
+or intention, I may venture to give them both.  To one coming from
+the lips of the charming heroine herself I naturally yield the
+precedence.  "Oh, the bear story!  I don't really remember whether
+that was before I was engaged to John or after.  But I had known
+him for some time; father introduced him at the Governor's ball at
+Sacramento.  Let me see!--I think it was in the winter of '56.
+Yes! it was very amusing; I always used to charge John with having
+trained that bear to attack our carriage so that he might come in
+as a hero!  Oh, of course, there are a hundred absurd stories about
+him,--they used to say that he lived all alone in a cabin like a
+savage, and all that sort of thing, and was a friend of a dubious
+woman in the locality, whom the common people made a heroine of,--
+Miggles, or Wiggles, or some such preposterous name.  But look at
+John there; can you conceive it?"  The listener, glancing at a very
+handsome, clean-shaven fellow, faultlessly attired, could not
+conceive such an absurdity.  So I therefore simply give the opinion
+of Joshua Bixley, Superintendent of the Long Divide Tunnel Company,
+for what it is worth: "I never took much stock in that bear story,
+and its captivating old Forester's daughter.  Old Forester knew a
+thing or two, and when he was out here consolidating tunnels, he
+found out that Jack Tenbrook was about headed for the big lead, and
+brought him out and introduced him to Amy.  You see, Jack, clear
+grit as he was, was mighty rough style, and about as simple as they
+make 'em, and they had to get up something to account for that
+girl's taking a shine to him.  But they seem to be happy enough--
+and what are you going to do about it?"
+
+And I transfer this philosophic query to the reader.
+
+
+
+THE YOUNGEST PROSPECTOR IN CALAVERAS
+
+
+He was scarcely eight when it was believed that he could have
+reasonably laid claim to the above title.  But he never did.  He
+was a small boy, intensely freckled to the roots of his tawny hair,
+with even a suspicion of it in his almond-shaped but somewhat full
+eyes, which were the greenish hue of a ripe gooseberry.  All this
+was very unlike his parents, from whom he diverged in resemblance
+in that fashion so often seen in the Southwest of America, as if
+the youth of the boundless West had struck a new note of
+independence and originality, overriding all conservative and
+established rules of heredity.  Something of this was also shown in
+a singular and remarkable reticence and firmness of purpose, quite
+unlike his family or schoolfellows.  His mother was the wife of a
+teamster, who had apparently once "dumped" his family, consisting
+of a boy and two girls, on the roadside at Burnt Spring, with the
+canvas roof of his wagon to cover them, while he proceeded to
+deliver other freight, not so exclusively his own, at other
+stations along the road, returning to them on distant and separate
+occasions with slight additions to their stock, habitation, and
+furniture.  In this way the canvas roof was finally shingled and
+the hut enlarged, and, under the quickening of a smiling California
+sky and the forcing of a teeming California soil, the chance-sown
+seed took root and became known as Medliker's Ranch, or "Medliker's,"
+with its bursting garden patch and its three sheds or "lean-to's."
+
+The girls helped their mother in a childish, imitative way; the
+boy, John Bunyan, after a more desultory and original fashion--when
+he was not "going to" or ostensibly "coming from" school, for he
+was seldom actually there.  Something of this fear was in the mind
+of Mrs. Medliker one morning as she looked up from the kettle she
+was scrubbing, with premonition of "more worriting," to behold the
+Reverend Mr. Staples, the local minister, hale John Bunyan Medliker
+into the shanty with one hand.  Letting Johnny go, he placed his
+back against the door and wiped his face with a red handkerchief.
+Johnny dropped into a chair, furtively glancing at the arm by which
+Mr. Staples had dragged him, and feeling it with the other hand to
+see if it was really longer.
+
+"I've been requested by the schoolmaster," said the Rev. Mr.
+Staples, putting his handkerchief back into his broad felt hat with
+a gasping smile, "to bring our young friend before you for a matter
+of counsel and discipline.  I have done so, Sister Medliker, with
+some difficulty,"--he looked down at John Bunyan, who again felt
+his arm and was satisfied that it WAS longer--"but we must do our
+dooty, even with difficulty to ourselves, and, perhaps, to others.
+Our young friend, John Bunyan, stands on a giddy height--on
+slippery places, and," continued Mr. Staples, with a lofty
+disregard to consecutive metaphor, "his feet are taking fast hold
+of destruction."  Here the child drew a breath of relief, possibly
+at the prospect of being on firm ground of any kind at last; but
+Sister Medliker, to whom the Staples style of exordium had only a
+Sabbath significance, turned to her offspring abruptly:--
+
+"And what's these yer doin's now, John? and me a slavin' to send ye
+to school?"
+
+Thus appealed to, Johnny looked for a reply at his feet, at his
+arm, and at the kettle.  Then he said: "I ain't done nothin', but
+he"--indicating Staples--"hez been nigh onter pullin' off my arm."
+
+"It's now almost a week ago," continued Mr. Staples, waving aside
+the interruption with a smile of painful Christian tolerance, "or
+perhaps ten days--I won't be too sure--that the schoolmaster
+discovered that Johnny had in his possession two or three flakes of
+fine river gold--each of the value of half a dollar, or perhaps
+sixty-two and one half cents.  On being questioned where he got
+them he refused to say; although subsequently he alleged that he
+had 'found' them.  It being a single instance, he was given the
+benefit of the doubt, and nothing more was said about it.  But a
+few days after he was found trying to pass off, at Mr. Smith's
+store, two other flakes of a different size, and a small nugget of
+the value of four or five dollars.  At this point I was called in;
+he repeated to me, I grieve to say, the same untruthfulness, and
+when I suggested to him the obvious fact that he had taken it from
+one of the miner's sluice boxes and committed the grievous sin of
+theft, he wickedly denied it--so that we are prevented from
+carrying out the Christian command of restoring it even ONE fold,
+instead of four or five fold as the Mosaic Law might have required.
+We were, alas! unable to ascertain anything from the miners
+themselves, though I grieve to say they one and all agreed that
+their 'take' that week was not at all what they had expected.  I
+even went so far as to admit the possibility of his own statement,
+and besought him at least to show me where he had found it.  He at
+first refused with great stubbornness of temper, but later
+consented to accompany me privately this afternoon to the spot."
+Mr. Staples paused, and sinking his voice gloomily, and with his
+eyes fixed upon Johnny, continued slowly: "When I state that, after
+several times trying to evade me on the way, he finally led me to
+the top of Bald Hill, where there is not a scrap of soil, and not
+the slightest indication, and still persisted that he found it
+THERE, you will understand, Sister Medliker, the incorrigibility of
+his conduct, and how he has added the sin of 'false witness' to his
+breaking the Eighth Commandment.  But I leave him to your Christian
+discipline!  Let us hope that if, through his stiff-necked
+obduracy, he has haply escaped the vengeance of man's law, he will
+not escape the rod of the domestic tabernacle."
