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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under the Redwoods, by Bret Harte
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+Title:  Under the Redwoods
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+Author:  Bret Harte
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+March, 2001  [Etext #2555]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under the Redwoods, by Bret Harte
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+
+Under the Redwoods
+
+by
+
+Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+JIMMY'S BIG BROTHER FROM CALIFORNIA
+
+THE YOUNGEST MISS PIPER
+
+A WIDOW OF THE SANTA ANA VALLEY
+
+THE MERMAID OF LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+
+UNDER THE EAVES
+
+HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+THREE VAGABONDS OF TRINIDAD
+
+A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
+
+A ROMANCE OF THE LINE
+
+BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+UNDER THE REDWOODS
+
+
+
+
+JIMMY'S BIG BROTHER FROM CALIFORNIA
+
+
+As night crept up from the valley that stormy afternoon, Sawyer's
+Ledge was at first quite blotted out by wind and rain, but
+presently reappeared in little nebulous star-like points along the
+mountain side, as the straggling cabins of the settlement were one
+by one lit up by the miners returning from tunnel and claim.  These
+stars were of varying brilliancy that evening, two notably so--one
+that eventually resolved itself into a many-candled illumination of
+a cabin of evident festivity; the other into a glimmering taper in
+the window of a silent one.  They might have represented the
+extreme mutations of fortune in the settlement that night: the
+celebration of a strike by Robert Falloner, a lucky miner; and the
+sick-bed of Dick Lasham, an unlucky one.
+
+The latter was, however, not quite alone.  He was ministered to by
+Daddy Folsom, a weak but emotional and aggressively hopeful
+neighbor, who was sitting beside the wooden bunk whereon the
+invalid lay.  Yet there was something perfunctory in his attitude:
+his eyes were continually straying to the window, whence the
+illuminated Falloner festivities could be seen between the trees,
+and his ears were more intent on the songs and laughter that came
+faintly from the distance than on the feverish breathing and
+unintelligible moans of the sufferer.
+
+Nevertheless he looked troubled equally by the condition of his
+charge and by his own enforced absence from the revels.  A more
+impatient moan from the sick man, however, brought a change to his
+abstracted face, and he turned to him with an exaggerated
+expression of sympathy.
+
+"In course!  Lordy!  I know jest what those pains are: kinder ez ef
+you was havin' a tooth pulled that had roots branchin' all over ye!
+My!  I've jest had 'em so bad I couldn't keep from yellin'!  That's
+hot rheumatics!  Yes, sir, I oughter know!  And" (confidentially)
+"the sing'ler thing about 'em is that they get worse jest as
+they're going off--sorter wringin' yer hand and punchin' ye in the
+back to say 'Good-by.'  There!" he continued, as the man sank
+exhaustedly back on his rude pillow of flour-sacks.  "There! didn't
+I tell ye?  Ye'll be all right in a minit, and ez chipper ez a jay
+bird in the mornin'.  Oh, don't tell me about rheumatics--I've bin
+thar!  On'y mine was the cold kind--that hangs on longest--yours is
+the hot, that burns itself up in no time!"
+
+If the flushed face and bright eyes of Lasham were not enough to
+corroborate this symptom of high fever, the quick, wandering laugh
+he gave would have indicated the point of delirium.  But the too
+optimistic Daddy Folsom referred this act to improvement, and went
+on cheerfully: "Yes, sir, you're better now, and"--here he assumed
+an air of cautious deliberation, extravagant, as all his assumptions
+were--"I ain't sayin' that--ef--you--was--to--rise--up" (very
+slowly) "and heave a blanket or two over your shoulders--jest by way
+o' caution, you know--and leanin' on me, kinder meander over to Bob
+Falloner's cabin and the boys, it wouldn't do you a heap o' good.
+Changes o' this kind is often prescribed by the faculty."  Another
+moan from the sufferer, however, here apparently corrected Daddy's
+too favorable prognosis.  "Oh, all right!  Well, perhaps ye know
+best; and I'll jest run over to Bob's and say how as ye ain't
+comin', and will be back in a jiffy!"
+
+"The letter," said the sick man hurriedly, "the letter, the letter!"
+
+Daddy leaned suddenly over the bed.  It was impossible for even his
+hopefulness to avoid the fact that Lasham was delirious.  It was a
+strong factor in the case--one that would certainly justify his
+going over to Falloner's with the news.  For the present moment,
+however, this aberration was to be accepted cheerfully and humored
+after Daddy's own fashion.  "Of course--the letter, the letter," he
+said convincingly; "that's what the boys hev bin singin' jest now--
+
+
+     'Good-by, Charley; when you are away,
+      Write me a letter, love; send me a letter, love!'
+
+
+That's what you heard, and a mighty purty song it is too, and
+kinder clings to you.  It's wonderful how these things gets in your
+head."
+
+"The letter--write--send money--money--money, and the photograph--
+the photograph--photograph--money," continued the sick man, in the
+rapid reiteration of delirium.
+
+"In course you will--to-morrow--when the mail goes," returned Daddy
+soothingly; "plenty of them.  Jest now you try to get a snooze,
+will ye?  Hol' on!--take some o' this."
+
+There was an anodyne mixture on the rude shelf, which the doctor
+had left on his morning visit.  Daddy had a comfortable belief that
+what would relieve pain would also check delirium, and he
+accordingly measured out a dose with a liberal margin to allow of
+waste by the patient in swallowing in his semi-conscious state.  As
+he lay more quiet, muttering still, but now unintelligibly, Daddy,
+waiting for a more complete unconsciousness and the opportunity to
+slip away to Falloner's, cast his eyes around the cabin.  He
+noticed now for the first time since his entrance that a crumpled
+envelope bearing a Western post-mark was lying at the foot of the
+bed.  Daddy knew that the tri-weekly post had arrived an hour
+before he came, and that Lasham had evidently received a letter.
+Sure enough the letter itself was lying against the wall beside
+him.  It was open.  Daddy felt justified in reading it.
+
+It was curt and businesslike, stating that unless Lasham at once
+sent a remittance for the support of his brother and sister--two
+children in charge of the writer--they must find a home elsewhere.
+That the arrears were long standing, and the repeated promises of
+Lasham to send money had been unfulfilled.  That the writer could
+stand it no longer.  This would be his last communication unless
+the money were sent forthwith.
+
+It was by no means a novel or, under the circumstances, a shocking
+disclosure to Daddy.  He had seen similar missives from daughters,
+and even wives, consequent on the varying fortunes of his
+neighbors; no one knew better than he the uncertainties of a
+miner's prospects, and yet the inevitable hopefulness that buoyed
+him up.  He tossed it aside impatiently, when his eye caught a
+strip of paper he had overlooked lying upon the blanket near the
+envelope.  It contained a few lines in an unformed boyish hand
+addressed to "my brother," and evidently slipped into the letter
+after it was written.  By the uncertain candlelight Daddy read as
+follows:--
+
+
+Dear Brother, Rite to me and Cissy rite off.  Why aint you done it?
+It's so long since you rote any.  Mister Recketts ses you dont care
+any more.  Wen you rite send your fotograff.  Folks here ses I aint
+got no big bruther any way, as I disremember his looks, and cant
+say wots like him.  Cissy's kryin' all along of it.  I've got a
+hedake.  William Walker make it ake by a blo.  So no more at
+present from your loving little bruther Jim.
+
+
+The quick, hysteric laugh with which Daddy read this was quite
+consistent with his responsive, emotional nature; so, too, were the
+ready tears that sprang to his eyes.  He put the candle down
+unsteadily, with a casual glance at the sick man.  It was notable,
+however, that this look contained less sympathy for the ailing "big
+brother" than his emotion might have suggested.  For Daddy was
+carried quite away by his own mental picture of the helpless
+children, and eager only to relate his impressions of the incident.
+He cast another glance at the invalid, thrust the papers into his
+pocket, and clapping on his hat slipped from the cabin and ran to
+the house of festivity.  Yet it was characteristic of the man, and
+so engrossed was he by his one idea, that to the usual inquiries
+regarding his patient he answered, "he's all right," and plunged at
+once into the incident of the dunning letter, reserving--with the
+instinct of an emotional artist--the child's missive until the
+last.  As he expected, the money demand was received with indignant
+criticisms of the writer.
+
+"That's just like 'em in the States," said Captain Fletcher;
+"darned if they don't believe we've only got to bore a hole in the
+ground and snake out a hundred dollars.  Why, there's my wife--with
+a heap of hoss sense in everything else--is allus wonderin' why I
+can't rake in a cool fifty betwixt one steamer day and another."
+
+"That's nothin' to my old dad," interrupted Gus Houston, the
+"infant" of the camp, a bright-eyed young fellow of twenty; "why,
+he wrote to me yesterday that if I'd only pick up a single piece of
+gold every day and just put it aside, sayin' 'That's for popper and
+mommer,' and not fool it away--it would be all they'd ask of me."
+
+"That's so," added another; "these ignorant relations is just the
+ruin o' the mining industry.  Bob Falloner hez bin lucky in his
+strike to-day, but he's a darned sight luckier in being without
+kith or kin that he knows of."
+
+Daddy waited until the momentary irritation had subsided, and then
+drew the other letter from his pocket.  "That ain't all, boys," he
+began in a faltering voice, but gradually working himself up to a
+pitch of pathos; "just as I was thinking all them very things, I
+kinder noticed this yer poor little bit o' paper lyin' thar
+lonesome like and forgotten, and I--read it--and well--gentlemen--
+it just choked me right up!"  He stopped, and his voice faltered.
+
+"Go slow, Daddy, go slow!" said an auditor smilingly.  It was
+evident that Daddy's sympathetic weakness was well known.
+
+Daddy read the child's letter.  But, unfortunately, what with his
+real emotion and the intoxication of an audience, he read it
+extravagantly, and interpolated a child's lisp (on no authority
+whatever), and a simulated infantile delivery, which, I fear, at
+first provoked the smiles rather than the tears of his audience.
+Nevertheless, at its conclusion the little note was handed round
+the party, and then there was a moment of thoughtful silence.
+
+"Tell you what it is, boys," said Fletcher, looking around the
+table, "we ought to be doin' suthin' for them kids right off!  Did
+you," turning to Daddy, "say anythin' about this to Dick?"
+
+"Nary--why, he's clean off his head with fever--don't understand a
+word--and just babbles," returned Daddy, forgetful of his roseate
+diagnosis a moment ago, "and hasn't got a cent."
+
+"We must make up what we can amongst us afore the mail goes to-
+night," said the "infant," feeling hurriedly in his pockets.
+"Come, ante up, gentlemen," he added, laying the contents of his
+buckskin purse upon the table.
+
+"Hold on, boys," said a quiet voice.  It was their host Falloner,
+who had just risen and was slipping on his oilskin coat.  "You've
+got enough to do, I reckon, to look after your own folks.  I've
+none!  Let this be my affair.  I've got to go to the Express Office
+anyhow to see about my passage home, and I'll just get a draft for
+a hundred dollars for that old skeesicks--what's his blamed name?
+Oh, Ricketts"--he made a memorandum from the letter--"and I'll send
+it by express.  Meantime, you fellows sit down there and write
+something--you know what--saying that Dick's hurt his hand and
+can't write--you know; but asked you to send a draft, which you're
+doing.  Sabe?  That's all!  I'll skip over to the express now and
+get the draft off, and you can mail the letter an hour later.  So
+put your dust back in your pockets and help yourselves to the
+whiskey while I'm gone."  He clapped his hat on his head and
+disappeared.
+
+"There goes a white man, you bet!" said Fletcher admiringly, as the
+door closed behind their host.  "Now, boys," he added, drawing a
+chair to the table, "let's get this yer letter off, and then go
+back to our game."
+
+Pens and ink were produced, and an animated discussion ensued as to
+the matter to be conveyed.  Daddy's plea for an extended explanatory
+and sympathetic communication was overruled, and the letter was
+written to Ricketts on the simple lines suggested by Falloner.
+
+"But what about poor little Jim's letter?  That ought to be
+answered," said Daddy pathetically.
+
+"If Dick hurt his hand so he can't write to Ricketts, how in
+thunder is he goin' to write to Jim?" was the reply.
+
+"But suthin' oughter be said to the poor kid," urged Daddy
+piteously.
+
+"Well, write it yourself--you and Gus Houston make up somethin'
+together.  I'm going to win some money," retorted Fletcher,
+returning to the card-table, where he was presently followed by all
+but Daddy and Houston.
+
+"Ye can't write it in Dick's name, because that little brother
+knows Dick's handwriting, even if he don't remember his face.
+See?" suggested Houston.
+
+"That's so," said Daddy dubiously; "but," he added, with elastic
+cheerfulness, we can write that Dick 'says.'  See?"
+
+"Your head's level, old man!  Just you wade in on that."
+
+Daddy seized the pen and "waded in."  Into somewhat deep and
+difficult water, I fancy, for some of it splashed into his eyes,
+and he sniffled once or twice as he wrote.  "Suthin' like this," he
+said, after a pause:--
+
+
+DEAR LITTLE JIMMIE,--Your big brother havin' hurt his hand, wants
+me to tell you that otherways he is all hunky and A1.  He says he
+don't forget you and little Cissy, you bet! and he's sendin' money
+to old Ricketts straight off.  He says don't you and Cissy mind
+whether school keeps or not as long as big Brother Dick holds the
+lines.  He says he'd have written before, but he's bin follerin' up
+a lead mighty close, and expects to strike it rich in a few days.
+
+
+"You ain't got no sabe about kids," said Daddy imperturbably;
+"they've got to be humored like sick folks.  And they want
+everythin' big--they don't take no stock in things ez they are--
+even ef they hev 'em worse than they are.  'So,'" continued Daddy,
+reading to prevent further interruption, "'he says you're just to
+keep your eyes skinned lookin' out for him comin' home any time--
+day or night.  All you've got to do is to sit up and wait.  He
+might come and even snake you out of your beds!  He might come with
+four white horses and a nigger driver, or he might come disguised
+as an ornary tramp.  Only you've got to be keen on watchin'.'  (Ye
+see," interrupted Daddy explanatorily, "that'll jest keep them kids
+lively.)  'He says Cissy's to stop cryin' right off, and if Willie
+Walker hits yer on the right cheek you just slug out with your left
+fist, 'cordin' to Scripter.'  Gosh," ejaculated Daddy, stopping
+suddenly and gazing anxiously at Houston, "there's that blamed
+photograph--I clean forgot that."
+
+"And Dick hasn't got one in the shop, and never had," returned
+Houston emphatically.  "Golly! that stumps us!  Unless," he added,
+with diabolical thoughtfulness, "we take Bob's?  The kids don't
+remember Dick's face, and Bob's about the same age.  And it's a
+regular star picture--you bet!  Bob had it taken in Sacramento--in
+all his war paint.  See!"  He indicated a photograph pinned against
+the wall--a really striking likeness which did full justice to
+Bob's long silken mustache and large, brown determined eyes.  "I'll
+snake it off while they ain't lookin', and you jam it in the
+letter.  Bob won't miss it, and we can fix it up with Dick after
+he's well, and send another."
+
+Daddy silently grasped the "infant's" hand, who presently secured
+the photograph without attracting attention from the card-players.
+It was promptly inclosed in the letter, addressed to Master James
+Lasham.  The "infant" started with it to the post-office, and Daddy
+Folsom returned to Lasham's cabin to relieve the watcher that had
+been detached from Falloner's to take his place beside the sick
+man.
+
+Meanwhile the rain fell steadily and the shadows crept higher and
+higher up the mountain.  Towards midnight the star points faded out
+one by one over Sawyer's Ledge even as they had come, with the
+difference that the illumination of Falloner's cabin was
+extinguished first, while the dim light of Lasham's increased in
+number.  Later, two stars seemed to shoot from the centre of the
+ledge, trailing along the descent, until they were lost in the
+obscurity of the slope--the lights of the stage-coach to Sacramento
+carrying the mail and Robert Falloner.  They met and passed two
+fainter lights toiling up the road--the buggy lights of the doctor,
+hastily summoned from Carterville to the bedside of the dying Dick
+Lasham.
+
+
+The slowing up of his train caused Bob Falloner to start from a
+half doze in a Western Pullman car.  As he glanced from his window
+he could see that the blinding snowstorm which had followed him for
+the past six hours had at last hopelessly blocked the line.  There
+was no prospect beyond the interminable snowy level, the whirling
+flakes, and the monotonous palisades of leafless trees seen through
+it to the distant banks of the Missouri.  It was a prospect that
+the mountain-bred Falloner was beginning to loathe, and although it
+was scarcely six weeks since he left California, he was already
+looking back regretfully to the deep slopes and the free song of
+the serried ranks of pines.
+
+The intense cold had chilled his temperate blood, even as the rigors
+and conventions of Eastern life had checked his sincerity and
+spontaneous flow of animal spirits begotten in the frank intercourse
+and brotherhood of camps.  He had just fled from the artificialities
+of the great Atlantic cities to seek out some Western farming lands
+in which he might put his capital and energies.  The unlooked-for
+interruption of his progress by a long- forgotten climate only
+deepened his discontent.  And now--that train was actually backing!
+It appeared they must return to the last station to wait for a
+snow-plough to clear the line.  It was, explained the conductor,
+barely a mile from Shepherdstown, where there was a good hotel and a
+chance of breaking the journey for the night.
+
+Shepherdstown!  The name touched some dim chord in Bob Falloner's
+memory and conscience--yet one that was vague.  Then he suddenly
+remembered that before leaving New York he had received a letter
+from Houston informing him of Lasham's death, reminding him of his
+previous bounty, and begging him--if he went West--to break the
+news to the Lasham family.  There was also some allusion to a joke
+about his (Bob's) photograph, which he had dismissed as unimportant,
+and even now could not remember clearly.  For a few moments his
+conscience pricked him that he should have forgotten it all, but now
+he could make amends by this providential delay.  It was not a task
+to his liking; in any other circumstances he would have written, but
+he would not shirk it now.
+
+Shepherdstown was on the main line of the Kansas Pacific Road, and
+as he alighted at its station, the big through trains from San
+Francisco swept out of the stormy distance and stopped also.  He
+remembered, as he mingled with the passengers, hearing a childish
+voice ask if this was the Californian train.  He remembered hearing
+the amused and patient reply of the station-master: "Yes, sonny--
+here she is again, and here's her passengers," as he got into the
+omnibus and drove to the hotel.  Here he resolved to perform his
+disagreeable duty as quickly as possible, and on his way to his
+room stopped for a moment at the office to ask for Ricketts'
+address.  The clerk, after a quick glance of curiosity at his new
+guest, gave it to him readily, with a somewhat familiar smile.  It
+struck Falloner also as being odd that he had not been asked to
+write his name on the hotel register, but this was a saving of time
+he was not disposed to question, as he had already determined to
+make his visit to Ricketts at once, before dinner.  It was still
+early evening.
+
+He was washing his hands in his bedroom when there came a light tap
+at his sitting-room door.  Falloner quickly resumed his coat and
+entered the sitting-room as the porter ushered in a young lady
+holding a small boy by the hand.  But, to Falloner's utter
+consternation, no sooner had the door closed on the servant than
+the boy, with a half-apologetic glance at the young lady, uttered a
+childish cry, broke from her, and calling, "Dick! Dick!" ran
+forward and leaped into Falloner's arms.
+
+The mere shock of the onset and his own amazement left Bob without
+breath for words.  The boy, with arms convulsively clasping his
+body, was imprinting kisses on Bob's waistcoat in default of
+reaching his face.  At last Falloner managed gently but firmly to
+free himself, and turned a half-appealing, half-embarrassed look
+upon the young lady, whose own face, however, suddenly flushed
+pink.  To add to the confusion, the boy, in some reaction of
+instinct, suddenly ran back to her, frantically clutched at her
+skirts, and tried to bury his head in their folds.
+
+"He don't love me," he sobbed.  "He don't care for me any more."
+
+The face of the young girl changed.  It was a pretty face in its
+flushing; in the paleness and thoughtfulness that overcast it it
+was a striking face, and Bob's attention was for a moment distracted
+from the grotesqueness of the situation.  Leaning over the boy she
+said in a caressing yet authoritative voice, "Run away for a moment,
+dear, until I call you," opening the door for him in a maternal way
+so inconsistent with the youthfulness of her figure that it struck
+him even in his confusion.  There was something also in her dress
+and carriage that equally affected him: her garments were somewhat
+old-fashioned in style, yet of good material, with an odd incongruity
+to the climate and season.
+
+Under her rough outer cloak she wore a polka jacket and the
+thinnest of summer blouses; and her hat, though dark, was of rough
+straw, plainly trimmed.  Nevertheless, these peculiarities were
+carried off with an air of breeding and self-possession that was
+unmistakable.  It was possible that her cool self-possession might
+have been due to some instinctive antagonism, for as she came a
+step forward with coldly and clearly-opened gray eyes, he was
+vaguely conscious that she didn't like him.  Nevertheless, her
+manner was formally polite, even, as he fancied, to the point of
+irony, as she began, in a voice that occasionally dropped into the
+lazy Southern intonation, and a speech that easily slipped at times
+into Southern dialect:--
+
+"I sent the child out of the room, as I could see that his advances
+were annoying to you, and a good deal, I reckon, because I knew
+your reception of them was still more painful to him.  It is quite
+natural, I dare say, you should feel as you do, and I reckon
+consistent with your attitude towards him.  But you must make some
+allowance for the depth of his feelings, and how he has looked
+forward to this meeting.  When I tell you that ever since he
+received your last letter, he and his sister--until her illness
+kept her home--have gone every day when the Pacific train was due
+to the station to meet you; that they have taken literally as
+Gospel truth every word of your letter"--
+
+"My letter?" interrupted Falloner.
+
+The young girl's scarlet lip curled slightly.  "I beg your pardon--
+I should have said the letter you dictated.  Of course it wasn't in
+your handwriting--you had hurt your hand, you know," she added
+ironically.  "At all events, they believed it all--that you were
+coming at any moment; they lived in that belief, and the poor
+things went to the station with your photograph in their hands so
+that they might be the first to recognize and greet you."
+
+"With my photograph?" interrupted Falloner again.
+
+The young girl's clear eyes darkened ominously.  "I reckon," she
+said deliberately, as she slowly drew from her pocket the
+photograph Daddy Folsom had sent, "that that is your photograph.
+It certainly seems an excellent likeness," she added, regarding him
+with a slight suggestion of contemptuous triumph.
+
+In an instant the revelation of the whole mystery flashed upon him!
+The forgotten passage in Houston's letter about the stolen
+photograph stood clearly before him; the coincidence of his
+appearance in Shepherdstown, and the natural mistake of the
+children and their fair protector, were made perfectly plain.  But
+with this relief and the certainty that he could confound her with
+an explanation came a certain mischievous desire to prolong the
+situation and increase his triumph.  She certainly had not shown
+him any favor.
+
+"Have you got the letter also?" he asked quietly.
+
+She whisked it impatiently from her pocket and handed it to him.
+As he read Daddy's characteristic extravagance and recognized the
+familiar idiosyncrasies of his old companions, he was unable to
+restrain a smile.  He raised his eyes, to meet with surprise the
+fair stranger's leveled eyebrows and brightly indignant eyes, in
+which, however, the rain was fast gathering with the lightning.
+
+"It may be amusing to you, and I reckon likely it was all a
+California joke," she said with slightly trembling lips; "I don't
+know No'thern gentlemen and their ways, and you seem to have
+forgotten our ways as you have your kindred.  Perhaps all this may
+seem so funny to them: it may not seem funny to that boy who is now
+crying his heart out in the hall; it may not be very amusing to
+that poor Cissy in her sick-bed longing to see her brother.  It may
+be so far from amusing to her, that I should hesitate to bring you
+there in her excited condition and subject her to the pain that you
+have caused him.  But I have promised her; she is already expecting
+us, and the disappointment may be dangerous, and I can only implore
+you--for a few moments at least--to show a little more affection
+than you feel."  As he made an impulsive, deprecating gesture, yet
+without changing his look of restrained amusement, she stopped him
+hopelessly.  "Oh, of course, yes, yes, I know it is years since you
+have seen them; they have no right to expect more; only--only--
+feeling as you do," she burst impulsively, "why--oh, why did you
+come?"
+
+Here was Bob's chance.  He turned to her politely; began gravely,
+"I simply came to"--when suddenly his face changed; he stopped as
+if struck by a blow.  His cheek flushed, and then paled!  Good God!
+What had he come for?  To tell them that this brother they were
+longing for--living for--perhaps even dying for--was dead!  In his
+crass stupidity, his wounded vanity over the scorn of the young
+girl, his anticipation of triumph, he had forgotten--totally
+forgotten--what that triumph meant!  Perhaps if he had felt more
+keenly the death of Lasham the thought of it would have been
+uppermost in his mind; but Lasham was not his partner or associate,
+only a brother miner, and his single act of generosity was in the
+ordinary routine of camp life.  If she could think him cold and
+heartless before, what would she think of him now?  The absurdity
+of her mistake had vanished in the grim tragedy he had seemed to
+have cruelly prepared for her.  The thought struck him so keenly
+that he stammered, faltered, and sank helplessly into a chair.
+
+The shock that he had received was so plain to her that her own
+indignation went out in the breath of it.  Her lip quivered.
+"Don't you mind," she said hurriedly, dropping into her Southern
+speech; "I didn't go to hurt you, but I was just that mad with the
+thought of those pickaninnies, and the easy way you took it, that I
+clean forgot I'd no call to catechise you!  And you don't know me
+from the Queen of Sheba.  Well," she went on, still more rapidly,
+and in odd distinction to her previous formal slow Southern
+delivery, "I'm the daughter of Colonel Boutelle, of Bayou Sara,
+Louisiana; and his paw, and his paw before him, had a plantation
+there since the time of Adam, but he lost it and six hundred
+niggers during the Wah!  We were pooh as pohverty--paw and maw and
+we four girls--and no more idea of work than a baby.  But I had an
+education at the convent at New Orleans, and could play, and speak
+French, and I got a place as school-teacher here; I reckon the
+first Southern woman that has taught school in the No'th!
+Ricketts, who used to be our steward at Bayou Sara, told me about
+the pickaninnies, and how helpless they were, with only a brother
+who occasionally sent them money from California.  I suppose I
+cottoned to the pooh little things at first because I knew what it
+was to be alone amongst strangers, Mr. Lasham; I used to teach them
+at odd times, and look after them, and go with them to the train to
+look for you.  Perhaps Ricketts made me think you didn't care for
+them; perhaps I was wrong in thinking it was true, from the way you
+met Jimmy just now.  But I've spoken my mind and you know why."
+She ceased and walked to the window.
+
+Falloner rose.  The storm that had swept through him was over.
+The quick determination, resolute purpose, and infinite patience
+which had made him what he was were all there, and with it a
+conscientiousness which his selfish independence had hitherto kept
+dormant.  He accepted the situation, not passively--it was not in
+his nature--but threw himself into it with all his energy.
+
+"You were quite right," he said, halting a moment beside her; "I
+don't blame you, and let me hope that later you may think me less
+to blame than you do now.  Now, what's to be done?  Clearly, I've
+first to make it right with Tommy--I mean Jimmy--and then we must
+make a straight dash over to the girl!  Whoop!"  Before she could
+understand from his face the strange change in his voice, he had
+dashed out of the room.  In a moment he reappeared with the boy
+struggling in his arms.  "Think of the little scamp not knowing his
+own brother!" he laughed, giving the boy a really affectionate, if
+slightly exaggerated hug, and expecting me to open my arms to the
+first little boy who jumps into them!  I've a great mind not to
+give him the present I fetched all the way from California.  Wait a
+moment."  He dashed into the bedroom, opened his valise--where he
+providentially remembered he had kept, with a miner's superstition,
+the first little nugget of gold he had ever found--seized the tiny
+bit of quartz of gold, and dashed out again to display it before
+Jimmy's eager eyes.
+
+If the heartiness, sympathy, and charming kindness of the man's
+whole manner and face convinced, even while it slightly startled,
+the young girl, it was still more effective with the boy.  Children
+are quick to detect the false ring of affected emotion, and Bob's
+was so genuine--whatever its cause--that it might have easily
+passed for a fraternal expression with harder critics.  The child
+trustfully nestled against him and would have grasped the gold, but
+the young man whisked it into his pocket.  "Not until we've shown
+it to our little sister--where we're going now!  I'm off to order a
+sleigh."  He dashed out again to the office as if he found some
+relief in action, or, as it seemed to Miss Boutelle, to avoid
+embarrassing conversation.  When he came back again he was carrying
+an immense bearskin from his luggage.  He cast a critical look at
+the girl's unseasonable attire.
+
+"I shall wrap you and Jimmy in this--you know it's snowing
+frightfully."
+
+Miss Boutelle flushed a little.  "I'm warm enough when walking,"
+she said coldly.  Bob glanced at her smart little French shoes, and
+thought otherwise.  He said nothing, but hastily bundled his two
+guests downstairs and into the street.  The whirlwind dance of the
+snow made the sleigh an indistinct bulk in the glittering darkness,
+and as the young girl for an instant stood dazedly still, Bob
+incontinently lifted her from her feet, deposited her in the
+vehicle, dropped Jimmy in her lap, and wrapped them both tightly in
+the bearskin.  Her weight, which was scarcely more than a child's,
+struck him in that moment as being tantalizingly incongruous to the
+matronly severity of her manner and its strange effect upon him.
+He then jumped in himself, taking the direction from his companion,
+and drove off through the storm.
+
+The wind and darkness were not favorable to conversation, and only
+once did he break the silence.  "Is there any one who would be
+likely to remember--me--where we are going?" he asked, in a lull of
+the storm.
+
+Miss Boutelle uncovered enough of her face to glance at him
+curiously.  "Hardly!  You know the children came here from the
+No'th after your mother's death, while you were in California."
+
+"Of course," returned Bob hurriedly; "I was only thinking--you know
+that some of my old friends might have called," and then collapsed
+into silence.
+
+After a pause a voice came icily, although under the furs: "Perhaps
+you'd prefer that your arrival be kept secret from the public?  But
+they seem to have already recognized you at the hotel from your
+inquiry about Ricketts, and the photograph Jimmy had already shown
+them two weeks ago."  Bob remembered the clerk's familiar manner
+and the omission to ask him to register.  "But it need go no
+further, if you like," she added, with a slight return of her
+previous scorn.
+
+"I've no reason for keeping it secret," said Bob stoutly.
+
+No other words were exchanged until the sleigh drew up before a
+plain wooden house in the suburbs of the town.  Bob could see at a
+glance that it represented the income of some careful artisan or
+small shopkeeper, and that it promised little for an invalid's
+luxurious comfort.  They were ushered into a chilly sitting-room
+and Miss Boutelle ran upstairs with Jimmy to prepare the invalid
+for Bob's appearance.  He noticed that a word dropped by the woman
+who opened the door made the young girl's face grave again, and
+paled the color that the storm had buffeted to her cheek.  He
+noticed also that these plain surroundings seemed only to enhance
+her own superiority, and that the woman treated her with a
+deference in odd contrast to the ill-concealed disfavor with which
+she regarded him.  Strangely enough, this latter fact was a relief
+to his conscience.  It would have been terrible to have received
+their kindness under false pretenses; to take their just blame of
+the man he personated seemed to mitigate the deceit.
+
+The young girl rejoined him presently with troubled eyes.  Cissy
+was worse, and only intermittently conscious, but had asked to see
+him.  It was a short flight of stairs to the bedroom, but before he
+reached it Bob's heart beat faster than it had in any mountain
+climb.  In one corner of the plainly furnished room stood a small
+truckle bed, and in it lay the invalid.  It needed but a single
+glance at her flushed face in its aureole of yellow hair to
+recognize the likeness to Jimmy, although, added to that strange
+refinement produced by suffering, there was a spiritual exaltation
+in the child's look--possibly from delirium--that awed and
+frightened him; an awful feeling that he could not lie to this
+hopeless creature took possession of him, and his step faltered.
+But she lifted her small arms pathetically towards him as if she
+divined his trouble, and he sank on his knees beside her.  With a
+tiny finger curled around his long mustache, she lay there silent.
+Her face was full of trustfulness, happiness, and consciousness--
+but she spoke no word.
+
+There was a pause, and Falloner, slightly lifting his head without
+disturbing that faintly clasping finger, beckoned Miss Boutelle to
+his side.  "Can you drive?" he said, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Take my sleigh and get the best doctor in town to come here at
+once.  Bring him with you if you can; if he can't come at once,
+drive home yourself.  I will stay here."
+
+"But"--hesitated Miss Boutelle.
+
+"I will stay here," he repeated.
+
+The door closed on the young girl, and Falloner, still bending over
+the child, presently heard the sleigh-bells pass away in the storm.
+He still sat with his bent head, held by the tiny clasp of those
+thin fingers.  But the child's eyes were fixed so intently upon him
+that Mrs. Ricketts leaned over the strangely-assorted pair and
+said--
+
+"It's your brother Dick, dearie.  Don't you know him?"
+
+The child's lips moved faintly.  "Dick's dead," she whispered.
+
+"She's wandering," said Mrs. Ricketts.  "Speak to her."  But Bob,
+with his eyes on the child's, lifted a protesting hand.  The little
+sufferer's lips moved again.  "It isn't Dick--it's the angel God
+sent to tell me."
+
+She spoke no more.  And when Miss Boutelle returned with the doctor
+she was beyond the reach of finite voices.  Falloner would have
+remained all night with them, but he could see that his presence in
+the contracted household was not desired.  Even his offer to take
+Jimmy with him to the hotel was declined, and at midnight he
+returned alone.
+
+What his thoughts were that night may be easily imagined.  Cissy's
+death had removed the only cause he had for concealing his real
+identity.  There was nothing more to prevent his revealing all to
+Miss Boutelle and to offer to adopt the boy.  But he reflected this
+could not be done until after the funeral, for it was only due to
+Cissy's memory that he should still keep up the role of Dick Lasham
+as chief mourner.  If it seems strange that Bob did not at this
+crucial moment take Miss Boutelle into his confidence, I fear it
+was because he dreaded the personal effect of the deceit he had
+practiced upon her more than any ethical consideration; she had
+softened considerably in her attitude towards him that night; he
+was human, after all, and while he felt his conduct had been
+unselfish in the main, he dared not confess to himself how much her
+opinion had influenced him.  He resolved that after the funeral he
+would continue his journey, and write to her, en route, a full
+explanation of his conduct, inclosing Daddy's letter as corroborative
+evidence.  But on searching his letter-case he found that he had
+lost even that evidence, and he must trust solely at present to
+her faith in his improbable story.
+
+It seemed as if his greatest sacrifice was demanded at the funeral!
+For it could not be disguised that the neighbors were strongly
+prejudiced against him.  Even the preacher improved the occasion to
+warn the congregation against the dangers of putting off duty until
+too late.  And when Robert Falloner, pale, but self-restrained,
+left the church with Miss Boutelle, equally pale and reserved, on
+his arm, he could with difficulty restrain his fury at the passing
+of a significant smile across the faces of a few curious bystanders.
+"It was Amy Boutelle, that was the 'penitence' that fetched him, you
+bet!" he overheard, a barely concealed whisper; and the reply, "And
+it's a good thing she's made out of it too, for he's mighty rich!"
+
+At the church door he took her cold hand into his.  "I am leaving
+to-morrow morning with Jimmy," he said, with a white face.  "Good-
+by."
+
+"You are quite right; good-by," she replied as briefly, but with
+the faintest color.  He wondered if she had heard it too.
+
+Whether she had heard it or not, she went home with Mrs. Ricketts
+in some righteous indignation, which found--after the young lady's
+habit--free expression.  Whatever were Mr. Lasham's faults of
+omission it was most un-Christian to allude to them there, and an
+insult to the poor little dear's memory who had forgiven them.
+Were she in his shoes she would shake the dust of the town off her
+feet; and she hoped he would.  She was a little softened on
+arriving to find Jimmy in tears.  He had lost Dick's photograph--or
+Dick had forgotten to give it back at the hotel, for this was all
+he had in his pocket.  And he produced a letter--the missing letter
+of Daddy, which by mistake Falloner had handed back instead of the
+photograph.  Miss Boutelle saw the superscription and Californian
+postmark with a vague curiosity.
+
+"Did you look inside, dear?  Perhaps it slipped in."
+
+Jimmy had not.  Miss Boutelle did--and I grieve to say, ended by
+reading the whole letter.
+
+Bob Falloner had finished packing his things the next morning, and
+was waiting for Mr. Ricketts and Jimmy.  But when a tap came at the
+door, he opened it to find Miss Boutelle standing there.  "I have
+sent Jimmy into the bedroom," she said with a faint smile, "to look
+for the photograph which you gave him in mistake for this.  I think
+for the present he prefers his brother's picture to this letter,
+which I have not explained to him or any one."  She stopped, and
+raising her eyes to his, said gently: "I think it would have only
+been a part of your goodness to have trusted me, Mr. Falloner."
+
+"Then you will forgive me?" he said eagerly.
+
+She looked at him frankly, yet with a faint trace of coquetry that
+the angels might have pardoned.  "Do you want me to say to you what
+Mrs. Ricketts says were the last words of poor Cissy?"
+
+A year later, when the darkness and rain were creeping up Sawyer's
+Ledge, and Houston and Daddy Folsom were sitting before their
+brushwood fire in the old Lasham cabin, the latter delivered
+himself oracularly.
+
+"It's a mighty queer thing, that news about Bob!  It's not that
+he's married, for that might happen to any one; but this yer
+account in the paper of his wedding being attended by his 'little
+brother.'  That gets me!  To think all the while he was here he was
+lettin' on to us that he hadn't kith or kin!  Well, sir, that
+accounts to me for one thing,--the sing'ler way he tumbled to that
+letter of poor Dick Lasham's little brother and sent him that
+draft!  Don't ye see?  It was a feller feelin'!  Knew how it was
+himself!  I reckon ye all thought I was kinder soft reading that
+letter o' Dick Lasham's little brother to him, but ye see what it
+did."
+
+
+
+THE YOUNGEST MISS PIPER
+
+
+I do not think that any of us who enjoyed the acquaintance of the
+Piper girls or the hospitality of Judge Piper, their father, ever
+cared for the youngest sister.  Not on account of her extreme
+youth, for the eldest Miss Piper confessed to twenty-six--and the
+youth of the youngest sister was established solely, I think, by
+one big braid down her back.  Neither was it because she was the
+plainest, for the beauty of the Piper girls was a recognized
+general distinction, and the youngest Miss Piper was not entirely
+devoid of the family charms.  Nor was it from any lack of
+intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her
+precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming.
+Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which
+might impart an embarrassing publicity to any statement--the
+reverse of our general feeling--that might be confided by any one
+to her private ear, was a sufficient reason; for it was pointed out
+that she always understood everything that Tom Sparrell told her in
+his ordinary tone of voice.  Briefly, it was very possible that
+Delaware--the youngest Miss Piper--did not like us.  Yet it was
+fondly believed by us that the other sisters failed to show that
+indifference to our existence shown by Miss Delaware, although the
+heartburnings, misunderstandings, jealousies, hopes and fears, and
+finally the chivalrous resignation with which we at last accepted
+the long foregone conclusion that they were not for us, and far
+beyond our reach, is not a part of this veracious chronicle.
+Enough that none of the flirtations of her elder sisters affected
+or were shared by the youngest Miss Piper.  She moved in this
+heart-breaking atmosphere with sublime indifference, treating her
+sisters' affairs with what we considered rank simplicity or
+appalling frankness.  Their few admirers who were weak enough to
+attempt to gain her mediation or confidence had reason to regret
+it.