+
+"Ye kin leave him to me," said Mrs. Medliker, in her anxiety to get
+rid of the parson, assuming a confidence she was far from feeling.
+
+"So be it, Sister Medliker," said Staples, drawing a long,
+satisfactory breath; "and let us trust that when you have rastled
+with his flesh and spirit, you will bring us joyful tidings to
+Wednesday's Mother's Meeting."
+
+He clapped his soft hat on his head, cast another glance at the
+wicked Johnny, opened the door with his hand behind him, and backed
+himself into the road.
+
+"Now, Johnny," said Mrs. Medliker, setting her lips together as the
+door closed, "look me right in the face, and say where you stole
+that gold."
+
+But Johnny evidently did not think that his mother's face at that
+moment offered any moral support, for he did not look at her; but,
+after gazing at the kettle, said slowly, "I didn't steal no gold."
+
+"Then," said Mrs. Medliker triumphantly, "if ye didn't steal it,
+you'd say right off HOW ye got it."
+
+Children are often better logicians than their elders.  To John
+Bunyan the stealing of gold and the mere refusal to say where he
+got it were two distinct and separate things; that the negation of
+the second proposition meant the affirmation of the first he could
+not accept.  But then children are also imitative, and fearful of
+the older intellect.  It struck Johnny that his mother might be
+right, and that to her it really meant the same thing.  So, after a
+moment's silence he replied more confidently, "I suppose I stoled
+it."
+
+But he was utterly unprepared for the darkening change in his
+mother's face, and her furious accents.  "You stole it?--you STOLE
+it, you limb!  And you sit there and brazenly tell me!  Who did you
+steal it from?  Tell me quick, afore I wring it out of you!"
+
+Completely astounded and bewildered at this new turn of affairs,
+Johnny again fell back upon the dreadful truth, and gasped, "I
+don't know."
+
+"You don't know, you devil!  Did you take it from Frazer's?"
+
+"No."
+
+"From the Simmons Brothers?"
+
+"No."
+
+"From the Blazing Star Company?"
+
+"No."
+
+"From a store?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then, in created goodness!--WHERE did you get it?"
+
+Johnny raised his brown-gooseberry eyes for a single instant to his
+mother's and said, "I found it."
+
+Mrs. Medliker gasped again and stared hopelessly at the ceiling.
+Yet she was conscious of a certain relief.  After all, it was
+POSSIBLE that he had found it--liar as he undoubtedly was.
+
+"Then why don't you say where, you awful child?"
+
+"Don't want to!"
+
+Johnny would have liked to add that he saw no reason why he should
+tell.  Other people who found gold were not obliged to tell.  There
+was Jim Brody, who had struck a lead and kept the locality secret.
+Nobody forced him to tell.  Nobody called him a thief; nobody had
+dragged him about by the arm until he showed it.  Why was it wrong
+that a little boy should find gold?  It wasn't agin the
+Commandments.  Mr. Staples had never got up and said, "Thou shalt
+not find gold!"  His mother had never made him pray not to find it!
+The schoolmaster had never read him awful stories of boys who found
+gold and never said anything about it, and so came to a horrid end.
+All this crowded his small boy's mind, and, crowding, choked his
+small boy's utterance.
+
+"You jest wait till your father comes home," said Mrs. Medliker,
+"and he'll see whether you 'want to' or not.  And now get yourself
+off to bed and stay there."
+
+Johnny knew that his father--whose teams had increased to five
+wagons, and whose route extended forty miles further--was not due
+for a week, and that the catastrophe was yet remote.  His present
+punishment he had expected.  He went into the adjoining bedroom,
+which he occupied with his sister, and began to undress.  He
+lingered for some time over one stocking, and finally cautiously
+removed from it a small piece of flake gold which he had kept
+concealed all day under his big toe, to the great discomfort of
+that member.  But this was only a small, ordinary self-martyrdom of
+boyhood.  He scratched a boyish hieroglyphic on the metal, and when
+his mother's back was turned scraped a small hole in the adobe
+wall, inserted the gold in it, and covered it up with a plaster
+made of the moistened debris.  It was safe--so was his secret--for
+it need not, perhaps, be stated here that Johnny HAD told the truth
+and HAD honestly found the gold!  But where?--yes, that was his own
+secret!  And now, Johnny, with the instinct of all young animals,
+dismissed the whole subject from his mind, and, reclining
+comfortably upon his arm, fell into an interesting study of the
+habits of the red ant as exemplified in a crack of the adobe wall,
+and with the aid of a burnt match succeeded in diverting for the
+rest of the afternoon the attention of a whole laborious colony.
+
+The next morning, however, brought trouble to him in the curiosity
+of his sisters, heightened by their belief that he could at any
+moment be taken off to prison--which was their understanding of
+their mother's story.  I grieve to say that to them this invested
+him with a certain romantic heroism, from the gratification of
+which the hero himself was not exempt.  Nevertheless, he
+successfully evaded their questioning, and on broader impersonal
+grounds.  As girls, it was none of their business!  He wasn't a-
+going to tell them HIS secrets!  And what did they know about gold,
+anyway?  They couldn't tell it from brass!  The attitude of his
+mother was, however, still perplexing.  She was no longer actively
+indignant, but treated him with a mysterious reserve that was the
+more appalling.  The fact was that she no longer believed in his
+theft,--indeed, she had never seriously accepted it,--but his
+strange reticence and secretiveness piqued her curiosity, and even
+made her a little afraid of him.  The capacity for keeping a secret
+she believed was manlike, and reminded her--for no reason in the
+world--of Jim Medliker, her husband, whom she feared.  Well, she
+would let them fight it out between them.  More than that, she was
+finally obliged to sink her reserve in employing him in the
+necessary "chores" for the house, and he was sent on an errand to
+the country store at the cross-roads.  But he first extracted his
+gold-flake from the wall, and put it in his pocket.
+
+On arriving at the store, it was plain even to his boyish
+perceptions that the minister had circulated his miserable story.
+Two or three of the customers spoke to each other in a whisper, and
+looked at him.  More than that, when he began his homeward journey
+he saw that two of the loungers were evidently following him.  Half
+in timidity and half in boyish mischief he once or twice strayed
+from the direct road, and snatched a fearful joy in observing their
+equal divergence.  As he passed Mr. Staples's house he saw that
+reverend gentleman sneak out of his back gate, and, without seeing
+the two others, join in the inquisitorial procession.  But the
+events of the past day had had their quickening effect upon
+Johnny's intellect.  A brilliantly wicked thought struck him.  As
+he was passing a perfectly bare spot on the road he managed,
+without being noticed, to cast his glittering flake of gold on the
+sterile ground at the other side of the road, where the minister's
+path would lie.  Then, at a point where the road turned, he
+concealed himself in the brush.  The Reverend Mr. Staples hurried
+forward as he lost sight of the boy in the sweep of the road, but
+halted suddenly.  Johnny's heart leaped.  The minister looked
+around him, stooped, picked up the piece of gold, thrust it
+hurriedly in his waistcoat pocket, and continued his way.  When he
+reached the turn of the road, before passing it, he availed himself
+of his solitude to pause and again examine the treasure, and again
+return it to his pocket.  But, to Johnny's surprise, he here turned
+back, walked quickly to the spot where he had found it, carefully
+examined the locality, kicking the loose soil and stones around
+with his feet until he had apparently satisfied himself that there
+was no more, and no gold-bearing indications in the soil.  At this
+moment, however, the two other inquisitors came in sight, and Mr.
+Staples turned quickly and hurried on.  Before he had passed the
+brush where Johnny was concealed, the two men overtook him and
+exchanged greetings.  They both spoke of "Johnny" and his crime; of
+having followed him with a view of finding out where he went to
+procure his gold, and of his having again evaded them.  Mr. Staples
+agreed with their purpose, but, to Johnny's intense astonishment,
+SAID NOTHING ABOUT HIS OWN FIND!  When they had passed on, the boy
+slipped from his place of concealment and followed them at a
+distance until his own house came in view.  Here the two men
+diverged, but the minister continued on towards the other "store"
+and post-office on the main road.
+
+He would have told his mother what he had seen, and his surprise
+that the minister had not spoken of finding the gold to the other
+men, but he was checked, first by his mother's attitude towards
+him, which was clearly the same as the minister's, and, second, by
+the knowledge that she would have condemned his dropping the gold
+in the minister's path,--though he knew not WHY,--or asked his
+reason for it, which he was equally sure he could not formulate,
+though he also knew not why.  But that evening, as he was returning
+from the spring with water, he heard the minister's voice in the
+kitchen.  It had been a day of surprises and revelations to Johnny,
+but the climax seemed to be reached as he entered the room; and he
+now stood transfixed and open-mouthed as he heard Mr. Staples say:--
+
+"It's all very well, Sister Medliker, to comfort your heart with
+vain hopes and delusions.  A mother's leanin's is the soul's
+deceivin's,--and yer leanin' on a broken reed.  If the boy truly
+found that gold he'd have come to ye and said: 'Behold, mother, I
+have found gold in the highways and byways; rejoice and be
+exceedin' glad!' and hev poured it inter yer lap.  Yes," continued
+Mr. Staples aggressively to the boy, as he saw him stagger back
+with his pail in hand, "yes, sir, THAT would have been the course
+of a Christian child!"
+
+For a moment Johnny felt the blood boiling in his ears, and a
+thousand words seemed crowding in his throat.  "Then"--he gasped
+and choked.  "Then"--he began again, and stopped with the
+suffocation of indignation.
+
+But Mr. Staples saw in his agitation only an awakened conscience,
+and, nudging Mrs. Medliker, leaned eagerly forward for a reply.
+"Then," he repeated, with suave encouragement, "go on, Johnny!
+Speak it out!"
+
+"Then," said Johnny, in a high, shrill falsetto that startled them,
+"then wot for did YOU pick up that piece o' gold in the road this
+arternoon, and say nothin' of it to the men who followed ye?  Ye
+did; I seed yer!  And ye didn't say nothin' of it to anybody; and
+ye ain't sayin' nothin' of it now ter maw! and ye've got it in yer
+vest!  And it's mine, and I dropped it!  Gimme it."
+
+Astonishment, confusion, and rage swelled and empurpled Staples'
+face.  It was HIS turn to gasp for breath.  Yet in the same moment
+he made an angry dash at the boy.  But Mrs. Medliker interfered.
+This was an entirely new feature in the case.  Great is the power
+of gold.  A single glance at the minister's confusion had convinced
+her that Johnny's accusation was true, and it was Johnny's MONEY--
+constructively HERS--that the minister was concealing.  His mere
+possession of that gold had more effect in straightening out her
+loose logic than any sense of hypocrisy.
+
+"You leave the boy be, Brother Staples," said Mrs. Medliker
+sharply.  "I reckon wot's his is hisn, spite of whar he got it."
+
+Mr. Staples saw his mistake, and smiled painfully as he fumbled in
+his waistcoat pocket.  "I believe I DID pick up something," he
+said, "that may or may not have been gold, but I have dropped it
+again or thrown it away; and really it is of little concern in our
+moral lesson.  For we have only HIS word that it was really his!
+How do we KNOW it?"
+
+"Cos it has my marks on it," said Johnny quickly; "it had a criss-
+cross I scratched on it.  I kin tell it good enuf."
+
+Mr. Staples turned suddenly pale and rose.  "Of course," he said to
+Mrs. Medliker with painful dignity, "if you set so much value upon
+a mere worldly trifle, I will endeavor to find it.  It may be in my
+other pocket."  He backed out of the door in his usual fashion, but
+instantly went over to the post-office, where, as he afterwards
+alleged, he had changed the ore for coin in a moment of inadvertence.
+But Johnny's hieroglyphics were found on it, and in some mysterious
+way the story got about.  It had two effects that Johnny did not
+dream of.  It had forced his mother into an attitude of complicity
+with him; it had raised up for him a single friend. Jake Stielitzer,
+quartz miner, had declared that Burnt Spring was "playing it low
+down" on Johnny!  That if they really believed that the boy took
+gold from their sluice boxes, it was their duty to watch their
+CLAIMS and not the boy.  That it was only their excuse for
+"snooping" after him, and they only wanted to find his "strike,"
+which was as much his as their claims were their own!  All this with
+great proficiency of epithet, but also a still more recognized
+proficiency with the revolver, which made the former respected.
+
+"That's the real nigger in the fence, Johnny," said Jake, twirling
+his huge mustache, "and they only want to know where your lead is,--
+and don't yer tell 'em!  Let 'em bile over with waitin' first, and
+that'll put the fire out.  Does yer pop know?"
+
+"No," said Johnny.
+
+"Nor yer mar?"
+
+"No."
+
+Jake whistled.  "Then it's only YOU, yourself?"
+
+Johnny nodded violently, and his brown eyes glistened.
+
+"It's a heap of information to be packed away in a chap of your
+size, Johnny.  Makes you feel kinder crowded inside, eh?  MUST keep
+it to yourself, eh?"
+
+"Have to," said Johnny with a gasp that was a little like a sigh.
+
+It caused Jake to look at him attentively.  "See here, Johnny," he
+said, "now ef ye wanted to tell somebody about it,--somebody as was
+a friend of yours,--ME, f'r instance?"
+
+Johnny slowly withdrew the freckled, warty little hand that had
+been resting confidingly in Jake's and gently sidled away from him.
+Jake burst into a loud laugh.