+
+"It's no kind o' use givin' me goodies," she said to a helpless
+suitor of Louisiana Piper's who had offered to bring her some
+sweets, "for I ain't got no influence with Lu, and if I don't give
+'em up to her when she hears of it, she'll nag me and hate you like
+pizen.  Unless," she added thoughtfully, "it was wintergreen
+lozenges; Lu can't stand them, or anybody who eats them within a
+mile."  It is needless to add that the miserable man, thus put upon
+his gallantry, was obliged in honor to provide Del with the
+wintergreen lozenges that kept him in disfavor and at a distance.
+Unfortunately, too, any predilection or pity for any particular
+suitor of her sister's was attended by even more disastrous
+consequences.  It was reported that while acting as "gooseberry"--a
+role usually assigned to her--between Virginia Piper and an
+exceptionally timid young surveyor, during a ramble she conceived a
+rare sentiment of humanity towards the unhappy man.  After once or
+twice lingering behind in the ostentatious picking of a wayside
+flower, or "running on ahead" to look at a mountain view, without
+any apparent effect on the shy and speechless youth, she decoyed
+him aside while her elder sister rambled indifferently and somewhat
+scornfully on.  The youngest Miss Piper leaped upon the rail of a
+fence, and with the stalk of a thimbleberry in her mouth swung her
+small feet to and fro and surveyed him dispassionately.
+
+"Ye don't seem to be ketchin' on?" she said tentatively.
+
+The young man smiled feebly and interrogatively.
+
+"Don't seem to be either follering suit nor trumpin'," continued
+Del bluntly.
+
+"I suppose so--that is, I fear that Miss Virginia"--he stammered.
+
+"Speak up!  I'm a little deaf.  Say it again!" said Del, screwing
+up her eyes and eyebrows.
+
+The young man was obliged to admit in stentorian tones that his
+progress had been scarcely satisfactory.
+
+"You're goin' on too slow--that's it," said Del critically.  "Why,
+when Captain Savage meandered along here with Jinny" (Virginia)
+"last week, afore we got as far as this he'd reeled off a heap of
+Byron and Jamieson" (Tennyson), "and sich; and only yesterday Jinny
+and Doctor Beveridge was blowin' thistletops to know which was a
+flirt all along the trail past the crossroads.  Why, ye ain't
+picked ez much as a single berry for Jinny, let alone Lad's Love or
+Johnny Jumpups and Kissme's, and ye keep talkin' across me, you
+two, till I'm tired.  Now look here," she burst out with sudden
+decision, "Jinny's gone on ahead in a kind o' huff; but I reckon
+she's done that afore too, and you'll find her, jest as Spinner
+did, on the rise of the hill, sittin' on a pine stump and lookin'
+like this."  (Here the youngest Miss Piper locked her fingers over
+her left knee, and drew it slightly up,--with a sublime
+indifference to the exposure of considerable small-ankled red
+stocking,--and with a far-off, plaintive stare, achieved a
+colorable imitation of her elder sister's probable attitude.)
+"Then you jest go up softly, like as you was a bear, and clap your
+hands on her eyes, and say in a disguised voice like this" (here
+Del turned on a high falsetto beyond any masculine compass),
+"'Who's who?' jest like in forfeits."
+
+"But she'll be sure to know me," said the surveyor timidly.
+
+"She won't," said Del in scornful skepticism.
+
+"I hardly think"--stammered the young man, with an awkward smile,
+"that I--in fact--she'll discover me--before I can get beside her."
+
+"Not if you go softly, for she'll be sittin' back to the road, so--
+gazing away, so"--the youngest Miss Piper again stared dreamily in
+the distance, "and you'll creep up just behind, like this."
+
+"But won't she be angry?  I haven't known her long--that is--don't
+you see?"  He stopped embarrassedly.
+
+"Can't hear a word you say," said Del, shaking her head decisively.
+"You've got my deaf ear.  Speak louder, or come closer."
+
+But here the instruction suddenly ended, once and for all time!
+For whether the young man was seriously anxious to perfect himself;
+whether he was truly grateful to the young girl and tried to show
+it; whether he was emboldened by the childish appeal of the long
+brown distinguishing braid down her back, or whether he suddenly
+found something peculiarly provocative in the reddish brown eyes
+between their thickset hedge of lashes, and with the trim figure
+and piquant pose, and was seized with that hysteric desperation
+which sometimes attacks timidity itself, I cannot say!  Enough that
+he suddenly put his arm around her waist and his lips to her soft
+satin cheek, peppered and salted as it was by sun-freckles and
+mountain air, and received a sound box on the ear for his pains.
+The incident was closed.  He did not repeat the experiment on
+either sister.  The disclosure of his rebuff seemed, however, to
+give a singular satisfaction to Red Gulch.
+
+While it may be gathered from this that the youngest Miss Piper was
+impervious to general masculine advances, it was not until later
+that Red Gulch was thrown into skeptical astonishment by the rumors
+that all this time she really had a lover!  Allusion has been made
+to the charge that her deafness did not prevent her from perfectly
+understanding the ordinary tone of voice of a certain Mr. Thomas
+Sparrell.
+
+No undue significance was attached to this fact through the very
+insignificance and "impossibility" of that individual;--a lanky,
+red-haired youth, incapacitated for manual labor through lameness,--
+a clerk in a general store at the Cross Roads!  He had never been
+the recipient of Judge Piper's hospitality; he had never visited
+the house even with parcels; apparently his only interviews with
+her or any of the family had been over the counter.  To do him
+justice he certainly had never seemed to seek any nearer
+acquaintance; he was not at the church door when her sisters,
+beautiful in their Sunday gowns, filed into the aisle, with little
+Delaware bringing up the rear; he was not at the Democratic
+barbecue, that we attended without reference to our personal
+politics, and solely for the sake of Judge Piper and the girls; nor
+did he go to the Agricultural Fair Ball--open to all.  His
+abstention we believed to be owing to his lameness; to a wholesome
+consciousness of his own social defects; or an inordinate passion
+for reading cheap scientific textbooks, which did not, however, add
+fluency nor conviction to his speech.  Neither had he the
+abstraction of a student, for his accounts were kept with an
+accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the store, as ignobly
+practical, and even malignant.  Possibly we might have expressed
+this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of repartee
+which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a temper on
+occasion.  "Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and to kinder
+see blood through their eyelashes," had been suggested by an
+observing customer.
+
+In short, little as we knew of the youngest Miss Piper, he was the
+last man we should have suspected her to select as an admirer.
+What we did know of their public relations, purely commercial ones,
+implied the reverse of any cordial understanding.  The provisioning
+of the Piper household was entrusted to Del, with other practical
+odds and ends of housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is
+said to be a truthful record of one of their overheard interviews
+at the store:--
+
+The youngest Miss Piper, entering, displacing a quantity of goods
+in the centre to make a sideways seat for herself, and looking
+around loftily as she took a memorandum-book and pencil from her
+pocket.
+
+"Ahem!  If I ain't taking you away from your studies, Mr. Sparrell,
+maybe you'll be good enough to look here a minit;--but" (in
+affected politeness) "if I'm disturbing you I can come another
+time."
+
+Sparrell, placing the book he had been reading carefully under the
+counter, and advancing to Miss Delaware with a complete ignoring of
+her irony: "What can we do for you to-day, Miss Piper?"
+
+Miss Delaware, with great suavity of manner, examining her
+memorandum-book: "I suppose it wouldn't be shocking your delicate
+feelings too much to inform you that the canned lobster and oysters
+you sent us yesterday wasn't fit for hogs?"
+
+Sparrell (blandly): "They weren't intended for them, Miss Piper.
+If we had known you were having company over from Red Gulch to
+dinner, we might have provided something more suitable for them.
+We have a fair quality of oil-cake and corn-cobs in stock, at
+reduced figures.  But the canned provisions were for your own
+family."
+
+Miss Delaware (secretly pleased at this sarcastic allusion to her
+sister's friends, but concealing her delight): "I admire to hear
+you talk that way, Mr. Sparrell; it's better than minstrels or a
+circus.  I suppose you get it outer that book," indicating the
+concealed volume.  "What do you call it?"
+
+Sparrell (politely): "The First Principles of Geology."
+
+Miss Delaware, leaning sideways and curling her little fingers
+around her pink ear: "Did you say the first principles of 'geology'
+or 'politeness'?  You know I am so deaf; but, of course, it
+couldn't be that."
+
+Sparrell (easily): "Oh no, you seem to have that in your hand"--
+pointing to Miss Delaware's memorandum-book--"you were quoting from
+it when you came in."
+
+Miss Delaware, after an affected silence of deep resignation:
+"Well! it's too bad folks can't just spend their lives listenin' to
+such elegant talk; I'd admire to do nothing else!  But there's my
+family up at Cottonwood--and they must eat.  They're that low that
+they expect me to waste my time getting food for 'em here, instead
+of drinking in the First Principles of the Grocery."
+
+"Geology," suggested Sparrell blandly.  "The history of rock
+formation."
+
+"Geology," accepted Miss Delaware apologetically; "the history of
+rocks, which is so necessary for knowing just how much sand you can
+put in the sugar.  So I reckon I'll leave my list here, and you can
+have the things toted to Cottonwood when you've got through with
+your First Principles."
+
+She tore out a list of her commissions from a page of her
+memorandum-book, leaped lightly from the counter, threw her brown
+braid from her left shoulder to its proper place down her back,
+shook out her skirts deliberately, and saying, "Thank you for a
+most improvin' afternoon, Mr. Sparrell," sailed demurely out of the
+store.
+
+A few auditors of this narrative thought it inconsistent that a
+daughter of Judge Piper and a sister of the angelic host should put
+up with a mere clerk's familiarity, but it was pointed out that
+"she gave him as good as he sent," and the story was generally
+credited.  But certainly no one ever dreamed that it pointed to any
+more precious confidences between them.
+
+I think the secret burst upon the family, with other things, at the
+big picnic at Reservoir Canyon.  This festivity had been arranged
+for weeks previously, and was undertaken chiefly by the "Red Gulch
+Contingent," as we were called, as a slight return to the Piper
+family for their frequent hospitality.  The Piper sisters were
+expected to bring nothing but their own personal graces and attend
+to the ministration of such viands and delicacies as the boys had
+profusely supplied.
+
+The site selected was Reservoir Canyon, a beautiful, triangular
+valley with very steep sides, one of which was crowned by the
+immense reservoir of the Pioneer Ditch Company.  The sheer flanks
+of the canyon descended in furrowed lines of vines and clinging
+bushes, like folds of falling skirts, until they broke again into
+flounces of spangled shrubbery over a broad level carpet of
+monkshood, mariposas, lupines, poppies, and daisies.  Tempered and
+secluded from the sun's rays by its lofty shadows, the delicious
+obscurity of the canyon was in sharp contrast to the fiery mountain
+trail that in the full glare of the noonday sky made its tortuous
+way down the hillside, like a stream of lava, to plunge suddenly
+into the valley and extinguish itself in its coolness as in a lake.
+The heavy odors of wild honeysuckle, syringa, and ceanothus that
+hung over it were lightened and freshened by the sharp spicing of
+pine and bay.  The mountain breeze which sometimes shook the
+serrated tops of the large redwoods above with a chill from the
+remote snow peaks even in the heart of summer, never reached the
+little valley.
+
+It seemed an ideal place for a picnic.  Everybody was therefore
+astonished to hear that an objection was suddenly raised to this
+perfect site.  They were still more astonished to know that the
+objector was the youngest Miss Piper!  Pressed to give her reasons,
+she had replied that the locality was dangerous; that the reservoir
+placed upon the mountain, notoriously old and worn out, had been
+rendered more unsafe by false economy in unskillful and hasty
+repairs to satisfy speculating stockbrokers, and that it had lately
+shown signs of leakage and sapping of its outer walls; that, in the
+event of an outbreak, the little triangular valley, from which
+there was no outlet, would be instantly flooded.  Asked still more
+pressingly to give her authority for these details, she at first
+hesitated, and then gave the name of Tom Sparrell.
+
+The derision with which this statement was received by us all, as
+the opinion of a sedentary clerk, was quite natural and obvious,
+but not the anger which it excited in the breast of Judge Piper;
+for it was not generally known that the judge was the holder of a
+considerable number of shares in the Pioneer Ditch Company, and
+that large dividends had been lately kept up by a false economy of
+expenditure, to expedite a "sharp deal" in the stock, by which the
+judge and others could sell out of a failing company.  Rather, it
+was believed, that the judge's anger was due only to the discovery
+of Sparrell's influence over his daughter and his interference with
+the social affairs of Cottonwood.  It was said that there was a
+sharp scene between the youngest Miss Piper and the combined forces
+of the judge and the elder sisters, which ended in the former's
+resolute refusal to attend the picnic at all if that site was
+selected.
+
+As Delaware was known to be fearless even to the point of
+recklessness, and fond of gayety, her refusal only intensified the
+belief that she was merely "stickin' up for Sparrell's judgment"
+without any reference to her own personal safety or that of her
+sisters.  The warning was laughed away; the opinion of Sparrell
+treated with ridicule as the dyspeptic and envious expression of an
+impractical man.  It was pointed out that the reservoir had lasted
+a long time even in its alleged ruinous state; that only a miracle
+of coincidence could make it break down that particular afternoon
+of the picnic; that even if it did happen, there was no direct
+proof that it would seriously flood the valley, or at best add more
+than a spice of excitement to the affair.  The "Red Gulch
+Contingent," who WOULD be there, was quite as capable of taking
+care of the ladies, in case of any accident, as any lame crank who
+wouldn't, but could only croak a warning to them from a distance.
+A few even wished something might happen that they might have an
+opportunity of showing their superior devotion; indeed, the
+prospect of carrying the half-submerged sisters, in a condition of
+helpless loveliness, in their arms to a place of safety was a
+fascinating possibility.  The warning was conspicuously ineffective;
+everybody looked eagerly forward to the day and the unchanged
+locality; to the greatest hopefulness and anticipation was added the
+stirring of defiance, and when at last the appointed hour had
+arrived, the picnic party passed down the twisting mountain trail
+through the heat and glare in a fever of enthusiasm.
+
+It was a pretty sight to view this sparkling procession--the girls
+cool and radiant in their white, blue, and yellow muslins and
+flying ribbons, the "Contingent" in its cleanest ducks, and blue
+and red flannel shirts, the judge white-waistcoated and panama-
+hatted, with a new dignity borrowed from the previous circumstances,
+and three or four impressive Chinamen bringing up the rear with
+hampers--as it at last debouched into Reservoir Canyon.
+
+Here they dispersed themselves over the limited area, scarcely half
+an acre, with the freedom of escaped school children.  They were
+secure in their woodland privacy.  They were overlooked by no high
+road and its passing teams; they were safe from accidental
+intrusion from the settlement; indeed they went so far as to effect
+the exclusiveness of "clique."  At first they amused themselves by
+casting humorously defiant eyes at the long low Ditch Reservoir,
+which peeped over the green wall of the ridge, six hundred feet
+above them; at times they even simulated an exaggerated terror of
+it, and one recognized humorist declaimed a grotesque appeal to its
+forbearance, with delightful local allusions.  Others pretended to
+discover near a woodman's hut, among the belt of pines at the top
+of the descending trail, the peeping figure of the ridiculous and
+envious Sparrell.  But all this was presently forgotten in the
+actual festivity.  Small as was the range of the valley, it still
+allowed retreats during the dances for waiting couples among the
+convenient laurel and manzanita bushes which flounced the mountain
+side.  After the dancing, old-fashioned children's games were
+revived with great laughter and half-hearted and coy protests from
+the ladies; notably one pastime known as "I'm a-pinin'," in which
+ingenious performance the victim was obliged to stand in the centre
+of a circle and publicly "pine" for a member of the opposite sex.
+Some hilarity was occasioned by the mischievous Miss "Georgy" Piper
+declaring, when it came to her turn, that she was "pinin'" for a
+look at the face of Tom Sparrell just now!
+
+In this local trifling two hours passed, until the party sat down
+to the long-looked for repast.  It was here that the health of
+Judge Piper was neatly proposed by the editor of the "Argus."  The
+judge responded with great dignity and some emotion.  He reminded
+them that it had been his humble endeavor to promote harmony--that
+harmony so characteristic of American principles--in social as he
+had in political circles, and particularly among the strangely
+constituted yet purely American elements of frontier life.  He
+accepted the present festivity with its overflowing hospitalities,
+not in recognition of himself--("yes! yes!")--nor of his family--
+(enthusiastic protests)--but of that American principle!  If at one
+time it seemed probable that these festivities might be marred by
+the machinations of envy--(groans)--or that harmony interrupted by
+the importation of low-toned material interests--(groans)--he could
+say that, looking around him, he had never before felt--er--that--
+Here the judge stopped short, reeled slightly forward, caught at a
+camp-stool, recovered himself with an apologetic smile, and turned
+inquiringly to his neighbor.
+
+A light laugh--instantly suppressed--at what was at first supposed
+to be the effect of the "overflowing hospitality" upon the speaker
+himself, went around the male circle until it suddenly appeared
+that half a dozen others had started to their feet at the same
+time, with white faces, and that one of the ladies had screamed.
+
+"What is it?" everybody was asking with interrogatory smiles.
+
+It was Judge Piper who replied:--
+
+"A little shock of earthquake," he said blandly; "a mere thrill!  I
+think," he added with a faint smile, "we may say that Nature
+herself has applauded our efforts in good old Californian fashion,
+and signified her assent.  What are you saying, Fludder?"
+
+"I was thinking, sir," said Fludder deferentially, in a lower
+voice, "that if anything was wrong in the reservoir, this shock,
+you know, might"--
+
+He was interrupted by a faint crashing and crackling sound, and
+looking up, beheld a good-sized boulder, evidently detached from
+some greater height, strike the upland plateau at the left of the
+trail and bound into the fringe of forest beside it.  A slight
+cloud of dust marked its course, and then lazily floated away in
+mid air.  But it had been watched agitatedly, and it was evident
+that that singular loss of nervous balance which is apt to affect
+all those who go through the slightest earthquake experience was
+felt by all.  But some sense of humor, however, remained.
+
+"Looks as if the water risks we took ain't goin' to cover
+earthquakes," drawled Dick Frisney; "still that wasn't a bad shot,
+if we only knew what they were aiming at."
+
+"Do be quiet," said Virginia Piper, her cheeks pink with excitement.
+"Listen, can't you?  What's that funny murmuring you hear now and
+then up there?"
+
+"It's only the snow-wind playin' with the pines on the summit.  You
+girls won't allow anybody any fun but yourselves."
+
+But here a scream from "Georgy," who, assisted by Captain Fairfax,
+had mounted a camp-stool at the mouth of the valley, attracted
+everybody's attention.  She was standing upright, with dilated
+eyes, staring at the top of the trail.  "Look!" she said excitedly,
+"if the trail isn't moving!"
+
+Everybody faced in that direction.  At the first glance it seemed
+indeed as if the trail was actually moving; wriggling and
+undulating its tortuous way down the mountain like a huge snake,
+only swollen to twice its usual size.  But the second glance showed
+it to be no longer a trail but a channel of water, whose stream,
+lifted in a bore-like wall four or five feet high, was plunging
+down into the devoted valley.
+
+For an instant they were unable to comprehend even the nature of
+the catastrophe.  The reservoir was directly over their heads; the
+bursting of its wall they had imagined would naturally bring down
+the water in a dozen trickling streams or falls over the cliff
+above them and along the flanks of the mountain.  But that its
+suddenly liberated volume should overflow the upland beyond and
+then descend in a pent-up flood by their own trail and their only
+avenue of escape, had been beyond their wildest fancy.
+
+They met this smiting truth with that characteristic short laugh
+with which the American usually receives the blow of Fate or the
+unexpected--as if he recognized only the absurdity of the
+situation.  Then they ran to the women, collected them together,
+and dragged them to vantages of fancied security among the bushes
+which flounced the long skirts of the mountain walls.  But I leave
+this part of the description to the characteristic language of one
+of the party:--
+
+"When the flood struck us, it did not seem to take any stock of us
+in particular, but laid itself out to 'go for' that picnic for all
+it was worth!  It wiped it off the face of the earth in about
+twenty-five seconds!  It first made a clean break from stem to
+stern, carrying everything along with it.  The first thing I saw
+was old Judge Piper, puttin' on his best licks to get away from a
+big can of strawberry ice cream that was trundling after him and
+trying to empty itself on his collar, whenever a bigger wave lifted
+it.  He was followed by what was left of the brass band; the big
+drum just humpin' itself to keep abreast o' the ice cream, mixed up
+with camp-stools, music-stands, a few Chinamen, and then what they
+call in them big San Francisco processions 'citizens generally.'
+The hull thing swept up the canyon inside o' thirty seconds.  Then,
+what Captain Fairfax called 'the reflex action in the laws o'
+motion' happened, and darned if the hull blamed procession didn't
+sweep back again--this time all the heavy artillery, such as camp-
+kettles, lager beer kegs, bottles, glasses, and crockery that was
+left behind takin' the lead now, and Judge Piper and that ice cream
+can bringin' up the rear.  As the jedge passed us the second time,
+we noticed that that ice cream can--hevin' swallowed water--was
+kinder losing its wind, and we encouraged the old man by shoutin'
+out, 'Five to one on him!'  And then, you wouldn't believe what
+followed.  Why, darn my skin, when that 'reflex' met the current at
+the other end, it just swirled around again in what Captain Fairfax
+called the 'centrifugal curve,' and just went round and round the
+canyon like ez when yer washin' the dirt out o' a prospectin' pan--
+every now and then washin' some one of the boys that was in it,
+like scum, up ag'in the banks.
+
+"We managed in this way to snake out the judge, jest ez he was
+sailin' round on the home stretch, passin' the quarter post two
+lengths ahead o' the can.  A good deal o' the ice cream had washed
+away, but it took us ten minutes to shake the cracked ice and
+powdered salt out o' the old man's clothes, and warm him up again
+in the laurel bush where he was clinging.  This sort o' 'Here we go
+round the mulberry bush' kep' on until most o' the humans was got
+out, and only the furniture o' the picnic was left in the race.
+Then it got kinder mixed up, and went sloshin' round here and
+there, ez the water kep' comin' down by the trail.  Then Lulu
+Piper, what I was holdin' up all the time in a laurel bush, gets an
+idea, for all she was wet and draggled; and ez the things went
+bobbin' round, she calls out the figures o' a cotillon to 'em.
+'Two camp-stools forward.'  'Sashay and back to your places.'
+'Change partners.'  'Hands all round.'
+
+"She was clear grit, you bet!  And the joke caught on and the other
+girls jined in, and it kinder cheered 'em, for they was wantin' it.
+Then Fludder allowed to pacify 'em by sayin' he just figured up the
+size o' the reservoir and the size o' the canyon, and he kalkilated
+that the cube was about ekal, and the canyon couldn't flood any
+more.  And then Lulu--who was peart as a jay and couldn't be
+fooled--speaks up and says, 'What's the matter with the ditch,
+Dick?'
+
+"Lord! then we knew that she knew the worst; for of course all the
+water in the ditch itself--fifty miles of it!--was drainin' now
+into that reservoir and was bound to come down to the canyon."
+
+It was at this point that the situation became really desperate,
+for they had now crawled up the steep sides as far as the bushes
+afforded foothold, and the water was still rising.  The chatter of
+the girls ceased, there were long silences, in which the men
+discussed the wildest plans, and proposed to tear their shirts into
+strips to make ropes to support the girls by sticks driven into the
+mountain side.  It was in one of those intervals that the distinct
+strokes of a woodman's axe were heard high on the upland at the
+point where the trail descended to the canyon.  Every ear was
+alert, but only those on one side of the canyon could get a fair
+view of the spot.  This was the good fortune of Captain Fairfax and
+Georgy Piper, who had climbed to the highest bush on that side, and
+were now standing up, gazing excitedly in that direction.
+
+"Some one is cutting down a tree at the head of the trail," shouted
+Fairfax.  The response and joyful explanation, "for a dam across
+the trail," was on everybody's lips at the same time.
+
+But the strokes of the axe were slow and painfully intermittent.
+Impatience burst out.
+
+"Yell to him to hurry up!  Why haven't they brought two men?"
+
+"It's only one man," shouted the captain, "and he seems to be a
+cripple.  By Jiminy!--it is--yes!--it's Tom Sparrell!"
+
+There was a dead silence.  Then, I grieve to say, shame and its
+twin brother rage took possession of their weak humanity.  Oh, yes!
+It was all of a piece!  Why in the name of Folly hadn't he sent for
+an able-bodied man.  Were they to be drowned through his cranky
+obstinacy?
+
+The blows still went on slowly.  Presently, however, they seemed to
+alternate with other blows--but alas! they were slower, and if
+possible feebler!
+
+"Have they got another cripple to work?" roared the Contingent in
+one furious voice.
+
+"No--it's a woman--a little one--yes! a girl.  Hello!  Why, sure as
+you live, it's Delaware!"
+
+A spontaneous cheer burst from the Contingent, partly as a rebuke
+to Sparrell, I think, partly from some shame over their previous
+rage.  He could take it as he liked.
+
+Still the blows went on distressingly slow.  The girls were hoisted
+on the men's shoulders; the men were half submerged.  Then there
+was a painful pause; then a crumbling crash.  Another cheer went up
+from the canyon.
+
+"It's down! straight across the trail," shouted Fairfax, "and a
+part of the bank on the top of it."
+
+There was another moment of suspense.  Would it hold or be carried
+away by the momentum of the flood?  It held!  In a few moments
+Fairfax again gave voice to the cheering news that the flow had
+stopped and the submerged trail was reappearing.  In twenty minutes
+it was clear--a muddy river bed, but possible of ascent!  Of course
+there was no diminution of the water in the canyon, which had no
+outlet, yet it now was possible for the party to swing from bush to
+bush along the mountain side until the foot of the trail--no longer
+an opposing one--was reached.  There were some missteps and
+mishaps,--flounderings in the water, and some dangerous rescues,--
+but in half an hour the whole concourse stood upon the trail and
+commenced the ascent.  It was a slow, difficult, and lugubrious
+procession--I fear not the best-tempered one, now that the stimulus
+of danger and chivalry was past.  When they reached the dam made by
+the fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour
+to avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully it had
+diverted the current to a declivity on the other side.
+
+But strangely enough they were greeted by nothing else!  Sparrell
+and the youngest Miss Piper were gone; and when they at last
+reached the highroad, they were astounded to hear from a passing
+teamster that no one in the settlement knew anything of the
+disaster!
+
+This was the last drop in their cup of bitterness!  They who had
+expected that the settlement was waiting breathlessly for their
+rescue, who anticipated that they would be welcomed as heroes, were
+obliged to meet the ill-concealed amusement of passengers and
+friends at their dishevelled and bedraggled appearance, which
+suggested only the blundering mishaps of an ordinary summer outing!
+"Boatin' in the reservoir, and fell in?"  "Playing at canal-boat in
+the Ditch?" were some of the cheerful hypotheses.  The fleeting
+sense of gratitude they had felt for their deliverers was dissipated
+by the time they had reached their homes, and their rancor increased
+by the information that when the earthquake occurred Mr. Tom
+Sparrell and Miss Delaware were enjoying a "pasear" in the forest--
+he having a half-holiday by virtue of the festival--and that
+the earthquake had revived his fears of a catastrophe.  The two had
+procured axes in the woodman's hut and did what they thought was
+necessary to relieve the situation of the picnickers.  But the very
+modesty of this account of their own performance had the effect of
+belittling the catastrophe itself, and the picnickers' report of
+their exceeding peril was received with incredulous laughter.
+
+For the first time in the history of Red Gulch there was a serious
+division between the Piper family, supported by the Contingent, and
+the rest of the settlement.  Tom Sparrell's warning was remembered
+by the latter, and the ingratitude of the picnickers to their
+rescuers commented upon; the actual calamity to the reservoir was
+more or less attributed to the imprudent and reckless contiguity of
+the revelers on that day, and there were not wanting those who
+referred the accident itself to the machinations of the scheming
+Ditch Director Piper!
+
+It was said that there was a stormy scene in the Piper household
+that evening.  The judge had demanded that Delaware should break
+off her acquaintance with Sparrell, and she had refused; the judge
+had demanded of Sparrell's employer that he should discharge him,
+and had been met with the astounding information that Sparrell was
+already a silent partner in the concern.  At this revelation Judge
+Piper was alarmed; while he might object to a clerk who could not
+support a wife, as a consistent democrat he could not oppose a
+fairly prosperous tradesman.  A final appeal was made to Delaware;
+she was implored to consider the situation of her sisters, who had
+all made more ambitious marriages or were about to make them.  Why
+should she now degrade the family by marrying a country storekeeper?
+
+It is said that here the youngest Miss Piper made a memorable
+reply, and a revelation the truth of which was never gainsaid:--
+
+"You all wanter know why I'm going to marry Tom Sparrell?" she
+queried, standing up and facing the whole family circle.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why I prefer him to the hull caboodle that you girls have married
+or are going to marry?" she continued, meditatively biting the end
+of her braid.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, he's the only man of the whole lot that hasn't proposed to
+me first."
+
+It is presumed that Sparrell made good the omission, or that the
+family were glad to get rid of her, for they were married that
+autumn.  And really a later comparison of the family records shows
+that while Captain Fairfax remained "Captain Fairfax," and the
+other sons-in-law did not advance proportionately in standing or
+riches, the lame storekeeper of Red Gulch became the Hon. Senator
+Tom Sparrell.
+
+
+
+A WIDOW OF THE SANTA ANA VALLEY
+
+
+The Widow Wade was standing at her bedroom window staring out, in
+that vague instinct which compels humanity in moments of doubt and
+perplexity to seek this change of observation or superior
+illumination.  Not that Mrs. Wade's disturbance was of a serious
+character.  She had passed the acute stage of widowhood by at least
+two years, and the slight redness of her soft eyelids as well as the
+droop of her pretty mouth were merely the recognized outward and
+visible signs of the grievously minded religious community in which
+she lived.  The mourning she still wore was also partly in
+conformity with the sad-colored garments of her neighbors, and the
+necessities of the rainy season.  She was in comfortable
+circumstances, the mistress of a large ranch in the valley, which
+had lately become more valuable by the extension of a wagon road
+through its centre.  She was simply worrying whether she should go
+to a "sociable" ending with "a dance"--a daring innovation of some
+strangers--at the new hotel, or continue to eschew such follies,
+that were, according to local belief, unsuited to "a vale of tears."
+
+Indeed at this moment the prospect she gazed abstractedly upon
+seemed to justify that lugubrious description.  The Santa Ana
+Valley--a long monotonous level--was dimly visible through moving
+curtains of rain or veils of mist, to the black mourning edge of
+the horizon, and had looked like that for months.  The valley--in
+some remote epoch an arm of the San Francisco Bay--every rainy
+season seemed to be trying to revert to its original condition,
+and, long after the early spring had laid on its liberal color in
+strips, bands, and patches of blue and yellow, the blossoms of
+mustard and lupine glistened like wet paint.  Nevertheless on that
+rich alluvial soil Nature's tears seemed only to fatten the widow's
+acres and increase her crops.  Her neighbors, too, were equally
+prosperous.  Yet for six months of the year the recognized
+expression of Santa Ana was one of sadness, and for the other six
+months--of resignation.  Mrs. Wade had yielded early to this
+influence, as she had to others, in the weakness of her gentle
+nature, and partly as it was more becoming the singular tragedy
+that had made her a widow.
+
+The late Mr. Wade had been found dead with a bullet through his
+head in a secluded part of the road over Heavy Tree Hill in Sonora
+County.  Near him lay two other bodies, one afterwards identified
+as John Stubbs, a resident of the Hill, and probably a traveling
+companion of Wade's, and the other a noted desperado and
+highwayman, still masked, as at the moment of the attack.  Wade and
+his companion had probably sold their lives dearly, and against
+odds, for another mask was found on the ground, indicating that the
+attack was not single-handed, and as Wade's body had not yet been
+rifled, it was evident that the remaining highwayman had fled in
+haste.  The hue and cry had been given by apparently the only one
+of the travelers who escaped, but as he was hastening to take the
+overland coach to the East at the time, his testimony could not be
+submitted to the coroner's deliberation.  The facts, however, were
+sufficiently plain for a verdict of willful murder against the
+highwayman, although it was believed that the absent witness had
+basely deserted his companion and left him to his fate, or, as was
+suggested by others, that he might even have been an accomplice.
+It was this circumstance which protracted comment on the incident,
+and the sufferings of the widow, far beyond that rapid obliteration
+which usually overtook such affairs in the feverish haste of the
+early days.  It caused her to remove to Santa Ana, where her old
+father had feebly ranched a "quarter section" in the valley.  He
+survived her husband only a few months, leaving her the property,
+and once more in mourning.  Perhaps this continuity of woe endeared
+her to a neighborhood where distinctive ravages of diphtheria or
+scarlet fever gave a kind of social preeminence to any household,
+and she was so sympathetically assisted by her neighbors in the
+management of the ranch that, from an unkempt and wasteful
+wilderness, it became paying property.  The slim, willowy figure,
+soft red-lidded eyes, and deep crape of "Sister Wade" at church or
+prayer-meeting was grateful to the soul of these gloomy worshipers,
+and in time she herself found that the arm of these dyspeptics of
+mind and body was nevertheless strong and sustaining.  Small wonder
+that she should hesitate to-night about plunging into inconsistent,
+even though trifling, frivolities.
+
+But apart from this superficial reason, there was another instinctive
+one deep down in the recesses of Mrs. Wade's timid heart which she
+had kept to herself, and indeed would have tearfully resented had it
+been offered by another.  The late Mr. Wade had been, in fact, a
+singular example of this kind of frivolous existence carried to a
+man-like excess.  Besides being a patron of amusements, Mr. Wade
+gambled, raced, and drank.  He was often home late, and sometimes
+not at all.  Not that this conduct was exceptional in the "roaring
+days" of Heavy Tree Hill, but it had given Mrs. Wade perhaps an
+undue preference for a less certain, even if a more serious life.
+His tragic death was, of course, a kind of martyrdom, which exalted
+him in the feminine mind to a saintly memory; yet Mrs. Wade was not
+without a certain relief in that.  It was voiced, perhaps crudely,
+by the widow of Abner Drake in a visit of condolence to the tearful
+Mrs. Wade a few days after Wade's death.  "It's a vale o' sorrow,
+Mrs. Wade," said the sympathizer, "but it has its ups and downs, and
+I recken ye'll be feelin' soon pretty much as I did about Abner when
+HE was took.  It was mighty soothin' and comfortin' to feel that
+whatever might happen now, I always knew just whar Abner was passin'
+his nights."  Poor slim Mrs. Wade had no disquieting sense of humor
+to interfere with her reception of this large truth, and she
+accepted it with a burst of reminiscent tears.
+
+A long volleying shower had just passed down the level landscape,
+and was followed by a rolling mist from the warm saturated soil
+like the smoke of the discharge.  Through it she could see a faint
+lightening of the hidden sun, again darkening through a sudden
+onset of rain, and changing as with her conflicting doubts and
+resolutions.  Thus gazing, she was vaguely conscious of an addition
+to the landscape in the shape of a man who was passing down the
+road with a pack on his back like the tramping "prospectors" she
+had often seen at Heavy Tree Hill.  That memory apparently settled
+her vacillating mind; she determined she would NOT go to the dance.
+But as she was turning away from the window a second figure, a
+horseman, appeared in another direction by a cross-road, a shorter
+cut through her domain.  This she had no difficulty in recognizing
+as one of the strangers who were getting up the dance.  She had
+noticed him at church on the previous Sunday.  As he passed the
+house he appeared to be gazing at it so earnestly that she drew
+back from the window lest she should be seen.  And then, for no
+reason whatever, she changed her mind once more, and resolved to go
+to the dance.  Gravely announcing this fact to the wife of her
+superintendent who kept house with her in her loneliness, she
+thought nothing more about it.  She should go in her mourning, with
+perhaps the addition of a white collar and frill.
+
+It was evident, however, that Santa Ana thought a good deal more
+than she did of this new idea, which seemed a part of the
+innovation already begun by the building up of the new hotel.  It
+was argued by some that as the new church and new schoolhouse had
+been opened by prayer, it was only natural that a lighter festivity
+should inaugurate the opening of the hotel.  "I reckon that dancin'
+is about the next thing to travelin' for gettin' up an appetite for
+refreshments, and that's what the landlord is kalkilatin' to
+sarve," was the remark of a gloomy but practical citizen on the
+veranda of "The Valley Emporium."  "That's so," rejoined a
+bystander; "and I notice on that last box o' pills I got for chills
+the directions say that a little 'agreeable exercise'--not too
+violent--is a great assistance to the working o' the pills."
+
+"I reckon that that Mr. Brooks who's down here lookin' arter mill
+property, got up the dance.  He's bin round town canvassin' all the
+women folks and drummin' up likely gals for it.  They say he
+actooally sent an invite to the Widder Wade," remarked another
+lounger.  "Gosh! he's got cheek!"
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the proprietor judicially, "while we don't
+intend to hev any minin' camp fandangos or 'Frisco falals round
+Santa Any--(Santa Ana was proud of its simple agricultural
+virtues)--I ain't so hard-shelled as not to give new things a fair
+trial.  And, after all, it's the women folk that has the say about
+it.  Why, there's old Miss Ford sez she hasn't kicked a fut sence
+she left Mizoori, but wouldn't mind trying it agin.  Ez to Brooks
+takin' that trouble--well, I suppose it's along o' his bein'
+HEALTHY!"  He heaved a deep dyspeptic sigh, which was faintly
+echoed by the others.  "Why, look at him now, ridin' round on that
+black hoss o' his, in the wet since daylight and not carin' for
+blind chills or rhumatiz!"
+
+He was looking at a serape-draped horseman, the one the widow had
+seen on the previous night, who was now cantering slowly up the
+street.  Seeing the group on the veranda, he rode up, threw himself
+lightly from his saddle, and joined them.  He was an alert,
+determined, good-looking fellow of about thirty-five, whose smooth,
+smiling face hardly commended itself to Santa Ana, though his eyes
+were distinctly sympathetic.  He glanced at the depressed group
+around him and became ominously serious.
+
+"When did it happen?" he asked gravely.
+
+"What happen?" said the nearest bystander.
+
+"The Funeral, Flood, Fight, or Fire.  Which of the four F's was
+it?"
+
+"What are ye talkin' about?" said the proprietor stiffly, scenting
+some dangerous humor.
+
+"YOU," said Brooks promptly.  "You're all standing here, croaking
+like crows, this fine morning.  I passed YOUR farm, Johnson, not an
+hour ago; the wheat just climbing out of the black adobe mud as
+thick as rows of pins on paper--what have YOU to grumble at?  I saw
+YOUR stock, Briggs, over on Two-Mile Bottom, waddling along, fat as
+the adobe they were sticking in, their coats shining like fresh
+paint--what's the matter with YOU?  And," turning to the
+proprietor, "there's YOUR shed, Saunders, over on the creek, just
+bursting with last year's grain that you know has gone up two
+hundred per cent. since you bought it at a bargain--what are YOU
+growling at?  It's enough to provoke a fire or a famine to hear you
+groaning--and take care it don't, some day, as a lesson to you."
+
+All this was so perfectly true of the prosperous burghers that they
+could not for a moment reply.  But Briggs had recourse to what he
+believed to be a retaliatory taunt.
+
+"I heard you've been askin' Widow Wade to come to your dance," he
+said, with a wink at the others.  "Of course she said 'Yes.'"
+
+"Of course she did," returned Brooks coolly.  "I've just got her
+note."
+
+"What?" ejaculated the three men together.  "Mrs. Wade comin'?"
+
+"Certainly!  Why shouldn't she?  And it would do YOU good to come
+too, and shake the limp dampness out o' you," returned Brooks, as
+he quietly remounted his horse and cantered away.
+
+"Darned ef I don't think he's got his eye on the widder," said
+Johnson faintly.
+
+"Or the quarter section," added Briggs gloomily.
+
+For all that, the eventful evening came, with many lights in the
+staring, undraped windows of the hotel, coldly bright bunting on
+the still damp walls of the long dining-room, and a gentle downpour
+from the hidden skies above.  A close carryall was especially
+selected to bring Mrs. Wade and her housekeeper.  The widow
+arrived, looking a little slimmer than usual in her closely
+buttoned black dress, white collar and cuffs, very glistening in
+eye and in hair,--whose glossy black ringlets were perhaps more
+elaborately arranged than was her custom,--and with a faint coming
+and going of color, due perhaps to her agitation at this tentative
+reentering into worldly life, which was nevertheless quite virginal
+in effect.  A vague solemnity pervaded the introductory proceedings,
+and a singular want of sociability was visible in the "sociable"
+part of the entertainment.  People talked in whispers or with that
+grave precision which indicates good manners in rural communities;
+conversed painfully with other people whom they did not want to talk
+to rather than appear to be alone, or rushed aimlessly together like
+water drops, and then floated in broken, adherent masses over the
+floor.  The widow became a helpless, religious centre of deacons and
+Sunday-school teachers, which Brooks, untiring, yet fruitless, in
+his attempt to produce gayety, tried in vain to break.  To this
+gloom the untried dangers of the impending dance, duly prefigured by
+a lonely cottage piano and two violins in a desert of expanse, added
+a nervous chill.  When at last the music struck up--somewhat
+hesitatingly and protestingly, from the circumstance that the player
+was the church organist, and fumbled mechanically for his stops, the
+attempt to make up a cotillon set was left to the heroic Brooks.
+Yet he barely escaped disaster when, in posing the couples, he
+incautiously begged them to look a little less as if they were
+waiting for the coffin to be borne down the aisle between them, and
+was rewarded by a burst of tears from Mrs. Johnson, who had lost a
+child two years before, and who had to be led away, while her place
+in the set was taken by another.  Yet the cotillon passed off; a
+Spanish dance succeeded; "Moneymusk," with the Virginia Reel, put a
+slight intoxicating vibration into the air, and healthy youth at
+last asserted itself in a score of freckled but buxom girls in white
+muslin, with romping figures and laughter, at the lower end of the
+room.  Still a rigid decorum reigned among the elder dancers, and
+the figures were called out in grave formality, as if, to Brooks's
+fancy, they were hymns given from the pulpit, until at the close of
+the set, in half-real, half-mock despair, he turned desperately to
+Mrs. Wade, his partner:--
+
+"Do you waltz?"
+
+Mrs. Wade hesitated.  She HAD, before marriage, and was a good
+waltzer.  "I do," she said timidly, "but do you think they"--
+
+But before the poor widow could formulate her fears as to the
+reception of "round dances," Brooks had darted to the piano, and
+the next moment she heard with a "fearful joy" the opening bars of
+a waltz.  It was an old Julien waltz, fresh still in the fifties,
+daring, provocative to foot, swamping to intellect, arresting to
+judgment, irresistible, supreme!  Before Mrs. Wade could protest,
+Brooks's arm had gathered up her slim figure, and with one quick
+backward sweep and swirl they were off!  The floor was cleared for
+them in a sudden bewilderment of alarm--a suspense of burning
+curiosity.  The widow's little feet tripped quickly, her long black
+skirt swung out; as she turned the corner there was not only a
+sudden revelation of her pretty ankles, but, what was more
+startling, a dazzling flash of frilled and laced petticoat, which
+at once convinced every woman in the room that the act had been
+premeditated for days!  Yet even that criticism was presently
+forgotten in the pervading intoxication of the music and the
+movement.  The younger people fell into it with wild rompings,
+whirlings, and clasping of hands and waists.  And stranger than
+all, a corybantic enthusiasm seized upon the emotionally religious,
+and those priests and priestesses of Cybele who were famous for
+their frenzy and passion in camp-meeting devotions seemed to find
+an equal expression that night in the waltz.  And when, flushed and
+panting, Mrs. Wade at last halted on the arm of her partner, they
+were nearly knocked over by the revolving Johnson and Mrs. Stubbs
+in a whirl of gloomy exultation!  Deacons and Sunday-school
+teachers waltzed together until the long room shook, and the very
+bunting on the walls waved and fluttered with the gyrations of
+those religious dervishes.  Nobody knew--nobody cared how long this
+frenzy lasted--it ceased only with the collapse of the musicians.
+Then, with much vague bewilderment, inward trepidation, awkward and
+incoherent partings, everybody went dazedly home; there was no
+other dancing after that--the waltz was the one event of the
+festival and of the history of Santa Ana.  And later that night,
+when the timid Mrs. Wade, in the seclusion of her own room and the
+disrobing of her slim figure, glanced at her spotless frilled and
+laced petticoat lying on a chair, a faint smile--the first of her
+widowhood--curved the corners of her pretty mouth.
+
+A week of ominous silence regarding the festival succeeded in Santa
+Ana.  The local paper gave the fullest particulars of the opening
+of the hotel, but contented itself with saying: "The entertainment
+concluded with a dance."  Mr. Brooks, who felt himself compelled to
+call upon his late charming partner twice during the week,
+characteristically soothed her anxieties as to the result.  "The
+fact of it is, Mrs. Wade, there's really nobody in particular to
+blame--and that's what gets them.  They're all mixed up in it,
+deacons and Sunday-school teachers; and when old Johnson tried to
+be nasty the other evening and hoped you hadn't suffered from your
+exertions that night, I told him you hadn't quite recovered yet
+from the physical shock of having been run into by him and Mrs.
+Stubbs, but that, you being a lady, you didn't tell just how you
+felt at the exhibition he and she made of themselves.  That shut
+him up."
+
+"But you shouldn't have said that," said Mrs. Wade with a
+frightened little smile.
+
+"No matter," returned Brooks cheerfully.  "I'll take the blame of
+it with the others.  You see they'll have to have a scapegoat--and
+I'm just the man, for I got up the dance!  And as I'm going away, I
+suppose I shall bear off the sin with me into the wilderness."
+
+"You're going away?" repeated Mrs. Wade in more genuine concern.
+
+"Not for long," returned Brooks laughingly.  "I came here to look
+up a mill site, and I've found it.  Meantime I think I've opened
+their eyes."
+
+"You have opened mine," said the widow with timid frankness.
+
+They were soft pretty eyes when opened, in spite of their heavy red
+lids, and Mr. Brooks thought that Santa Ana would be no worse if
+they remained open.  Possibly he looked it, for Mrs. Wade said
+hurriedly, "I mean--that is--I've been thinking that life needn't
+ALWAYS be as gloomy as we make it here.  And even HERE, you know,
+Mr. Brooks, we have six months' sunshine--though we always forget
+it in the rainy season."
+
+"That's so," said Brooks cheerfully.  "I once lost a heap of money
+through my own foolishness, and I've managed to forget it, and I
+even reckon to get it back again out of Santa Ana if my mill
+speculation holds good.  So good-by, Mrs. Wade--but not for long."
+He shook her hand frankly and departed, leaving the widow conscious
+of a certain sympathetic confidence and a little grateful for--she
+knew not what.
+
+This feeling remained with her most of the afternoon, and even
+imparted a certain gayety to her spirits, to the extent of causing
+her to hum softly to herself; the air being oddly enough the Julien
+Waltz.  And when, later in the day, the shadows were closing in
+with the rain, word was brought to her that a stranger wished to
+see her in the sitting-room, she carried a less mournful mind to
+this function of her existence.  For Mrs. Wade was accustomed to
+give audience to traveling agents, tradesmen, working-hands and
+servants, as chatelaine of her ranch, and the occasion was not
+novel.  Yet on entering the room, which she used partly as an
+office, she found some difficulty in classifying the stranger, who
+at first glance reminded her of the tramping miner she had seen
+that night from her window.  He was rather incongruously dressed,
+some articles of his apparel being finer than others; he wore a
+diamond pin in a scarf folded over a rough "hickory" shirt; his
+light trousers were tucked in common mining boots that bore stains
+of travel and a suggestion that he had slept in his clothes.  What
+she could see of his unshaven face in that uncertain light
+expressed a kind of dogged concentration, overlaid by an assumption
+of ease.  He got up as she came in, and with a slight "How do,
+ma'am," shut the door behind her and glanced furtively around the
+room.
+
+"What I've got to say to ye, Mrs. Wade,--as I reckon you be,--is
+strictly private and confidential!  Why, ye'll see afore I get
+through.  But I thought I might just as well caution ye agin our
+being disturbed."
+
+Overcoming a slight instinct of repulsion, Mrs. Wade returned, "You
+can speak to me here; no one will interrupt you--unless I call
+them," she added with a little feminine caution.
+
+"And I reckon ye won't do that," he said with a grim smile.  "You
+are the widow o' Pulaski Wade, late o' Heavy Tree Hill, I reckon?"
+
+"I am," said Mrs. Wade.
+
+"And your husband's buried up thar in the graveyard, with a
+monument over him setting forth his virtues ez a Christian and a
+square man and a high-minded citizen?  And that he was foully
+murdered by highwaymen?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Wade, "that is the inscription."
+
+"Well, ma'am, a bigger pack o' lies never was cut on stone!"
+
+Mrs. Wade rose, half in indignation, half in terror.
+
+"Keep your sittin'," said the stranger, with a warning wave of his
+hand.  "Wait till I'm through, and then you call in the hull State
+o' Californy, ef ye want."
+
+The stranger's manner was so doggedly confident that Mrs. Wade sank
+back tremblingly in her chair.  The man put his slouch hat on his
+knee, twirled it round once or twice, and then said with the same
+stubborn deliberation:--
+
+"The highwayman in that business was your husband--Pulaski Wade--
+and his gang, and he was killed by one o' the men he was robbin'.
+Ye see, ma'am, it used to be your husband's little game to rope in
+three or four strangers in a poker deal at Spanish Jim's saloon--I
+see you've heard o' the place," he interpolated as Mrs. Wade drew
+back suddenly--"and when he couldn't clean 'em out in that way, or
+they showed a little more money than they played, he'd lay for 'em
+with his gang in a lone part of the trail, and go through them like
+any road agent.  That's what he did that night--and that's how he
+got killed."
+
+"How do you know this?" said Mrs. Wade, with quivering lips.
+
+"I was one o' the men he went through before he was killed.  And
+I'd hev got my money back, but the rest o' the gang came up, and I
+got away jest in time to save my life and nothin' else.  Ye might
+remember thar was one man got away and giv' the alarm, but he was
+goin' on to the States by the overland coach that night and
+couldn't stay to be a witness.  I was that man.  I had paid my
+passage through, and I couldn't lose THAT too with my other money,
+so I went."
+
+Mrs. Wade sat stunned.  She remembered the missing witness, and how
+she had longed to see the man who was last with her husband; she
+remembered Spanish Jim's saloon--his well-known haunt; his frequent
+and unaccountable absences, the sudden influx of money which he
+always said he had won at cards; the diamond ring he had given her
+as the result of "a bet;" the forgotten recurrence of other
+robberies by a secret masked gang; a hundred other things that had
+worried her, instinctively, vaguely.  She knew now, too, the
+meaning of the unrest that had driven her from Heavy Tree Hill--the
+strange unformulated fears that had haunted her even here.  Yet
+with all this she felt, too, her present weakness--knew that this
+man had taken her at a disadvantage, that she ought to indignantly
+assert herself, deny everything, demand proof, and brand him a
+slanderer!
+
+"How did--you--know it was my husband?" she stammered.
+
+"His mask fell off in the fight; you know another mask was found--
+it was HIS.  I saw him as plainly as I see him there!" he pointed
+to a daguerreotype of her husband which stood upon her desk.
+
+Mrs. Wade could only stare vacantly, hopelessly.  After a pause the
+man continued in a less aggressive manner and more confidential
+tone, which, however, only increased her terror.  "I ain't sayin'
+that YOU knowed anything about this, ma'am, and whatever other
+folks might say when THEY know of it, I'll allers say that you
+didn't."
+
+"What, then, did you come here for?" said the widow desperately.
+
+"What do I come here for?" repeated the man grimly, looking around
+the room; "what did I come to this yer comfortable home--this yer
+big ranch and to a rich woman like yourself for?  Well, Mrs. Wade,
+I come to get the six hundred dollars your husband robbed me of,
+that's all!  I ain't askin' more!  I ain't askin' interest!  I
+ain't askin' compensation for havin' to run for my life--and,"
+again looking grimly round the walls, "I ain't askin' more than you
+will give--or is my rights."
+
+"But this house never was his; it was my father's," gasped Mrs.
+Wade; "you have no right"--
+
+"Mebbe 'yes' and mebbe 'no,' Mrs. Wade," interrupted the man, with
+a wave of his hat; "but how about them two checks to bearer for two
+hundred dollars each found among your husband's effects, and
+collected by your lawyer for you--MY CHECKS, Mrs. Wade?"
+
+A wave of dreadful recollection overwhelmed her.  She remembered
+the checks found upon her husband's body, known only to her and her
+lawyer, believed to be gambling gains, and collected at once under
+his legal advice.  Yet she made one more desperate effort in spite
+of the instinct that told her he was speaking the truth.
+
+"But you shall have to prove it--before witnesses."
+
+"Do you WANT me to prove it before witnesses?" said the man, coming
+nearer her.  "Do you want to take my word and keep it between
+ourselves, or do you want to call in your superintendent and his
+men, and all Santy Any, to hear me prove your husband was a
+highwayman, thief, and murderer?  Do you want to knock over that
+monument on Heavy Tree Hill, and upset your standing here among the
+deacons and elders?  Do you want to do all this and be forced, even
+by your neighbors, to pay me in the end, as you will?  Ef you do,
+call in your witnesses now and let's have it over.  Mebbe it would
+look better ef I got the money out of YOUR FRIENDS than ye--
+a woman!  P'raps you're right!"
+
+He made a step towards the door, but she stopped him.
+
+"No! no! wait!  It's a large sum--I haven't it with me," she
+stammered, thoroughly beaten.
+
+"Ye kin get it."
+
+"Give me time!" she implored.  "Look!  I'll give you a hundred down
+now,--all I have here,--the rest another time!"  She nervously
+opened a drawer of her desk and taking out a buckskin bag of gold
+thrust it in his hand.  "There! go away now!"  She lifted her thin
+hands despairingly to her head.  "Go! do!"
+
+The man seemed struck by her manner.  "I don't want to be hard on a
+woman," he said slowly.  "I'll go now and come back again at nine
+to-night.  You can git the money, or what's as good, a check to
+bearer, by then.  And ef ye'll take my advice, you won't ask no
+advice from others, ef you want to keep your secret.  Just now it's
+safe with me; I'm a square man, ef I seem to be a hard one."  He
+made a gesture as if to take her hand, but as she drew shrinkingly
+away, he changed it to an awkward bow, and the next moment was
+gone.
+
+She started to her feet, but the unwonted strain upon her nerves
+and frail body had been greater than she knew.  She made a step
+forward, felt the room whirl round her and then seem to collapse
+beneath her feet, and, clutching at her chair, sank back into it,
+fainting.
+
+How long she lay there she never knew.  She was at last conscious
+of some one bending over her, and a voice--the voice of Mr. Brooks--
+in her ear, saying, "I beg your pardon; you seem ill.  Shall I
+call some one?"
+
+"No!" she gasped, quickly recovering herself with an effort, and
+staring round her.  "Where is--when did you come in?"
+
+"Only this moment.  I was leaving tonight, sooner than I expected,
+and thought I'd say good-by.  They told me that you had been
+engaged with a stranger, but he had just gone.  I beg your pardon--
+I see you are ill.  I won't detain you any longer."
+
+"No! no! don't go!  I am better--better," she said feverishly.  As
+she glanced at his strong and sympathetic face a wild idea seized
+her.  He was a stranger here, an alien to these people, like
+herself.  The advice that she dare not seek from others, from her
+half-estranged religious friends, from even her superintendent and
+his wife, dare she ask from him?  Perhaps he saw this frightened
+doubt, this imploring appeal, in her eyes, for he said gently, "Is
+it anything I can do for you?"
+
+"Yes," she said, with the sudden desperation of weakness; "I want
+you to keep a secret."
+
+"Yours?--yes!" he said promptly.
+
+Whereat poor Mrs. Wade instantly burst into tears.  Then, amidst
+her sobs, she told him of the stranger's visit, of his terrible
+accusations, of his demands, his expected return, and her own utter
+helplessness.  To her terror, as she went on she saw a singular
+change in his kind face; he was following her with hard, eager
+intensity.  She had half hoped, even through her fateful instincts,
+that he might have laughed, manlike, at her fears, or pooh-poohed
+the whole thing.  But he did not.  "You say he positively recognized
+your husband?" he repeated quickly.
+
+"Yes, yes!" sobbed the widow, "and knew that daguerreotype!" she
+pointed to the desk.
+
+Brooks turned quickly in that direction.  Luckily his back was
+towards her, and she could not see his face, and the quick,
+startled look that came into his eyes.  But when they again met
+hers, it was gone, and even their eager intensity had changed to a
+gentle commiseration.  "You have only his word for it, Mrs. Wade,"
+he said gently, "and in telling your secret to another, you have
+shorn the rascal of half his power over you.  And he knew it.  Now,
+dismiss the matter from your mind and leave it all to me.  I will
+be here a few minutes before nine--AND ALONE IN THIS ROOM.  Let
+your visitor be shown in here, and don't let us be disturbed.
+Don't be alarmed," he added with a faint twinkle in his eye, "there
+will be no fuss and no exposure!"
+
+
+It lacked a few minutes of nine when Mr. Brooks was ushered into
+the sitting-room.  As soon as he was alone he quietly examined the
+door and the windows, and having satisfied himself, took his seat
+in a chair casually placed behind the door.  Presently he heard the
+sound of voices and a heavy footstep in the passage.  He lightly
+felt his waistcoat pocket--it contained a pretty little weapon of
+power and precision, with a barrel scarcely two inches long.
+
+The door opened, and the person outside entered the room.  In an
+instant Brooks had shut the door and locked it behind him.  The man
+turned fiercely, but was faced by Brooks quietly, with one finger
+calmly hooked in his waistcoat pocket.  The man slightly recoiled
+from him--not as much from fear as from some vague stupefaction.
+"What's that for?  What's your little game?" he said half
+contemptuously.
+
+"No game at all," returned Brooks coolly.  "You came here to sell a
+secret.  I don't propose to have it given away first to any
+listener."
+
+"YOU don't--who are YOU?"
+
+"That's a queer question to ask of the man you are trying to
+personate--but I don't wonder!  You're doing it d----d badly."
+
+"Personate--YOU?" said the stranger, with staring eyes.
+
+"Yes, ME," said Brooks quietly.  "I am the only man who escaped
+from the robbery that night at Heavy Tree Hill and who went home by
+the Overland Coach."
+
+The stranger stared, but recovered himself with a coarse laugh.
+"Oh, well! we're on the same lay, it appears!  Both after the
+widow--afore we show up her husband."
+
+"Not exactly," said Brooks, with his eyes fixed intently on the
+stranger.  "You are here to denounce a highwayman who is DEAD and
+escaped justice.  I am here to denounce one who is LIVING!--Stop!
+drop your hand; it's no use.  You thought you had to deal only with
+a woman to-night, and your revolver isn't quite handy enough.
+There! down!--down!  So!  That'll do."
+
+"You can't prove it," said the man hoarsely.
+
+"Fool!  In your story to that woman you have given yourself away.
+There were but two travelers attacked by the highwaymen.  One was
+killed--I am the other.  Where do YOU come in?  What witness can
+you be--except as the highwayman that you are?  Who is left to
+identify Wade but--his accomplice!"
+
+The man's suddenly whitened face made his unshaven beard seem to
+bristle over his face like some wild animal's.  "Well, ef you
+kalkilate to blow me, you've got to blow Wade and his widder too.
+Jest you remember that," he said whiningly.
+
+"I've thought of that," said Brooks coolly, "and I calculate that
+to prevent it is worth about that hundred dollars you got from that
+poor woman--and no more!  Now, sit down at that table, and write as
+I dictate."
+
+The man looked at him in wonder, but obeyed.
+
+"Write," said Brooks, "'I hereby certify that my accusations
+against the late Pulaski Wade of Heavy Tree Hill are erroneous and
+groundless, and the result of mistaken identity, especially in
+regard to any complicity of his in the robbery of John Stubbs,
+deceased, and Henry Brooks, at Heavy Tree Hill, on the night of the
+13th August, 1854.'"
+
+The man looked up with a repulsive smile.  "Who's the fool now,
+Cap'n?  What's become of your hold on the widder, now?"
+
+"Write!" said Brooks fiercely.
+
+The sound of a pen hurriedly scratching paper followed this first
+outburst of the quiet Brooks.
+
+"Sign it," said Brooks.
+
+The man signed it.
+
+"Now go," said Brooks, unlocking the door, "but remember, if you
+should ever be inclined to revisit Santa Ana, you will find ME
+living here also."
+
+The man slunk out of the door and into the passage like a wild
+animal returning to the night and darkness.  Brooks took up the
+paper, rejoined Mrs. Wade in the parlor, and laid it before her.
+
+"But," said the widow, trembling even in her joy, "do you--do you
+think he was REALLY mistaken?"
+
+"Positive," said Brooks coolly.  "It's true, it's a mistake that
+has cost you a hundred dollars, but there are some mistakes that
+are worth that to be kept quiet."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+They were married a year later; but there is no record that in
+after years of conjugal relations with a weak, charming, but
+sometimes trying woman, Henry Brooks was ever tempted to tell her
+the whole truth of the robbery of Heavy Tree Hill.
+
+
+
+THE MERMAID OF LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+
+
+Some forty years ago, on the northern coast of California, near the
+Golden Gate, stood a lighthouse.  Of a primitive class, since
+superseded by a building more in keeping with the growing magnitude
+of the adjacent port, it attracted little attention from the
+desolate shore, and, it was alleged, still less from the desolate
+sea beyond.  A gray structure of timber, stone, and glass, it was
+buffeted and harried by the constant trade winds, baked by the
+unclouded six months' sun, lost for a few hours in the afternoon
+sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots from the Farallones.
+It was kept by a recluse--a preoccupied man of scientific tastes,
+who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants, had applied to
+the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a means of
+securing the seclusion he valued more than gold.  Some believed that
+he was the victim of an early disappointment in love--a view
+charitably taken by those who also believed that the government
+would not have appointed "a crank" to a position of responsibility.
+Howbeit, he fulfilled his duties, and, with the assistance of an
+Indian, even cultivated a small patch of ground beside the
+lighthouse.  His isolation was complete!  There was little to attract
+wanderers here: the nearest mines were fifty miles away; the virgin
+forest on the mountains inland were penetrated only by sawmills and
+woodmen from the Bay settlements, equally remote.  Although by the
+shore-line the lights of the great port were sometimes plainly
+visible, yet the solitude around him was peopled only by Indians,--a
+branch of the great northern tribe of "root-diggers,"--peaceful and
+simple in their habits, as yet undisturbed by the white man, nor
+stirred into antagonism by aggression.  Civilization only touched
+him at stated intervals, and then by the more expeditious sea from
+the government boat that brought him supplies.  But for his
+contiguity to the perpetual turmoil of wind and sea, he might have
+passed a restful Arcadian life in his surroundings; for even his
+solitude was sometimes haunted by this faint reminder of the great
+port hard by that pulsated with an equal unrest.  Nevertheless, the
+sands before his door and the rocks behind him seemed to have been
+untrodden by any other white man's foot since their upheaval from
+the ocean.  It was true that the little bay beside him was marked on
+the map as "Sir Francis Drake's Bay," tradition having located it as
+the spot where that ingenious pirate and empire-maker had once
+landed his vessels and scraped the barnacles from his adventurous
+keels.  But of this Edgar Pomfrey--or "Captain Pomfrey," as he was
+called by virtue of his half-nautical office--had thought little.
+
+For the first six months he had thoroughly enjoyed his seclusion.
+In the company of his books, of which he had brought such a fair
+store that their shelves lined his snug corners to the exclusion of
+more comfortable furniture, he found his principal recreation.
+Even his unwonted manual labor, the trimming of his lamp and
+cleaning of his reflectors, and his personal housekeeping, in which
+his Indian help at times assisted, he found a novel and interesting
+occupation.  For outdoor exercise, a ramble on the sands, a climb
+to the rocky upland, or a pull in the lighthouse boat, amply
+sufficed him.  "Crank" as he was supposed to be, he was sane enough
+to guard against any of those early lapses into barbarism which
+marked the lives of some solitary gold-miners.  His own taste, as
+well as the duty of his office, kept his person and habitation
+sweet and clean, and his habits regular.  Even the little
+cultivated patch of ground on the lee side of the tower was
+symmetrical and well ordered.  Thus the outward light of Captain
+Pomfrey shone forth over the wilderness of shore and wave, even
+like his beacon, whatever his inward illumination may have been.
+
+It was a bright summer morning, remarkable even in the monotonous
+excellence of the season, with a slight touch of warmth which the
+invincible Northwest Trades had not yet chilled.  There was still a
+faint haze off the coast, as if last night's fog had been caught in
+the quick sunshine, and the shining sands were hot, but without the
+usual dazzling glare.  A faint perfume from a quaint lilac-colored
+beach-flower, whose clustering heads dotted the sand like bits of
+blown spume, took the place of that smell of the sea which the
+odorless Pacific lacked.  A few rocks, half a mile away, lifted
+themselves above the ebb tide at varying heights as they lay on the
+trough of the swell, were crested with foam by a striking surge, or
+cleanly erased in the full sweep of the sea.  Beside, and partly
+upon one of the higher rocks, a singular object was moving.
+
+Pomfrey was interested but not startled.  He had once or twice seen
+seals disporting on these rocks, and on one occasion a sea-lion,--
+an estray from the familiar rocks on the other side of the Golden
+Gate.  But he ceased work in his garden patch, and coming to his
+house, exchanged his hoe for a telescope.  When he got the mystery
+in focus he suddenly stopped and rubbed the object-glass with his
+handkerchief.  But even when he applied the glass to his eye for a
+second time, he could scarcely believe his eyesight.  For the
+object seemed to be a WOMAN, the lower part of her figure submerged
+in the sea, her long hair depending over her shoulders and waist.
+There was nothing in her attitude to suggest terror or that she was
+the victim of some accident.  She moved slowly and complacently
+with the sea, and even--a more staggering suggestion--appeared to
+be combing out the strands of her long hair with her fingers.  With
+her body half concealed she might have been a mermaid!
+
+He swept the foreshore and horizon with his glass; there was
+neither boat nor ship--nor anything that moved, except the long
+swell of the Pacific.  She could have come only from the sea; for
+to reach the rocks by land she would have had to pass before the
+lighthouse, while the narrow strip of shore which curved northward
+beyond his range of view he knew was inhabited only by Indians.
+But the woman was unhesitatingly and appallingly WHITE, and her
+hair light even to a golden gleam in the sunshine.
+
+Pomfrey was a gentleman, and as such was amazed, dismayed, and
+cruelly embarrassed.  If she was a simple bather from some vicinity
+hitherto unknown and unsuspected by him, it was clearly his
+business to shut up his glass and go back to his garden patch--
+although the propinquity of himself and the lighthouse must have
+been as plainly visible to her as she was to him.  On the other
+hand, if she was the survivor of some wreck and in distress--or, as
+he even fancied from her reckless manner, bereft of her senses, his
+duty to rescue her was equally clear.  In his dilemma he determined
+upon a compromise and ran to his boat.  He would pull out to sea,
+pass between the rocks and the curving sand-spit, and examine the
+sands and sea more closely for signs of wreckage, or some
+overlooked waiting boat near the shore.  He would be within hail if
+she needed him, or she could escape to her boat if she had one.
+
+In another moment his boat was lifting on the swell towards the
+rocks.  He pulled quickly, occasionally turning to note that the
+strange figure, whose movements were quite discernible to the naked
+eye, was still there, but gazing more earnestly towards the nearest
+shore for any sign of life or occupation.  In ten minutes he had
+reached the curve where the trend opened northward, and the long
+line of shore stretched before him.  He swept it eagerly with a
+single searching glance.  Sea and shore were empty.  He turned
+quickly to the rock, scarcely a hundred yards on his beam.  It was
+empty too!  Forgetting his previous scruples, he pulled directly
+for it until his keel grated on its submerged base.  There was
+nothing there but the rock, slippery with the yellow-green slime of
+seaweed and kelp--neither trace nor sign of the figure that had
+occupied it a moment ago.  He pulled around it; there was no cleft
+or hiding-place.  For an instant his heart leaped at the sight of
+something white, caught in a jagged tooth of the outlying reef, but
+it was only the bleached fragment of a bamboo orange-crate, cast
+from the deck of some South Sea trader, such as often strewed the
+beach.  He lay off the rock, keeping way in the swell, and
+scrutinizing the glittering sea.  At last he pulled back to the
+lighthouse, perplexed and discomfited.
+
+Was it simply a sporting seal, transformed by some trick of his
+vision?  But he had seen it through his glass, and now remembered
+such details as the face and features framed in their contour of
+golden hair, and believed he could even have identified them.  He
+examined the rock again with his glass, and was surprised to see
+how clearly it was outlined now in its barren loneliness.  Yet he
+must have been mistaken.  His scientific and accurate mind allowed
+of no errant fancy, and he had always sneered at the marvelous as
+the result of hasty or superficial observation.  He was a little
+worried at this lapse of his healthy accuracy,--fearing that it
+might be the result of his seclusion and loneliness,--akin to the
+visions of the recluse and solitary.  It was strange, too, that it
+should take the shape of a woman; for Edgar Pomfrey had a story--
+the usual old and foolish one.
+
+Then his thoughts took a lighter phase, and he turned to the memory
+of his books, and finally to the books themselves.  From a shelf he
+picked out a volume of old voyages, and turned to a remembered
+passage: "In other seas doe abound marvells soche as Sea Spyders of
+the bigness of a pinnace, the wich they have been known to attack
+and destroy; Sea Vypers which reach to the top of a goodly maste,
+whereby they are able to draw marinners from the rigging by the
+suction of their breathes; and Devill Fyshe, which vomit fire by
+night which makyth the sea to shine prodigiously, and mermaydes.
+They are half fyshe and half mayde of grate Beauty, and have been
+seen of divers godly and creditable witnesses swymming beside
+rocks, hidden to their waist in the sea, combing of their hayres,
+to the help of whych they carry a small mirrore of the bigness of
+their fingers."  Pomfrey laid the book aside with a faint smile.
+To even this credulity he might come!
+
+Nevertheless, he used the telescope again that day.  But there was
+no repetition of the incident, and he was forced to believe that he
+had been the victim of some extraordinary illusion.  The next
+morning, however, with his calmer judgment doubts began to visit
+him.  There was no one of whom he could make inquiries but his
+Indian helper, and their conversation had usually been restricted
+to the language of signs or the use of a few words he had picked
+up.  He contrived, however, to ask if there was a "waugee" (white)
+woman in the neighborhood.  The Indian shook his head in surprise.
+There was no "waugee" nearer than the remote mountain-ridge to
+which he pointed.  Pomfrey was obliged to be content with this.
+Even had his vocabulary been larger, he would as soon have thought
+of revealing the embarrassing secret of this woman, whom he
+believed to be of his own race, to a mere barbarian as he would of
+asking him to verify his own impressions by allowing him to look at
+her that morning.  The next day, however, something happened which
+forced him to resume his inquiries.  He was rowing around the
+curving spot when he saw a number of black objects on the northern
+sands moving in and out of the surf, which he presently made out as
+Indians.  A nearer approach satisfied him that they were wading
+squaws and children gathering seaweed and shells.  He would have
+pushed his acquaintance still nearer, but as his boat rounded the
+point, with one accord they all scuttled away like frightened
+sandpipers.  Pomfrey, on his return, asked his Indian retainer if
+they could swim.  "Oh, yes!"  "As far as the rock?"  "Yes."  Yet
+Pomfrey was not satisfied.  The color of his strange apparition
+remained unaccounted for, and it was not that of an Indian woman.
+
+Trifling events linger long in a monotonous existence, and it was
+nearly a week before Pomfrey gave up his daily telescopic inspection
+of the rock.  Then he fell back upon his books again, and, oddly
+enough, upon another volume of voyages, and so chanced upon the
+account of Sir Francis Drake's occupation of the bay before him.  He
+had always thought it strange that the great adventurer had left no
+trace or sign of his sojourn there; still stranger that he should
+have overlooked the presence of gold, known even to the Indians
+themselves, and have lost a discovery far beyond his wildest dreams
+and a treasure to which the cargoes of those Philippine galleons he
+had more or less successfully intercepted were trifles.  Had the
+restless explorer been content to pace those dreary sands during
+three weeks of inactivity, with no thought of penetrating the inland
+forests behind the range, or of even entering the nobler bay beyond?
+Or was the location of the spot a mere tradition as wild and
+unsupported as the "marvells" of the other volume?  Pomfrey had the
+skepticism of the scientific, inquiring mind.
+
+Two weeks had passed and he was returning from a long climb inland,
+when he stopped to rest in his descent to the sea.  The panorama of
+the shore was before him, from its uttermost limit to the
+lighthouse on the northern point.  The sun was still one hour high,
+it would take him about that time to reach home.  But from this
+coign of vantage he could see--what he had not before observed--
+that what he had always believed was a little cove on the northern
+shore was really the estuary of a small stream which rose near him
+and eventually descended into the ocean at that point.  He could
+also see that beside it was a long low erection of some kind,
+covered with thatched brush, which looked like a "barrow," yet
+showed signs of habitation in the slight smoke that rose from it
+and drifted inland.  It was not far out of his way, and he resolved
+to return in that direction.  On his way down he once or twice
+heard the barking of an Indian dog, and knew that he must be in the
+vicinity of an encampment.  A camp-fire, with the ashes yet warm,
+proved that he was on the trail of one of the nomadic tribes, but
+the declining sun warned him to hasten home to his duty.  When he
+at last reached the estuary, he found that the building beside it
+was little else than a long hut, whose thatched and mud-plastered
+mound-like roof gave it the appearance of a cave.  Its single
+opening and entrance abutted on the water's edge, and the smoke he
+had noticed rolled through this entrance from a smouldering fire
+within.  Pomfrey had little difficulty in recognizing the purpose
+of this strange structure from the accounts he had heard from
+"loggers" of the Indian customs.  The cave was a "sweat-house"--a
+calorific chamber in which the Indians closely shut themselves,
+naked, with a "smudge" or smouldering fire of leaves, until,
+perspiring and half suffocated, they rushed from the entrance and
+threw themselves into the water before it.  The still smouldering
+fire told him that the house had been used that morning, and he
+made no doubt that the Indians were encamped near by.  He would
+have liked to pursue his researches further, but he found he had
+already trespassed upon his remaining time, and he turned somewhat
+abruptly away--so abruptly, in fact, that a figure, which had
+evidently been cautiously following him at a distance, had not time
+to get away.  His heart leaped with astonishment.  It was the woman
+he had seen on the rock.
+
+Although her native dress now only disclosed her head and hands,
+there was no doubt about her color, and it was distinctly white,
+save for the tanning of exposure and a slight red ochre marking on
+her low forehead.  And her hair, long and unkempt as it was, showed
+that he had not erred in his first impression of it.  It was a
+tawny flaxen, with fainter bleachings where the sun had touched it
+most.  Her eyes were of a clear Northern blue.  Her dress, which
+was quite distinctive in that it was neither the cast off finery of
+civilization nor the cheap "government" flannels and calicoes
+usually worn by the Californian tribes, was purely native, and of
+fringed deerskin, and consisted of a long, loose shirt and leggings
+worked with bright feathers and colored shells.  A necklace, also
+of shells and fancy pebbles, hung round her neck.  She seemed to be
+a fully developed woman, in spite of the girlishness of her flowing
+hair, and notwithstanding the shapeless length of her gaberdine-
+like garment, taller than the ordinary squaw.
+
+Pomfrey saw all this in a single flash of perception, for the next
+instant she was gone, disappearing behind the sweat-house.  He ran
+after her, catching sight of her again, half doubled up, in the
+characteristic Indian trot, dodging around rocks and low bushes as
+she fled along the banks of the stream.  But for her distinguishing
+hair, she looked in her flight like an ordinary frightened squaw.
+This, which gave a sense of unmanliness and ridicule to his own
+pursuit of her, with the fact that his hour of duty was drawing
+near and he was still far from the lighthouse, checked him in full
+career, and he turned regretfully away.  He had called after her at
+first, and she had not heeded him.  What he would have said to her
+he did not know.  He hastened home discomfited, even embarrassed--
+yet excited to a degree he had not deemed possible in himself.
+
+During the morning his thoughts were full of her.  Theory after
+theory for her strange existence there he examined and dismissed.
+His first thought, that she was a white woman--some settler's wife--
+masquerading in Indian garb, he abandoned when he saw her moving;
+no white woman could imitate that Indian trot, nor would remember
+to attempt it if she were frightened.  The idea that she was a
+captive white, held by the Indians, became ridiculous when he
+thought of the nearness of civilization and the peaceful, timid
+character of the "digger" tribes.  That she was some unfortunate
+demented creature who had escaped from her keeper and wandered into
+the wilderness, a glance at her clear, frank, intelligent, curious
+eyes had contradicted.  There was but one theory left--the most
+sensible and practical one--that she was the offspring of some
+white man and Indian squaw.  Yet this he found, oddly enough, the
+least palatable to his fancy.  And the few half-breeds he had seen
+were not at all like her.
+
+The next morning he had recourse to his Indian retainer, "Jim."
+With infinite difficulty, protraction, and not a little
+embarrassment, he finally made him understand that he had seen a
+"white squaw" near the "sweat-house," and that he wanted to know
+more about her.  With equal difficulty Jim finally recognized the
+fact of the existence of such a person, but immediately afterwards
+shook his head in an emphatic negation.  With greater difficulty
+and greater mortification Pomfrey presently ascertained that Jim's
+negative referred to a supposed abduction of the woman which he
+understood that his employer seriously contemplated.  But he also
+learned that she was a real Indian, and that there were three or
+four others like her, male and female, in that vicinity; that from
+a "skeena mowitch" (little baby) they were all like that, and that
+their parents were of the same color, but never a white or "waugee"
+man or woman among them; that they were looked upon as a distinct
+and superior caste of Indians, and enjoyed certain privileges with
+the tribe; that they superstitiously avoided white men, of whom
+they had the greatest fear, and that they were protected in this by
+the other Indians; that it was marvelous and almost beyond belief
+that Pomfrey had been able to see one, for no other white man had,
+or was even aware of their existence.
+
+How much of this he actually understood, how much of it was lying
+and due to Jim's belief that he wished to abduct the fair stranger,
+Pomfrey was unable to determine.  There was enough, however, to
+excite his curiosity strongly and occupy his mind to the exclusion
+of his books--save one.  Among his smaller volumes he had found a
+travel book of the "Chinook Jargon," with a lexicon of many of the
+words commonly used by the Northern Pacific tribes.  An hour or
+two's trial with the astonished Jim gave him an increased
+vocabulary and a new occupation.  Each day the incongruous pair
+took a lesson from the lexicon.  In a week Pomfrey felt he would be
+able to accost the mysterious stranger.  But he did not again
+surprise her in any of his rambles, or even in a later visit to the
+sweat-house.  He had learned from Jim that the house was only used
+by the "bucks," or males, and that her appearance there had been
+accidental.  He recalled that he had had the impression that she
+had been stealthily following him, and the recollection gave him a
+pleasure he could not account for.  But an incident presently
+occurred which gave him a new idea of her relations towards him.