+
+"All right, Johnny boy," he said with a hearty slap upon the boy's
+back, "keep yer head shut ef yer wanter!  Only ef anybody else
+comes bummin' round ye, like this, jest turn him over TO ME, and
+I'll lift him outer his boots!"
+
+Jake kept his word, and his distance thereafter.  Indeed, it was
+after this first and last conversation with him that the influence
+of his powerful protection was so strong that all active criticisms
+of Johnny ceased, and only a respectful surveillance of his
+movements lingered in the settlement.  I do not know that this was
+altogether distasteful to the child; it would have been strange,
+indeed, if he had not felt at times exalted by this mysterious
+influence that he seemed to have acquired over his fellow
+creatures.  If he were merely hunting blackberries in the brush, he
+was always sure, sooner or later, to find a ready hand offered to
+help and accompany him; if he trapped a squirrel or tracked down a
+wild bees' hoard, he generally found a smiling face watching him.
+Prospectors sometimes stopped him with: "Well, Johnny, as a chipper
+and far-minded boy, now WHAR would YOU advise us to dig?"  I grieve
+to say that Johnny was not above giving his advice,--and that it
+was invariably of not the smallest use to the recipient.
+
+And so the days passed.  Mr. Medliker's absence was protracted, and
+the hour of retribution and punishment still seemed far away.  The
+blackberries ripened and dried upon the hillside, and the squirrels
+had gathered their hoards; the bees no longer came and went through
+the thicket, but Johnny was still in daily mysterious possession of
+his grains of gold!  And then one day--after the fate of all heroic
+humanity--his secret was imperilled by the blandishments and
+machinations of the all-powerful sex.
+
+Florry Fraser was a little playmate of Johnny's.  Why, with his
+doubts of his elder sister's intelligence and integrity, he should
+have selected a child two years younger, and of singular
+simplicity, was, like his other secret, his own.  What SHE saw in
+him to attract her was equally strange; possibly it may have been
+his brown-gooseberry eyes or his warts; but she was quite content
+to trot after him, like a young squaw, carrying his "bow-arrow," or
+his "trap," supremely satisfied to share his woodland knowledge or
+his scanter confidences.  For nobody who knew Johnny suspected that
+she was privy to his great secret.  Howbeit, wherever his ragged
+straw hat, thatched with his tawny hair, was detected in the brush,
+the little nankeen sunbonnet of Florry was sure to be discerned not
+far behind.  For two weeks they had not seen each other.  A fell
+disease, nurtured in ignorance, dirt, and carelessness, was
+striking right and left through the valleys of the foothills, and
+Florry, whose sister had just recovered from an attack, had been
+sequestered with her.  But one morning, as Johnny was bringing his
+wood from the stack behind the house, he saw, to his intense
+delight, a picket of the road fence slipped aside by a small red
+hand, and a moment after Florry squeezed herself through the narrow
+opening.  Her round cheeks were slightly flushed, and there was a
+scrap of red flannel around her plump throat that heightened the
+whiteness of her skin.
+
+"My!" said Johnny, with half-real, half-affected admiration, "how
+splendiferous!"
+
+"Sore froat," said Florry, in a whisper, trying to insert her two
+chubby fingers between the bandage and her chin.  "I mussent go
+outer the garden patch!  I mussent play in the woods, for I'll be
+seed!  I mussent stay long, for they'll ketch me outer bed!"
+
+"Outer bed?" repeated Johnny, with intense admiration, as he
+perceived for the first time that Florry was in a flannel nightgown,
+with bare legs and feet.
+
+"Ess."
+
+Whereupon these two delightful imps chuckled and wagged their heads
+with a sincere enjoyment that this mere world could not give!
+Johnny slipped off his shoes and stockings and hurriedly put them
+on the infant Florry, securing them from falling off with a thick
+cord.  This added to their enjoyment.
+
+"We can play cubby house in the stone heap," whispered Florry.
+
+"Hol' on till I tote in this wood," said Johnny.  "You hide till I
+come back."
+
+Johnny swiftly delivered his load with an alacrity he had never
+shown before.  Then they played "cubby house"--not fifty feet from
+the cabin, with a hushed but guilty satisfaction.  But presently it
+palled.  Their domain was too circumscribed for variety.  "Robinson
+Crusoe up the tree" was impossible, as being visible from the house
+windows.  Johnny was at his wits' end.  Florry was fretful and
+fastidious.  Then a great thought struck him and left him cold.
+"If I show you a show, you won't tell?" he said suddenly.
+
+"No."
+
+"Wish yer-ma-die?"
+
+"Ess."
+
+"Got any penny?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Got any slate pencil?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ain't got any pins nor nuthin'?  You kin go in for a pin."
+
+But Florry had none of childhood's fluctuating currency with her,
+having, so to speak, no pockets.
+
+"Well," said Johnny, brightening up, "ye kin go in for luv."
+
+The child clipped him with her small arms and smiled, and, Johnny
+leading the way, they crept on all fours through the thick ferns
+until they paused before a deep fissure in the soil half overgrown
+with bramble.  In its depths they could hear the monotonous trickle
+of water.  It was really the source of the spring that afterwards
+reappeared fifty yards nearer the road, and trickled into an
+unfailing pool known as the Burnt Spring, from the brown color of
+the surrounding bracken.  It was the water supply of the ranch, and
+the reason for Mr. Medliker's original selection of that site.
+Johnny lingered for an instant, looked carefully around, and then
+lowered himself into the fissure.  A moment later he reached up his
+arms to Florry, lowered her also, and both disappeared from view.
+Yet from time to time their voices came faintly from below--with
+the gurgle of water--as of festive gnomes at play.
+
+At the end of ten minutes they reappeared, a little muddy, a little
+bedraggled, but flushed and happy.  There were two pink spots on
+Florry's cheeks, and she clasped something tightly in her little
+red fist.
+
+"There," said Johnny, when they were seated in the straw again,
+"now mind you don't tell."
+
+But here suddenly Florry's lips began to quiver, and she gave vent
+to a small howl of anguish.
+
+"You ain't bit by a trant'ler nor nuthin'?' said Johnny anxiously.
+"Hush up!"
+
+"N--o--o!  But"--
+
+"But what?" said Johnny.
+
+"Mar said I MUST tell!  Mar said I was to fin' out where you get
+the truly gold!  Mar said I was to get you to take me," howled
+Florry, in an agony of remorse.
+
+Johnny gasped.  "You Injin!" he began.
+
+"But I won't--Johnny!" said Florry, clutching his leg frantically.
+"I won't and I sha'n't!  I ain't no Injin!"
+
+Then, between her sobs, she told him how her mother and Mr. Staples
+had said that she was to ask Johnny the next time they met to take
+her where they found the "truly gold," and she was to remember
+where it was and to tell them.  And they were going to give her a
+new dolly and a hunk of gingerbread.  "But I won't--and I sha'n't!"