+
+The difficulty of making Jim understand had hitherto prevented
+Pomfrey from intrusting him with the care of the lantern; but with
+the aid of the lexicon he had been able to make him comprehend its
+working, and under Pomfrey's personal guidance the Indian had once
+or twice lit the lamp and set its machinery in motion.  It remained
+for him only to test Jim's unaided capacity, in case of his own
+absence or illness.  It happened to be a warm, beautiful sunset,
+when the afternoon fog had for once delayed its invasion of the
+shore-line, that he left the lighthouse to Jim's undivided care,
+and reclining on a sand-dune still warm from the sun, lazily
+watched the result of Jim's first essay.  As the twilight deepened,
+and the first flash of the lantern strove with the dying glories of
+the sun, Pomfrey presently became aware that he was not the only
+watcher.  A little gray figure creeping on all fours suddenly
+glided out of the shadow of another sand-dune and then halted,
+falling back on its knees, gazing fixedly at the growing light.  It
+was the woman he had seen.  She was not a dozen yards away, and in
+her eagerness and utter absorption in the light had evidently
+overlooked him.  He could see her face distinctly, her lips parted
+half in wonder, half with the breathless absorption of a devotee.
+A faint sense of disappointment came over him.  It was not HIM she
+was watching, but the light!  As it swelled out over the darkening
+gray sand she turned as if to watch its effect around her, and
+caught sight of Pomfrey.  With a little startled cry--the first she
+had uttered--she darted away.  He did not follow.  A moment before,
+when he first saw her, an Indian salutation which he had learned
+from Jim had risen to his lips, but in the odd feeling which her
+fascination of the light had caused him he had not spoken.  He
+watched her bent figure scuttling away like some frightened animal,
+with a critical consciousness that she was really scarce human, and
+went back to the lighthouse.  He would not run after her again!
+Yet that evening he continued to think of her, and recalled her
+voice, which struck him now as having been at once melodious and
+childlike, and wished he had at least spoken, and perhaps elicited
+a reply.
+
+He did not, however, haunt the sweat-house near the river again.
+Yet he still continued his lessons with Jim, and in this way,
+perhaps, although quite unpremeditatedly, enlisted a humble ally.
+A week passed in which he had not alluded to her, when one morning,
+as he was returning from a row, Jim met him mysteriously on the
+beach.
+
+"S'pose him come slow, slow," said Jim gravely, airing his newly
+acquired English; "make no noise--plenty catchee Indian maiden."
+The last epithet was the polite lexicon equivalent of squaw.
+
+Pomfrey, not entirely satisfied in his mind, nevertheless softly
+followed the noiselessly gliding Jim to the lighthouse.  Here Jim
+cautiously opened the door, motioning Pomfrey to enter.
+
+The base of the tower was composed of two living rooms, a storeroom
+and oil-tank.  As Pomfrey entered, Jim closed the door softly
+behind him.  The abrupt transition from the glare of the sands and
+sun to the semi-darkness of the storeroom at first prevented him
+from seeing anything, but he was instantly distracted by a
+scurrying flutter and wild beating of the walls, as of a caged
+bird.  In another moment he could make out the fair stranger,
+quivering with excitement, passionately dashing at the barred
+window, the walls, the locked door, and circling around the room in
+her desperate attempt to find an egress, like a captured seagull.
+Amazed, mystified, indignant with Jim, himself, and even his
+unfortunate captive, Pomfrey called to her in Chinook to stop, and
+going to the door, flung it wide open.  She darted by him, raising
+her soft blue eyes for an instant in a swift, sidelong glance of
+half appeal, half-frightened admiration, and rushed out into the
+open.  But here, to his surprise, she did not run away.  On the
+contrary, she drew herself up with a dignity that seemed to
+increase her height, and walked majestically towards Jim, who at
+her unexpected exit had suddenly thrown himself upon the sand, in
+utterly abject terror and supplication.  She approached him slowly,
+with one small hand uplifted in a menacing gesture.  The man
+writhed and squirmed before her.  Then she turned, caught sight of
+Pomfrey standing in the doorway, and walked quietly away.  Amazed,
+yet gratified with this new assertion of herself, Pomfrey
+respectfully, but alas! incautiously, called after her.  In an
+instant, at the sound of his voice, she dropped again into her
+slouching Indian trot and glided away over the sandhills.
+
+Pomfrey did not add any reproof of his own to the discomfiture of
+his Indian retainer.  Neither did he attempt to inquire the secret
+of this savage girl's power over him.  It was evident he had spoken
+truly when he told his master that she was of a superior caste.
+Pomfrey recalled her erect and indignant figure standing over the
+prostrate Jim, and was again perplexed and disappointed at her
+sudden lapse into the timid savage at the sound of his voice.
+Would not this well-meant but miserable trick of Jim's have the
+effect of increasing her unreasoning animal-like distrust of him?
+A few days later brought an unexpected answer to his question.
+
+It was the hottest hour of the day.  He had been fishing off the
+reef of rocks where he had first seen her, and had taken in his
+line and was leisurely pulling for the lighthouse.  Suddenly a
+little musical cry not unlike a bird's struck his ear.  He lay on
+his oars and listened.  It was repeated; but this time it was
+unmistakably recognizable as the voice of the Indian girl, although
+he had heard it but once.  He turned eagerly to the rock, but it
+was empty; he pulled around it, but saw nothing.  He looked towards
+the shore, and swung his boat in that direction, when again the cry
+was repeated with the faintest quaver of a laugh, apparently on the
+level of the sea before him.  For the first time he looked down,
+and there on the crest of a wave not a dozen yards ahead, danced
+the yellow hair and laughing eyes of the girl.  The frightened
+gravity of her look was gone, lost in the flash of her white teeth
+and quivering dimples as her dripping face rose above the sea.
+When their eyes met she dived again, but quickly reappeared on the
+other bow, swimming with lazy, easy strokes, her smiling head
+thrown back over her white shoulder, as if luring him to a race.
+If her smile was a revelation to him, still more so was this first
+touch of feminine coquetry in her attitude.  He pulled eagerly
+towards her; with a few long overhand strokes she kept her
+distance, or, if he approached too near, she dived like a loon,
+coming up astern of him with the same childlike, mocking cry.  In
+vain he pursued her, calling her to stop in her own tongue, and
+laughingly protested; she easily avoided his boat at every turn.
+Suddenly, when they were nearly abreast of the river estuary, she
+rose in the water, and, waving her little hands with a gesture of
+farewell, turned, and curving her back like a dolphin, leaped into
+the surging swell of the estuary bar and was lost in its foam.  It
+would have been madness for him to have attempted to follow in his
+boat, and he saw that she knew it.  He waited until her yellow
+crest appeared in the smoother water of the river, and then rowed
+back.  In his excitement and preoccupation he had quite forgotten
+his long exposure to the sun during his active exercise, and that
+he was poorly equipped for the cold sea-fog which the heat had
+brought in earlier, and which now was quietly obliterating sea and
+shore.  This made his progress slower and more difficult, and by
+the time he had reached the lighthouse he was chilled to the bone.
+
+The next morning he woke with a dull headache and great weariness,
+and it was with considerable difficulty that he could attend to his
+duties.  At nightfall, feeling worse, he determined to transfer the
+care of the light to Jim, but was amazed to find that he had
+disappeared, and what was more ominous, a bottle of spirits which
+Pomfrey had taken from his locker the night before had disappeared
+too.  Like all Indians, Jim's rudimentary knowledge of civilization
+included "fire-water;" he evidently had been tempted, had fallen,
+and was too ashamed or too drunk to face his master.  Pomfrey,
+however, managed to get the light in order and working, and then,
+he scarcely knew how, betook himself to bed in a state of high
+fever.  He turned from side to side racked by pain, with burning
+lips and pulses.  Strange fancies beset him; he had noticed when he
+lit his light that a strange sail was looming off the estuary--a
+place where no sail had ever been seen or should be--and was
+relieved that the lighting of the tower might show the reckless or
+ignorant mariner his real bearings for the "Gate."  At times he had
+heard voices above the familiar song of the surf, and tried to rise
+from his bed, but could not.  Sometimes these voices were strange,
+outlandish, dissonant, in his own language, yet only partly
+intelligible; but through them always rang a single voice, musical,
+familiar, yet of a tongue not his own--hers!  And then, out of his
+delirium--for such it proved afterwards to be--came a strange
+vision.  He thought that he had just lit the light when, from some
+strange and unaccountable reason, it suddenly became dim and defied
+all his efforts to revive it.  To add to his discomfiture, he could
+see quite plainly through the lantern a strange-looking vessel
+standing in from the sea.  She was so clearly out of her course for
+the Gate that he knew she had not seen the light, and his limbs
+trembled with shame and terror as he tried in vain to rekindle the
+dying light.  Yet to his surprise the strange ship kept steadily
+on, passing the dangerous reef of rocks, until she was actually in
+the waters of the bay.  But stranger than all, swimming beneath her
+bows was the golden head and laughing face of the Indian girl, even
+as he had seen it the day before.  A strange revulsion of feeling
+overtook him.  Believing that she was luring the ship to its
+destruction, he ran out on the beach and strove to hail the vessel
+and warn it of its impending doom.  But he could not speak--no
+sound came from his lips.  And now his attention was absorbed by
+the ship itself.  High-bowed and pooped, and curved like the
+crescent moon, it was the strangest craft that he had ever seen.
+Even as he gazed it glided on nearer and nearer, and at last
+beached itself noiselessly on the sands before his own feet.  A
+score of figures as bizarre and outlandish as the ship itself now
+thronged its high forecastle--really a castle in shape and warlike
+purpose--and leaped from its ports.  The common seamen were nearly
+naked to the waist; the officers looked more like soldiers than
+sailors.  What struck him more strangely was that they were one and
+all seemingly unconscious of the existence of the lighthouse,
+sauntering up and down carelessly, as if on some uninhabited
+strand, and even talking--so far as he could understand their old
+bookish dialect--as if in some hitherto undiscovered land.  Their
+ignorance of the geography of the whole coast, and even of the sea
+from which they came, actually aroused his critical indignation;
+their coarse and stupid allusions to the fair Indian swimmer as the
+"mermaid" that they had seen upon their bow made him more furious
+still.  Yet he was helpless to express his contemptuous anger, or
+even make them conscious of his presence.  Then an interval of
+incoherency and utter blankness followed.  When he again took up
+the thread of his fancy the ship seemed to be lying on her beam
+ends on the sand; the strange arrangement of her upper deck and
+top-hamper, more like a dwelling than any ship he had ever seen,
+was fully exposed to view, while the seamen seemed to be at work
+with the rudest contrivances, calking and scraping her barnacled
+sides.  He saw that phantom crew, when not working, at wassail and
+festivity; heard the shouts of drunken roisterers; saw the placing
+of a guard around some of the most uncontrollable, and later
+detected the stealthy escape of half a dozen sailors inland, amidst
+the fruitless volley fired upon them from obsolete blunderbusses.
+Then his strange vision transported him inland, where he saw these
+seamen following some Indian women.  Suddenly one of them turned
+and ran frenziedly towards him as if seeking succor, closely
+pursued by one of the sailors.  Pomfrey strove to reach her,
+struggled violently with the fearful apathy that seemed to hold his
+limbs, and then, as she uttered at last a little musical cry, burst
+his bonds and--awoke!
+
+As consciousness slowly struggled back to him, he could see the
+bare wooden-like walls of his sleeping-room, the locker, the one
+window bright with sunlight, the open door of the tank-room, and
+the little staircase to the tower.  There was a strange smoky and
+herb-like smell in the room.  He made an effort to rise, but as he
+did so a small sunburnt hand was laid gently yet restrainingly upon
+his shoulder, and he heard the same musical cry as before, but this
+time modulated to a girlish laugh.  He raised his head faintly.
+Half squatting, half kneeling by his bed was the yellow-haired
+stranger.
+
+With the recollection of his vision still perplexing him, he said
+in a weak voice, "Who are you?"
+
+Her blue eyes met his own with quick intelligence and no trace of
+her former timidity.  A soft, caressing light had taken its place.
+Pointing with her finger to her breast in a childlike gesture, she
+said, "Me--Olooya."
+
+"Olooya!"  He remembered suddenly that Jim had always used that
+word in speaking of her, but until then he had always thought it
+was some Indian term for her distinct class.
+
+"Olooya," he repeated.  Then, with difficulty attempting to use her
+own tongue, he asked, "When did you come here?"
+
+"Last night," she answered in the same tongue.  "There was no
+witch-fire there," she continued, pointing to the tower; "when it
+came not, Olooya came!  Olooya found white chief sick and alone.
+White chief could not get up!  Olooya lit witch-fire for him."
+
+"You?" he repeated in astonishment.  "I lit it myself."
+
+She looked at him pityingly, as if still recognizing his delirium,
+and shook her head.  "White chief was sick--how can know?  Olooya
+made witch-fire."
+
+He cast a hurried glance at his watch hanging on the wall beside
+him.  It had RUN DOWN, although he had wound it the last thing
+before going to bed.  He had evidently been lying there helpless
+beyond the twenty-four hours!
+
+He groaned and turned to rise, but she gently forced him down
+again, and gave him some herbal infusion, in which he recognized
+the taste of the Yerba Buena vine which grew by the river.  Then
+she made him comprehend in her own tongue that Jim had been
+decoyed, while drunk, aboard a certain schooner lying off the shore
+at a spot where she had seen some men digging in the sands.  She
+had not gone there, for she was afraid of the bad men, and a slight
+return of her former terror came into her changeful eyes.  She knew
+how to light the witch-light; she reminded him she had been in the
+tower before.
+
+"You have saved my light, and perhaps my life," he said weakly,
+taking her hand.
+
+Possibly she did not understand him, for her only answer was a
+vague smile.  But the next instant she started up, listening
+intently, and then with a frightened cry drew away her hand and
+suddenly dashed out of the building.  In the midst of his amazement
+the door was darkened by a figure--a stranger dressed like an
+ordinary miner.  Pausing a moment to look after the flying Olooya,
+the man turned and glanced around the room, and then with a coarse,
+familiar smile approached Pomfrey.
+
+"Hope I ain't disturbin' ye, but I allowed I'd just be neighborly
+and drop in--seein' as this is gov'nment property, and me and my
+pardners, as American citizens and tax-payers, helps to support it.
+We're coastin' from Trinidad down here and prospectin' along the
+beach for gold in the sand.  Ye seem to hev a mighty soft berth of
+it here--nothing to do--and lots of purty half-breeds hangin'
+round!"
+
+The man's effrontery was too much for Pomfrey's self-control,
+weakened by illness.  "It IS government property," he answered
+hotly, "and you have no more right to intrude upon it than you have
+to decoy away my servant, a government employee, during my illness,
+and jeopardize that property."
+
+The unexpectedness of this attack, and the sudden revelation of the
+fact of Pomfrey's illness in his flushed face and hollow voice
+apparently frightened and confused the stranger.  He stammered a
+surly excuse, backed out of the doorway, and disappeared.  An hour
+later Jim appeared, crestfallen, remorseful, and extravagantly
+penitent.  Pomfrey was too weak for reproaches or inquiry, and he
+was thinking only of Olooya.
+
+She did not return.  His recovery in that keen air, aided, as he
+sometimes thought, by the herbs she had given him, was almost as
+rapid as his illness.  The miners did not again intrude upon the
+lighthouse nor trouble his seclusion.  When he was able to sun
+himself on the sands, he could see them in the distance at work on
+the beach.  He reflected that she would not come back while they
+were there, and was reconciled.  But one morning Jim appeared,
+awkward and embarrassed, leading another Indian, whom he introduced
+as Olooya's brother.  Pomfrey's suspicions were aroused.  Except
+that the stranger had something of the girl's superiority of
+manner, there was no likeness whatever to his fair-haired
+acquaintance.  But a fury of indignation was added to his
+suspicions when he learned the amazing purport of their visit.  It
+was nothing less than an offer from the alleged brother to SELL his
+sister to Pomfrey for forty dollars and a jug of whiskey!
+Unfortunately, Pomfrey's temper once more got the better of his
+judgment.  With a scathing exposition of the laws under which the
+Indian and white man equally lived, and the legal punishment of
+kidnaping, he swept what he believed was the impostor from his
+presence.  He was scarcely alone again before he remembered that
+his imprudence might affect the girl's future access to him, but it
+was too late now.
+
+Still he clung to the belief that he should see her when the
+prospectors had departed, and he hailed with delight the breaking
+up of the camp near the "sweat-house" and the disappearance of the
+schooner.  It seemed that their gold-seeking was unsuccessful; but
+Pomfrey was struck, on visiting the locality, to find that in their
+excavations in the sand at the estuary they had uncovered the
+decaying timbers of a ship's small boat of some ancient and
+obsolete construction.  This made him think of his strange dream,
+with a vague sense of warning which he could not shake off, and on
+his return to the lighthouse he took from his shelves a copy of the
+old voyages to see how far his fancy had been affected by his
+reading.  In the account of Drake's visit to the coast he found a
+footnote which he had overlooked before, and which ran as follows:
+"The Admiral seems to have lost several of his crew by desertion,
+who were supposed to have perished miserably by starvation in the
+inhospitable interior or by the hands of savages.  But later
+voyagers have suggested that the deserters married Indian wives,
+and there is a legend that a hundred years later a singular race of
+half-breeds, bearing unmistakable Anglo-Saxon characteristics, was
+found in that locality."  Pomfrey fell into a reverie of strange
+hypotheses and fancies.  He resolved that, when he again saw
+Olooya, he would question her; her terror of these men might be
+simply racial or some hereditary transmission.
+
+But his intention was never fulfilled.  For when days and weeks had
+elapsed, and he had vainly haunted the river estuary and the rocky
+reef before the lighthouse without a sign of her, he overcame his
+pride sufficiently to question Jim.  The man looked at him with
+dull astonishment.
+
+"Olooya gone," he said.
+
+"Gone!--where?"
+
+The Indian made a gesture to seaward which seemed to encompass the
+whole Pacific.
+
+"How?  With whom?" repeated his angry yet half-frightened master.
+
+"With white man in ship.  You say YOU no want Olooya--forty dollars
+too much.  White man give fifty dollars--takee Olooya all same."
+
+
+
+UNDER THE EAVES
+
+
+The assistant editor of the San Francisco "Daily Informer" was
+going home.  So much of his time was spent in the office of the
+"Informer" that no one ever cared to know where he passed those six
+hours of sleep which presumably suggested a domicile.  His business
+appointments outside the office were generally kept at the
+restaurant where he breakfasted and dined, or of evenings in the
+lobbies of theatres or the anterooms of public meetings.  Yet he
+had a home and an interval of seclusion of which he was jealously
+mindful, and it was to this he was going to-night at his usual
+hour.
+
+His room was in a new building on one of the larger and busier
+thoroughfares.  The lower floor was occupied by a bank, but as it
+was closed before he came home, and not yet opened when he left, it
+did not disturb his domestic sensibilities.  The same may be said
+of the next floor, which was devoted to stockbrokers' and companies
+offices, and was equally tomb-like and silent when he passed; the
+floor above that was a desert of empty rooms, which echoed to his
+footsteps night and morning, with here and there an oasis in the
+green sign of a mining secretary's office, with, however, the
+desolating announcement that it would only be "open for transfers
+from two to four on Saturdays."  The top floor had been frankly
+abandoned in an unfinished state by the builder, whose ambition had
+"o'erleaped itself" in that sanguine era of the city's growth.
+There was a smell of plaster and the first coat of paint about it
+still, but the whole front of the building was occupied by a long
+room with odd "bull's-eye" windows looking out through the heavy
+ornamentations of the cornice over the adjacent roofs.
+
+It had been originally intended for a club-room, but after the ill
+fortune which attended the letting of the floor below, and possibly
+because the earthquake-fearing San Franciscans had their doubts of
+successful hilarity at the top of so tall a building, it remained
+unfinished, with the two smaller rooms at its side.  Its incomplete
+and lonely grandeur had once struck the editor during a visit of
+inspection, and the landlord, whom he knew, had offered to make it
+habitable for him at a nominal rent.  It had a lavatory with a
+marble basin and a tap of cold water.  The offer was a novel one,
+but he accepted it, and fitted up the apartment with some cheap
+second-hand furniture, quite inconsistent with the carved mantels
+and decorations, and made a fair sitting-room and bedroom of it.
+Here, on a Sunday, when its stillness was intensified, and even a
+passing footstep on the pavement fifty feet below was quite
+startling, he would sit and work by one of the quaint open windows.
+In the rainy season, through the filmed panes he sometimes caught a
+glimpse of the distant, white-capped bay, but never of the street
+below him.
+
+The lights were out, but, groping his way up to the first landing,
+he took from a cup-boarded niche in the wall his candlestick and
+matches and continued the ascent to his room.  The humble
+candlelight flickered on the ostentatious gold letters displayed on
+the ground-glass doors of opulent companies which he knew were
+famous, and rooms where millionaires met in secret conclave, but
+the contrast awakened only his sense of humor.  Yet he was always
+relieved after he had reached his own floor.  Possibly its
+incompleteness and inchoate condition made it seem less lonely than
+the desolation of the finished and furnished rooms below, and it
+was only this recollection of past human occupancy that was
+depressing.
+
+He opened his door, lit the solitary gas jet that only half
+illuminated the long room, and, it being already past midnight,
+began to undress himself.  This process presently brought him to
+that corner of his room where his bed stood, when he suddenly
+stopped, and his sleepy yawn changed to a gape of surprise.  For,
+lying in the bed, its head upon the pillow, and its rigid arms
+accurately stretched down over the turned-back sheet, was a child's
+doll!  It was a small doll--a banged and battered doll, that had
+seen service, but it had evidently been "tucked in" with maternal
+tenderness, and lay there with its staring eyes turned to the
+ceiling, the very genius of insomnia!
+
+His first start of surprise was followed by a natural resentment of
+what might have been an impertinent intrusion on his privacy by
+some practical-joking adult, for he knew there was no child in the
+house.
+
+His room was kept in order by the wife of the night watchman
+employed by the bank, and no one else had a right of access to it.
+But the woman might have brought a child there and not noticed its
+disposal of its plaything.  He smiled.  It might have been worse!
+It might have been a real baby!
+
+The idea tickled him with a promise of future "copy"--of a story
+with farcical complications, or even a dramatic ending, in which
+the baby, adopted by him, should turn out to be somebody's stolen
+offspring.  He lifted the little image that had suggested these
+fancies, carefully laid it on his table, went to bed, and presently
+forgot it all in slumber.
+
+In the morning his good-humor and interest in it revived to the
+extent of writing on a slip of paper, "Good-morning!  Thank you--
+I've slept very well," putting the slip in the doll's jointed arms,
+and leaving it in a sitting posture outside his door when he left
+his room.  When he returned late at night it was gone.
+
+But it so chanced that, a few days later, owing to press of work on
+the "Informer," he was obliged to forego his usual Sunday holiday
+out of town, and that morning found him, while the bells were
+ringing for church, in his room with a pile of manuscript and proof
+before him.  For these were troublous days in San Francisco; the
+great Vigilance Committee of '56 was in session, and the offices of
+the daily papers were thronged with eager seekers of news.  Such
+affairs, indeed, were not in the functions of the assistant editor,
+nor exactly to his taste; he was neither a partisan of the so-
+called Law and Order Party, nor yet an enthusiastic admirer of the
+citizen Revolutionists known as the Vigilance Committee, both
+extremes being incompatible with his habits of thought.
+Consequently he was not displeased at this opportunity of doing his
+work away from the office and the "heady talk" of controversy.
+
+He worked on until the bells ceased and a more than Sabbath
+stillness fell upon the streets.  So quiet was it that once or
+twice the conversation of passing pedestrians floated up and into
+his window, as of voices at his elbow.
+
+Presently he heard the sound of a child's voice singing in subdued
+tone, as if fearful of being overheard.  This time he laid aside
+his pen--it certainly was no delusion!  The sound did not come from
+the open window, but from some space on a level with his room.  Yet
+there was no contiguous building as high.
+
+He rose and tried to open his door softly, but it creaked, and the
+singing instantly ceased.  There was nothing before him but the
+bare, empty hall, with its lathed and plastered partitions, and the
+two smaller rooms, unfinished like his own, on either side of him.
+Their doors were shut; the one at his right hand was locked, the
+other yielded to his touch.
+
+For the first moment he saw only the bare walls of the apparently
+empty room.  But a second glance showed him two children--a boy of
+seven and a girl of five--sitting on the floor, which was further
+littered by a mattress, pillow, and blanket.  There was a cheap
+tray on one of the trunks containing two soiled plates and cups and
+fragments of a meal.  But there was neither a chair nor table nor
+any other article of furniture in the room.  Yet he was struck by
+the fact that, in spite of this poverty of surrounding, the
+children were decently dressed, and the few scattered pieces of
+luggage in quality bespoke a superior condition.
+
+The children met his astonished stare with an equal wonder and, he
+fancied, some little fright.  The boy's lips trembled a little as
+he said apologetically--
+
+"I told Jinny not to sing.  But she didn't make MUCH noise."
+
+"Mamma said I could play with my dolly.  But I fordot and singed,"
+said the little girl penitently.
+
+"Where's your mamma?" asked the young man.  The fancy of their
+being near relatives of the night watchman had vanished at the
+sound of their voices.
+
+"Dorn out," said the girl.
+
+"When did she go out?"
+
+"Last night."
+
+"Were you all alone here last night?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+Perhaps they saw the look of indignation and pity in the editor's
+face, for the boy said quickly--
+
+"She don't go out EVERY night; last night she went to"--
+
+He stopped suddenly, and both children looked at each other with a
+half laugh and half cry, and then repeated in hopeless unison,
+"She's dorn out."
+
+"When is she coming back again?"
+
+"To-night.  But we won't make any more noise."
+
+"Who brings you your food?" continued the editor, looking at the
+tray.
+
+"Woberts."
+
+Evidently Roberts, the night watchman!  The editor felt relieved;
+here was a clue to some explanation.  He instantly sat down on the
+floor between them.
+
+"So that was the dolly that slept in my bed," he said gayly, taking
+it up.
+
+God gives helplessness a wonderful intuition of its friends.  The
+children looked up at the face of their grown-up companion,
+giggled, and then burst into a shrill fit of laughter.  He felt
+that it was the first one they had really indulged in for many
+days.  Nevertheless he said, "Hush!" confidentially; why he
+scarcely knew, except to intimate to them that he had taken in
+their situation thoroughly.  "Make no noise," he added softly, "and
+come into my big room."
+
+They hung back, however, with frightened yet longing eyes.  "Mamma
+said we mussent do out of this room," said the girl.
+
+"Not ALONE," responded the editor quickly, "but with ME, you know;
+that's different."
+
+The logic sufficed them, poor as it was.  Their hands slid quite
+naturally into his.  But at the door he stopped, and motioning to
+the locked door of the other room, asked:--
+
+"And is that mamma's room, too?"
+
+Their little hands slipped from his and they were silent.
+Presently the boy, as if acted upon by some occult influence of the
+girl, said in a half whisper, "Yes."
+
+The editor did not question further, but led them into his room.
+Here they lost the slight restraint they had shown, and began,
+child fashion, to become questioners themselves.
+
+In a few moments they were in possession of his name, his business,
+the kind of restaurant he frequented, where he went when he left
+his room all day, the meaning of those funny slips of paper, and
+the written manuscripts, and why he was so quiet.  But any attempt
+of his to retaliate by counter questions was met by a sudden
+reserve so unchildlike and painful to him--as it was evidently to
+themselves--that he desisted, wisely postponing his inquiries until
+he could meet Roberts.
+
+He was glad when they fell to playing games with each other quite
+naturally, yet not entirely forgetting his propinquity, as their
+occasional furtive glances at his movements showed him.  He, too,
+became presently absorbed in his work, until it was finished and it
+was time for him to take it to the office of the "Informer."  The
+wild idea seized him of also taking the children afterwards for a
+holiday to the Mission Dolores, but he prudently remembered that
+even this negligent mother of theirs might have some rights over
+her offspring that he was bound to respect.
+
+He took leave of them gayly, suggesting that the doll be replaced
+in his bed while he was away, and even assisted in "tucking it up."
+But during the afternoon the recollection of these lonely
+playfellows in the deserted house obtruded itself upon his work and
+the talk of his companions.  Sunday night was his busiest night,
+and he could not, therefore, hope to get away in time to assure
+himself of their mother's return.
+
+It was nearly two in the morning when he returned to his room.  He
+paused for a moment on the threshold to listen for any sound from
+the adjoining room.  But all was hushed.
+
+His intention of speaking to the night watchman was, however,
+anticipated the next morning by that guardian himself.  A tap upon
+his door while he was dressing caused him to open it somewhat
+hurriedly in the hope of finding one of the children there, but he
+met only the embarrassed face of Roberts.  Inviting him into the
+room, the editor continued dressing.  Carefully closing the door
+behind him, the man began, with evident hesitation,--
+
+"I oughter hev told ye suthin' afore, Mr. Breeze; but I kalkilated,
+so to speak, that you wouldn't be bothered one way or another, and
+so ye hadn't any call to know that there was folks here"--
+
+"Oh, I see," interrupted Breeze cheerfully; "you're speaking of the
+family next door--the landlord's new tenants."
+
+"They ain't exactly THAT," said Roberts, still with embarrassment.
+"The fact is--ye see--the thing points THIS way: they ain't no
+right to be here, and it's as much as my place is worth if it leaks
+out that they are."
+
+Mr. Breeze suspended his collar-buttoning, and stared at Roberts.
+
+"You see, sir, they're mighty poor, and they've nowhere else to go--
+and I reckoned to take 'em in here for a spell and say nothing
+about it."
+
+"But the landlord wouldn't object, surely?  I'll speak to him
+myself," said Breeze impulsively.
+
+"Oh, no; don't!" said Roberts in alarm; "he wouldn't like it.  You
+see, Mr. Breeze, it's just this way: the mother, she's a born lady,
+and did my old woman a good turn in old times when the family was
+rich; but now she's obliged--just to support herself, you know--to
+take up with what she gets, and she acts in the bally in the
+theatre, you see, and hez to come in late o' nights.  In them cheap
+boarding-houses, you know, the folks looks down upon her for that,
+and won't hev her, and in the cheap hotels the men are--you know--a
+darned sight wuss, and that's how I took her and her kids in here,
+where no one knows 'em."
+
+"I see," nodded the editor sympathetically; "and very good it was
+of you, my man."
+
+Roberts looked still more confused, and stammered with a forced
+laugh, "And--so--I'm just keeping her on here, unbeknownst, until
+her husband gets"--  He stopped suddenly.
+
+"So she has a husband living, then?" said Breeze in surprise.
+
+"In the mines, yes--in the mines!" repeated Roberts with a
+monotonous deliberation quite distinct from his previous
+hesitation, "and she's only waitin' until he gets money enough--
+to--to take her away."  He stopped and breathed hard.
+
+"But couldn't you--couldn't WE--get her some more furniture?
+There's nothing in that room, you know, not a chair or table; and
+unless the other room is better furnished"--
+
+"Eh?  Oh, yes!" said Roberts quickly, yet still with a certain
+embarrassment; "of course THAT'S better furnished, and she's quite
+satisfied, and so are the kids, with anything.  And now, Mr.
+Breeze, I reckon you'll say nothin' o' this, and you'll never go
+back on me?"
+
+"My dear Mr. Roberts," said the editor gravely, "from this moment I
+am not only blind, but deaf to the fact that ANYBODY occupies this
+floor but myself."
+
+"I knew you was white all through, Mr. Breeze," said the night
+watchman, grasping the young man's hand with a grip of iron, "and I
+telled my wife so.  I sez, 'Jest you let me tell him EVERYTHIN','
+but she"--  He stopped again and became confused.
+
+"And she was quite right, I dare say," said Breeze, with a laugh;
+"and I do not want to know anything.  And that poor woman must
+never know that I ever knew anything, either.  But you may tell
+your wife that when the mother is away she can bring the little
+ones in here whenever she likes."
+
+"Thank ye--thank ye, sir!--and I'll just run down and tell the old
+woman now, and won't intrude upon your dressin' any longer."
+
+He grasped Breeze's hand again, went out and closed the door behind
+him.  It might have been the editor's fancy, but he thought there
+was a certain interval of silence outside the door before the night
+watchman's heavy tread was heard along the hall again.
+
+For several evenings after this Mr. Breeze paid some attention to
+the ballet in his usual round of the theatres.  Although he had
+never seen his fair neighbor, he had a vague idea that he might
+recognize her through some likeness to her children.  But in vain.
+In the opulent charms of certain nymphs, and in the angular
+austerities of others, he failed equally to discern any of those
+refinements which might have distinguished the "born lady" of
+Roberts's story, or which he himself had seen in her children.
+
+These he did not meet again during the week, as his duties kept him
+late at the office; but from certain signs in his room he knew that
+Mrs. Roberts had availed herself of his invitation to bring them in
+with her, and he regularly found "Jinny's" doll tucked up in his
+bed at night, and he as regularly disposed of it outside his door
+in the morning, with a few sweets, like an offering, tucked under
+its rigid arms.
+
+But another circumstance touched him more delicately; his room was
+arranged with greater care than before, and with an occasional
+exhibition of taste that certainly had not distinguished Mrs.
+Roberts's previous ministrations.  One evening on his return he
+found a small bouquet of inexpensive flowers in a glass on his
+writing-table.  He loved flowers too well not to detect that they
+were quite fresh, and could have been put there only an hour or two
+before he arrived.
+
+The next evening was Saturday, and, as he usually left the office
+earlier on that day, it occurred to him, as he walked home, that it
+was about the time his fair neighbor would be leaving the theatre,
+and that it was possible he might meet her.
+
+At the front door, however, he found Roberts, who returned his
+greeting with a certain awkwardness which struck him as singular.
+When he reached the niche on the landing he found his candle was
+gone, but he proceeded on, groping his way up the stairs, with an
+odd conviction that both these incidents pointed to the fact that
+the woman had just returned or was expected.
+
+He had also a strange feeling--which may have been owing to the
+darkness--that some one was hidden on the landing or on the stairs
+where he would pass.  This was further accented by a faint odor of
+patchouli, as, with his hand on the rail, he turned the corner of
+the third landing, and he was convinced that if he had put out his
+other hand it would have come in contact with his mysterious
+neighbor.  But a certain instinct of respect for her secret, which
+she was even now guarding in the darkness, withheld him, and he
+passed on quickly to his own floor.
+
+Here it was lighter; the moon shot a beam of silver across the
+passage from an unshuttered window as he passed.  He reached his
+room door, entered, but instead of lighting the gas and shutting
+the door, stood with it half open, listening in the darkness.
+
+His suspicions were verified; there was a slight rustling noise,
+and a figure which had evidently followed him appeared at the end
+of the passage.  It was that of a woman habited in a grayish dress
+and cloak of the same color; but as she passed across the band of
+moonlight he had a distinct view of her anxious, worried face.  It
+was a face no longer young; it was worn with illness, but still
+replete with a delicacy and faded beauty so inconsistent with her
+avowed profession that he felt a sudden pang of pain and doubt.
+The next moment she had vanished in her room, leaving the same
+faint perfume behind her.  He closed his door softly, lit the gas,
+and sat down in a state of perplexity.  That swift glimpse of her
+face and figure had made her story improbable to the point of
+absurdity, or possibly to the extreme of pathos!
+
+It seemed incredible that a woman of that quality should be forced
+to accept a vocation at once so low, so distasteful, and so
+unremunerative.  With her evident antecedents, had she no friends
+but this common Western night watchman of a bank?  Had Roberts
+deceived him?  Was his whole story a fabrication, and was there
+some complicity between the two?  What was it?  He knit his brows.
+
+Mr. Breeze had that overpowering knowledge of the world which only
+comes with the experience of twenty-five, and to this he superadded
+the active imagination of a newspaper man.  A plot to rob the bank?
+These mysterious absences, that luggage which he doubted not was
+empty and intended for spoil!  But why encumber herself with the
+two children?  Here his common sense and instinct of the ludicrous
+returned and he smiled.
+
+But he could not believe in the ballet dancer!  He wondered,
+indeed, how any manager could have accepted the grim satire of that
+pale, worried face among the fairies, that sad refinement amid
+their vacant smiles and rouged checks.  And then, growing sad
+again, he comforted himself with the reflection that at least the
+children were not alone that night, and so went to sleep.
+
+For some days he had no further meeting with his neighbors.  The
+disturbed state of the city--for the Vigilance Committee were still
+in session--obliged the daily press to issue "extras," and his work
+at the office increased.
+
+It was not until Sunday again that he was able to be at home.
+Needless to say that his solitary little companions were duly
+installed there, while he sat at work with his proofs on the table
+before him.
+
+The stillness of the empty house was only broken by the habitually
+subdued voices of the children at their play, when suddenly the
+harsh stroke of a distant bell came through the open window.  But
+it was no Sabbath bell, and Mr. Breeze knew it.  It was the tocsin
+of the Vigilance Committee, summoning the members to assemble at
+their quarters for a capture, a trial, or an execution of some
+wrongdoer.  To him it was equally a summons to the office--to
+distasteful news and excitement.
+
+He threw his proofs aside in disgust, laid down his pen, seized his
+hat, and paused a moment to look round for his playmates.  But they
+were gone!  He went into the hall, looked into the open door of
+their room, but they were not there.  He tried the door of the
+second room, but it was locked.
+
+Satisfied that they had stolen downstairs in their eagerness to
+know what the bell meant, he hurried down also, met Roberts in the
+passage,--a singularly unusual circumstance at that hour,--called
+to him to look after the runaways, and hurried to his office.
+
+Here he found the staff collected, excitedly discussing the news.
+One of the Vigilance Committee prisoners, a notorious bully and
+ruffian, detained as a criminal and a witness, had committed
+suicide in his cell.  Fortunately this was all reportorial work,
+and the services of Mr. Breeze were not required.  He hurried back,
+relieved, to his room.
+
+When he reached his landing, breathlessly, he heard the same quick
+rustle he had heard that memorable evening, and was quite satisfied
+that he saw a figure glide swiftly out of the open door of his
+room.  It was no doubt his neighbor, who had been seeking her
+children, and as he heard their voices as he passed, his uneasiness
+and suspicions were removed.
+
+He sat down again to his scattered papers and proofs, finished his
+work, and took it to the office on his way to dinner.  He returned
+early, in the hope that he might meet his neighbor again, and had
+quite settled his mind that he was justified in offering a civil
+"Good-evening" to her, in spite of his previous respectful ignoring
+of her presence.  She must certainly have become aware by this time
+of his attention to her children and consideration for herself, and
+could not mistake his motives.  But he was disappointed, although
+he came up softly; he found the floor in darkness and silence on
+his return, and he had to be content with lighting his gas and
+settling down to work again.
+
+A near church clock had struck ten when he was startled by the
+sound of an unfamiliar and uncertain step in the hall, followed by
+a tap at his door.  Breeze jumped to his feet, and was astonished
+to find Dick, the "printer's devil," standing on the threshold with
+a roll of proofs in his hand.
+
+"How did you get here?" he asked testily.
+
+"They told me at the restaurant they reckoned you lived yere, and
+the night watchman at the door headed me straight up.  When he knew
+whar I kem from he wanted to know what the news was, but I told him
+he'd better buy an extra and see."
+
+"Well, what did you come for?" said the editor impatiently.
+
+"The foreman said it was important, and he wanted to know afore he
+went to press ef this yer correction was YOURS?"
+
+He went to the table, unrolled the proofs, and, taking out the
+slip, pointed to a marked paragraph.  "The foreman says the
+reporter who brought the news allows he got it straight first-hand!
+But ef you've corrected it, he reckons you know best."
+
+Breeze saw at a glance that the paragraph alluded to was not of his
+own writing, but one of several news items furnished by reporters.
+These had been "set up" in the same "galley," and consequently
+appeared in the same proof-slip.  He was about to say curtly that
+neither the matter nor the correction was his, when something odd
+in the correction of the item struck him.  It read as follows:--
+
+"It appears that the notorious 'Jim Bodine,' who is in hiding and
+badly wanted by the Vigilance Committee, has been tempted lately
+into a renewal of his old recklessness.  He was seen in Sacramento
+Street the other night by two separate witnesses, one of whom
+followed him, but he escaped in some friendly doorway."
+
+The words "in Sacramento Street" were stricken out and replaced by
+the correction "on the Saucelito shore," and the words "friendly
+doorway " were changed to "friendly dinghy."  The correction was
+not his, nor the handwriting, which was further disguised by being
+an imitation of print.  A strange idea seized him.
+
+"Has any one seen these proofs since I left them at the office?"
+
+"No, only the foreman, sir."
+
+He remembered that he had left the proofs lying openly on his table
+when he was called to the office at the stroke of the alarm bell;
+he remembered the figure he saw gliding from his room on his
+return.  She had been there alone with the proofs; she only could
+have tampered with them.
+
+The evident object of the correction was to direct the public
+attention from Sacramento Street to Saucelito, as the probable
+whereabouts of this "Jimmy Bodine."  The street below was
+Sacramento Street, the "friendly doorway" might have been their
+own.
+
+That she had some knowledge of this Bodine was not more improbable
+than the ballet story.  Her strange absences, the mystery
+surrounding her, all seemed to testify that she had some
+connection--perhaps only an innocent one--with these desperate
+people whom the Vigilance Committee were hunting down.  Her attempt
+to save the man was, after all, no more illegal than their attempt
+to capture him.  True, she might have trusted him, Breeze, without
+this tampering with his papers; yet perhaps she thought he was
+certain to discover it--and it was only a silent appeal to his
+mercy.  The corrections were ingenious and natural--it was the act
+of an intelligent, quick-witted woman.
+
+Mr. Breeze was prompt in acting upon his intuition, whether right
+or wrong.  He took up his pen, wrote on the margin of the proof,
+"Print as corrected," said to the boy carelessly, "The corrections
+are all right," and dismissed him quickly.
+
+The corrected paragraph which appeared in the "Informer" the next
+morning seemed to attract little public attention, the greater
+excitement being the suicide of the imprisoned bully and the effect
+it might have upon the prosecution of other suspected parties,
+against whom the dead man had been expected to bear witness.
+
+Mr. Breeze was unable to obtain any information regarding the
+desperado Bodine's associates and relations; his correction of the
+paragraph had made the other members of the staff believe he had
+secret and superior information regarding the fugitive, and he thus
+was estopped from asking questions.  But he felt himself justified
+now in demanding fuller information from Roberts at the earliest
+opportunity.
+
+For this purpose he came home earlier that night, hoping to find
+the night watchman still on his first beat in the lower halls.  But
+he was disappointed.  He was amazed, however, on reaching his own
+landing, to find the passage piled with new luggage, some of that
+ruder type of rolled blanket and knapsack known as a "miner's kit."
+He was still more surprised to hear men's voices and the sound of
+laughter proceeding from the room that was always locked.  A sudden
+sense of uneasiness and disgust, he knew not why, came over him.
+
+He passed quickly into his room, shut the door sharply, and lit the
+gas.  But he presently heard the door of the locked room open, a
+man's voice, slightly elevated by liquor and opposition, saying, "I
+know what's due from one gen'leman to 'nother"--a querulous,
+objecting voice saying, "Hole on! not now," and a fainter feminine
+protest, all of which were followed by a rap on his door.
+
+Breeze opened it to two strangers, one of whom lurched forward
+unsteadily with outstretched hand.  He had a handsome face and
+figure, and a certain consciousness of it even in the abandon of
+liquor; he had an aggressive treacherousness of eye which his
+potations had not subdued.  He grasped Breeze's hand tightly, but
+dropped it the next moment perfunctorily as he glanced round the
+room.
+
+"I told them I was bound to come in," he said, without looking at
+Breeze, "and say 'Howdy!' to the man that's bin a pal to my women
+folks and the kids--and acted white all through!  I said to Mame,
+'I reckon HE knows who I am, and that I kin be high-toned to them
+that's high-toned; kin return shake for shake and shot for shot!'
+Aye! that's me!  So I was bound to come in like a gen'leman, sir,
+and here I am!"
+
+He threw himself in an unproffered chair and stared at Breeze.
+
+"I'm afraid," said Breeze dryly, "that, nevertheless, I never knew
+who you were, and that even now I am ignorant whom I am addressing."
+
+"That's just it," said the second man, with a querulous protest,
+which did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his
+friend; "that's what I'm allus telling Jim.  'Jim,' I says, 'how is
+folks to know you're the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped
+three o' them Mariposa Vigilants?  They didn't see you do it!  They
+just look at your fancy style and them mustaches of yours, and
+allow ye might be death on the girls, but they don't know ye!  An'
+this man yere--he's a scribe in them papers--writes what the boss
+editor tells him, and lives up yere on the roof, 'longside yer wife
+and the children--what's he knowin' about YOU?'  Jim's all right
+enough," he continued, in easy confidence to Breeze, "but he's too
+fresh 'bout himself."
+
+Mr. James Bodine accepted this tribute and criticism of his
+henchman with a complacent laugh, which was not, however, without a
+certain contempt for the speaker and the man spoken to.  His bold,
+selfish eyes wandered round the room as if in search of some other
+amusement than his companions offered.
+
+"I reckon this is the room which that hound of a landlord, Rakes,
+allowed he'd fix up for our poker club--the club that Dan Simmons
+and me got up, with a few other sports.  It was to be a slap-up
+affair, right under the roof, where there was no chance of the
+police raiding us.  But the cur weakened when the Vigilants started
+out to make war on any game a gen'leman might hev that wasn't in
+their gummy-bag, salt pork trade.  Well, it's gettin' a long time
+between drinks, gen'lemen, ain't it?"  He looked round him
+significantly.
+
+Only the thought of the woman and her children in the next room,
+and the shame that he believed she was enduring, enabled Breeze to
+keep his temper or even a show of civility.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said quietly, "that you'll find very little here
+to remind you of the club--not even the whiskey; for I use the room
+only as a bedroom, and as I am a workingman, and come in late and
+go out early, I have never found it available for hospitality, even
+to my intimate friends.  I am very glad, however, that the little
+leisure I have had in it has enabled me to make the floor less
+lonely for your children."
+
+Mr. Bodine got up with an affected yawn, turned an embarrassed yet
+darkening eye on Breeze, and lunged unsteadily to the door.  "And
+as I only happened in to do the reg'lar thing between high-toned
+gen'lemen, I reckon we kin say 'Quits.'"  He gave a coarse laugh,
+said "So long," nodded, stumbled into the passage, and thence into
+the other room.
+
+His companion watched him pass out with a relieved yet protecting
+air, and then, closing the door softly, drew nearer to Breeze, and
+said in husky confidence,--
+
+"Ye ain't seein' him at his best, mister!  He's bin drinkin' too
+much, and this yer news has upset him."
+
+"What news?" asked Breeze.
+
+"This yer suicide o' Irish Jack!"
+
+"Was he his friend?"
+
+"Friend?" ejaculated the man, horrified at the mere suggestion.
+"Not much!  Why, Irish Jack was the only man that could hev hung
+Jim!  Now he's dead, in course the Vigilants ain't got no proof
+agin Jim.  Jim wants to face it out now an' stay here, but his wife
+and me don't see it noways!  So we are taking advantage o' the lull
+agin him to get him off down the coast this very night.  That's why
+he's been off his head drinkin'.  Ye see, when a man has been for
+weeks hidin'--part o' the time in that room and part o' the time on
+the wharf, where them Vigilants has been watchin' every ship that
+left in order to ketch him, he's inclined to celebrate his chance
+o' getting away"--
+
+"Part of the time in that room?" interrupted Breeze quickly.
+
+"Sartin!  Don't ye see?  He allus kem in as you went out--sabe!--
+and got away before you kem back, his wife all the time just a-
+hoverin' between the two places, and keeping watch for him.  It was
+killin' to her, you see, for she wasn't brought up to it, whiles
+Jim didn't keer--had two revolvers and kalkilated to kill a dozen
+Vigilants afore he dropped.  But that's over now, and when I've got
+him safe on that 'plunger' down at the wharf to-night, and put him
+aboard the schooner that's lying off the Heads, he's all right
+agin."
+
+"And Roberts knew all this and was one of his friends?" asked
+Breeze.
+
+"Roberts knew it, and Roberts's wife used to be a kind of servant
+to Jim's wife in the South, when she was a girl, but I don't know
+ez Roberts is his FRIEND!"
+
+"He certainly has shown himself one," said Breeze.
+
+"Ye-e-s," said the stranger meditatively, "ye-e-s."  He stopped,
+opened the door softly, and peeped out, and then closed it again
+softly.  "It's sing'lar, Mr. Breeze," he went on in a sudden yet
+embarrassed burst of confidence, "that Jim thar--a man thet can
+shoot straight, and hez frequent; a man thet knows every skin game
+goin'--that THET man Jim," very slowly, "hezn't really--got--any
+friends--'cept me--and his wife."
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Breeze dryly.
+
+"Sure!  Why, you yourself didn't cotton to him--I could see THET."
+
+Mr. Breeze felt himself redden slightly, and looked curiously at
+the man.  This vulgar parasite, whom he had set down as a worshiper
+of sham heroes, undoubtedly did not look like an associate of
+Bodine's, and had a certain seriousness that demanded respect.  As
+he looked closer into his wide, round face, seamed with small-pox,
+he fancied he saw even in its fatuous imbecility something of that
+haunting devotion he had seen on the refined features of the wife.
+He said more gently,--
+
+"But one friend like you would seem to be enough."
+
+"I ain't what I uster be, Mr. Breeze," said the man meditatively,
+"and mebbe ye don't know who I am.  I'm Abe Shuckster, of
+Shuckster's Ranch--one of the biggest in Petalumy.  I was a rich
+man until a year ago, when Jim got inter trouble.  What with
+mortgages and interest, payin' up Jim's friends and buying off some
+ez was set agin him, thar ain't much left, and when I've settled
+that bill for the schooner lying off the Heads there I reckon I'm
+about played out.  But I've allus a shanty at Petalumy, and mebbe
+when things is froze over and Jim gets back--you'll come and see
+him--for you ain't seen him at his best."
+
+"I suppose his wife and children go with him?" said Breeze.
+
+"No!  He's agin it, and wants them to come later.  But that's all
+right, for you see she kin go back to their own house at the
+Mission, now that the Vigilants are givin' up shadderin' it.  So
+long, Mr. Breeze!  We're startin' afore daylight.  Sorry you didn't
+see Jim in condition."
+
+He grasped Breeze's hand warmly and slipped out of the door softly.
+For an instant Mr. Breeze felt inclined to follow him into the room
+and make a kinder adieu to the pair, but the reflection that he
+might embarrass the wife, who, it would seem, had purposely avoided
+accompanying her husband when he entered, withheld him.  And for
+the last few minutes he had been doubtful if he had any right to
+pose as her friend.  Beside the devotion of the man who had just
+left him, his own scant kindness to her children seemed ridiculous.
+
+He went to bed, but tossed uneasily until he fancied he heard
+stealthy footsteps outside his door and in the passage.  Even then
+he thought of getting up, dressing, and going out to bid farewell
+to the fugitives.  But even while he was thinking of it he fell
+asleep and did not wake until the sun was shining in at his
+windows.
+
+He sprang to his feet, threw on his dressing-gown, and peered into
+the passage.  Everything was silent.  He stepped outside--the light
+streamed into the hall from the open doors and windows of both
+rooms--the floor was empty; not a trace of the former occupants
+remained.  He was turning back when his eye fell upon the battered
+wooden doll set upright against his doorjamb, holding stiffly in
+its jointed arms a bit of paper folded like a note.  Opening it, he
+found a few lines written in pencil.
+
+
+God bless you for your kindness to us, and try to forgive me for
+touching your papers.  But I thought that you would detect it, know
+WHY I did it, and then help us, as you did!  Good-by!
+
+MAMIE BODINE.
+
+
+Mr. Breeze laid down the paper with a slight accession of color, as
+if its purport had been ironical.  How little had he done compared
+to the devotion of this delicate woman or the sacrifices of that
+rough friend!  How deserted looked this nest under the eaves, which
+had so long borne its burden of guilt, innocence, shame, and
+suffering!  For many days afterwards he avoided it except at night,
+and even then he often found himself lying awake to listen to the
+lost voices of the children.
+
+But one evening, a fortnight later, he came upon Roberts in the
+hall.  "Well," said Breeze, with abrupt directness, "did he get
+away?"
+
+Roberts started, uttered an oath which it is possible the Recording
+Angel passed to his credit, and said, "Yes, HE got away all right!"
+
+"Why, hasn't his wife joined him?"
+
+"No.  Never, in this world, I reckon; and if anywhere in the next,
+I don't want to go there!" said Roberts furiously.
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"Dead?  That kind don't die!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Roberts's lips writhed, and then, with a strong effort, he said
+with deliberate distinctness, "I mean--that the hound went off with
+another woman--that--was--in--that schooner, and left that fool
+Shuckster adrift in the plunger."
+
+"And the wife and children?"
+
+"Shuckster sold his shanty at Petaluma to pay their passage to the
+States.  Good-night!"
+
+
+
+HOW REUBEN ALLEN "SAW LIFE" IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+The junior partner of the firm of Sparlow & Kane, "Druggists and
+Apothecaries," of San Francisco, was gazing meditatively out of the
+corner of the window of their little shop in Dupont Street.  He
+could see the dimly lit perspective of the narrow thoroughfare fade
+off into the level sand wastes of Market Street on the one side,
+and plunge into the half-excavated bulk of Telegraph Hill on the
+other.  He could see the glow and hear the rumble of Montgomery
+Street--the great central avenue farther down the hill.  Above the
+housetops was spread the warm blanket of sea-fog under which the
+city was regularly laid to sleep every summer night to the cool
+lullaby of the Northwest Trades.  It was already half-past eleven;
+footsteps on the wooden pavement were getting rarer and more
+remote; the last cart had rumbled by; the shutters were up along
+the street; the glare of his own red and blue jars was the only
+beacon left to guide the wayfarers.  Ordinarily he would have been
+going home at this hour, when his partner, who occupied the surgery
+and a small bedroom at the rear of the shop, always returned to
+relieve him.  That night, however, a professional visit would
+detain the "Doctor" until half-past twelve.  There was still an
+hour to wait.  He felt drowsy; the mysterious incense of the shop,
+that combined essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris
+root--which always reminded him of the Arabian Nights--was
+affecting him.  He yawned, and then, turning away, passed behind
+the counter, took down a jar labeled "Glycyrr. Glabra," selected a
+piece of Spanish licorice, and meditatively sucked it.  Not
+receiving from it that diversion and sustenance he apparently was
+seeking, he also visited, in an equally familiar manner, a jar
+marked "Jujubes," and returned ruminatingly to his previous position.
+
+If I have not in this incident sufficiently established the
+youthfulness of the junior partner, I may add briefly that he was
+just nineteen, that he had early joined the emigration to
+California, and after one or two previous light-hearted essays at
+other occupations, for which he was singularly unfitted, he had
+saved enough to embark on his present venture, still less suited to
+his temperament.  In those adventurous days trades and vocations
+were not always filled by trained workmen; it was extremely
+probable that the experienced chemist was already making his
+success as a gold-miner, with a lawyer and a physician for his
+partners, and Mr. Kane's inexperienced position was by no means a
+novel one.  A slight knowledge of Latin as a written language, an
+American schoolboy's acquaintance with chemistry and natural
+philosophy, were deemed sufficient by his partner, a regular
+physician, for practical cooperation in the vending of drugs and
+putting up of prescriptions.  He knew the difference between acids
+and alkalies and the peculiar results which attended their
+incautious combination.  But he was excessively deliberate,
+painstaking, and cautious.  The legend which adorned the desk at
+the counter, "Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared," was
+more than usually true as regarded the adverb.  There was no danger
+of his poisoning anybody through haste or carelessness, but it was
+possible that an urgent "case" might have succumbed to the disease
+while he was putting up the remedy.  Nor was his caution entirely
+passive.  In those days the "heroic" practice of medicine was in
+keeping with the abnormal development of the country; there were
+"record" doses of calomel and quinine, and he had once or twice
+incurred the fury of local practitioners by sending back their
+prescriptions with a modest query.
+
+The far-off clatter of carriage wheels presently arrested his
+attention; looking down the street, he could see the lights of a
+hackney carriage advancing towards him.  They had already flashed
+upon the open crossing a block beyond before his vague curiosity
+changed into an active instinctive presentiment that they were
+coming to the shop.  He withdrew to a more becoming and dignified
+position behind the counter as the carriage drew up with a jerk
+before the door.
+
+The driver rolled from his box and opened the carriage door to a
+woman whom he assisted, between some hysterical exclamations on her
+part and some equally incoherent explanations of his own, into the
+shop.  Kane saw at a glance that both were under the influence of
+liquor, and one, the woman, was disheveled and bleeding about the
+head.  Yet she was elegantly dressed and evidently en fete, with
+one or two "tricolor" knots and ribbons mingled with her finery.
+Her golden hair, matted and darkened with blood, had partly escaped
+from her French bonnet and hung heavily over her shoulders.  The
+driver, who was supporting her roughly, and with a familiarity that
+was part of the incongruous spectacle, was the first to speak.
+
+"Madame le Blank! ye know!  Got cut about the head down at the fete
+at South Park!  Tried to dance upon the table, and rolled over on
+some champagne bottles.  See?  Wants plastering up!"
+
+"Ah brute!  Hog!  Nozzing of ze kine!  Why will you lie?  I dance!
+Ze cowards, fools, traitors zere upset ze table and I fall.  I am
+cut!  Ah, my God, how I am cut!"
+
+She stopped suddenly and lapsed heavily against the counter.  At
+which Kane hurried around to support her into the surgery with the
+one fixed idea in his bewildered mind of getting her out of the
+shop, and, suggestively, into the domain and under the
+responsibility of his partner.  The hackman, apparently relieved
+and washing his hands of any further complicity in the matter,
+nodded and smiled, and saying, "I reckon I'll wait outside,
+pardner," retreated incontinently to his vehicle.  To add to Kane's
+half-ludicrous embarrassment the fair patient herself slightly
+resisted his support, accused the hackman of "abandoning her," and
+demanded if Kane knew "zee reason of zees affair," yet she
+presently lapsed again into the large reclining-chair which he had
+wheeled forward, with open mouth, half-shut eyes, and a strange
+Pierrette mask of face, combined of the pallor of faintness and
+chalk, and the rouge of paint and blood.  At which Kane's
+cautiousness again embarrassed him.  A little brandy from the
+bottle labeled "Vini Galli" seemed to be indicated, but his
+inexperience could not determine if her relaxation was from
+bloodlessness or the reacting depression of alcohol.  In this
+dilemma he chose a medium course, with aromatic spirits of ammonia,
+and mixing a diluted quantity in a measuring-glass, poured it
+between her white lips.  A start, a struggle, a cough--a volley of
+imprecatory French, and the knocking of the glass from his hand
+followed--but she came to!  He quickly sponged her head of the
+half-coagulated blood, and removed a few fragments of glass from a
+long laceration of the scalp.  The shock of the cold water and the
+appearance of the ensanguined basin frightened her into a momentary
+passivity.  But when Kane found it necessary to cut her hair in the
+region of the wound in order to apply the adhesive plaster, she
+again endeavored to rise and grasp the scissors.
+
+"You'll bleed to death if you're not quiet," said the young man
+with dogged gravity.
+
+Something in his manner impressed her into silence again.  He cut
+whole locks away ruthlessly; he was determined to draw the edges of
+the wound together with the strip of plaster and stop the bleeding--
+if he cropped the whole head.  His excessive caution for her
+physical condition did not extend to her superficial adornment.
+Her yellow tresses lay on the floor, her neck and shoulders were
+saturated with water from the sponge which he continually applied,
+until the heated strips of plaster had closed the wound almost
+hermetically.  She whimpered, tears ran down her cheeks; but so
+long as it was not blood the young man was satisfied.
+
+In the midst of it he heard the shop door open, and presently the
+sound of rapping on the counter.  Another customer!
+
+Mr. Kane called out, "Wait a moment," and continued his ministrations.
+After a pause the rapping recommenced.  Kane was just securing the
+last strip of plaster and preserved a preoccupied silence.  Then the
+door flew open abruptly and a figure appeared impatiently on the
+threshold.  It was that of a miner recently returned from the gold
+diggings--so recently that he evidently had not had time to change
+his clothes at his adjacent hotel, and stood there in his high
+boots, duck trousers, and flannel shirt, over which his coat was
+slung like a hussar's jacket from his shoulder.  Kane would have
+uttered an indignant protest at the intrusion, had not the intruder
+himself as quickly recoiled with an astonishment and contrition that
+was beyond the effect of any reproval.  He literally gasped at the
+spectacle before him.  A handsomely dressed woman reclining in a
+chair; lace and jewelry and ribbons depending from her saturated
+shoulders; tresses of golden hair filling her lap and lying on the
+floor; a pail of ruddy water and a sponge at her feet, and a pale
+young man bending over her head with a spirit lamp and strips of
+yellow plaster!
+
+"'Scuse me, pard!  I was just dropping in; don't you hurry!  I kin
+wait," he stammered, falling back, and then the door closed
+abruptly behind him.
+
+Kane gathered up the shorn locks, wiped the face and neck of his
+patient with a clean towel and his own handkerchief, threw her
+gorgeous opera cloak over her shoulders, and assisted her to rise.
+She did so, weakly but obediently; she was evidently stunned and
+cowed in some mysterious way by his material attitude, perhaps, or
+her sudden realization of her position; at least the contrast
+between her aggressive entrance into the shop and her subdued
+preparation for her departure was so remarkable that it affected
+even Kane's preoccupation.
+
+"There," he said, slightly relaxing his severe demeanor with an
+encouraging smile, "I think this will do; we've stopped the
+bleeding.  It will probably smart a little as the plaster sets
+closer.  I can send my partner, Dr. Sparlow, to you in the
+morning."
+
+She looked at him curiously and with a strange smile.  "And zees
+Doctor Sparrlow--eez he like you, M'sieu?"
+
+"He is older, and very well known," said the young man seriously.
+"I can safely recommend him."
+
+"Ah," she repeated, with a pensive smile which made Kane think her
+quite pretty.  "Ah--he ez older--your Doctor Sparrlow--but YOU are
+strong, M'sieu."
+
+"And," said Kane vaguely, "he will tell you what to do."
+
+"Ah," she repeated again softly, with the same smile, "he will tell
+me what to do if I shall not know myself.  Dat ez good."
+
+Kane had already wrapped her shorn locks in a piece of spotless
+white paper and tied it up with narrow white ribbon in the dainty
+fashion dear to druggists' clerks.  As he handed it to her she felt
+in her pocket and produced a handful of gold.
+
+"What shall I pay for zees, M'sieu?"
+
+Kane reddened a little--solely because of his slow arithmetical
+faculties.  Adhesive plaster was cheap--he would like to have
+charged proportionately for the exact amount he had used; but the
+division was beyond him!  And he lacked the trader's instinct.
+
+"Twenty-five cents, I think," he hazarded briefly.
+
+She started, but smiled again.  "Twenty-five cents for all zees--ze
+medicine, ze strips for ze head, ze hair cut"--she glanced at the
+paper parcel he had given her--"it is only twenty-five cents?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+He selected from her outstretched palm, with some difficulty, the
+exact amount, the smallest coin it held.  She again looked at him
+curiously--half confusedly--and moved slowly into the shop.  The
+miner, who was still there, retreated as before with a gaspingly
+apologetic gesture--even flattening himself against the window to
+give her sweeping silk flounces freer passage.  As she passed into
+the street with a "Merci, M'sieu, good a'night," and the hackman
+started from the vehicle to receive her, the miner drew a long
+breath, and bringing his fist down upon the counter, ejaculated,--
+
+"B'gosh!  She's a stunner!"
+
+Kane, a good deal relieved at her departure and the success of his
+ministration, smiled benignly.
+
+The stranger again stared after the retreating carriage, looked
+around the shop, and even into the deserted surgery, and approached
+the counter confidentially.  "Look yer, pardner.  I kem straight
+from St. Jo, Mizzorri, to Gold Hill--whar I've got a claim--and I
+reckon this is the first time I ever struck San Francisker.  I
+ain't up to towny ways nohow, and I allow that mebbe I'm rather
+green.  So we'll let that pass!  Now look yer!" he added, leaning
+over the counter with still deeper and even mysterious confidence,
+"I suppose this yer kind o' thing is the regular go here, eh?
+nothin' new to YOU! in course no!  But to me, pard, it's just
+fetchin' me!  Lifts me clear outer my boots every time!  Why, when
+I popped into that thar room, and saw that lady--all gold,
+furbelows, and spangles--at twelve o'clock at night, sittin' in
+that cheer and you a-cuttin' her h'r and swabbin' her head o'
+blood, and kinder prospectin' for 'indications,' so to speak, and
+doin' it so kam and indifferent like, I sez to myself, 'Rube,
+Rube,' sez I, 'this yer's life! city life! San Francisker life! and
+b'gosh, you've dropped into it!  Now, pard, look yar! don't you
+answer, ye know, ef it ain't square and above board for me to know;
+I ain't askin' you to give the show away, ye know, in the matter of
+high-toned ladies like that, but" (very mysteriously, and sinking
+his voice to the lowest confidential pitch, as he put his hand to
+his ear as if to catch the hushed reply), "what mout hev bin
+happening, pard?"
+
+Considerably amused at the man's simplicity, Kane replied good-
+humoredly: "Danced among some champagne bottles on a table at a
+party, fell and got cut by glass."
+
+The stranger nodded his head slowly and approvingly as he repeated
+with infinite deliberateness: "Danced on champagne bottles,
+champagne! you said, pard? at a pahty!  Yes!" (musingly and
+approvingly).  "I reckon that's about the gait they take.  SHE'D do
+it."
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you? sorry to have kept you
+waiting," said Kane, glancing at the clock.
+
+"O ME!  Lord! ye needn't mind me.  Why, I should wait for anythin'
+o' the like o' that, and be just proud to do it!  And ye see, I
+sorter helped myself while you war busy."
+
+"Helped yourself?" said Kane in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, outer that bottle."  He pointed to the ammonia bottle, which
+still stood on the counter.  "It seemed to be handy and popular."
+
+"Man! you might have poisoned yourself."
+
+The stranger paused a moment at the idea.  "So I mout, I reckon,"
+he said musingly, "that's so! pizined myself jest ez you was
+lookin' arter that high-toned case, and kinder bothered you!  It's
+like me!"
+
+"I mean it required diluting; you ought to have taken it in water,"
+said Kane.
+
+"I reckon!  It DID sorter h'ist me over to the door for a little
+fresh air at first! seemed rayther scaldy to the lips.  But wot of
+it that GOT THAR," he put his hand gravely to his stomach, "did me
+pow'ful good."
+
+"What was the matter with you?" asked Kane.
+
+"Well, ye see, pard" (confidentially again), "I reckon it's suthin'
+along o' my heart.  Times it gets to poundin' away like a quartz
+stamp, and then it stops suddent like, and kinder leaves ME out
+too."
+
+Kane looked at him more attentively.  He was a strong, powerfully
+built man with a complexion that betrayed nothing more serious than
+the effects of mining cookery.  It was evidently a common case of
+indigestion.
+
+"I don't say it would not have done you some good if properly
+administered," he replied.  "If you like I'll put up a diluted
+quantity and directions?"
+
+"That's me, every time, pardner!" said the stranger with an accent
+of relief.  "And look yer, don't you stop at that!  Ye just put me
+up some samples like of anythin' you think mout be likely to hit.
+I'll go in for a fair show, and then meander in every now and then,
+betwixt times, to let you know.  Ye don't mind my drifting in here,
+do ye?  It's about ez likely a place ez I struck since I've left
+the Sacramento boat, and my hotel, just round the corner.  Ye just
+sample me a bit o' everythin'; don't mind the expense.  I'll take
+YOUR word for it.  The way you--a young fellow--jest stuck to your
+work in thar, cool and kam as a woodpecker--not minding how high-
+toned she was--nor the jewelery and spangles she had on--jest got
+me!  I sez to myself, 'Rube,' sez I, 'whatever's wrong o' YOUR
+insides, you jest stick to that feller to set ye right.'"
+
+The junior partner's face reddened as he turned to his shelves
+ostensibly for consultation.  Conscious of his inexperience, the
+homely praise of even this ignorant man was not ungrateful.  He
+felt, too, that his treatment of the Frenchwoman, though
+successful, might not be considered remunerative from a business
+point of view by his partner.  He accordingly acted upon the
+suggestion of the stranger and put up two or three specifics for
+dyspepsia.  They were received with grateful alacrity and the
+casual display of considerable gold in the stranger's pocket in the
+process of payment.  He was evidently a successful miner.
+
+After bestowing the bottles carefully about his person, he again
+leaned confidentially towards Kane.  "I reckon of course you know
+this high-toned lady, being in the way of seein' that kind o'
+folks.  I suppose you won't mind telling me, ez a stranger.  But"
+(he added hastily, with a deprecatory wave of his hand), "perhaps
+ye would."
+
+Mr. Kane, in fact, had hesitated.  He knew vaguely and by report
+that Madame le Blanc was the proprietress of a famous restaurant,
+over which she had rooms where private gambling was carried on to a
+great extent.  It was also alleged that she was protected by a
+famous gambler and a somewhat notorious bully.  Mr. Kane's caution
+suggested that he had no right to expose the reputation of his
+chance customer.  He was silent.
+
+The stranger's face became intensely sympathetic and apologetic.
+"I see!--not another word, pard!  It ain't the square thing to be
+givin' her away, and I oughtn't to hev asked.  Well--so long!  I
+reckon I'll jest drift back to the hotel.  I ain't been in San
+Francisker mor' 'n three hours, and I calkilate, pard, that I've
+jest seen about ez square a sample of high-toned life as fellers ez
+haz bin here a year.  Well, hastermanyanner--ez the Greasers say.
+I'll be droppin' in to-morrow.  My name's Reuben Allen o' Mariposa.
+I know yours; it's on the sign, and it ain't Sparlow."
+
+He cast another lingering glance around the shop, as if loath to
+leave it, and then slowly sauntered out of the door, pausing in the
+street a moment, in the glare of the red light, before he faded
+into darkness.  Without knowing exactly why, Kane had an instinct
+that the stranger knew no one in San Francisco, and after leaving
+the shop was going into utter silence and obscurity.
+
+A few moments later Dr. Sparlow returned to relieve his wearied
+partner.  A pushing, active man, he listened impatiently to Kane's
+account of his youthful practice with Madame le Blanc, without,
+however, dwelling much on his methods.  "You ought to have charged
+her more," the elder said decisively.  "She'd have paid it.  She
+only came here because she was ashamed to go to a big shop in
+Montgomery Street--and she won't come again."
+
+"But she wants you to see her to-morrow," urged Kane, "and I told
+her you would!"
+
+"You say it was only a superficial cut?" queried the doctor, "and
+you closed it?  Umph! what can she want to see ME for?"  He paid
+more attention, however, to the case of the stranger, Allen.  "When
+he comes here again, manage to let me see him."  Mr. Kane promised,
+yet for some indefinable reason he went home that night not quite
+as well satisfied with himself.
+
+He was much more concerned the next morning when, after relieving
+the doctor for his regular morning visits, he was startled an hour
+later by the abrupt return of that gentleman.  His face was marked
+by some excitement and anxiety, which nevertheless struggled with
+that sense of the ludicrous which Californians in those days
+imported into most situations of perplexity or catastrophe.
+Putting his hands deeply into his trousers pockets, he confronted
+his youthful partner behind the counter.
+
+"How much did you charge that French-woman?" he said gravely.
+
+"Twenty-five cents," said Kane timidly.
+
+"Well, I'd give it back and add two hundred and fifty dollars if
+she had never entered the shop."
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Her head will be--and a mass of it, in a day, I reckon!  Why, man,
+you put enough plaster on it to clothe and paper the dome of the
+Capitol!  You drew her scalp together so that she couldn't shut her
+eyes without climbing up the bed-post!  You mowed her hair off so
+that she'll have to wear a wig for the next two years--and handed
+it to her in a beau-ti-ful sealed package!  They talk of suing me
+and killing you out of hand."
+
+"She was bleeding a great deal and looked faint," said the junior
+partner; "I thought I ought to stop that."
+
+"And you did--by thunder!  Though it might have been better
+business for the shop if I'd found her a crumbling ruin here, than
+lathed and plastered in this fashion, over there!  However," he
+added, with a laugh, seeing an angry light in his junior partner's
+eye, "SHE don't seem to mind it--the cursing all comes from THEM.
+SHE rather likes your style and praises it--that's what gets me!
+Did you talk to her much," he added, looking critically at his
+partner.
+
+"I only told her to sit still or she'd bleed to death," said Kane
+curtly.
+
+"Humph!--she jabbered something about your being 'strong' and
+knowing just how to handle her.  Well, it can't be helped now.  I
+think I came in time for the worst of it and have drawn their fire.
+Don't do it again.  The next time a woman with a cut head and long
+hair tackles you, fill up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack
+her off to some of the big shops and make THEM pick it out."  And
+with a good-humored nod he started off to finish his interrupted
+visits.
+
+With a vague sense of remorse, and yet a consciousness of some
+injustice done him, Mr. Kane resumed his occupation with filters
+and funnels, and mortars and triturations.  He was so gloomily
+preoccupied that he did not, as usual, glance out of the window, or
+he would have observed the mining stranger of the previous night
+before it.  It was not until the man's bowed shoulders blocked the
+light of the doorway that he looked up and recognized him.  Kane
+was in no mood to welcome his appearance.  His presence, too,
+actively recalled the last night's adventure of which he was a
+witness--albeit a sympathizing one.  Kane shrank from the illusions
+which he felt he would be sure to make.  And with his present ill
+luck, he was by no means sure that his ministrations even to HIM
+had been any more successful than they had been to the Frenchwoman.
+But a glance at his good-humored face and kindling eyes removed
+that suspicion.  Nevertheless, he felt somewhat embarrassed and
+impatient, and perhaps could not entirely conceal it.  He forgot
+that the rudest natures are sometimes the most delicately sensitive
+to slights, and the stranger had noticed his manner and began
+apologetically.
+
+"I allowed I'd just drop in anyway to tell ye that these thar pills
+you giv' me did me a heap o' good so far--though mebbe it's only
+fair to give the others a show too, which I'm reckoning to do."  He
+paused, and then in a submissive confidence went on: "But first I
+wanted to hev you excuse me for havin' asked all them questions
+about that high-toned lady last night, when it warn't none of my
+business.  I am a darned fool."
+
+Mr. Kane instantly saw that it was no use to keep up his attitude
+of secrecy, or impose upon the ignorant, simple man, and said
+hurriedly: "Oh no.  The lady is very well known.  She is the
+proprietress of a restaurant down the street--a house open to
+everybody.  Her name is Madame le Blanc; you may have heard of her
+before?"
+
+To his surprise the man exhibited no diminution of interest nor
+change of sentiment at this intelligence.  "Then," he said slowly,
+"I reckon I might get to see her again.  Ye see, Mr. Kane, I rather
+took a fancy to her general style and gait--arter seein' her in
+that fix last night.  It was rather like them play pictures on the
+stage.  Ye don't think she'd make any fuss to seein' a rough old
+'forty-niner' like me?"
+
+"Hardly," said Kane, "but there might be some objection from her
+gentlemen friends," he added, with a smile,--"Jack Lane, a gambler,
+who keeps a faro bank in her rooms, and Jimmy O'Ryan, a prize-
+fighter, who is one of her 'chuckers out.'"
+
+His further relation of Madame le Blanc's entourage apparently gave
+the miner no concern.  He looked at Kane, nodded, and repeated
+slowly and appreciatively: "Yes, keeps a gamblin' and faro bank and
+a prize-fighter--I reckon that might be about her gait and style
+too.  And you say she lives"--
+
+He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop quickly, shut
+the door behind him, and turned the key in the lock.  It was done
+so quickly that Kane instinctively felt that the man had been
+loitering in the vicinity and had approached from the side street.
+A single glance at the intruder's face and figure showed him that
+it was the bully of whom he had just spoken.  He had seen that
+square, brutal face once before, confronting the police in a riot,
+and had not forgotten it.  But today, with the flush of liquor on
+it, it had an impatient awkwardness and confused embarrassment that
+he could not account for.  He did not comprehend that the genuine
+bully is seldom deliberate of attack, and is obliged--in common
+with many of the combative lower animals--to lash himself into a
+previous fury of provocation.  This probably saved him, as perhaps
+some instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger kept
+him cool.  He remained standing quietly behind the counter.  Allen
+glanced around carelessly, looking at the shelves.
+
+The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruffian's rage
+and embarrassment.  Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop
+and clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which
+jarred the glasses--yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and
+void of purpose that he stopped in the midst of it and had to
+content himself with glaring at Kane.
+
+"Well," said Kane quietly, "what does all this mean?  What do you
+want here?"
+
+"What does it mean?" repeated the bully, finding his voice in a
+high falsetto, designed to imitate Kane's.  "It means I'm going to
+play merry h-ll with this shop!  It means I'm goin' to clean it out
+and the blank hair-cuttin' blank that keeps it.  What do I want
+here?  Well--what I want I intend to help myself to, and all h-ll
+can't stop me!  And" (working himself to the striking point) "who
+the blank are you to ask me?"  He sprang towards the counter, but
+at the same moment Allen seemed to slip almost imperceptibly and
+noiselessly between them, and Kane found himself confronted only by
+the miner's broad back.
+
+"Hol' yer hosses, stranger," said Allen slowly, as the ruffian
+suddenly collided with his impassive figure.  "I'm a sick man
+comin' in yer for medicine.  I've got somethin' wrong with my
+heart, and goin's on like this yer kinder sets it to thumpin'."
+
+"Blank you and your blank heart!" screamed the bully, turning in a
+fury of amazement and contempt at this impotent interruption.
+"Who"--but his voice stopped.  Allen's powerful right arm had
+passed over his head and shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned
+his elbows against his sides.  Held rigidly upright, he attempted
+to kick, but Allen's right leg here advanced, and firmly held his
+lower limbs against the counter that shook to his struggles and
+blasphemous outcries.  Allen turned quietly to Kane, and, with a
+gesture of his unemployed arm, said confidentially:
+
+"Would ye mind passing me down that ar Romantic Spirits of Ammonyer
+ye gave me last night?"
+
+Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle.
+
+"Thar," said Allen, taking out the stopper and holding the pungent
+spirit against the bully's dilated nostrils and vociferous mouth,
+"thar, smell that, and taste it, it will do ye good; it was
+powerful kammin' to ME last night."
+
+The ruffian gasped, coughed, choked, but his blaspheming voice died
+away in a suffocating hiccough.
+
+"Thar," continued Allen, as his now subdued captive relaxed his
+struggling, "ye 'r' better, and so am I.  It's quieter here now,
+and ye ain't affectin' my heart so bad.  A little fresh air will
+make us both all right."  He turned again to Kane in his former
+subdued confidential manner.
+
+"Would ye mind openin' that door?"