+she said passionately.  She was quite pale again.
+
+Johnny was convinced, but thoughtful.  "Tell 'em," he said
+hoarsely, "tell 'em a big whopper!  They won't know no better.
+They'll never guess where."  And he briefly recounted the wild-
+goose chase he had given the minister.
+
+"And get the dolly and the cake," said Florry, her eyes shining
+through her tears.
+
+"In course," said Johnny.  "They'll get the dolly back, but you kin
+have eated the cake first."  They looked at each other, and their
+eyes danced together over this heaven-sent inspiration.  Then
+Johnny took off her shoes and stockings, rubbed her cold feet with
+his dirty handkerchief, and said: "Now you trot over to your mar!"
+
+He helped her through the loose picket of the fence and was turning
+away when her faint voice again called him.
+
+"Johnny!"
+
+He turned back; she was standing on the other side of the fence
+holding out her arms to him.  He went to her with shining eyes,
+lifted her up, and from her hot but loving little lips took a fatal
+kiss.
+
+For only an hour later Mrs. Fraser found Florry in her bed, tossing
+with a high fever and a light head.  She was talking of "Johnny"
+and "gold," and had a flake of the metal in her tiny fist.  When
+Mr. Staples was sent for, and with the mother and father, hung
+anxiously above her bed, to their eager questioning they could only
+find out that Florry had been to a high mountain, ever so far away,
+and on the top of it there was gold lying around, and a shining
+figure was giving it away to the people.
+
+"And who were the people, Florry dear," said Mr. Staples
+persuasively; "anybody ye know here?"
+
+"They woz angels," said Florry, with a frightened glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+I grieve to say that Mr. Staples did not look as pleased at the
+celestial vision as he might have, and poor Mrs. Fraser probably
+saw that in her child's face which drove other things from her
+mind.  Yet Mr. Staples persisted:--
+
+"And who led you to this beautiful mountain?  Was it Johnny?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Who then?"
+
+Florry opened her eyes on the speaker.  "I fink it was Dod," she
+said, and closed them again.
+
+But here Dr. Duchesne hurried in, and after a single glance at the
+child hustled Mr. Staples from the room.  For there were grave
+complications that puzzled him, Florry seemed easier and quieter
+under his kindly voice and touch, but did not speak again,--and so,
+slowly sinking, passed away that night in a dreamless sleep.  This
+was followed by a mad panic at Burnt Spring the next day, and Mrs.
+Medliker fled with her two girls to Sacramento, leaving Johnny,
+ostensibly strong and active, to keep house until his father's
+return.  But Mr. Medliker's return was again delayed, and in the
+epidemic, which had now taken a fast hold of the settlement,
+Johnny's secret--and indeed the boy himself--was quite forgotten.
+It was only on Mr. Medliker's arrival it was known that he had been
+lying dangerously ill, alone, in the abandoned house.  In his
+strange reticence and firmness of purpose he had kept his
+sufferings to himself,--as he had his other secret,--and they were
+revealed only in the wasted, hollow figure that feebly opened the
+door to his father.
+
+On which intelligence Mr. Staples was, as usual, promptly on the
+spot with his story of Johnny's secret to the father, and his usual
+eager questioning to the fast-sinking boy.  "And now, Johnny," he
+said, leaning over the bed, "tell us ALL.  There is One from whom
+no secrets are hid.  Remember, too, that dear Florry, who is now
+with the angels, has already confessed."
+
+Perhaps it was because Johnny, even at that moment, hated the man;
+perhaps it was because at that moment he loved and believed in
+Florry, or perhaps it was only that because at that moment he was
+nearer the greater Truth than his questioner, but he said, in a
+husky voice, "You lie!"
+
+Staples drew back with a flushed face, but lips that writhed in a
+pained and still persistent eagerness.  "But, Johnny, at least tell
+us where--wh--wow--wow."
+
+I am obliged to admit that these undignified accents came from Mr.
+Staples' own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr.
+Medliker's arm around his throat.  The teamster was irascible and
+prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same
+reason, strong and sinewy.  Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and
+dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside,
+with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker in his ears:--
+
+"You're a minister of the gospel, I know, but ef ye say another
+word to my Johnny, I'll knock the gospel stuffin' out of ye.  Ye
+hear me!  I'VE DRIVEN MULES AFORE!"
+
+He then strode back into the room.  "Ye needn't answer, Johnny,
+he's gone."
+
+But so, too, had Johnny, for he never answered the question in this
+world, nor, please God, was he required to in the next.  He lay
+still and dead.  The community was scandalized the next day when
+Mr. Medliker sent for a minister from Sacramento to officiate at
+his child's funeral, in place of Mr. Staples, and then the subject
+was dropped.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+But the influence of Johnny's hidden treasure still remained as a
+superstition in the locality.  Prospecting parties were continually
+made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and
+data altogether apocryphal.  It was even alleged that a miner had
+one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over
+the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the
+stars at the very moment he thought he had discovered their secret.
+And then it was forgotten; the prosperous Mr. Medliker, now the
+proprietor of a stage-coach route, moved away to Sacramento;
+Medliker's Ranch became a station for changing horses, and, as the
+new railway in time superseded even that, sank into a blacksmith's
+shop on the outskirts of the new town of Burnt Spring.  And then
+one day, six years after, news fell as a bolt from the blue!
+
+It was thus recorded in the county paper: "A piece of rare good
+fortune, involving, it is said, the development of a lead of
+extraordinary value, has lately fallen to the lot of Mr. John
+Silsbee, the popular blacksmith, on the site of the old Medliker
+Ranch.  In clearing out the failing water-course known as Burnt
+Spring, Mr. Silsbee came upon a rich ledge or pocket at the actual
+source of the spring,--a fissure in the ground a few rods from the
+road.  The present yield has been estimated to be from eight to ten
+thousand dollars.  But the event is considered as one of the most
+remarkable instances of the vagaries of 'prospecting' ever known,
+as this valuable 'pot-hole' existed undisturbed for EIGHT YEARS not
+FIFTY YARDS from the old cabin that was in former times the
+residence of J. Medliker, Esq., and the station of the Pioneer
+Stage Company, and was utterly unknown and unsuspected by the
+previous inhabitants!  Verily truth is stranger than fiction!"
+
+
+
+A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS
+
+
+The schoolmaster at Hemlock Hill was troubled that morning.  Three
+of his boys were missing.  This was not only a notable deficit in a
+roll-call of twenty, but the absentees were his three most original
+and distinctive scholars.  He had received no preliminary warning
+or excuse.  Nor could he attribute their absence to any common
+local detention or difficulty of travel.  They lived widely apart
+and in different directions.  Neither were they generally known as
+"chums," or comrades, who might have entered into an unhallowed
+combination to "play hookey."