+
+Kane flew to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide open.  The
+bully again began to struggle, but a second inhalation of the
+hartshorn quelled him, and enabled his captor to drag him to the
+door.  As they emerged upon the sidewalk, the bully, with a final
+desperate struggle, freed his arm and grasped his pistol at his
+hip-pocket, but at the same moment Allen deliberately caught his
+hand, and with a powerful side throw cast him on the pavement,
+retaining the weapon in his own hand.  "I've one of my own," he
+said to the prostrate man, "but I reckon I'll keep this yer too,
+until you're better."
+
+The crowd that had collected quickly, recognizing the notorious and
+discomfited bully, were not of a class to offer him any sympathy,
+and he slunk away followed by their jeers.  Allen returned quietly
+to the shop.  Kane was profuse in his thanks, and yet oppressed
+with his simple friend's fatuous admiration for a woman who could
+keep such ruffians in her employ.  "You know who that man was, I
+suppose?" he said.
+
+"I reckon it was that 'er prize-fighter belongin' to that high-
+toned lady," returned Allen simply.  "But he don't know anything
+about RASTLIN', b'gosh; only that I was afraid o' bringin' on that
+heart trouble, I mout hev hurt him bad."
+
+"They think"--hesitated Kane, "that--I--was rough in my treatment
+of that woman and maliciously cut off her hair.  This attack was
+revenge--or"--he hesitated still more, as he remembered Dr.
+Sparlow's indication of the woman's feeling--"or that bully's idea
+of revenge."
+
+"I see," nodded Allen, opening his small sympathetic eyes on Kane
+with an exasperating air of secrecy--"just jealousy."
+
+Kane reddened in sheer hopelessness of explanation.  "No; it was
+earning his wages, as he thought."
+
+"Never ye mind, pard," said Allen confidentially.  "I'll set 'em
+both right.  Ye see, this sorter gives me a show to call at that
+thar restaurant and give HIM back his six-shooter, and set her on
+the right trail for you.  Why, Lordy!  I was here when you was
+fixin' her--I'm testimony o' the way you did it--and she'll
+remember me.  I'll sorter waltz round thar this afternoon.  But I
+reckon I won't be keepin' YOU from your work any longer.  And look
+yar!--I say, pard!--this is seein' life in 'Frisco--ain't it?
+Gosh!  I've had more high times in this very shop in two days, than
+I've had in two years of St. Jo.  So long, Mr. Kane!"  He waved his
+hand, lounged slowly out of the shop, gave a parting glance up the
+street, passed the window, and was gone.
+
+The next day being a half-holiday for Kane, he did not reach the
+shop until afternoon.  "Your mining friend Allen has been here,"
+said Doctor Sparlow.  "I took the liberty of introducing myself,
+and induced him to let me carefully examine him.  He was a little
+shy, and I am sorry for it, as I fear he has some serious organic
+trouble with his heart and ought to have a more thorough
+examination."  Seeing Kane's unaffected concern, he added, "You
+might influence him to do so.  He's a good fellow and ought to take
+some care of himself.  By the way, he told me to tell you that he'd
+seen Madame le Blanc and made it all right about you.  He seems to
+be quite infatuated with the woman."
+
+"I'm sorry he ever saw her," said Kane bitterly.
+
+"Well, his seeing her seems to have saved the shop from being
+smashed up, and you from getting a punched head," returned the
+Doctor with a laugh.  "He's no fool--yet it's a freak of human
+nature that a simple hayseed like that--a man who's lived in the
+backwoods all his life, is likely to be the first to tumble before
+a pot of French rouge like her."
+
+Indeed, in a couple of weeks, there was no further doubt of Mr.
+Reuben Allen's infatuation.  He dropped into the shop frequently on
+his way to and from the restaurant, where he now regularly took his
+meals; he spent his evenings in gambling in its private room.  Yet
+Kane was by no means sure that he was losing his money there
+unfairly, or that he was used as a pigeon by the proprietress and
+her friends.  The bully O'Ryan was turned away; Sparlow grimly
+suggested that Allen had simply taken his place, but Kane
+ingeniously retorted that the Doctor was only piqued because Allen
+had evaded his professional treatment.  Certainly the patient had
+never consented to another examination, although he repeatedly and
+gravely bought medicines, and was a generous customer.  Once or
+twice Kane thought it his duty to caution Allen against his new
+friends and enlighten him as to Madame le Blanc's reputation, but
+his suggestions were received with a good-humored submission that
+was either the effect of unbelief or of perfect resignation to the
+fact, and he desisted.  One morning Dr. Sparlow said cheerfully:--
+
+"Would you like to hear the last thing about your friend and the
+Frenchwoman?  The boys can't account for her singling out a fellow
+like that for her friend, so they say that the night that she cut
+herself at the fete and dropped in here for assistance, she found
+nobody here but Allen--a chance customer!  That it was HE who cut
+off her hair and bound up her wounds in that sincere fashion, and
+she believed he had saved her life."  The Doctor grinned maliciously
+as he added: "And as that's the way history is written you see your
+reputation is safe."
+
+It may have been a month later that San Francisco was thrown into a
+paroxysm of horror and indignation over the assassination of a
+prominent citizen and official in the gambling-rooms of Madame le
+Blanc, at the hands of a notorious gambler.  The gambler had
+escaped, but in one of those rare spasms of vengeful morality which
+sometimes overtakes communities who have too long winked at and
+suffered the existence of evil, the fair proprietress and her whole
+entourage were arrested and haled before the coroner's jury at the
+inquest.  The greatest excitement prevailed; it was said that if
+the jury failed in their duty, the Vigilance Committee had arranged
+for the destruction of the establishment and the deportation of its
+inmates.  The crowd that had collected around the building was
+reinforced by Kane and Dr. Sparlow, who had closed their shop in
+the next block to attend.  When Kane had fought his way into the
+building and the temporary court, held in the splendidly furnished
+gambling saloon, whose gilded mirrors reflected the eager faces of
+the crowd, the Chief of Police was giving his testimony in a formal
+official manner, impressive only for its relentless and impassive
+revelation of the character and antecedents of the proprietress.
+The house had been long under the espionage of the police; Madame
+le Blanc had a dozen aliases; she was "wanted" in New Orleans, in
+New York, in Havana!  It was in HER house that Dyer, the bank
+clerk, committed suicide; it was there that Colonel Hooley was set
+upon by her bully, O'Ryan; it was she--Kane heard with reddening
+cheeks--who defied the police with riotous conduct at a fete two
+months ago.  As he coolly recited the counts of this shameful
+indictment, Kane looked eagerly around for Allen, whom he knew had
+been arrested as a witness.  How would HE take this terrible
+disclosure?  He was sitting with the others, his arm thrown over
+the back of his chair, and his good-humored face turned towards the
+woman, in his old confidential attitude.  SHE, gorgeously dressed,
+painted, but unblushing, was cool, collected, and cynical.
+
+The Coroner next called the only witness of the actual tragedy,
+"Reuben Allen."  The man did not move nor change his position.  The
+summons was repeated; a policeman touched him on the shoulder.
+There was a pause, and the officer announced: "He has fainted, your
+Honor!"
+
+"Is there a physician present?" asked the Coroner.
+
+Sparlow edged his way quickly to the front.  "I'm a medical man,"
+he said to the Coroner, as he passed quickly to the still, upright,
+immovable figure and knelt beside it with his head upon his heart.
+There was an awed silence as, after a pause, he rose slowly to his
+feet.
+
+"The witness is a patient, your Honor, whom I examined some weeks
+ago and found suffering from valvular disease of the heart.  He is
+dead."
+
+
+
+THREE VAGABONDS OF TRINIDAD
+
+
+"Oh! it's you, is it?" said the Editor.
+
+The Chinese boy to whom the colloquialism was addressed answered
+literally, after his habit:--
+
+"Allee same Li Tee; me no changee.  Me no ollee China boy."
+
+"That's so," said the Editor with an air of conviction.  "I don't
+suppose there's another imp like you in all Trinidad County.  Well,
+next time don't scratch outside there like a gopher, but come in."
+
+"Lass time," suggested Li Tee blandly, "me tap tappee.  You no like
+tap tappee.  You say, alle same dam woodpeckel."
+
+It was quite true--the highly sylvan surroundings of the Trinidad
+"Sentinel" office--a little clearing in a pine forest--and its
+attendant fauna, made these signals confusing.  An accurate
+imitation of a woodpecker was also one of Li Tee's accomplishments.
+
+The Editor without replying finished the note he was writing; at
+which Li Tee, as if struck by some coincident recollection, lifted
+up his long sleeve, which served him as a pocket, and carelessly
+shook out a letter on the table like a conjuring trick.  The
+Editor, with a reproachful glance at him, opened it.  It was only
+the ordinary request of an agricultural subscriber--one Johnson--
+that the Editor would "notice" a giant radish grown by the
+subscriber and sent by the bearer.
+
+"Where's the radish, Li Tee?" said the Editor suspiciously.
+
+"No hab got.  Ask Mellikan boy."
+
+"What?"
+
+Here Li Tee condescended to explain that on passing the schoolhouse
+he had been set upon by the schoolboys, and that in the struggle
+the big radish--being, like most such monstrosities of the quick
+Californian soil, merely a mass of organized water--was "mashed"
+over the head of some of his assailants.  The Editor, painfully
+aware of these regular persecutions of his errand boy, and perhaps
+realizing that a radish which could not be used as a bludgeon was
+not of a sustaining nature, forebore any reproof.  "But I cannot
+notice what I haven't seen, Li Tee," he said good-humoredly.
+
+"S'pose you lie--allee same as Johnson," suggested Li with equal
+cheerfulness.  "He foolee you with lotten stuff--you foolee
+Mellikan man, allee same."
+
+The Editor preserved a dignified silence until he had addressed his
+letter.  "Take this to Mrs. Martin," he said, handing it to the
+boy; "and mind you keep clear of the schoolhouse.  Don't go by the
+Flat either if the men are at work, and don't, if you value your
+skin, pass Flanigan's shanty, where you set off those firecrackers
+and nearly burnt him out the other day.  Look out for Barker's dog
+at the crossing, and keep off the main road if the tunnel men are
+coming over the hill."  Then remembering that he had virtually
+closed all the ordinary approaches to Mrs. Martin's house, he
+added, "Better go round by the woods, where you won't meet ANY
+ONE."
+
+The boy darted off through the open door, and the Editor stood for
+a moment looking regretfully after him.  He liked his little
+protege ever since that unfortunate child--a waif from a Chinese
+wash-house--was impounded by some indignant miners for bringing
+home a highly imperfect and insufficient washing, and kept as
+hostage for a more proper return of the garments.  Unfortunately,
+another gang of miners, equally aggrieved, had at the same time
+looted the wash-house and driven off the occupants, so that Li Tee
+remained unclaimed.  For a few weeks he became a sporting appendage
+of the miners' camp; the stolid butt of good-humored practical
+jokes, the victim alternately of careless indifference or of
+extravagant generosity.  He received kicks and half-dollars
+intermittently, and pocketed both with stoical fortitude.  But
+under this treatment he presently lost the docility and frugality
+which was part of his inheritance, and began to put his small wits
+against his tormentors, until they grew tired of their own mischief
+and his.  But they knew not what to do with him.  His pretty
+nankeen-yellow skin debarred him from the white "public school,"
+while, although as a heathen he might have reasonably claimed
+attention from the Sabbath-school, the parents who cheerfully gave
+their contributions to the heathen ABROAD, objected to him as a
+companion of their children in the church at home.  At this
+juncture the Editor offered to take him into his printing office as
+a "devil."  For a while he seemed to be endeavoring, in his old
+literal way, to act up to that title.  He inked everything but the
+press.  He scratched Chinese characters of an abusive import on
+"leads," printed them, and stuck them about the office; he put
+"punk" in the foreman's pipe, and had been seen to swallow small
+type merely as a diabolical recreation.  As a messenger he was
+fleet of foot, but uncertain of delivery.  Some time previously the
+Editor had enlisted the sympathies of Mrs. Martin, the good-natured
+wife of a farmer, to take him in her household on trial, but on the
+third day Li Tee had run away.  Yet the Editor had not despaired,
+and it was to urge her to a second attempt that he dispatched that
+letter.
+
+He was still gazing abstractedly into the depths of the wood when
+he was conscious of a slight movement--but no sound--in a clump of
+hazel near him, and a stealthy figure glided from it.  He at once
+recognized it as "Jim," a well-known drunken Indian vagrant of the
+settlement--tied to its civilization by the single link of "fire
+water," for which he forsook equally the Reservation where it was
+forbidden and his own camps where it was unknown.  Unconscious of
+his silent observer, he dropped upon all fours, with his ear and
+nose alternately to the ground like some tracking animal.  Then
+having satisfied himself, he rose, and bending forward in a dogged
+trot, made a straight line for the woods.  He was followed a few
+seconds later by his dog--a slinking, rough, wolf-like brute, whose
+superior instinct, however, made him detect the silent presence of
+some alien humanity in the person of the Editor, and to recognize
+it with a yelp of habit, anticipatory of the stone that he knew was
+always thrown at him.
+
+"That's cute," said a voice, "but it's just what I expected all
+along."
+
+The Editor turned quickly.  His foreman was standing behind him,
+and had evidently noticed the whole incident.
+
+"It's what I allus said," continued the man.  "That boy and that
+Injin are thick as thieves.  Ye can't see one without the other--
+and they've got their little tricks and signals by which they
+follow each other.  T'other day when you was kalkilatin' Li Tee was
+doin' your errands I tracked him out on the marsh, just by
+followin' that ornery, pizenous dog o' Jim's.  There was the whole
+caboodle of 'em--including Jim--campin' out, and eatin' raw fish
+that Jim had ketched, and green stuff they had both sneaked outer
+Johnson's garden.  Mrs. Martin may TAKE him, but she won't keep him
+long while Jim's round.  What makes Li foller that blamed old Injin
+soaker, and what makes Jim, who, at least, is a 'Merican, take up
+with a furrin' heathen, just gets me."
+
+The Editor did not reply.  He had heard something of this before.
+Yet, after all, why should not these equal outcasts of civilization
+cling together!
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Li Tee's stay with Mrs. Martin was brief.  His departure was
+hastened by an untoward event--apparently ushered in, as in the
+case of other great calamities, by a mysterious portent in the sky.
+One morning an extraordinary bird of enormous dimensions was seen
+approaching from the horizon, and eventually began to hover over
+the devoted town.  Careful scrutiny of this ominous fowl, however,
+revealed the fact that it was a monstrous Chinese kite, in the
+shape of a flying dragon.  The spectacle imparted considerable
+liveliness to the community, which, however, presently changed to
+some concern and indignation.  It appeared that the kite was
+secretly constructed by Li Tee in a secluded part of Mrs. Martin's
+clearing, but when it was first tried by him he found that through
+some error of design it required a tail of unusual proportions.
+This he hurriedly supplied by the first means he found--Mrs.
+Martin's clothes-line, with part of the weekly wash depending from
+it.  This fact was not at first noticed by the ordinary sightseer,
+although the tail seemed peculiar--yet, perhaps, not more peculiar
+than a dragon's tail ought to be.  But when the actual theft was
+discovered and reported through the town, a vivacious interest was
+created, and spy-glasses were used to identify the various articles
+of apparel still hanging on that ravished clothes-line.  These
+garments, in the course of their slow disengagement from the
+clothes-pins through the gyrations of the kite, impartially
+distributed themselves over the town--one of Mrs. Martin's
+stockings falling upon the veranda of the Polka Saloon, and the
+other being afterwards discovered on the belfry of the First
+Methodist Church--to the scandal of the congregation.  It would
+have been well if the result of Li Tee's invention had ended here.
+Alas! the kite-flyer and his accomplice, "Injin Jim," were tracked
+by means of the kite's tell-tale cord to a lonely part of the marsh
+and rudely dispossessed of their charge by Deacon Hornblower and a
+constable.  Unfortunately, the captors overlooked the fact that the
+kite-flyers had taken the precaution of making a "half-turn" of the
+stout cord around a log to ease the tremendous pull of the kite--
+whose power the captors had not reckoned upon--and the Deacon
+incautiously substituted his own body for the log.  A singular
+spectacle is said to have then presented itself to the on-lookers.
+The Deacon was seen to be running wildly by leaps and bounds over
+the marsh after the kite, closely followed by the constable in
+equally wild efforts to restrain him by tugging at the end of the
+line.  The extraordinary race continued to the town until the
+constable fell, losing his hold of the line.  This seemed to impart
+a singular specific levity to the Deacon, who, to the astonishment
+of everybody, incontinently sailed up into a tree!  When he was
+succored and cut down from the demoniac kite, he was found to have
+sustained a dislocation of the shoulder, and the constable was
+severely shaken.  By that one infelicitous stroke the two outcasts
+made an enemy of the Law and the Gospel as represented in Trinidad
+County.  It is to be feared also that the ordinary emotional instinct
+of a frontier community, to which they were now simply abandoned,
+was as little to be trusted.  In this dilemma they disappeared from
+the town the next day--no one knew where.  A pale blue smoke rising
+from a lonely island in the bay for some days afterwards suggested
+their possible refuge.  But nobody greatly cared.  The sympathetic
+mediation of the Editor was characteristically opposed by Mr. Parkin
+Skinner, a prominent citizen:--
+
+"It's all very well for you to talk sentiment about niggers,
+Chinamen, and Injins, and you fellers can laugh about the Deacon
+being snatched up to heaven like Elijah in that blamed Chinese
+chariot of a kite--but I kin tell you, gentlemen, that this is a
+white man's country!  Yes, sir, you can't get over it!  The nigger
+of every description--yeller, brown, or black, call him 'Chinese,'
+'Injin,' or 'Kanaka,' or what you like--hez to clar off of God's
+footstool when the Anglo-Saxon gets started!  It stands to reason
+that they can't live alongside o' printin' presses, M'Cormick's
+reapers, and the Bible!  Yes, sir! the Bible; and Deacon Hornblower
+kin prove it to you.  It's our manifest destiny to clar them out--
+that's what we was put here for--and it's just the work we've got
+to do!"
+
+I have ventured to quote Mr. Skinner's stirring remarks to show
+that probably Jim and Li Tee ran away only in anticipation of a
+possible lynching, and to prove that advanced sentiments of this
+high and ennobling nature really obtained forty years ago in an
+ordinary American frontier town which did not then dream of
+Expansion and Empire!
+
+Howbeit, Mr. Skinner did not make allowance for mere human nature.
+One morning Master Bob Skinner, his son, aged twelve, evaded the
+schoolhouse, and started in an old Indian "dug-out" to invade the
+island of the miserable refugees.  His purpose was not clearly
+defined to himself, but was to be modified by circumstances.  He
+would either capture Li Tee and Jim, or join them in their lawless
+existence.  He had prepared himself for either event by
+surreptitiously borrowing his father's gun.  He also carried
+victuals, having heard that Jim ate grasshoppers and Li Tee rats,
+and misdoubting his own capacity for either diet.  He paddled
+slowly, well in shore, to be secure from observation at home, and
+then struck out boldly in his leaky canoe for the island--a tufted,
+tussocky shred of the marshy promontory torn off in some tidal
+storm.  It was a lovely day, the bay being barely ruffled by the
+afternoon "trades;" but as he neared the island he came upon the
+swell from the bar and the thunders of the distant Pacific, and
+grew a little frightened.  The canoe, losing way, fell into the
+trough of the swell, shipping salt water, still more alarming to
+the prairie-bred boy.  Forgetting his plan of a stealthy invasion,
+he shouted lustily as the helpless and water-logged boat began to
+drift past the island; at which a lithe figure emerged from the
+reeds, threw off a tattered blanket, and slipped noiselessly, like
+some animal, into the water.  It was Jim, who, half wading, half
+swimming, brought the canoe and boy ashore.  Master Skinner at once
+gave up the idea of invasion, and concluded to join the refugees.
+
+This was easy in his defenceless state, and his manifest delight in
+their rude encampment and gypsy life, although he had been one of
+Li Tee's oppressors in the past.  But that stolid pagan had a
+philosophical indifference which might have passed for Christian
+forgiveness, and Jim's native reticence seemed like assent.  And,
+possibly, in the minds of these two vagabonds there might have been
+a natural sympathy for this other truant from civilization, and
+some delicate flattery in the fact that Master Skinner was not
+driven out, but came of his own accord.  Howbeit, they fished
+together, gathered cranberries on the marsh, shot a wild duck and
+two plovers, and when Master Skinner assisted in the cooking of
+their fish in a conical basket sunk in the ground, filled with
+water, heated by rolling red-hot stones from their drift-wood fire
+into the buried basket, the boy's felicity was supreme.  And what
+an afternoon!  To lie, after this feast, on their bellies in the
+grass, replete like animals, hidden from everything but the
+sunshine above them; so quiet that gray clouds of sandpipers
+settled fearlessly around them, and a shining brown muskrat slipped
+from the ooze within a few feet of their faces--was to feel
+themselves a part of the wild life in earth and sky.  Not that
+their own predatory instincts were hushed by this divine peace;
+that intermitting black spot upon the water, declared by the Indian
+to be a seal, the stealthy glide of a yellow fox in the ambush of a
+callow brood of mallards, the momentary straying of an elk from the
+upland upon the borders of the marsh, awoke their tingling nerves
+to the happy but fruitless chase.  And when night came, too soon,
+and they pigged together around the warm ashes of their camp-fire,
+under the low lodge poles of their wigwam of dried mud, reeds, and
+driftwood, with the combined odors of fish, wood-smoke, and the
+warm salt breath of the marsh in their nostrils, they slept
+contentedly.  The distant lights of the settlement went out one by
+one, the stars came out, very large and very silent, to take their
+places.  The barking of a dog on the nearest point was followed by
+another farther inland.  But Jim's dog, curled at the feet of his
+master, did not reply.  What had HE to do with civilization?
+
+The morning brought some fear of consequences to Master Skinner,
+but no abatement of his resolve not to return.  But here he was
+oddly combated by Li Tee.  "S'pose you go back allee same.  You
+tellee fam'lee canoe go topside down--you plentee swimee to bush.
+Allee night in bush.  Housee big way off--how can get?  Sabe?"
+
+"And I'll leave the gun, and tell Dad that when the canoe upset the
+gun got drowned," said the boy eagerly.
+
+Li Tee nodded.
+
+"And come again Saturday, and bring more powder and shot and a
+bottle for Jim," said Master Skinner excitedly.
+
+"Good!" grunted the Indian.
+
+Then they ferried the boy over to the peninsula, and set him on a
+trail across the marshes, known only to themselves, which would
+bring him home.  And when the Editor the next morning chronicled
+among his news, "Adrift on the Bay--A Schoolboy's Miraculous
+Escape," he knew as little what part his missing Chinese errand boy
+had taken in it as the rest of his readers.
+
+Meantime the two outcasts returned to their island camp.  It may
+have occurred to them that a little of the sunlight had gone from
+it with Bob; for they were in a dull, stupid way fascinated by the
+little white tyrant who had broken bread with them.  He had been
+delightfully selfish and frankly brutal to them, as only a
+schoolboy could be, with the addition of the consciousness of his
+superior race.  Yet they each longed for his return, although he
+was seldom mentioned in their scanty conversation--carried on in
+monosyllables, each in his own language, or with some common
+English word, or more often restricted solely to signs.  By a
+delicate flattery, when they did speak of him it was in what they
+considered to be his own language.
+
+"Boston boy, plenty like catchee HIM," Jim would say, pointing to a
+distant swan.  Or Li Tee, hunting a striped water snake from the
+reeds, would utter stolidly, "Melikan boy no likee snake."  Yet the
+next two days brought some trouble and physical discomfort to them.
+Bob had consumed, or wasted, all their provisions--and, still more
+unfortunately, his righteous visit, his gun, and his superabundant
+animal spirits had frightened away the game, which their habitual
+quiet and taciturnity had beguiled into trustfulness.  They were
+half starved, but they did not blame him.  It would come all right
+when he returned.  They counted the days, Jim with secret notches
+on the long pole, Li Tee with a string of copper "cash" he always
+kept with him.  The eventful day came at last,--a warm autumn day,
+patched with inland fog like blue smoke and smooth, tranquil, open
+surfaces of wood and sea; but to their waiting, confident eyes the
+boy came not out of either.  They kept a stolid silence all that
+day until night fell, when Jim said, "Mebbe Boston boy go dead."
+Li Tee nodded.  It did not seem possible to these two heathens that
+anything else could prevent the Christian child from keeping his
+word.
+
+After that, by the aid of the canoe, they went much on the marsh,
+hunting apart, but often meeting on the trail which Bob had taken,
+with grunts of mutual surprise.  These suppressed feelings, never
+made known by word or gesture, at last must have found vicarious
+outlet in the taciturn dog, who so far forgot his usual discretion
+as to once or twice seat himself on the water's edge and indulge in
+a fit of howling.  It had been a custom of Jim's on certain days to
+retire to some secluded place, where, folded in his blanket, with
+his back against a tree, he remained motionless for hours.  In the
+settlement this had been usually referred to the after effects of
+drink, known as the "horrors," but Jim had explained it by saying
+it was "when his heart was bad."  And now it seemed, by these
+gloomy abstractions, that "his heart was bad" very often.  And then
+the long withheld rains came one night on the wings of a fierce
+southwester, beating down their frail lodge and scattering it
+abroad, quenching their camp-fire, and rolling up the bay until it
+invaded their reedy island and hissed in their ears.  It drove the
+game from Jim's gun; it tore the net and scattered the bait of Li
+Tee, the fisherman.  Cold and half starved in heart and body, but
+more dogged and silent than ever, they crept out in their canoe
+into the storm-tossed bay, barely escaping with their miserable
+lives to the marshy peninsula.  Here, on their enemy's ground,
+skulking in the rushes, or lying close behind tussocks, they at
+last reached the fringe of forest below the settlement.  Here, too,
+sorely pressed by hunger, and doggedly reckless of consequences,
+they forgot their caution, and a flight of teal fell to Jim's gun
+on the very outskirts of the settlement.
+
+It was a fatal shot, whose echoes awoke the forces of civilization
+against them.  For it was heard by a logger in his hut near the
+marsh, who, looking out, had seen Jim pass.  A careless, good-
+natured frontiersman, he might have kept the outcasts' mere
+presence to himself; but there was that damning shot!  An Indian
+with a gun!  That weapon, contraband of law, with dire fines and
+penalties to whoso sold or gave it to him!  A thing to be looked
+into--some one to be punished!  An Indian with a weapon that made
+him the equal of the white!  Who was safe?  He hurried to town to
+lay his information before the constable, but, meeting Mr. Skinner,
+imparted the news to him.  The latter pooh-poohed the constable,
+who he alleged had not yet discovered the whereabouts of Jim, and
+suggested that a few armed citizens should make the chase
+themselves.  The fact was that Mr. Skinner, never quite satisfied
+in his mind with his son's account of the loss of the gun, had put
+two and two together, and was by no means inclined to have his own
+gun possibly identified by the legal authority.  Moreover, he went
+home and at once attacked Master Bob with such vigor and so highly
+colored a description of the crime he had committed, and the
+penalties attached to it, that Bob confessed.  More than that, I
+grieve to say that Bob lied.  The Indian had "stoled his gun," and
+threatened his life if he divulged the theft.  He told how he was
+ruthlessly put ashore, and compelled to take a trail only known to
+them to reach his home.  In two hours it was reported throughout
+the settlement that the infamous Jim had added robbery with
+violence to his illegal possession of the weapon.  The secret of
+the island and the trail over the marsh was told only to a few.
+
+Meantime it had fared hard with the fugitives.  Their nearness to
+the settlement prevented them from lighting a fire, which might
+have revealed their hiding-place, and they crept together,
+shivering all night in a clump of hazel.  Scared thence by passing
+but unsuspecting wayfarers wandering off the trail, they lay part
+of the next day and night amid some tussocks of salt grass, blown
+on by the cold sea-breeze; chilled, but securely hidden from sight.
+Indeed, thanks to some mysterious power they had of utter
+immobility, it was wonderful how they could efface themselves,
+through quiet and the simplest environment.  The lee side of a
+straggling vine in the meadow, or even the thin ridge of cast-up
+drift on the shore, behind which they would lie for hours
+motionless, was a sufficient barrier against prying eyes.  In this
+occupation they no longer talked together, but followed each other
+with the blind instinct of animals--yet always unerringly, as if
+conscious of each other's plans.  Strangely enough, it was the REAL
+animal alone--their nameless dog--who now betrayed impatience and a
+certain human infirmity of temper.  The concealment they were
+resigned to, the sufferings they mutely accepted, he alone
+resented!  When certain scents or sounds, imperceptible to their
+senses, were blown across their path, he would, with bristling
+back, snarl himself into guttural and strangulated fury.  Yet, in
+their apathy, even this would have passed them unnoticed, but that
+on the second night he disappeared suddenly, returning after two
+hours' absence with bloody jaws--replete, but still slinking and
+snappish.  It was only in the morning that, creeping on their hands
+and knees through the stubble, they came upon the torn and mangled
+carcass of a sheep.  The two men looked at each other without
+speaking--they knew what this act of rapine meant to themselves.
+It meant a fresh hue and cry after them--it meant that their
+starving companion had helped to draw the net closer round them.
+The Indian grunted, Li Tee smiled vacantly; but with their knives
+and fingers they finished what the dog had begun, and became
+equally culpable.  But that they were heathens, they could not have
+achieved a delicate ethical responsibility in a more Christian-like
+way.
+
+Yet the rice-fed Li Tee suffered most in their privations.  His
+habitual apathy increased with a certain physical lethargy which
+Jim could not understand.  When they were apart he sometimes found
+Li Tee stretched on his back with an odd stare in his eyes, and
+once, at a distance, he thought he saw a vague thin vapor drift
+from where the Chinese boy was lying and vanish as he approached.
+When he tried to arouse him there was a weak drawl in his voice and
+a drug-like odor in his breath.  Jim dragged him to a more
+substantial shelter, a thicket of alder.  It was dangerously near
+the frequented road, but a vague idea had sprung up in Jim's now
+troubled mind that, equal vagabonds though they were, Li Tee had
+more claims upon civilization, through those of his own race who
+were permitted to live among the white men, and were not hunted to
+"reservations" and confined there like Jim's people.  If Li Tee was
+"heap sick," other Chinamen might find and nurse him.  As for Li
+Tee, he had lately said, in a more lucid interval: "Me go dead--
+allee samee Mellikan boy.  You go dead too--allee samee," and then
+lay down again with a glassy stare in his eyes.  Far from being
+frightened at this, Jim attributed his condition to some
+enchantment that Li Tee had evoked from one of his gods--just as he
+himself had seen "medicine-men" of his own tribe fall into strange
+trances, and was glad that the boy no longer suffered.  The day
+advanced, and Li Tee still slept.  Jim could hear the church bells
+ringing; he knew it was Sunday--the day on which he was hustled
+from the main street by the constable; the day on which the shops
+were closed, and the drinking saloons open only at the back door.
+The day whereon no man worked--and for that reason, though he knew
+it not, the day selected by the ingenious Mr. Skinner and a few
+friends as especially fitting and convenient for a chase of the
+fugitives.  The bell brought no suggestion of this--though the dog
+snapped under his breath and stiffened his spine.  And then he
+heard another sound, far off and vague, yet one that brought a
+flash into his murky eye, that lit up the heaviness of his Hebraic
+face, and even showed a slight color in his high cheek-bones.  He
+lay down on the ground, and listened with suspended breath.  He
+heard it now distinctly.  It was the Boston boy calling, and the
+word he was calling was "Jim."
+
+Then the fire dropped out of his eyes as he turned with his usual
+stolidity to where Li Tee was lying.  Him he shook, saying briefly:
+"Boston boy come back!"  But there was no reply, the dead body
+rolled over inertly under his hand; the head fell back, and the jaw
+dropped under the pinched yellow face.  The Indian gazed at him
+slowly, and then gravely turned again in the direction of the
+voice.  Yet his dull mind was perplexed, for, blended with that
+voice were other sounds like the tread of clumsily stealthy feet.
+But again the voice called "Jim!" and raising his hands to his lips
+he gave a low whoop in reply.  This was followed by silence, when
+suddenly he heard the voice--the boy's voice--once again, this time
+very near him, saying eagerly:--
+
+"There he is!"
+
+Then the Indian knew all.  His face, however, did not change as he
+took up his gun, and a man stepped out of the thicket into the
+trail:--
+
+"Drop that gun, you d----d Injin."
+
+The Indian did not move.
+
+"Drop it, I say!"
+
+The Indian remained erect and motionless.
+
+A rifle shot broke from the thicket.  At first it seemed to have
+missed the Indian, and the man who had spoken cocked his own rifle.
+But the next moment the tall figure of Jim collapsed where he stood
+into a mere blanketed heap.
+
+The man who had fired the shot walked towards the heap with the
+easy air of a conqueror.  But suddenly there arose before him an
+awful phantom, the incarnation of savagery--a creature of blazing
+eyeballs, flashing tusks, and hot carnivorous breath.  He had
+barely time to cry out "A wolf!" before its jaws met in his throat,
+and they rolled together on the ground.
+
+But it was no wolf--as a second shot proved--only Jim's slinking
+dog; the only one of the outcasts who at that supreme moment had
+gone back to his original nature.
+
+
+
+A VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN
+
+
+Mr. Jackson Potter halted before the little cottage, half shop,
+half hostelry, opposite the great gates of Domesday Park, where
+tickets of admission to that venerable domain were sold.  Here Mr.
+Potter revealed his nationality as a Western American, not only in
+his accent, but in a certain half-humorous, half-practical
+questioning of the ticket-seller--as that quasi-official stamped
+his ticket--which was nevertheless delivered with such unfailing
+good-humor, and such frank suggestiveness of the perfect equality
+of the ticket-seller and the well-dressed stranger that, far from
+producing any irritation, it attracted the pleased attention not
+only of the official, but his wife and daughter and a customer.
+Possibly the good looks of the stranger had something to do with
+it.  Jackson Potter was a singularly handsome young fellow, with
+one of those ideal faces and figures sometimes seen in Western
+frontier villages, attributable to no ancestor, but evolved
+possibly from novels and books devoured by ancestresses in the long
+solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier.  A
+beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent blonde
+curls, poised on a shapely neck and shoulders, was more Greek in
+outline than suggestive of any ordinary American type.  Finally,
+after having thoroughly amused his small audience, he lifted his
+straw hat to the "ladies," and lounged out across the road to the
+gateway.  Here he paused, consulting his guide-book, and read
+aloud: "St. John's gateway.  This massive structure, according to
+Leland, was built in"--murmured--"never mind when; we'll pass St.
+John," marked the page with his pencil, and tendering his ticket to
+the gate-keeper, heard, with some satisfaction, that, as there were
+no other visitors just then, and as the cicerone only accompanied
+PARTIES, he would be left to himself, and at once plunged into a
+by-path.
+
+It was that loveliest of rare creations--a hot summer day in
+England, with all the dampness of that sea-blown isle wrung out of
+it, exhaled in the quivering blue vault overhead, or passing as dim
+wraiths in the distant wood, and all the long-matured growth of
+that great old garden vivified and made resplendent by the fervid
+sun.  The ashes of dead and gone harvests, even the dust of those
+who had for ages wrought in it, turned again and again through
+incessant cultivation, seemed to move and live once more in that
+present sunshine.  All color appeared to be deepened and mellowed,
+until even the very shadows of the trees were as velvety as the
+sward they fell upon.  The prairie-bred Potter, accustomed to the
+youthful caprices and extravagances of his own virgin soil, could
+not help feeling the influence of the ripe restraints of this.
+
+As he glanced through the leaves across green sunlit spaces to the
+ivy-clad ruins of Domesday Abbey, which seemed itself a growth of
+the very soil, he murmured to himself: "Things had been made mighty
+comfortable for folks here, you bet!"  Forgotten books he had read
+as a boy, scraps of school histories, or rarer novels, came back to
+him as he walked along, and peopled the solitude about him with
+their heroes.
+
+Nevertheless, it was unmistakably hot--a heat homelike in its
+intensity, yet of a different effect, throwing him into languid
+reverie rather than filling his veins with fire.  Secure in his
+seclusion in the leafy chase, he took off his jacket and rambled on
+in his shirt sleeves.  Through the opening he presently saw the
+abbey again, with the restored wing where the noble owner lived for
+two or three weeks in the year, but now given over to the
+prevailing solitude.  And then, issuing from the chase, he came
+upon a broad, moss-grown terrace.  Before him stretched a tangled
+and luxuriant wilderness of shrubs and flowers, darkened by cypress
+and cedars of Lebanon; its dun depths illuminated by dazzling white
+statues, vases, trellises, and paved paths, choked and lost in the
+trailing growths of years of abandonment and forgetfulness.  He
+consulted his guide-book again.  It was the "old Italian garden,"
+constructed under the design of a famous Italian gardener by the
+third duke; but its studied formality being displeasing to his
+successor, it was allowed to fall into picturesque decay and
+negligent profusion, which were not, however, disturbed by later
+descendants,--a fact deplored by the artistic writer of the guide-
+book, who mournfully called attention to the rare beauty of the
+marble statues, urns, and fountains, ruined by neglect, although
+one or two of the rarer objects had been removed to Deep Dene
+Lodge, another seat of the present duke.
+
+It is needless to say that Mr. Potter conceived at once a humorous
+opposition to the artistic enthusiasm of the critic, and, plunging
+into the garden, took a mischievous delight in its wildness and the
+victorious struggle of nature with the formality of art.  At every
+step through the tangled labyrinth he could see where precision and
+order had been invaded, and even the rigid masonry broken or
+upheaved by the rebellious force.  Yet here and there the two
+powers had combined to offer an example of beauty neither could
+have effected alone.  A passion vine had overrun and enclasped a
+vase with a perfect symmetry no sculptor could have achieved.  A
+heavy balustrade was made ethereal with a delicate fretwork of
+vegetation between its balusters like lace.  Here, however, the lap
+and gurgle of water fell gratefully upon the ear of the perspiring
+and thirsty Mr. Potter, and turned his attention to more material
+things.  Following the sound, he presently came upon an enormous
+oblong marble basin containing three time-worn fountains with
+grouped figures.  The pipes were empty, silent, and choked with
+reeds and water plants, but the great basin itself was filled with
+water from some invisible source.
+
+A terraced walk occupied one side of the long parallelogram; at
+intervals and along the opposite bank, half shadowed by willows,
+tinted marble figures of tritons, fauns, and dryads arose half
+hidden in the reeds.  They were more or less mutilated by time, and
+here and there only the empty, moss-covered plinths that had once
+supported them could be seen.  But they were so lifelike in their
+subdued color in the shade that he was for a moment startled.
+
+The water looked deliciously cool.  An audacious thought struck
+him.  He was alone, and the place was a secluded one.  He knew
+there were no other visitors; the marble basin was quite hidden
+from the rest of the garden, and approached only from the path by
+which he had come, and whose entire view he commanded.  He quietly
+and deliberately undressed himself under the willows, and
+unhesitatingly plunged into the basin.  The water was four or five
+feet deep, and its extreme length afforded an excellent swimming
+bath, despite the water-lilies and a few aquatic plants that
+mottled its clear surface, or the sedge that clung to the bases of
+the statues.  He disported for some moments in the delicious
+element, and then seated himself upon one of the half-submerged
+plinths, almost hidden by reeds, that had once upheld a river god.
+Here, lazily resting himself upon his elbow, half his body still
+below the water, his quick ear was suddenly startled by a rustling
+noise and the sound of footsteps.  For a moment he was inclined to
+doubt his senses; he could see only the empty path before him and
+the deserted terrace.  But the sound became more distinct, and to
+his great uneasiness appeared to come from the OTHER side of the
+fringe of willows, where there was undoubtedly a path to the
+fountain which he had overlooked.  His clothes were under those
+willows, but he was at least twenty yards from the bank and an
+equal distance from the terrace.  He was about to slip beneath the
+water when, to his crowning horror, before he could do so, a young
+girl slowly appeared from the hidden willow path full upon the
+terrace.  She was walking leisurely with a parasol over her head
+and a book in her hand.  Even in his intense consternation her
+whole figure--a charming one in its white dress, sailor hat, and
+tan shoes--was imprinted on his memory as she instinctively halted
+to look upon the fountain, evidently an unexpected surprise to her.