+
+He looked at the vacant places before him with a concern which his
+other scholars little shared, having, after their first lively
+curiosity, not unmixed with some envy of the derelicts, apparently
+forgotten them.  He missed the cropped head and inquisitive glances
+of Jackson Tribbs on the third bench, the red hair and brown eyes
+of Providence Smith in the corner, and there was a blank space in
+the first bench where Julian Fleming, a lanky giant of seventeen,
+had sat.  Still, it would not do to show his concern openly, and,
+as became a man who was at least three years the senior of the
+eldest, Julian Fleming, he reflected that they were "only boys,"
+and that their friends were probably ignorant of the good he was
+doing them, and so dismissed the subject.  Nevertheless, it struck
+him as wonderful how the little world beneath him got on without
+them.  Hanky Rogers, bully, who had been kept in wholesome check by
+Julian Fleming, was lively and exuberant, and his conduct was
+quietly accepted by the whole school; Johnny Stebbins, Tribbs's
+bosom friend, consorted openly with Tribbs's particular enemy; some
+of the girls were singularly gay and conceited.  It was evident
+that some superior masculine oppression had been removed.
+
+He was particularly struck by this last fact, when, the next
+morning, no news coming of the absentees, he was impelled to
+question his flock somewhat precisely concerning them.  There was
+the usual shy silence which follows a general inquiry from the
+teacher's desk; the children looked at one another, giggled
+nervously, and said nothing.
+
+"Can you give me any idea as to what might have kept them away?"
+said the master.
+
+Hanky Rogers looked quickly around, began, "Playin' hook--" in a
+loud voice, but stopped suddenly without finishing the word, and
+became inaudible.  The master saw fit to ignore him.
+
+"Bee-huntin'," said Annie Roker vivaciously.
+
+"Who is?" asked the master.
+
+"Provy Smith, of course.  Allers bee-huntin'.  Gets lots o' honey.
+Got two full combs in his desk last week.  He's awful on bees and
+honey.  Ain't he, Jinny?"  This in a high voice to her sister.
+
+The younger Miss Roker, thus appealed to, was heard to murmur that
+of all the sneakin' bee-hunters she had ever seed, Provy Smith was
+the worst.  "And squirrels--for nuts," she added.
+
+The master became attentive,--a clue seemed probable here.  "Would
+Tribbs and Fleming be likely to go with him?" he asked.
+
+A significant silence followed.  The master felt that the children
+recognized a doubt of this, knowing the boys were not "chums;"
+possibly they also recognized something incriminating to them, and
+with characteristic freemasonry looked at one another and were
+dumb.
+
+He asked no further questions, but, when school was dismissed,
+mounted his horse and started for the dwelling of the nearest
+culprit, Jackson Tribbs, four miles distant.  He had often admired
+the endurance of the boy, who had accomplished the distance,
+including the usual meanderings of a country youth, twice a day, on
+foot, in all weathers, with no diminution of spirits or energy.  He
+was still more surprised when he found it a mountain road, and that
+the house lay well up on the ascent of the pass.  Autumn was
+visible only in a few flaming sumacs set among the climbing pines,
+and here, in a little clearing to the right, appeared the dwelling
+he was seeking.
+
+"Tribbses," or "Tribbs's Run," was devoted to the work of cutting
+down the pines midway on a long regularly sloping mountain-side,
+which allowed the trunks, after they were trimmed and cut into
+suitable lengths, to be slid down through rude runs, or artificial
+channels, into the valley below, where they were collected by teams
+and conveyed to the nearest mills.  The business was simple in the
+extreme, and was carried on by Tribbs senior, two men with saws and
+axes, and the natural laws of gravitation.  The house was a long
+log cabin; several sheds roofed with bark or canvas seemed
+consistent with the still lingering summer and the heated odors of
+the pines, but were strangely incongruous to those white patches on
+the table-land and the white tongue stretching from the ridge to
+the valley.  But the master was familiar with those Sierran
+contrasts, and as he had never ascended the trail before, it might
+be only the usual prospect of the dwellers there.  At this moment
+Mr. Tribbs appeared from the cabin, with his axe on his shoulder.
+Nodding carelessly to the master, he was moving away, when the
+latter stopped him.
+
+"Is Jackson here?" he asked.
+
+"No," said the father, half impatiently, still moving on.  "Hain't
+seen him since yesterday."
+
+"Nor has he been at school," said the master, "either yesterday or
+to-day."
+
+Mr. Tribbs looked puzzled and grieved.  "Now I reckoned you had
+kep' him in for some devilment of his'n, or lessons."
+
+"Not ALL NIGHT!" said the master, somewhat indignant at this
+presumption of his arbitrary functions.
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Tribbs.  "Mariar!"  Mrs. Tribbs made her
+appearance in the doorway.  "The schoolmaster allows that Jackson
+ain't bin to school at all."  Then, turning to the master, he
+added, "Thar! you settle it between ye," and quietly walked away.
+
+Mrs. Tribbs looked by no means satisfied with or interested in the
+proposed tete-a-tete.  "Hev ye looked in the bresh" (i. e., brush
+or underwood) "for him?" she said querulously.
+
+"No," said the master, "I came here first.  There are two other
+boys missing,--Providence Smith and Julian Fleming.  Did either of
+them"--
+
+But Mrs. Tribbs had interrupted him with a gesture of impatient
+relief.  "Oh, that's all, is it?  Playin' hookey together, in
+course.  'Scuse me, I must go back to my bakin'."  She turned away,
+but stopped suddenly, touched, as the master fondly believed, by
+some tardy maternal solicitude.  But she only said: "When he DOES
+come back, you just give him a whalin', will ye?" and vanished into
+her kitchen.
+
+The master rode away, half ashamed of his foolish concern for the
+derelicts.  But he determined to try Smith's father, who owned a
+small rancho lower down on a spur of the same ridge.  But the spur
+was really nearer Hemlock Hill, and could have been reached more
+directly by a road from there.  He, however, kept along the ridge,
+and after half an hour's ride was convinced that Jackson Tribbs
+could have communicated with Provy Smith without coming nearer
+Hemlock Hill, and this revived his former belief that they were
+together.  He found the paternal Smith engaged in hoeing potatoes
+in a stony field.  The look of languid curiosity with which he had
+regarded the approach of the master changed to one of equally
+languid aggression as he learned the object of his visit.
+
+"Wot are ye comin' to ME for?  I ain't runnin' your school," he
+said slowly and aggressively.  "I started Providence all right for
+it mornin' afore last, since when I never set eyes on him.  That
+lets ME out.  My business, young feller, is lookin' arter the
+ranch.  Yours, I reckon, is lookin' arter your scholars."
+
+"I thought it my business to tell you your son was absent from
+school," said the master coldly, turning away.  "If you are
+satisfied, I have nothing more to say."  Nevertheless, for the
+moment he was so startled by this remarkable theory of his own
+responsibility in the case that he quite accepted the father's
+callousness,--or rather it seemed to him that his unfortunate
+charges more than ever needed his protection.  There was still the
+chance of his hearing some news from Julian Fleming's father; he
+lived at some distance, in the valley on the opposite side of
+Hemlock Hill; and thither the master made his way.  Luckily he had
+not gone far before he met Mr. Fleming, who was a teamster, en
+route.  Like the fathers of the other truants, he was also engaged
+in his vocation.  But, unlike the others, Fleming senior was jovial
+and talkative.  He pulled up his long team promptly, received the
+master's news with amused interest, and an invitation to spirituous
+refreshment from a demijohn in his wagon.
+
+"Me and the ole woman kind o' spekilated that Jule might hev been
+over with Aunt Marthy; but don't you worry, Mr. Schoolmaster.
+They're limbs, every one o' them, but they'll fetch up somewhere,
+all square!  Just you put two fingers o' that corn juice inside ye,
+and let 'em slide.  Ye didn't hear what the 'lekshun news was when
+ye was at Smith's, did ye?"
+
+The master had not inquired.  He confessed he had been worried
+about the boys.  He had even thought that Julian might have met
+with an accident.
+
+Mr. Fleming wiped his mouth, with a humorous affectation of
+concern.  "Met with an ACCIDENT?  Yes, I reckon not ONE accident,
+but TWO of 'em.  These yer accidents Jule's met with had two legs,
+and were mighty lively accidents, you bet, and took him off with
+'em; or mebbe they had four legs, and he's huntin' 'em yet.
+Accidents!  Now I never thought o' that!  Well, when you come
+across him and THEM ACCIDENTS, you just whale 'em, all three!  And
+ye won't take another drink?  Well, so long, then!  Gee up!"  He
+rolled away, with a laugh, in the heavy dust kicked up by his
+plunging mules, and the master made his way back to the schoolhouse.
+His quest for that day was ended.
+
+But the next morning he was both astounded and relieved, at the
+assembling of school, to find the three truants back in their
+places.  His urgent questioning of them brought only the one and
+same response from each: "Got lost on the ridge."  He further
+gathered that they had slept out for two nights, and were together
+all the time, but nothing further, and no details were given.  The
+master was puzzled.  They evidently expected punishment; that was
+no doubt also the wish of their parents; but if their story was
+true, it was a serious question if he ought to inflict it.  There
+was no means of testing their statement; there was equally none by
+which he could controvert it.  It was evident that the whole school
+accepted it without doubt; whether they were in possession of
+details gained from the truants themselves which they had withheld
+from him, or whether from some larger complicity with the culprits,
+he could not say.  He told them gravely that he should withhold
+equally their punishment and their pardon until he could satisfy
+himself of their veracity, and that there had been no premeditation
+in their act.  They seemed relieved, but here, again, he could not
+tell whether it sprang from confidence in their own integrity or
+merely from youthful hopefulness that delayed retribution never
+arrived!
+
+It was a month before their secret was fully disclosed.  It was
+slowly evolved from corroborating circumstances, but always with a
+shy reluctance from the boys themselves, and a surprise that any
+one should think it of importance.  It was gathered partly from
+details picked up at recess or on the playground, from the
+voluntary testimony of teamsters and packers, from a record in the
+county newspaper, but always shaping itself into a consecutive and
+harmonious narrative.
+
+It was a story so replete with marvelous escape and adventure that
+the master hesitated to accept it in its entirety until after it
+had long become a familiar history, and was even forgotten by the
+actors themselves.  And even now he transcribes it more from the
+circumstances that surrounded it than from a hope that the story
+will be believed.
+
+
+                        WHAT HAPPENED
+
+Master Provy Smith had started out that eventful morning with the
+intention of fighting Master Jackson Tribbs for the "Kingship" of
+Table Ridge--a trifling territory of ten leagues square--Tribbs
+having infringed on his boundaries and claimed absolute sovereignty
+over the whole mountain range.  Julian Fleming was present as
+referee and bottle-holder.  The battle ground selected was the
+highest part of the ridge.  The hour was six o'clock, which would
+allow them time to reach school before its opening, with all traces
+of their conflict removed.  The air was crisp and cold,--a trifle
+colder than usual,--and there was a singular thickening of the
+sun's rays on the ridge, which made the distant peaks indistinct
+and ghostlike.  However, the two combatants stripped "to the buff,"
+and Fleming patronizingly took position at the "corner," leaning
+upon a rifle, which, by reason of his superior years, and the
+wilderness he was obliged to traverse in going to school, his
+father had lent him to carry.  It was that day a providential
+weapon.
+
+Suddenly, Fleming uttered the word, "Sho!"  The two combatants
+paused in their first "squaring off" to see, to their surprise,
+that their referee had faced round, with his gun in his hand, and
+was staring in another direction.
+
+"B'ar!" shouted the three voices together.  A huge bear, followed
+by its cubs, was seen stumbling awkwardly away to the right, making
+for the timber below.  In an instant the boys had hurried into
+their jackets again, and the glory of fight was forgotten in the
+fever of the chase.  Why should they pound each other when there
+was something to really KILL?  They started in instant pursuit,
+Julian leading.
+
+But the wind was now keen and bitter in their faces, and that
+peculiar thickening of the air which they had noticed had become
+first a dark blue and then a whitening pall, in which the bear was
+lost.  They still kept on.  Suddenly Julian felt himself struck
+between the eyes by what seemed a snowball, and his companions were
+as quickly spattered by gouts of monstrous clinging snowflakes.
+Others as quickly followed--it was not snowing, it was snowballing.
+They at first laughed, affecting to retaliate with these whirling,
+flying masses shaken like clinging feathers from a pillow; but in a
+few seconds they were covered from head to foot by snow, their
+limbs impeded or pinioned against them by its weight, their breath
+gone.  They stopped blindly, breathlessly.  Then, with a common
+instinct, they turned back.  But the next moment they heard Julian
+cry, "Look out!"  Coming towards them out of the storm was the
+bear, who had evidently turned back by the same instinct.  An
+ungovernable instinct seized the younger boys, and they fled.  But
+Julian stopped with leveled rifle.  The bear stopped too, with
+sullen, staring eyes.  But the eyes that glanced along the rifle
+were young, true, and steady.  Julian fired.  The hot smoke was
+swept back by the gale into his face, but the bear turned and
+disappeared in the storm again.  Julian ran on to where his
+companions had halted at the report, a little ashamed of their
+cowardice.  "Keep on that way!" he shouted hoarsely.  "No use
+tryin' to go where the b'ar couldn't.  Keep on!"