+
+A sudden idea flashed upon him.  She was at least sixty yards away;
+he was half hidden in the reeds and well in the long shadows of the
+willows.  If he remained perfectly motionless she might overlook
+him at that distance, or take him for one of the statues.  He
+remembered also that as he was resting on his elbow, his half-
+submerged body lying on the plinth below water, he was somewhat in
+the attitude of one of the river gods.  And there was no other
+escape.  If he dived he might not be able to keep under water as
+long as she remained, and any movement he knew would betray him.
+He stiffened himself and scarcely breathed.  Luckily for him his
+attitude had been a natural one and easy to keep.  It was well,
+too, for she was evidently in no hurry and walked slowly, stopping
+from time to time to admire the basin and its figures.  Suddenly he
+was instinctively aware that she was looking towards him and even
+changing her position, moving her pretty head and shading her eyes
+with her hand as if for a better view.  He remained motionless,
+scarcely daring to breathe.  Yet there was something so innocently
+frank and undisturbed in her observation, that he knew as
+instinctively that she suspected nothing, and took him for a half-
+submerged statue.  He breathed more freely.  But presently she
+stopped, glanced around her, and, keeping her eyes fixed in his
+direction, began to walk backwards slowly until she reached a stone
+balustrade behind her.  On this she leaped, and, sitting down,
+opened in her lap the sketch-book she was carrying, and, taking out
+a pencil, to his horror began to sketch!
+
+For a wild moment he recurred to his first idea of diving and
+swimming at all hazards to the bank, but the conviction that now
+his slightest movement must be detected held him motionless.  He
+must save her the mortification of knowing she was sketching a
+living man, if he died for it.  She sketched rapidly but fixedly
+and absorbedly, evidently forgetting all else in her work.  From
+time to time she held out her sketch before her to compare it with
+her subject.  Yet the seconds seemed minutes and the minutes hours.
+Suddenly, to his great relief, a distant voice was heard calling
+"Lottie."  It was a woman's voice; by its accent it also seemed to
+him an American one.
+
+The young girl made a slight movement of impatience, but did not
+look up, and her pencil moved still more rapidly.  Again the voice
+called, this time nearer.  The young girl's pencil fairly flew over
+the paper, as, still without looking up, she lifted a pretty voice
+and answered back, "Y-e-e-s!"
+
+It struck him that her accent was also that of a compatriot.
+
+"Where on earth are you?" continued the first voice, which now
+appeared to come from the other side of the willows on the path by
+which the young girl had approached.  "Here, aunty," replied the
+girl, closing her sketch-book with a snap and starting to her feet.
+
+A stout woman, fashionably dressed, made her appearance from the
+willow path.
+
+"What have you been doing all this while?" she said querulously.
+"Not sketching, I hope," she added, with a suspicious glance at the
+book.  "You know your professor expressly forbade you to do so in
+your holidays."
+
+The young girl shrugged her shoulders.  "I've been looking at the
+fountains," she replied evasively.
+
+"And horrid looking pagan things they are, too," said the elder
+woman, turning from them disgustedly, without vouchsafing a second
+glance.  "Come.  If we expect to do the abbey, we must hurry up, or
+we won't catch the train.  Your uncle is waiting for us at the top
+of the garden."
+
+And, to Potter's intense relief, she grasped the young girl's arm
+and hurried her away, their figures the next moment vanishing in
+the tangled shrubbery.
+
+Potter lost no time in plunging with his cramped limbs into the
+water and regaining the other side.  Here he quickly half dried
+himself with some sun-warmed leaves and baked mosses, hurried on
+his clothes, and hastened off in the opposite direction to the path
+taken by them, yet with such circuitous skill and speed that he
+reached the great gateway without encountering anybody.  A brisk
+walk brought him to the station in time to catch a stopping train,
+and in half an hour he was speeding miles away from Domesday Park
+and his half-forgotten episode.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Meantime the two ladies continued on their way to the abbey.  "I
+don't see why I mayn't sketch things I see about me," said the
+young lady impatiently.  "Of course, I understand that I must go
+through the rudimentary drudgery of my art and study from casts,
+and learn perspective, and all that; but I can't see what's the
+difference between working in a stuffy studio over a hand or arm
+that I know is only a STUDY, and sketching a full or half length in
+the open air with the wonderful illusion of light and shade and
+distance--and grouping and combining them all--that one knows and
+feels makes a picture.  The real picture one makes is already in
+one's self."
+
+"For goodness' sake, Lottie, don't go on again with your usual
+absurdities.  Since you are bent on being an artist, and your
+Popper has consented and put you under the most expensive master in
+Paris, the least you can do is to follow the rules.  And I dare say
+he only wanted you to 'sink the shop' in company.  It's such horrid
+bad form for you artistic people to be always dragging out your
+sketch-books.  What would you say if your Popper came over here,
+and began to examine every lady's dress in society to see what
+material it was, just because he was a big dry-goods dealer in
+America?"
+
+The young girl, accustomed to her aunt's extravagances, made no
+reply.  But that night she consulted her sketch, and was so far
+convinced of her own instincts, and the profound impression the
+fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish
+her interrupted sketch from memory.  For Miss Charlotte Forrest was
+a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to
+let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a
+novitiate.  She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her
+hand and found it good!  Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and
+wanted the vivification of color.
+
+When she returned to Paris she began--still secretly--a larger
+study in oils.  She worked upon it in her own room every moment she
+could spare from her studio practice, unknown to her professor.  It
+absorbed her existence; she grew thin and pale.  When it was
+finished, and only then, she showed it tremblingly to her master.
+He stood silent, in profound astonishment.  The easel before him
+showed a foreground of tangled luxuriance, from which stretched a
+sheet of water like a darkened mirror, while through parted reeds
+on its glossy surface arose the half-submerged figure of a river
+god, exquisite in contour, yet whose delicate outlines were almost
+a vision by the crowning illusion of light, shadow, and atmosphere.
+
+"It is a beautiful copy, mademoiselle, and I forgive you breaking
+my rules," he said, drawing a long breath.  "But I cannot now
+recall the original picture."
+
+"It's no copy of a picture, professor," said the young girl
+timidly, and she disclosed her secret.  "It was the only perfect
+statue there," she added diffidently; "but I think it wanted--
+something."
+
+"True," said the professor abstractedly.  "Where the elbow rests
+there should be a half-inverted urn flowing with water; but the
+drawing of that shoulder is so perfect--as is YOUR study of it--
+that one guesses the missing forearm one cannot see, which clasped
+it.  Beautiful! beautiful!"
+
+Suddenly he stopped, and turned his eyes almost searchingly on
+hers.
+
+"You say you have never drawn from the human model, mademoiselle?"
+
+"Never," said the young girl innocently.
+
+"True," murmured the professor again.  "These are the classic ideal
+measurements.  There are no limbs like those now.  Yet it is
+wonderful!  And this gem, you say, is in England?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good!  I am going there in a few days.  I shall make a pilgrimage
+to see it.  Until then, mademoiselle, I beg you to break as many of
+my rules as you like."
+
+Three weeks later she found the professor one morning standing
+before her picture in her private studio.  "You have returned from
+England," she said joyfully.
+
+"I have," said the professor gravely.
+
+"You have seen the original subject?" she said timidly.
+
+"I have NOT.  I have not seen it, mademoiselle," he said, gazing at
+her mildly through his glasses, "because it does not exist, and
+never existed."
+
+The young girl turned pale.
+
+"Listen.  I have go to England.  I arrive at the Park of Domesday.
+I penetrate the beautiful, wild garden.  I approach the fountain.
+I see the wonderful water, the exquisite light and shade, the
+lilies, the mysterious reeds--beautiful, yet not as beautiful as
+you have made it, mademoiselle, but no statue--no river god!  I
+demand it of the concierge.  He knows of it absolutely nothing.  I
+transport myself to the noble proprietor, Monsieur le Duc, at a
+distant chateau where he has collected the ruined marbles.  It is
+not there."
+
+"Yet I saw it," said the young girl earnestly, yet with a troubled
+face.  "O professor," she burst out appealingly, "what do you think
+it was?"
+
+"I think, mademoiselle," said the professor gravely, "that you
+created it.  Believe me, it is a function of genius!  More, it is a
+proof, a necessity!  You saw the beautiful lake, the ruined
+fountain, the soft shadows, the empty plinth, curtained by reeds.
+You yourself say you feel there was 'something wanting.'
+Unconsciously you yourself supplied it.  All that you had ever
+dreamt of mythology, all that you had ever seen of statuary,
+thronged upon you at that supreme moment, and, evolved from your
+own fancy, the river god was born.  It is your own, chere enfant,
+as much the offspring of your genius as the exquisite atmosphere
+you have caught, the charm of light and shadow that you have
+brought away.  Accept my felicitations.  You have little more to
+learn of me."
+
+As he bowed himself out and descended the stairs he shrugged his
+shoulders slightly.  "She is an adorable genius," he murmured.
+"Yet she is also a woman.  Being a woman, naturally she has a
+lover--this river god!  Why not?"
+
+The extraordinary success of Miss Forrest's picture and the
+instantaneous recognition of her merit as an artist, apart from her
+novel subject, perhaps went further to remove her uneasiness than
+any serious conviction of the professor's theory.  Nevertheless, it
+appealed to her poetic and mystic imagination, and although other
+subjects from her brush met with equally phenomenal success, and
+she was able in a year to return to America with a reputation
+assured beyond criticism, she never entirely forgot the strange
+incident connected with her initial effort.
+
+And by degrees a singular change came over her.  Rich, famous, and
+attractive, she began to experience a sentimental and romantic
+interest in that episode.  Once, when reproached by her friends for
+her indifference to her admirers, she had half laughingly replied
+that she had once found her "ideal," but never would again.  Yet
+the jest had scarcely passed her lips before she became pale and
+silent.  With this change came also a desire to re-purchase the
+picture, which she had sold in her early success to a speculative
+American picture-dealer.  On inquiry she found, alas! that it had
+been sold only a day or two before to a Chicago gentleman, of the
+name of Potter, who had taken a fancy to it.
+
+Miss Forrest curled her pretty lip, but, nothing daunted, resolved
+to effect her purpose, and sought the purchaser at his hotel.  She
+was ushered into a private drawing-room, where, on a handsome
+easel, stood the newly acquired purchase.  Mr. Potter was out, "but
+would return in a moment."
+
+Miss Forrest was relieved, for, alone and undisturbed, she could
+now let her full soul go out to her romantic creation.  As she
+stood there, she felt the glamour of the old English garden come
+back to her, the play of light and shadow, the silent pool, the
+godlike face and bust, with its cast-down, meditative eyes, seen
+through the parted reeds.  She clasped her hands silently before
+her.  Should she never see it again as then?
+
+"Pray don't let me disturb you; but won't you take a seat?"
+
+Miss Forrest turned sharply round.  Then she started, uttered a
+frightened little cry, and fainted away.
+
+Mr. Potter was touched, but a master of himself.  As she came to,
+he said quietly: "I came upon you suddenly--as you stood entranced
+by this picture--just as I did when I first saw it.  That's why I
+bought it.  Are you any relative of the Miss Forrest who painted
+it?" he continued, quietly looking at her card, which he held in
+his hand.
+
+Miss Forrest recovered herself sufficiently to reply, and stated
+her business with some dignity.
+
+"Ah," said Mr. Potter, "THAT is another question.  You see, the
+picture has a special value to me, as I once saw an old-fashioned
+garden like that in England.  But that chap there,--I beg your
+pardon, I mean that figure,--I fancy, is your own creation,
+entirely.  However, I'll think over your proposition, and if you
+will allow me I'll call and see you about it."
+
+Mr. Potter did call--not once, but many times--and showed quite a
+remarkable interest in Miss Forrest's art.  The question of the
+sale of the picture, however, remained in abeyance.  A few weeks
+later, after a longer call than usual, Mr. Potter said:--
+
+"Don't you think the best thing we can do is to make a kind of
+compromise, and let us own the picture together?"
+
+And they did.
+
+
+
+A ROMANCE OF THE LINE
+
+
+As the train moved slowly out of the station, the Writer of Stories
+looked up wearily from the illustrated pages of the magazines and
+weeklies on his lap to the illustrated advertisements on the walls
+of the station sliding past his carriage windows.  It was getting
+to be monotonous.  For a while he had been hopefully interested in
+the bustle of the departing trains, and looked up from his
+comfortable and early invested position to the later comers with
+that sense of superiority common to travelers; had watched the
+conventional leave-takings--always feebly prolonged to the
+uneasiness of both parties--and contrasted it with the impassive
+business promptitude of the railway officials; but it was the old
+experience repeated.  Falling back on the illustrated advertisements
+again, he wondered if their perpetual recurrence at every station
+would not at last bring to the tired traveler the loathing of
+satiety; whether the passenger in railway carriages, continually
+offered Somebody's oats, inks, washing blue, candles, and soap,
+apparently as a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would
+not there and thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles,
+or recoil from that particular quality.  Or, as an unbiased
+observer, he wondered if, on the other hand, impressible passengers,
+after passing three or four stations, had ever leaped from the train
+and refused to proceed further until they were supplied with one or
+more of those articles.  Had he ever known any one who confided to
+him in a moment of expansiveness that he had dated his use of
+Somebody's soap to an advertisement persistently borne upon him
+through the medium of a railway carriage window?  No!  Would he not
+have connected that man with that other certifying individual who
+always appends a name and address singularly obscure and
+unconvincing, yet who, at some supreme moment, recommends Somebody's
+pills to a dying friend,--afflicted with a similar address,--which
+restore him to life and undying obscurity.  Yet these pictorial and
+literary appeals must have a potency independent of the wares they
+advertise, or they wouldn't be there.
+
+Perhaps he was the more sensitive to this monotony as he was just
+then seeking change and novelty in order to write a new story.  He
+was not looking for material,--his subjects were usually the same,--
+he was merely hoping for that relaxation and diversion which
+should freshen and fit him for later concentration.  Still, he had
+often heard of the odd circumstances to which his craft were
+sometimes indebted for suggestion.  The invasion of an eccentric-
+looking individual--probably an innocent tradesman into a railway
+carriage had given the hint for "A Night with a Lunatic;" a
+nervously excited and belated passenger had once unconsciously sat
+for an escaped forger; the picking up of a forgotten novel in the
+rack, with passages marked in pencil, had afforded the plot of a
+love story; or the germ of a romance had been found in an obscure
+news paragraph which, under less listless moments, would have
+passed unread.  On the other hand, he recalled these inconvenient
+and inconsistent moments from which the so-called "inspiration"
+sprang, the utter incongruity of time and place in some brilliant
+conception, and wondered if sheer vacuity of mind were really so
+favorable.
+
+Going back to his magazine again, he began to get mildly interested
+in a story.  Turning the page, however, he was confronted by a
+pictorial advertising leaflet inserted between the pages, yet so
+artistic in character that it might have been easily mistaken for
+an illustration of the story he was reading, and perhaps was not
+more remote or obscure in reference than many he had known.  But
+the next moment he recognized with despair that it was only a
+smaller copy of one he had seen on the hoarding at the last
+station.  He threw the leaflet aside, but the flavor of the story
+was gone.  The peerless detergent of the advertisement had erased
+it from the tablets of his memory.  He leaned back in his seat
+again, and lazily watched the flying suburbs.  Here were the usual
+promising open spaces and patches of green, quickly succeeded again
+by solid blocks of houses whose rear windows gave directly upon the
+line, yet seldom showed an inquisitive face--even of a wondering
+child.  It was a strange revelation of the depressing effects of
+familiarity.  Expresses might thunder by, goods trains drag their
+slow length along, shunting trains pipe all day beneath their
+windows, but the tenants heeded them not.  Here, too, was the
+junction, with its labyrinthine interlacing of tracks that dazed
+the tired brain; the overburdened telegraph posts, that looked as
+if they really could not stand another wire; the long lines of
+empty, homeless, and deserted trains in sidings that had seen
+better days; the idle trains, with staring vacant windows, which
+were eventually seized by a pert engine hissing, "Come along, will
+you?" and departed with a discontented grunt from every individual
+carriage coupling; the racing trains, that suddenly appeared
+parallel with one's carriage windows, begot false hopes of a
+challenge of speed, and then, without warning, drew contemptuously
+and, superciliously away; the swift eclipse of everything in a
+tunneled bridge; the long, slithering passage of an "up" express,
+and then the flash of a station, incoherent and unintelligible with
+pictorial advertisements again.
+
+He closed his eyes to concentrate his thought, and by degrees a
+pleasant languor stole over him.  The train had by this time
+attained that rate of speed which gave it a slight swing and roll
+on curves and switches not unlike the rocking of a cradle.  Once or
+twice he opened his eyes sleepily upon the waltzing trees in the
+double planes of distance, and again closed them.  Then, in one of
+these slight oscillations, he felt himself ridiculously slipping
+into slumber, and awoke with some indignation.  Another station was
+passed, in which process the pictorial advertisements on the
+hoardings and the pictures in his lap seemed to have become jumbled
+up, confused, and to dance before him, and then suddenly and
+strangely, without warning, the train stopped short--at ANOTHER
+station.  And then he arose, and--what five minutes before he never
+conceived of doing--gathered his papers and slipped from the
+carriage to the platform.  When I say "he" I mean, of course, the
+Writer of Stories; yet the man who slipped out was half his age and
+a different-looking person.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The change from the motion of the train--for it seemed that he had
+been traveling several hours--to the firmer platform for a moment
+bewildered him.  The station looked strange, and he fancied it
+lacked a certain kind of distinctness.  But that quality was also
+noticeable in the porters and loungers on the platform.  He thought
+it singular, until it seemed to him that they were not characteristic,
+nor in any way important or necessary to the business he had in
+hand.  Then, with an effort, he tried to remember himself and his
+purpose, and made his way through the station to the open road
+beyond.  A van, bearing the inscription, "Removals to Town and
+Country," stood before him and blocked his way, but a dogcart was in
+waiting, and a grizzled groom, who held the reins, touched his hat
+respectfully.  Although still dazed by his journey and uncertain of
+himself, he seemed to recognize in the man that distinctive
+character which was wanting in the others.  The correctness of his
+surmise was revealed a few moments later, when, after he had taken
+his seat beside him, and they were rattling out of the village
+street, the man turned towards him and said:--
+
+"Tha'll know Sir Jarge?"
+
+"I do not," said the young man.
+
+"Ay! but theer's many as cooms here as doan't, for all they cooms.
+Tha'll say it ill becooms mea as war man and boy in Sir Jarge's
+sarvice for fifty year, to say owt agen him, but I'm here to do it,
+or they couldn't foolfil their business.  Tha wast to ax me
+questions about Sir Jarge and the Grange, and I wor to answer soa
+as to make tha think thar was suthing wrong wi' un.  Howbut I may
+save tha time and tell thea downroight that Sir Jarge forged his
+uncle's will, and so gotten the Grange.  That 'ee keeps his niece
+in mortal fear o' he.  That tha'll be put in haunted chamber wi' a
+boggle."
+
+"I think," said the young man hesitatingly, "that there must be
+some mistake.  I do not know any Sir George, and I am NOT going to
+the Grange."
+
+"Eay!  Then thee aren't the 'ero sent down from London by the story
+writer?"
+
+"Not by THAT one," said the young man diffidently.
+
+The old man's face changed.  It was no mere figure of speech: it
+actually was ANOTHER face that looked down upon the traveler.
+
+"Then mayhap your honor will be bespoken at the Angel's Inn," he
+said, with an entirely distinct and older dialect, "and a finer
+hostel for a young gentleman of your condition ye'll not find on
+this side of Oxford.  A fair chamber, looking to the sun; sheets
+smelling of lavender from Dame Margery's own store, and, for the
+matter of that, spread by the fair hands of Maudlin, her daughter--
+the best favored lass that ever danced under a Maypole.  Ha! have
+at ye there, young sir!  Not to speak of the October ale of old
+Gregory, her father--ay, nor the rare Hollands, that never paid
+excise duties to the king."
+
+"I'm afraid," said the young traveler timidly, "there's over a
+century between us.  There's really some mistake."
+
+"What?" said the groom, "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry
+Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by
+a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his
+over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve?  Ye are
+NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon?  Ye are
+not he that was bespoken by the story writer in London?"
+
+"I don't think I am," said the young man apologetically.  "Indeed,
+as I am feeling far from well, I think I'll get out and walk."
+
+He got down--the vehicle and driver vanished in the distance.  It
+did not surprise him.  "I must collect my thoughts," he said.  He
+did so.  Possibly the collection was not large, for presently he
+said, with a sigh of relief:--
+
+"I see it all now!  My name is Paul Bunker.  I am of the young
+branch of an old Quaker family, rich and respected in the country,
+and I am on a visit to my ancestral home.  But I have lived since a
+child in America, and am alien to the traditions and customs of the
+old country, and even of the seat to which my fathers belong.  I
+have brought with me from the far West many peculiarities of speech
+and thought that may startle my kinsfolk.  But I certainly shall
+not address my uncle as 'Hoss!' nor shall I say 'guess' oftener
+than is necessary."
+
+Much brightened and refreshed by his settled identity, he had time,
+as he walked briskly along, to notice the scenery, which was
+certainly varied and conflicting in character, and quite
+inconsistent with his preconceived notions of an English landscape.
+On his right, a lake of the brightest cobalt blue stretched before
+a many-towered and terraced town, which was relieved by a
+background of luxuriant foliage and emerald-green mountains; on his
+left arose a rugged mountain, which he was surprised to see was
+snow-capped, albeit a tunnel was observable midway of its height,
+and a train just issuing from it.  Almost regretting that he had
+not continued on his journey, as he was fully sensible that it was
+in some way connected with the railway he had quitted, presently
+his attention was directed to the gateway of a handsome park, whose
+mansion was faintly seen in the distance.  Hurrying towards him,
+down the avenue of limes, was a strange figure.  It was that of a
+man of middle age; clad in Quaker garb, yet with an extravagance of
+cut and detail which seemed antiquated even for England.  He had
+evidently seen the young man approaching, and his face was beaming
+with welcome.  If Paul had doubted that it was his uncle, the first
+words he spoke would have reassured him.
+
+"Welcome to Hawthorn Hall," said the figure, grasping his hand
+heartily, "but thee will excuse me if I do not tarry with thee long
+at present, for I am hastening, even now, with some nourishing and
+sustaining food for Giles Hayward, a farm laborer."  He pointed to
+a package he was carrying.  "But thee will find thy cousins Jane
+and Dorcas Bunker taking tea in the summer-house.  Go to them!
+Nay--positively--I may not linger, but will return to thee quickly."
+And, to Paul's astonishment, he trotted away on his sturdy,
+respectable legs, still beaming and carrying his package in his hand.
+
+"Well, I'll be dog-goned! but the old man ain't going to be left,
+you bet!" he ejaculated, suddenly remembering his dialect.  "He'll
+get there, whether school keeps or not!"  Then, reflecting that no
+one heard him, he added simply, "He certainly was not over civil
+towards the nephew he has never seen before.  And those girls--whom
+I don't know!  How very awkward!"
+
+Nevertheless, he continued his way up the avenue towards the
+mansion.  The park was beautifully kept.  Remembering the native
+wildness and virgin seclusion of the Western forest, he could not
+help contrasting it with the conservative gardening of this pretty
+woodland, every rood of which had been patrolled by keepers and
+rangers, and preserved and fostered hundreds of years before he was
+born, until warmed for human occupancy.  At times the avenue was
+crossed by grass drives, where the original woodland had been
+displaced, not by the exigency of a "clearing" for tillage, as in
+his own West, but for the leisurely pleasure of the owner.  Then, a
+few hundred yards from the house itself,--a quaint Jacobean
+mansion,--he came to an open space where the sylvan landscape had
+yielded to floral cultivation, and so fell upon a charming summer-
+house, or arbor, embowered with roses.  It must have been the one
+of which his uncle had spoken, for there, to his wondering
+admiration, sat two little maids before a rustic table, drinking
+tea demurely, yes, with all the evident delight of a childish
+escapade from their elders.  While in the picturesque quaintness of
+their attire there was still a formal suggestion of the sect to
+which their father belonged, their summer frocks--differing in
+color, yet each of the same subdued tint--were alike in cut and
+fashion, and short enough to show their dainty feet in prim
+slippers and silken hose that matched their frocks.  As the
+afternoon sun glanced through the leaves upon their pink cheeks,
+tied up in quaint hats by ribbons under their chins, they made a
+charming picture.  At least Paul thought so as he advanced towards
+them, hat in hand.  They looked up at his approach, but again cast
+down their eyes with demure shyness; yet he fancied that they first
+exchanged glances with each other, full of mischievous intelligence.
+
+"I am your cousin Paul," he said smilingly, "though I am afraid I
+am introducing myself almost as briefly as your father just now
+excused himself to me.  He told me I would find you here, but he
+himself was hastening on a Samaritan mission."
+
+"With a box in his hand?" said the girls simultaneously, exchanging
+glances with each other again.
+
+"With a box containing some restorative, I think," responded Paul,
+a little wonderingly.
+
+"Restorative!  So THAT'S what he calls it now, is it?" said one of
+the girls saucily.  "Well, no one knows what's in the box, though
+he always carries it with him.  Thee never sees him without it"--
+
+"And a roll of paper," suggested the other girl.
+
+"Yes, a roll of paper--but one never knows what it is!" said the
+first speaker.  "It's very strange.  But no matter now, Paul.
+Welcome to Hawthorn Hall.  I am Jane Bunker, and this is Dorcas."
+She stopped, and then, looking down demurely, added, "Thee may kiss
+us both, cousin Paul."
+
+The young man did not wait for a second invitation, but gently
+touched his lips to their soft young cheeks.
+
+"Thee does not speak like an American, Paul.  Is thee really and
+truly one?" continued Jane.
+
+Paul remembered that he had forgotten his dialect, but it was too
+late now.
+
+"I am really and truly one, and your own cousin, and I hope you
+will find me a very dear"--
+
+"Oh!" said Dorcas, starting up primly.  "You must really allow me
+to withdraw."  To the young man's astonishment, she seized her
+parasol, and, with a youthful affectation of dignity, glided from
+the summer-house and was lost among the trees.
+
+"Thy declaration to me was rather sudden," said Jane quietly, in
+answer to his look of surprise, "and Dorcas is peculiarly sensitive
+and less like the 'world's people' than I am.  And it was just a
+little cruel, considering that she has loved thee secretly all
+these years, followed thy fortunes in America with breathless
+eagerness, thrilled at thy narrow escapes, and wept at thy
+privations."
+
+"But she has never seen me before!" said the astounded Paul.
+
+"And thee had never seen me before, and yet thee has dared to
+propose to me five minutes after thee arrived, and in her
+presence."
+
+"But, my dear girl!" expostulated Paul.
+
+"Stand off!" she said, rapidly opening her parasol and interposing
+it between them.  "Another step nearer--ay, even another word of
+endearment--and I shall be compelled--nay, forced," she added in a
+lower voice, "to remove this parasol, lest it should be crushed and
+ruined!"
+
+"I see," he said gloomily, "you have been reading novels; but so
+have I, and the same ones!  Nevertheless, I intended only to tell
+you that I hoped you would always find me a kind friend."
+
+She shut her parasol up with a snap.  "And I only intended to tell
+thee that my heart was given to another."
+
+"You INTENDED--and now?"
+
+"Is it the 'kind friend' who asks?"
+
+"If it were not?"
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"But thee loves another?" she said, toying with her cup.
+
+He attempted to toy with his, but broke it.  A man lacks delicacy
+in this kind of persiflage.  "You mean I am loved by another," he
+said bluntly.
+
+"You dare to say that!" she said, flashing, in spite of her prim
+demeanor.
+
+"No, but YOU did just now!  You said your sister loved me!"
+
+"Did I?" she said dreamily.  "Dear! dear!  That's the trouble of
+trying to talk like Mr. Blank's delightful dialogues.  One gets so
+mixed!"
+
+"Yet you will be a sister to me?" he said.  "'Tis an old American
+joke, but 'twill serve."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Had thee not better go to sister Dorcas?  She is playing with the
+cows," said Jane plaintively.
+
+"You forget," he returned gravely, "that, on page 27 of the novel
+we have both read, at this point he is supposed to kiss her."
+
+She had forgotten, but they both remembered in time.  At this
+moment a scream came faintly from the distance.  They both started,
+and rose.
+
+"It is sister Dorcas," said Jane, sitting down again and pouring
+out another cup of tea.  "I have always told her that one of those
+Swiss cows would hook her."
+
+Paul stared at her with a strange revulsion of feeling.  "I could
+save Dorcas," he muttered to himself, "in less time than it takes
+to describe."  He paused, however, as he reflected that this would
+depend entirely upon the methods of the writer of this description.
+"I could rescue her!  I have only to take the first clothes-line
+that I find, and with that knowledge and skill with the lasso which
+I learned in the wilds of America, I could stop the charge of the
+most furious ruminant.  I will!" and without another word he turned
+and rushed off in the direction of the sound.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+He had not gone a hundred yards before he paused, a little
+bewildered.  To the left could still be seen the cobalt lake with
+the terraced background; to the right the rugged mountains.  He
+chose the latter.  Luckily for him a cottager's garden lay in his
+path, and from a line supported by a single pole depended the
+homely linen of the cottager.  To tear these garments from the line
+was the work of a moment (although it represented the whole week's
+washing), and hastily coiling the rope dexterously in his hand, he
+sped onward.  Already panting with exertion and excitement, a few
+roods farther he was confronted with a spectacle that left him
+breathless.
+
+A woman--young, robust, yet gracefully formed--was running ahead of
+him, driving before her with an open parasol an animal which he
+instantly recognized as one of that simple yet treacherous species
+most feared by the sex--known as the "Moo Cow."
+
+For a moment he was appalled by the spectacle.  But it was only for
+a moment!  Recalling his manhood and her weakness, he stopped, and
+bracing his foot against a stone, with a graceful flourish of his
+lasso around his head, threw it in the air.  It uncoiled slowly,
+sped forward with unerring precision, and missed!  With the single
+cry of "Saved!" the fair stranger sank fainting in his arms!  He
+held her closely until the color came back to her pale face.  Then
+he quietly disentangled the lasso from his legs.
+
+"Where am I?" she said faintly.
+
+"In the same place," he replied, slowly but firmly.  "But," he
+added, "you have changed!"
+
+She had, indeed, even to her dress.  It was now of a vivid brick
+red, and so much longer in the skirt that it seemed to make her
+taller.  Only her hat remained the same.
+
+"Yes," she said, in a low, reflective voice and a disregard of her
+previous dialect, as she gazed up in his eyes with an eloquent
+lucidity, "I have changed, Paul!  I feel myself changing at those
+words you uttered to Jane.  There are moments in a woman's life
+that man knows nothing of; moments bitter and cruel, sweet and
+merciful, that change her whole being; moments in which the simple
+girl becomes a worldly woman; moments in which the slow procession
+of her years is never noted--except by another woman!  Moments that
+change her outlook on the world and her relations to it--and her
+husband's relations!  Moments when the maid becomes a wife, the
+wife a widow, the widow a re-married woman, by a simple, swift
+illumination of the fancy.  Moments when, wrought upon by a single
+word--a look--an emphasis and rising inflection, all logical
+sequence is cast away, processes are lost--inductions lead nowhere.
+Moments when the inharmonious becomes harmonious, the indiscreet
+discreet, the inefficient efficient, and the inevitable evitable.
+I mean," she corrected herself hurriedly--"You know what I mean!
+If you have not felt it you have read it!"
+
+"I have," he said thoughtfully.  "We have both read it in the same
+novel.  She is a fine writer."
+
+"Ye-e-s."  She hesitated with that slight resentment of praise of
+another woman so delightful in her sex.  "But you have forgotten
+the Moo Cow!" and she pointed to where the distracted animal was
+careering across the lawn towards the garden.
+
+"You are right," he said, "the incident is not yet closed.  Let us
+pursue it."
+
+They both pursued it.  Discarding the useless lasso, he had
+recourse to a few well-aimed epithets.  The infuriated animal
+swerved and made directly towards a small fountain in the centre of
+the garden.  In attempting to clear it, it fell directly into the
+deep cup-like basin and remained helplessly fixed, with its fore-
+legs projecting uneasily beyond the rim.
+
+"Let us leave it there," she said, "and forget it--and all that has
+gone before.  Believe me," she added, with a faint sigh, "it is
+best.  Our paths diverge from this moment.  I go to the summer-
+house, and you go to the Hall, where my father is expecting you."
+He would have detained her a moment longer, but she glided away and
+was gone.
+
+Left to himself again, that slight sense of bewilderment which had
+clouded his mind for the last hour began to clear away; his
+singular encounter with the girls strangely enough affected him
+less strongly than his brief and unsatisfactory interview with his
+uncle.  For, after all, he was his host, and upon him depended his
+stay at Hawthorn Hall.  The mysterious and slighting allusions of
+his cousins to the old man's eccentricities also piqued his
+curiosity.  Why had they sneered at his description of the contents
+of the package he carried--and what did it really contain?  He did
+not reflect that it was none of his business,--people in his
+situation seldom do,--and he eagerly hurried towards the Hall.
+But he found in his preoccupation he had taken the wrong turning in
+the path, and that he was now close to the wall which bounded and
+overlooked the highway.  Here a singular spectacle presented
+itself.  A cyclist covered with dust was seated in the middle of
+the road, trying to restore circulation to his bruised and injured
+leg by chafing it with his hands, while beside him lay his damaged
+bicycle.  He had evidently met with an accident.  In an instant
+Paul had climbed the wall and was at his side.
+
+"Can I offer you any assistance?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Thanks--no!  I've come a beastly cropper over something or other
+on this road, and I'm only bruised, though the machine has suffered
+worse," replied the stranger, in a fresh, cheery voice.  He was a
+good-looking fellow of about Paul's own age, and the young
+American's heart went out towards him.
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Paul.
+
+"That's what puzzles me," said the stranger.  "I was getting out of
+the way of a queer old chap in the road, and I ran over something
+that seemed only an old scroll of paper; but the shock was so great
+that I was thrown, and I fancy I was for a few moments unconscious.
+Yet I cannot see any other obstruction in the road, and there's
+only that bit of paper."  He pointed to the paper,--a half-crushed
+roll of ordinary foolscap, showing the mark of the bicycle upon it.
+
+A strange idea came into Paul's mind.  He picked up the paper and
+examined it closely.  Besides the mark already indicated, it showed
+two sharp creases about nine inches long, and another exactly at
+the point of the impact of the bicycle.  Taking a folded two-foot
+rule from his pocket, he carefully measured these parallel creases
+and made an exhaustive geometrical calculation with his pencil on
+the paper.  The stranger watched him with awed and admiring
+interest.  Rising, he again carefully examined the road, and was
+finally rewarded by the discovery of a sharp indentation in the
+dust, which, on measurement and comparison with the creases in the
+paper and the calculations he had just made, proved to be identical.
+
+"There was a solid body in that paper," said Paul quietly; "a
+parallelogram exactly nine inches long and three wide."
+
+"I say! you're wonderfully clever, don't you know," said the
+stranger, with unaffected wonder.  "I see it all--a brick."
+
+Paul smiled gently and shook his head.  "That is the hasty
+inference of an inexperienced observer.  You will observe at the
+point of impact of your wheel the parallel crease is CURVED, as
+from the yielding of the resisting substances, and not BROKEN, as
+it would be by the crumbling of a brick."
+
+"I say, you're awfully detective, don't you know! just like that
+fellow--what's his name?" said the stranger admiringly.
+
+The words recalled Paul to himself.  Why was he acting like a
+detective? and what was he seeking to discover?  Nevertheless, he
+felt impelled to continue.  "And that queer old chap whom you met--
+why didn't he help you?"
+
+"Because I passed him before I ran into the--the parallelogram, and
+I suppose he didn't know what happened behind him?"
+
+"Did he have anything in his hand?"
+
+"Can't say."
+
+"And you say you were unconscious afterwards?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Long enough for the culprit to remove the principal evidence of
+his crime?"
+
+"Come!  I say, really you are--you know you are!"
+
+"Have you any secret enemy?"
+
+"No."
+
+"And you don't know Mr. Bunker, the man who owns this vast estate?"
+
+"Not at all.  I'm from Upper Tooting."
+
+"Good afternoon," said Paul abruptly, and turned away.
+
+It struck him afterwards that his action might have seemed uncivil,
+and even inhuman, to the bruised cyclist, who could hardly walk.
+But it was getting late, and he was still far from the Hall, which,
+oddly enough, seemed to be no longer visible from the road.  He
+wandered on for some time, half convinced that he had passed the
+lodge gates, yet hoping to find some other entrance to the domain.
+Dusk was falling; the rounded outlines of the park trees beyond the
+wall were solid masses of shadow.  The full moon, presently rising,
+restored them again to symmetry, and at last he, to his relief,
+came upon the massive gateway.  Two lions ramped in stone on the
+side pillars.  He thought it strange that he had not noticed the
+gateway on his previous entrance, but he remembered that he was
+fully preoccupied with the advancing figure of his uncle.  In a few
+minutes the Hall itself appeared, and here again he was surprised
+that he had overlooked before its noble proportions and picturesque
+outline.  Its broad terraces, dazzlingly white in the moonlight;
+its long line of mullioned windows, suffused with a warm red glow
+from within, made it look like part of a wintry landscape--and
+suggested a Christmas card.  The venerable ivy that hid the ravages
+time had made in its walls looked like black carving.  His heart
+swelled with strange emotions as he gazed at his ancestral hall.
+How many of his blood had lived and died there; how many had gone
+forth from that great porch to distant lands!  He tried to think of
+his father--a little child--peeping between the balustrades of that
+terrace.  He tried to think of it, and perhaps would have succeeded
+had it not occurred to him that it was a known fact that his uncle
+had bought the estate and house of an impoverished nobleman only
+the year before.  Yet--he could not tell why--he seemed to feel
+higher and nobler for that trial.
+
+The terrace was deserted, and so quiet that as he ascended to it
+his footsteps seemed to echo from the walls.  When he reached the
+portals, the great oaken door swung noiselessly on its hinges--
+opened by some unseen but waiting servitor--and admitted him to a
+lofty hall, dark with hangings and family portraits, but warmed by
+a red carpet the whole length of its stone floor.  For a moment he
+waited for the servant to show him to the drawing-room or his
+uncle's study.  But no one appeared.  Believing this to be a part
+of the characteristic simplicity of the Quaker household, he boldly
+entered the first door, and found himself in a brilliantly lit and
+perfectly empty drawing-room.  The same experience met him with the
+other rooms on that floor--the dining-room displaying an already
+set, exquisitely furnished and decorated table, with chairs for
+twenty guests!  He mechanically ascended the wide oaken staircase
+that led to the corridor of bedrooms above a central salon.  Here
+he found only the same solitude.  Bedroom doors yielded to his
+touch, only to show the same brilliantly lit vacancy.  He presently
+came upon one room which seemed to give unmistakable signs of HIS
+OWN occupancy.  Surely there stood his own dressing-case on the
+table! and his own evening clothes carefully laid out on another,
+as if fresh from a valet's hands.  He stepped hastily into the
+corridor--there was no one there; he rang the bell--there was no
+response!  But he noticed that there was a jug of hot water in his
+basin, and he began dressing mechanically.