+
+"Keep on--whar?  There ain't no trail--no nuthin'!" said Jackson
+querulously, to hold down a rising fear.  It was true.  The trail
+had long since disappeared; even their footprints of a moment
+before were filled up by the piling snow; they were isolated in
+this stony upland, high in air, without a rock or tree to guide
+them across its vast white level.  They were bitterly cold and
+benumbed.  The stimulus of the storm and chase had passed, but
+Julian kept driving them before him, himself driven along by the
+furious blast, yet trying to keep some vague course along the
+waste.  So an hour passed.  Then the wind seemed to have changed,
+or else they had traveled in a circle--they knew not which, but the
+snow was in their faces now.  But, worst of all, the snow had
+changed too; it no longer fell in huge blue flakes, but in millions
+of stinging gray granules.  Julian's face grew hard and his eyes
+bright.  He knew it was no longer a snow-squall, but a lasting
+storm.  He stopped; the boys tumbled against him.  He looked at
+them with a strange smile.
+
+"Hev you two made up?" he said.
+
+"No--o!"
+
+"Make up, then."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Shake hands."
+
+They clasped each other's red, benumbed fingers and laughed, albeit
+a little frightened at Julian.  "Go on!" he said, curtly.
+
+They went on dazedly, stupidly, for another hour.
+
+Suddenly Provy Smith's keen eyes sparkled.  He pointed to a
+singular irregular mound of snow before them, plainly seen above
+the dreary level.  Julian ran to it with a cry, and began wildly
+digging.  "I knew I hit him," he cried, as he brushed the snow from
+a huge and hairy leg.  It was the bear--dead, but not yet cold.  He
+had succumbed with his huge back to the blast, the snow piling a
+bulwark behind him, where it had slowly roofed him in.  The half-
+frozen lads threw themselves fearlessly against his furry coat and
+crept between his legs, nestling themselves beneath his still warm
+body with screams of joy.  The snow they had thrown back increased
+the bulwark, and drifting over it, in a few moments inclosed them
+in a thin shell of snow.  Thoroughly exhausted, after a few grunts
+of satisfaction, a deep sleep fell upon them, from which they were
+awakened only by the pangs of hunger.  Alas! their dinners--the
+school dinners--had been left on the inglorious battlefield.
+Nevertheless, they talked of eating the bear if it came to the
+worst.  They would have tried it even then, but they were far above
+the belt of timber; they had matches--what boy has not?--but no
+WOOD.  Still, they were reassured, and even delighted, with this
+prospect, and so fell asleep again, stewing with the dead bear in
+the half-impervious snow, and woke up in the morning ravenous, yet
+to see the sun shining in their faces through the melted snow, and
+for Jackson Tribbs to quickly discover, four miles away as the crow
+flies, the cabin of his father among the flaming sumacs.
+
+They started up in the glare of the sun, which at first almost
+blinded them.  They then discovered that they were in a depression
+of the table-land that sloped before them to a deep gully in the
+mountainside, which again dropped into the canyon below.  The trail
+they had lost, they now remembered, must be near this edge.  But it
+was still hidden, and in seeking it there was danger of some fatal
+misstep in the treacherous snow.  Nevertheless, they sallied out
+bravely, although they would fain have stopped to skin the bear,
+but Julian's mandate was peremptory.  They spread themselves along
+the ridge, at times scraping the loose snow away in their search
+for the lost trail.
+
+Suddenly they all slipped and fell, but rose again quickly,
+laughing.  Then they slipped and fell again, but this time with the
+startling consciousness that it was not THEY who had slipped, but
+THE SNOW!  As they regained their feet they could plainly see now
+that a large crack on the white field, some twenty feet in width,
+extended between them and the carcass of the bear, showing the
+glistening rock below.  Again they were thrown down with a sharp
+shock.  Jackson Tribbs, who had been showing a strange excitement,
+suddenly gave a cry of warning.  "Lie flat, fellers! but keep a-
+crawlin' and jumpin'.  We're goin' down a slide!"  And the next
+moment they were sliding and tossing, apparently with the whole
+snow-field, down towards the gullied precipice.
+
+What happened after this, and how long it lasted, they never knew.
+For, hurried along with increasing momentum, but always
+mechanically clutching at the snow, and bounding from it as they
+swept on, they sometimes lost breath, and even consciousness.  At
+times they were half suffocated in rolling masses of drift, and
+again free and skimming over its arrested surface, but always
+falling, as it seemed to them, almost perpendicularly.  In one of
+these shocks they seemed to be going through a thicket of
+underbrush; but Provy Smith knew that they were the tops of pine-
+trees.  At last there was one shock longer and lasting, followed by
+a deepening thunder below them.  The avalanche had struck a ledge
+in the mountain side, and precipitated its lower part into the
+valley.
+
+Then everything was still, until Provy heard Julian's voice
+calling.  He answered, but there was no response from Tribbs.  Had
+he gone over into the valley?  They set up a despairing shout!  A
+voice--a smothered one--that might be his, came apparently from the
+snow beneath them.  They shouted again; the voice, vague and
+hollow, responded, but it was now surely his.
+
+"Where are you?" screamed Provy.
+
+"Down the chimbley."
+
+There was a black square of adobe sticking out of the snow near
+them.  They ran to it.  There was a hole.  They peered down, but
+could see nothing at first but a faint glimmer.
+
+"Come down, fellows!  It ain't far!" said Tribbs's voice.
+
+"Wot yer got there?" asked Julian cautiously.
+
+"Suthin' to eat."
+
+That was enough.  In another instant Julian and Provy went down the
+chimney.  What was a matter of fifteen feet after a thousand?
+Tribbs had already lit a candle by which they could see that they
+were in the cabin of some tunnel-man at work on the ridge.  He had
+probably been in the tunnel when the avalanche fell, and escaped,
+though his cabin was buried.  The three discoverers helped
+themselves to his larder.  They laughed and ate as at a picnic,
+played cards, pretended it was a robber's cave, and finally,
+wrapping themselves in the miner's blankets, slept soundly, knowing
+where they were, and confident also that they could find the trail
+early the next morning.  They did so, and without going to their
+homes came directly to school--having been absent about fifty
+hours.  They were in high spirits, except for the thought of
+approaching punishment, never dreaming to evade it by anything
+miraculous in their adventures.
+
+
+Such was briefly their story.  Its truth was corroborated by the
+discovery of the bear's carcass, by the testimony of the tunnel-
+man, who found his larder mysteriously ransacked in his buried
+cabin, and, above all, by the long white tongue that for many
+months hung from the ledge into the valley.  Nobody thought the
+lanky Julian a hero,--least of all himself.  Nobody suspected that
+Jackson Tribbs's treatment of a "slide" had been gathered from
+experiments in his father's "runs"--and he was glad they did not.
+The master's pardon obtained, the three truants cared little for
+the opinion of Hemlock Hill.  They knew THEMSELVES, that was
+enough.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Tales of Trail and Town, by Bret Harte
+
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