+
+There was little doubt that he was in a haunted house, but this did
+not particularly disturb him.  Indeed, he found himself wondering
+if it could be logically called a haunted house--unless he himself
+was haunting it, for there seemed to be no other there.  Perhaps
+the apparitions would come later, when he was dressed.  Clearly it
+was not his uncle's house--and yet, as he had never been inside his
+uncle's house, he reflected that he ought not to be positive.
+
+He finished dressing and sat down in an armchair with a kind of
+thoughtful expectancy.  But presently his curiosity became
+impatient of the silence and mystery, and he ventured once more to
+explore the house.  Opening his bedroom door, he found himself
+again upon the deserted corridor, but this time he could distinctly
+hear a buzz of voices from the drawing-room below.  Assured that he
+was near a solution of the mystery, he rapidly descended the broad
+staircase and made his way to the open door of the drawing-room.
+But although the sound of voices increased as he advanced, when he
+entered the room, to his utter astonishment, it was as empty as
+before.
+
+Yet, in spite of his bewilderment and confusion, he was able to
+follow one of the voices, which, in its peculiar distinctness and
+half-perfunctory tone, he concluded must belong to the host of the
+invisible assembly.
+
+"Ah," said the voice, greeting some unseen visitor, "so glad you
+have come.  Afraid your engagements just now would keep you away."
+Then the voice dropped to a lower and more confidential tone.  "You
+must take down Lady Dartman, but you will have Miss Morecamp--a
+clever girl--on the other side of you.  Ah, Sir George!  So good of
+you to come.  All well at the Priory?  So glad to hear it."  (Lower
+and more confidentially.)  "You know Mrs. Monkston.  You'll sit by
+her.  A little cut up by her husband losing his seat.  Try to amuse
+her."
+
+Emboldened by desperation, Paul turned in the direction of the
+voice.  "I am Paul Bunker," he said hesitatingly.  "I'm afraid
+you'll think me intrusive, but I was looking for my uncle, and"--
+
+"Intrusive, my dear boy!  The son of my near neighbor in the
+country intrusive?  Really, now, I like that!  Grace!" (the voice
+turned in another direction) "here is the American nephew of our
+neighbor Bunker at Widdlestone, who thinks he is 'a stranger.'"
+
+"We all knew of your expected arrival at Widdlestone--it was so
+good of you to waive ceremony and join us," said a well-bred
+feminine voice, which Paul at once assumed to belong to the
+hostess.  "But I must find some one for your dinner partner.  Mary"
+(here her voice was likewise turned away), "this is Mr. Bunker, the
+nephew of an old friend and neighbor in Upshire;" (the voice again
+turned to him), "you will take Miss Morecamp in.  My dear" (once
+again averted), "I must find some one else to console poor dear
+Lord Billingtree with."  Here the hostess's voice was drowned by
+fresh arrivals.
+
+Bewildered and confused as he was, standing in this empty desert of
+a drawing-room, yet encompassed on every side by human voices, so
+marvelous was the power of suggestion, he seemed to almost feel the
+impact of the invisible crowd.  He was trying desperately to
+realize his situation when a singularly fascinating voice at his
+elbow unexpectedly assisted him.  It was evidently his dinner
+partner.
+
+"I suppose you must be tired after your journey.  When did you
+arrive?"
+
+"Only a few hours ago," said Paul.
+
+"And I dare say you haven't slept since you arrived.  One doesn't
+on the passage, you know; the twenty hours pass so quickly, and the
+experience is so exciting--to US at least.  But I suppose as an
+American you are used to it."
+
+Paul gasped.  He had passively accepted the bodiless conversation,
+because it was at least intelligible!  But NOW!  Was he going mad?
+
+She evidently noticed his silence.  "Never mind," she continued,
+"you can tell me all about it at dinner.  Do you know I always
+think that this sort of thing--what we're doing now,--this
+ridiculous formality of reception,--which I suppose is after all
+only a concession to our English force of habit,--is absurd!  We
+ought to pass, as it were, directly from our houses to the dinner-
+table.  It saves time."
+
+"Yes--no--that is--I'm afraid I don't follow you," stammered Paul.
+
+There was a slight pout in her voice as she replied: "No matter
+now--we must follow them--for our host is moving off with Lady
+Billingtree, and it's our turn now."
+
+So great was the illusion that he found himself mechanically
+offering his arm as he moved through the empty room towards the
+door.  Then he descended the staircase without another word,
+preceded, however, by the sound of his host's voice.  Following
+this as a blind man might, he entered the dining-room, which to his
+discomfiture was as empty as the salon above.  Still following the
+host's voice, he dropped into a chair before the empty table,
+wondering what variation of the Barmecide feast was in store for
+him.  Yet the hum of voices from the vacant chairs around the board
+so strongly impressed him that he could almost believe that he was
+actually at dinner.
+
+"Are you seated?" asked the charming voice at his side.
+
+"Yes," a little wonderingly, as his was the only seat visibly
+occupied.
+
+"I am so glad that this silly ceremony is over.  By the way, where
+are you?"
+
+Paul would have liked to answer, "Lord only knows!" but he
+reflected that it might not sound polite.  "Where am I?" he feebly
+repeated.
+
+"Yes; where are you dining?"
+
+It seemed a cool question under the circumstances, but he answered
+promptly,--
+
+"With you."
+
+"Of course," said the charming voice; "but where are you eating
+your dinner?"
+
+Considering that he was not eating anything, Paul thought this
+cooler still.  But he answered briefly, "In Upshire."
+
+"Oh!  At your uncle's?"
+
+"No," said Paul bluntly; "in the next house."
+
+"Why, that's Sir William's--our host's--and he and his family are
+here in London.  You are joking."
+
+"Listen!" said Paul desperately.  Then in a voice unconsciously
+lowered he hurriedly told her where he was--how he came there--the
+empty house--the viewless company!  To his surprise the only
+response was a musical little laugh.  But the next moment her voice
+rose higher with an unmistakable concern in it, apparently
+addressing their invisible host.
+
+"Oh, Sir William, only think how dreadful.  Here's poor Mr. Bunker,
+alone in an empty house, which he has mistaken for his uncle's--and
+without any dinner!"
+
+"Really; dear, dear!  How provoking!  But how does he happen to be
+WITH US?  James, how is this?"
+
+"If you please, Sir William," said a servant's respectful voice,
+"Widdlestone is in the circuit and is switched on with the others.
+We heard that a gentleman's luggage had arrived at Widdlestone, and
+we telegraphed for the rooms to be made ready, thinking we'd have
+her ladyship's orders later."
+
+A single gleam of intelligence flashed upon Paul.  His luggage--
+yes, had been sent from the station to the wrong house, and he had
+unwittingly followed.  But these voices! whence did they come?  And
+where was the actual dinner at which his host was presiding?  It
+clearly was not at this empty table.
+
+"See that he has everything he wants at once," said Sir William;
+"there must be some one there."  Then his voice turned in the
+direction of Paul again, and he said laughingly, "Possess your soul
+and appetite in patience for a moment, Mr. Bunker; you will be only
+a course behind us.  But we are lucky in having your company--even
+at your own discomfort."
+
+Still more bewildered, Paul turned to his invisible partner.  "May
+I ask where YOU are dining?"
+
+"Certainly; at home in Curzon Street," returned the pretty voice.
+"It was raining so, I did not go out."
+
+"And--Lord Billington?" faltered Paul.
+
+"Oh, he's in Scotland--at his own place."
+
+"Then, in fact, nobody is dining here at all," said Paul desperately.
+
+There was a slight pause, and then the voice responded, with a
+touch of startled suggestion in it: "Good heavens, Mr. Bunker!  Is
+it possible you don't know we're dining by telephone?"
+
+"By what?"
+
+"Telephone.  Yes.  We're a telephonic dinner-party.  We are dining
+in our own houses; but, being all friends, we're switched on to
+each other, and converse exactly as we would at table.  It saves a
+great trouble and expense, for any one of us can give the party,
+and the poorest can equal the most extravagant.  People who are
+obliged to diet can partake of their own slops at home, and yet
+mingle with the gourmets without awkwardness or the necessity of
+apology.  We are spared the spectacle, at least, of those who eat
+and drink too much.  We can switch off a bore at once.  We can
+retire when we are fatigued, without leaving a blank space before
+the others.  And all this without saying anything of the higher
+spiritual and intellectual effect--freed from material grossness of
+appetite and show--which the dinner party thus attains.  But you
+are surely joking!  You, an American, and not know it!  Why, it
+comes from Boston.  Haven't you read that book, 'Jumping a Century'?
+It's by an American."
+
+A strange illumination came upon Paul.  Where had he heard
+something like this before?  But at the same moment his thoughts
+were diverted by the material entrance of a footman, bearing a
+silver salver with his dinner.  It was part of his singular
+experience that the visible entrance of this real, commonplace
+mortal--the only one he had seen--in the midst of this voiceless
+solitude was distinctly unreal, and had all the effect of an
+apparition.  He distrusted it and the dishes before him.  But his
+lively partner's voice was now addressing an unseen occupant of the
+next chair.  Had she got tired of his ignorance, or was it feminine
+tact to enable him to eat something?  He accepted the latter
+hypothesis, and tried to eat.  But he felt himself following the
+fascinating voice in all the charm of its youthful and spiritual
+inflections.  Taking advantage of its momentary silence, he said
+gently,--
+
+"I confess my ignorance, and am willing to admit all you claim for
+this wonderful invention.  But do you think it compensates for the
+loss of the individual person?  Take my own case--if you will not
+think me personal.  I have never had the pleasure of seeing you; do
+you believe that I am content with only that suggestion of your
+personality which the satisfaction of hearing your voice affords
+me?"
+
+There was a pause, and then a very mischievous ring in the voice
+that replied: "It certainly is a personal question, and it is
+another blessing of this invention that you'll never know whether I
+am blushing or not; but I forgive you, for I never before spoke to
+any one I had never seen--and I suppose it's confusion.  But do you
+really think you would know me--the REAL one--any better?  It is
+the real person who thinks and speaks, not the outward semblance
+that we see, which very often unfairly either attracts or repels
+us?  We can always SHOW ourselves at our best, but we must, at
+last, reveal our true colors through our thoughts and speech.
+Isn't it better to begin with the real thing first?"
+
+"I hope, at least, to have the privilege of judging by myself,"
+said Paul gallantly.  "You will not be so cruel as not to let me
+see you elsewhere, otherwise I shall feel as if I were in some
+dream, and will certainly be opposed to your preference for
+realities."
+
+"I am not certain if the dream would not be more interesting to
+you," said the voice laughingly.  "But I think your hostess is
+already saying 'good-by.'  You know everybody goes at once at this
+kind of party; the ladies don't retire first, and the gentlemen
+join them afterwards.  In another moment we'll ALL be switched off;
+but Sir William wants me to tell you that his coachman will drive
+you to your uncle's, unless you prefer to try and make yourself
+comfortable for the night here.  Good-by!"
+
+The voices around him seemed to grow fainter, and then utterly
+cease.  The lights suddenly leaped up, went out, and left him in
+complete darkness.  He attempted to rise, but in doing so overset
+the dishes before him, which slid to the floor.  A cold air seemed
+to blow across his feet.  The "good-by" was still ringing in his
+ears as he straightened himself to find he was in his railway
+carriage, whose door had just been opened for a young lady who was
+entering the compartment from a wayside station.  "Good-by," she
+repeated to the friend who was seeing her off.  The Writer of
+Stories hurriedly straightened himself, gathered up the magazines
+and papers that had fallen from his lap, and glanced at the station
+walls.  The old illustrations glanced back at him!  He looked at
+his watch; he had been asleep just ten minutes!
+
+
+
+BOHEMIAN DAYS IN SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+It is but just to the respectable memory of San Francisco that in
+these vagrant recollections I should deprecate at once any
+suggestion that the levity of my title described its dominant tone
+at any period of my early experiences.  On the contrary, it was a
+singular fact that while the rest of California was swayed by an
+easy, careless unconventionalism, or swept over by waves of emotion
+and sentiment, San Francisco preserved an intensely material and
+practical attitude, and even a certain austere morality.  I do not,
+of course, allude to the brief days of '49, when it was a
+straggling beach of huts and stranded hulks, but to the earlier
+stages of its development into the metropolis of California.  Its
+first tottering steps in that direction were marked by a distinct
+gravity and decorum.  Even during the period when the revolver
+settled small private difficulties, and Vigilance Committees
+adjudicated larger public ones, an unmistakable seriousness and
+respectability was the ruling sign of its governing class.  It was
+not improbable that under the reign of the Committee the lawless
+and vicious class were more appalled by the moral spectacle of
+several thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men in
+embattled procession than by mere force of arms, and one "suspect"--
+a prize-fighter--is known to have committed suicide in his cell
+after confrontation with his grave and passionless shopkeeping
+judges.  Even that peculiar quality of Californian humor which was
+apt to mitigate the extravagances of the revolver and the
+uncertainties of poker had no place in the decorous and responsible
+utterance of San Francisco.  The press was sober, materialistic,
+practical--when it was not severely admonitory of existing evil;
+the few smaller papers that indulged in levity were considered
+libelous and improper.  Fancy was displaced by heavy articles on
+the revenues of the State and inducements to the investment of
+capital.  Local news was under an implied censorship which
+suppressed anything that might tend to discourage timid or cautious
+capital.  Episodes of romantic lawlessness or pathetic incidents of
+mining life were carefully edited--with the comment that these
+things belonged to the past, and that life and property were now
+"as safe in San Francisco as in New York or London."
+
+Wonder-loving visitors in quest of scenes characteristic of the
+civilization were coldly snubbed with this assurance.  Fires,
+floods, and even seismic convulsions were subjected to a like
+grimly materialistic optimism.  I have a vivid recollection of a
+ponderous editorial on one of the severer earthquakes, in which it
+was asserted that only the UNEXPECTEDNESS of the onset prevented
+San Francisco from meeting it in a way that would be deterrent of
+all future attacks.  The unconsciousness of the humor was only
+equaled by the gravity with which it was received by the whole
+business community.  Strangely enough, this grave materialism
+flourished side by side with--and was even sustained by--a narrow
+religious strictness more characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers of
+a past century than the Western pioneers of the present.  San
+Francisco was early a city of churches and church organizations to
+which the leading men and merchants belonged.  The lax Sundays of
+the dying Spanish race seemed only to provoke a revival of the
+rigors of the Puritan Sabbath.  With the Spaniard and his Sunday
+afternoon bullfight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco
+pulpit thundered against Sunday picnics.  One of the popular
+preachers, declaiming upon the practice of Sunday dinner-giving,
+averred that when he saw a guest in his best Sunday clothes
+standing shamelessly upon the doorstep of his host, he felt like
+seizing him by the shoulder and dragging him from that threshold of
+perdition.
+
+Against the actual heathen the feeling was even stronger, and
+reached its climax one Sunday when a Chinaman was stoned to death
+by a crowd of children returning from Sunday-school.  I am offering
+these examples with no ethical purpose, but merely to indicate a
+singular contradictory condition which I do not think writers of
+early Californian history have fairly recorded.  It is not my
+province to suggest any theory for these appalling exceptions to
+the usual good-humored lawlessness and extravagance of the rest of
+the State.  They may have been essential agencies to the growth and
+evolution of the city.  They were undoubtedly sincere.  The
+impressions I propose to give of certain scenes and incidents of my
+early experience must, therefore, be taken as purely personal and
+Bohemian, and their selection as equally individual and vagrant.  I
+am writing of what interested me at the time, though not perhaps of
+what was more generally characteristic of San Francisco.
+
+I had been there a week--an idle week, spent in listless outlook
+for employment; a full week in my eager absorption of the strange
+life around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes
+and incidents of those days, which start out of my memory to-day as
+freshly as the day they impressed me.
+
+One of these recollections is of "steamer night," as it was
+called,--the night of "steamer day,"--preceding the departure of
+the mail steamship with the mails for "home."  Indeed, at that time
+San Francisco may be said to have lived from steamer day to steamer
+day; bills were made due on that day, interest computed to that
+period, and accounts settled.  The next day was the turning of a
+new leaf: another essay to fortune, another inspiration of energy.
+So recognized was the fact that even ordinary changes of condition,
+social and domestic, were put aside until AFTER steamer day.  "I'll
+see what I can do after next steamer day" was the common cautious
+or hopeful formula.  It was the "Saturday night" of many a wage-
+earner--and to him a night of festivity.  The thoroughfares were
+animated and crowded; the saloons and theatres full.  I can recall
+myself at such times wandering along the City Front, as the
+business part of San Francisco was then known.  Here the lights
+were burning all night, the first streaks of dawn finding the
+merchants still at their counting-house desks.  I remember the dim
+lines of warehouses lining the insecure wharves of rotten piles,
+half filled in--that had ceased to be wharves, but had not yet
+become streets,--their treacherous yawning depths, with the
+uncertain gleam of tarlike mud below, at times still vocal with the
+lap and gurgle of the tide.  I remember the weird stories of
+disappearing men found afterward imbedded in the ooze in which they
+had fallen and gasped their life away.  I remember the two or three
+ships, still left standing where they were beached a year or two
+before, built in between warehouses, their bows projecting into the
+roadway.  There was the dignity of the sea and its boundless
+freedom in their beautiful curves, which the abutting houses could
+not destroy, and even something of the sea's loneliness in the far-
+spaced ports and cabin windows lit up by the lamps of the prosaic
+landsmen who plied their trades behind them.  One of these ships,
+transformed into a hotel, retained its name, the Niantic, and part
+of its characteristic interior unchanged.  I remember these ships'
+old tenants--the rats--who had increased and multiplied to such an
+extent that at night they fearlessly crossed the wayfarer's path at
+every turn, and even invaded the gilded saloons of Montgomery
+Street.  In the Niantic their pit-a-pat was met on every staircase,
+and it was said that sometimes in an excess of sociability they
+accompanied the traveler to his room.  In the early "cloth-and-
+papered" houses--so called because the ceilings were not plastered,
+but simply covered by stretched and whitewashed cloth--their
+scamperings were plainly indicated in zigzag movements of the
+sagging cloth, or they became actually visible by finally dropping
+through the holes they had worn in it!  I remember the house whose
+foundations were made of boxes of plug tobacco--part of a
+jettisoned cargo--used instead of more expensive lumber; and the
+adjacent warehouse where the trunks of the early and forgotten
+"forty-niners" were stored, and--never claimed by their dead or
+missing owners--were finally sold at auction.  I remember the
+strong breath of the sea over all, and the constant onset of the
+trade winds which helped to disinfect the deposit of dirt and
+grime, decay and wreckage, which were stirred up in the later
+evolutions of the city.
+
+Or I recall, with the same sense of youthful satisfaction and
+unabated wonder, my wanderings through the Spanish Quarter, where
+three centuries of quaint customs, speech, and dress were still
+preserved; where the proverbs of Sancho Panza were still spoken in
+the language of Cervantes, and the high-flown illusions of the La
+Manchian knight still a part of the Spanish Californian hidalgo's
+dream.  I recall the more modern "Greaser," or Mexican--his index
+finger steeped in cigarette stains; his velvet jacket and his
+crimson sash; the many-flounced skirt and lace manta of his women,
+and their caressing intonations--the one musical utterance of the
+whole hard-voiced city.  I suppose I had a boy's digestion and
+bluntness of taste in those days, for the combined odor of tobacco,
+burned paper, and garlic, which marked that melodious breath, did
+not affect me.
+
+Perhaps from my Puritan training I experienced a more fearful joy
+in the gambling saloons.  They were the largest and most comfortable,
+even as they were the most expensively decorated rooms in San
+Francisco.  Here again the gravity and decorum which I have already
+alluded to were present at that earlier period--though perhaps from
+concentration of another kind.  People staked and lost their last
+dollar with a calm solemnity and a resignation that was almost
+Christian.  The oaths, exclamations, and feverish interruptions
+which often characterized more dignified assemblies were absent
+here.  There was no room for the lesser vices; there was little or
+no drunkenness; the gaudily dressed and painted women who presided
+over the wheels of fortune or performed on the harp and piano
+attracted no attention from those ascetic players.  The man who had
+won ten thousand dollars and the man who had lost everything rose
+from the table with equal silence and imperturbability.  I never
+witnessed any tragic sequel to those losses; I never heard of any
+suicide on account of them.  Neither can I recall any quarrel or
+murder directly attributable to this kind of gambling.  It must be
+remembered that these public games were chiefly rouge et noir,
+monte, faro, or roulette, in which the antagonist was Fate, Chance,
+Method, or the impersonal "bank," which was supposed to represent
+them all; there was no individual opposition or rivalry; nobody
+challenged the decision of the "croupier," or dealer.
+
+I remember a conversation at the door of one saloon which was as
+characteristic for its brevity as it was a type of the prevailing
+stoicism.  "Hello!" said a departing miner, as he recognized a
+brother miner coming in, "when did you come down?"  "This morning,"
+was the reply.  "Made a strike on the bar?" suggested the first
+speaker.  "You bet!" said the other, and passed in.  I chanced an
+hour later to be at the same place as they met again--their
+relative positions changed.  "Hello!  Whar now?" said the incomer.
+"Back to the bar."  "Cleaned out?"  "You bet!"  Not a word more
+explained a common situation.
+
+My first youthful experience at those tables was an accidental one.
+I was watching roulette one evening, intensely absorbed in the mere
+movement of the players.  Either they were so preoccupied with the
+game, or I was really older looking than my actual years, but a
+bystander laid his hand familiarly on my shoulder, and said, as to
+an ordinary habitue, "Ef you're not chippin' in yourself, pardner,
+s'pose you give ME a show."  Now I honestly believe that up to that
+moment I had no intention, nor even a desire, to try my own
+fortune.  But in the embarrassment of the sudden address I put my
+hand in my pocket, drew out a coin, and laid it, with an attempt at
+carelessness, but a vivid consciousness that I was blushing, upon a
+vacant number.  To my horror I saw that I had put down a large
+coin--the bulk of my possessions!  I did not flinch, however; I
+think any boy who reads this will understand my feeling; it was not
+only my coin but my manhood at stake.  I gazed with a miserable
+show of indifference at the players, at the chandelier--anywhere
+but at the dreadful ball spinning round the wheel.  There was a
+pause; the game was declared, the rake rattled up and down, but
+still I did not look at the table.  Indeed, in my inexperience of
+the game and my embarrassment, I doubt if I should have known if I
+had won or not.  I had made up my mind that I should lose, but I
+must do so like a man, and, above all, without giving the least
+suspicion that I was a greenhorn.  I even affected to be listening
+to the music.  The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the
+rake was busy, but I did not move.  At last the man I had displaced
+touched me on the arm and whispered, "Better make a straddle and
+divide your stake this time."  I did not understand him, but as I
+saw he was looking at the board, I was obliged to look, too.  I
+drew back dazed and bewildered!  Where my coin had lain a moment
+before was a glittering heap of gold.
+
+My stake had doubled, quadrupled, and doubled again.  I did not
+know how much then---I do not know now--it may have been not more
+than three or four hundred dollars--but it dazzled and frightened
+me.  "Make your game, gentlemen," said the croupier monotonously.
+I thought he looked at me--indeed, everybody seemed to be looking
+at me--and my companion repeated his warning.  But here I must
+again appeal to the boyish reader in defense of my idiotic
+obstinacy.  To have taken advice would have shown my youth.  I
+shook my head--I could not trust my voice.  I smiled, but with a
+sinking heart, and let my stake remain.  The ball again sped round
+the wheel, and stopped.  There was a pause.  The croupier
+indolently advanced his rake and swept my whole pile with others
+into the bank!  I had lost it all.  Perhaps it may be difficult for
+me to explain why I actually felt relieved, and even to some extent
+triumphant, but I seemed to have asserted my grown-up independence--
+possibly at the cost of reducing the number of my meals for days;
+but what of that!  I was a man!  I wish I could say that it was a
+lesson to me.  I am afraid it was not.  It was true that I did not
+gamble again, but then I had no especial desire to--and there was
+no temptation.  I am afraid it was an incident without a moral.
+Yet it had one touch characteristic of the period which I like to
+remember.  The man who had spoken to me, I think, suddenly
+realized, at the moment of my disastrous coup, the fact of my
+extreme youth.  He moved toward the banker, and leaning over him
+whispered a few words.  The banker looked up, half impatiently,
+half kindly--his hand straying tentatively toward the pile of coin.
+I instinctively knew what he meant, and, summoning my determination,
+met his eyes with all the indifference I could assume, and walked
+away.
+
+I had at that period a small room at the top of a house owned by a
+distant relation--a second or third cousin, I think.  He was a man
+of independent and original character, had a Ulyssean experience of
+men and cities, and an old English name of which he was proud.
+While in London he had procured from the Heralds' College his
+family arms, whose crest was stamped upon a quantity of plate he
+had brought with him to California.  The plate, together with an
+exceptionally good cook, which he had also brought, and his own
+epicurean tastes, he utilized in the usual practical Californian
+fashion by starting a rather expensive half-club, half-restaurant
+in the lower part of the building--which he ruled somewhat
+autocratically, as became his crest.  The restaurant was too
+expensive for me to patronize, but I saw many of its frequenters as
+well as those who had rooms at the club.  They were men of very
+distinct personality; a few celebrated, and nearly all notorious.
+They represented a Bohemianism--if such it could be called--less
+innocent than my later experiences.  I remember, however, one
+handsome young fellow whom I used to meet occasionally on the
+staircase, who captured my youthful fancy.  I met him only at
+midday, as he did not rise till late, and this fact, with a certain
+scrupulous elegance and neatness in his dress, ought to have made
+me suspect that he was a gambler.  In my inexperience it only
+invested him with a certain romantic mystery.
+
+One morning as I was going out to my very early breakfast at a
+cheap Italian cafe on Long Wharf, I was surprised to find him also
+descending the staircase.  He was scrupulously dressed even at that
+early hour, but I was struck by the fact that he was all in black,
+and his slight figure, buttoned to the throat in a tightly fitting
+frock coat, gave, I fancied, a singular melancholy to his pale
+Southern face.  Nevertheless, he greeted me with more than his
+usual serene cordiality, and I remembered that he looked up with a
+half-puzzled, half-amused expression at the rosy morning sky as he
+walked a few steps with me down the deserted street.  I could not
+help saying that I was astonished to see him up so early, and he
+admitted that it was a break in his usual habits, but added with a
+smiling significance I afterwards remembered that it was "an even
+chance if he did it again."  As we neared the street corner a man
+in a buggy drove up impatiently.  In spite of the driver's evident
+haste, my handsome acquaintance got in leisurely, and, lifting his
+glossy hat to me with a pleasant smile, was driven away.  I have a
+very lasting recollection of his face and figure as the buggy
+disappeared down the empty street.  I never saw him again.  It was
+not until a week later that I knew that an hour after he left me
+that morning he was lying dead in a little hollow behind the
+Mission Dolores--shot through the heart in a duel for which he had
+risen so early.
+
+I recall another incident of that period, equally characteristic,
+but happily less tragic in sequel.  I was in the restaurant one
+morning talking to my cousin when a man entered hastily and said
+something to him in a hurried whisper.  My cousin contracted his
+eyebrows and uttered a suppressed oath.  Then with a gesture of
+warning to the man he crossed the room quietly to a table where a
+regular habitue of the restaurant was lazily finishing his
+breakfast.  A large silver coffee-pot with a stiff wooden handle
+stood on the table before him.  My cousin leaned over the guest
+familiarly and apparently made some hospitable inquiry as to his
+wants, with his hand resting lightly on the coffee-pot handle.
+Then--possibly because, my curiosity having been excited, I was
+watching him more intently than the others--I saw what probably no
+one else saw--that he deliberately upset the coffee-pot and its
+contents over the guest's shirt and waistcoat.  As the victim
+sprang up with an exclamation, my cousin overwhelmed him with
+apologies for his carelessness, and, with protestations of sorrow
+for the accident, actually insisted upon dragging the man upstairs
+into his own private room, where he furnished him with a shirt and
+waistcoat of his own.  The side door had scarcely closed upon them,
+and I was still lost in wonder at what I had seen, when a man
+entered from the street.  He was one of the desperate set I have
+already spoken of, and thoroughly well known to those present.  He
+cast a glance around the room, nodded to one or two of the guests,
+and then walked to a side table and took up a newspaper.  I was
+conscious at once that a singular constraint had come over the
+other guests--a nervous awkwardness that at last seemed to make
+itself known to the man himself, who, after an affected yawn or
+two, laid down the paper and walked out.
+
+"That was a mighty close call," said one of the guests with a sigh
+of relief.
+
+"You bet!  And that coffee-pot spill was the luckiest kind of
+accident for Peters," returned another.
+
+"For both," added the first speaker, "for Peters was armed too, and
+would have seen him come in!"
+
+A word or two explained all.  Peters and the last comer had
+quarreled a day or two before, and had separated with the intention
+to "shoot on sight," that is, wherever they met,--a form of duel
+common to those days.  The accidental meeting in the restaurant
+would have been the occasion, with the usual sanguinary consequence,
+but for the word of warning given to my cousin by a passer-by who
+knew that Peters' antagonist was coming to the restaurant to look at
+the papers.  Had my cousin repeated the warning to Peters himself he
+would only have prepared him for the conflict--which he would not
+have shirked--and so precipitated the affray.
+
+The ruse of upsetting the coffee-pot, which everybody but myself
+thought an accident, was to get him out of the room before the
+other entered.  I was too young then to venture to intrude upon my
+cousin's secrets, but two or three years afterwards I taxed him
+with the trick and he admitted it regretfully.  I believe that a
+strict interpretation of the "code" would have condemned his act as
+unsportsmanlike, if not UNFAIR!
+
+I recall another incident connected with the building equally
+characteristic of the period.  The United States Branch Mint stood
+very near it, and its tall, factory-like chimneys overshadowed my
+cousin's roof.  Some scandal had arisen from an alleged leakage of
+gold in the manipulation of that metal during the various processes
+of smelting and refining.  One of the excuses offered was the
+volatilization of the precious metal and its escape through the
+draft of the tall chimneys.  All San Francisco laughed at this
+explanation until it learned that a corroboration of the theory had
+been established by an assay of the dust and grime of the roofs in
+the vicinity of the Mint.  These had yielded distinct traces of
+gold.  San Francisco stopped laughing, and that portion of it which
+had roofs in the neighborhood at once began prospecting.  Claims
+were staked out on these airy placers, and my cousin's roof, being
+the very next one to the chimney, and presumably "in the lead," was
+disposed of to a speculative company for a considerable sum.  I
+remember my cousin telling me the story--for the occurrence was
+quite recent--and taking me with him to the roof to explain it, but
+I am afraid I was more attracted by the mystery of the closely
+guarded building, and the strangely tinted smoke which arose from
+this temple where money was actually being "made," than by anything
+else.  Nor did I dream as I stood there--a very lanky, open-mouthed
+youth--that only three or four years later I should be the
+secretary of its superintendent.  In my more adventurous ambition I
+am afraid I would have accepted the suggestion half-heartedly.
+Merely to have helped to stamp the gold which other people had
+adventurously found was by no means a part of my youthful dreams.
+
+At the time of these earlier impressions the Chinese had not yet
+become the recognized factors in the domestic and business economy
+of the city which they had come to be when I returned from the
+mines three years later.  Yet they were even then a more remarkable
+and picturesque contrast to the bustling, breathless, and brand-new
+life of San Francisco than the Spaniard.  The latter seldom
+flaunted his faded dignity in the principal thoroughfares.  "John"
+was to be met everywhere.  It was a common thing to see a long file
+of sampan coolies carrying their baskets slung between them, on
+poles, jostling a modern, well-dressed crowd in Montgomery Street,
+or to get a whiff of their burned punk in the side streets; while
+the road leading to their temporary burial-ground at Lone Mountain
+was littered with slips of colored paper scattered from their
+funerals.  They brought an atmosphere of the Arabian Nights into
+the hard, modern civilization; their shops--not always confined at
+that time to a Chinese quarter--were replicas of the bazaars of
+Canton and Peking, with their quaint display of little dishes on
+which tidbits of food delicacies were exposed for sale, all of the
+dimensions and unreality of a doll's kitchen or a child's
+housekeeping.
+
+They were a revelation to the Eastern immigrant, whose preconceived
+ideas of them were borrowed from the ballet or pantomime; they did
+not wear scalloped drawers and hats with jingling bells on their
+points, nor did I ever see them dance with their forefingers
+vertically extended.  They were always neatly dressed, even the
+commonest of coolies, and their festive dresses were marvels.  As
+traders they were grave and patient; as servants they were sad and
+civil, and all were singularly infantine in their natural
+simplicity.  The living representatives of the oldest civilization
+in the world, they seemed like children.  Yet they kept their
+beliefs and sympathies to themselves, never fraternizing with the
+fanqui, or foreign devil, or losing their singular racial
+qualities.  They indulged in their own peculiar habits; of their
+social and inner life, San Francisco knew but little and cared
+less.  Even at this early period, and before I came to know them
+more intimately, I remember an incident of their daring fidelity to
+their own customs that was accidentally revealed to me.  I had
+become acquainted with a Chinese youth of about my own age, as I
+imagined,--although from mere outward appearance it was generally
+impossible to judge of a Chinaman's age between the limits of
+seventeen and forty years,--and he had, in a burst of confidence,
+taken me to see some characteristic sights in a Chinese warehouse
+within a stone's throw of the Plaza.  I was struck by the singular
+circumstance that while the warehouse was an erection of wood in
+the ordinary hasty Californian style, there were certain brick and
+stone divisions in its interior, like small rooms or closets,
+evidently added by the Chinamen tenants.  My companion stopped
+before a long, very narrow entrance, a mere longitudinal slit in
+the brick wall, and with a wink of infantine deviltry motioned me
+to look inside.  I did so, and saw a room, really a cell, of fair
+height but scarcely six feet square, and barely able to contain a
+rude, slanting couch of stone covered with matting, on which lay,
+at a painful angle, a richly dressed Chinaman.  A single glance at
+his dull, staring, abstracted eyes and half-opened mouth showed me
+he was in an opium trance.  This was not in itself a novel sight,
+and I was moving away when I was suddenly startled by the
+appearance of his hands, which were stretched helplessly before him
+on his body, and at first sight seemed to be in a kind of wicker
+cage.
+
+I then saw that his finger-nails were seven or eight inches long,
+and were supported by bamboo splints.  Indeed, they were no longer
+human nails, but twisted and distorted quills, giving him the
+appearance of having gigantic claws.  "Velly big Chinaman,"
+whispered my cheerful friend; "first-chop man--high classee--no can
+washee--no can eat--no dlinke, no catchee him own glub allee same
+nothee man--China boy must catchee glub for him, allee time!  Oh,
+him first-chop man--you bettee!"
+
+I had heard of this singular custom of indicating caste before, and
+was amazed and disgusted, but I was not prepared for what followed.
+My companion, evidently thinking he had impressed me, grew more
+reckless as showman, and saying to me, "Now me showee you one funny
+thing--heap makee you laugh," led me hurriedly across a little
+courtyard swarming with chickens and rabbits, when he stopped
+before another inclosure.  Suddenly brushing past an astonished
+Chinaman who seemed to be standing guard, he thrust me into the
+inclosure in front of a most extraordinary object.  It was a
+Chinaman, wearing a huge, square, wooden frame fastened around his
+neck like a collar, and fitting so tightly and rigidly that the
+flesh rose in puffy weals around his cheeks.  He was chained to a
+post, although it was as impossible for him to have escaped with
+his wooden cage through the narrow doorway as it was for him to lie
+down and rest in it.  Yet I am bound to say that his eyes and face
+expressed nothing but apathy, and there was no appeal to the
+sympathy of the stranger.  My companion said hurriedly,--
+
+"Velly bad man; stealee heap from Chinamen," and then, apparently
+alarmed at his own indiscreet intrusion, hustled me away as quickly
+as possible amid a shrill cackling of protestation from a few of
+his own countrymen who had joined the one who was keeping guard.
+In another moment we were in the street again--scarce a step from
+the Plaza, in the full light of Western civilization--not a stone's
+throw from the courts of justice.
+
+My companion took to his heels and left me standing there bewildered
+and indignant.  I could not rest until I had told my story, but
+without betraying my companion, to an elder acquaintance, who laid
+the facts before the police authorities.  I had expected to be
+closely cross-examined--to be doubted--to be disbelieved.  To my
+surprise, I was told that the police had already cognizance of
+similar cases of illegal and barbarous punishments, but that the
+victims themselves refused to testify against their countrymen--and
+it was impossible to convict or even to identify them.  "A white man
+can't tell one Chinese from another, and there are always a dozen of
+'em ready to swear that the man you've got isn't the one."  I was
+startled to reflect that I, too, could not have conscientiously
+sworn to either jailor or the tortured prisoner--or perhaps even to
+my cheerful companion.  The police, on some pretext, made a raid upon
+the premises a day or two afterwards, but without result.  I
+wondered if they had caught sight of the high-class, first-chop
+individual, with the helplessly outstretched fingers, as that story
+I had kept to myself.
+
+But these barbaric vestiges in John Chinaman's habits did not
+affect his relations with the San Franciscans.  He was singularly
+peaceful, docile, and harmless as a servant, and, with rare
+exceptions, honest and temperate.  If he sometimes matched cunning
+with cunning, it was the flattery of imitation.  He did most of the
+menial work of San Francisco, and did it cleanly.  Except that he
+exhaled a peculiar druglike odor, he was not personally offensive
+in domestic contact, and by virtue of being the recognized
+laundryman of the whole community his own blouses were always
+freshly washed and ironed.  His conversational reserve arose, not
+from his having to deal with an unfamiliar language,--for he had
+picked up a picturesque and varied vocabulary with ease,--but from
+his natural temperament.  He was devoid of curiosity, and utterly
+unimpressed by anything but the purely business concerns of those
+he served.  Domestic secrets were safe with him; his indifference
+to your thoughts, actions, and feelings had all the contempt which
+his three thousand years of history and his innate belief in your
+inferiority seemed to justify.  He was blind and deaf in your
+household because you didn't interest him in the least.  It was
+said that a gentleman, who wished to test his impassiveness,
+arranged with his wife to come home one day and, in the hearing of
+his Chinese waiter who was more than usually intelligent--to
+disclose with well-simulated emotion the details of a murder he had
+just committed.  He did so.  The Chinaman heard it without a sign
+of horror or attention even to the lifting of an eyelid, but
+continued his duties unconcerned.  Unfortunately, the gentleman, in
+order to increase the horror of the situation, added that now there
+was nothing left for him but to cut his throat.  At this John
+quietly left the room.  The gentleman was delighted at the success
+of his ruse until the door reopened and John reappeared with his
+master's razor, which he quietly slipped--as if it had been a
+forgotten fork--beside his master's plate, and calmly resumed his
+serving.  I have always considered this story to be quite as
+improbable as it was inartistic, from its tacit admission of a
+certain interest on the part of the Chinaman.  I never knew one who
+would have been sufficiently concerned to go for the razor.
+
+His taciturnity and reticence may have been confounded with
+rudeness of address, although he was always civil enough.  "I see
+you have listened to me and done exactly what I told you," said a
+lady, commending some performance of her servant after a previous
+lengthy lecture; "that's very nice."  "Yes," said John calmly, "you
+talkee allee time; talkee allee too much."  "I always find Ling
+very polite," said another lady, speaking of her cook, "but I wish
+he did not always say to me, 'Goodnight, John,' in a high falsetto
+voice."  She had not recognized the fact that he was simply
+repeating her own salutation with his marvelous instinct of
+relentless imitation, even as to voice.  I hesitate to record the
+endless stories of his misapplication of that faculty which were
+then current, from the one of the laundryman who removed the
+buttons from the shirts that were sent to him to wash that they
+might agree with the condition of the one offered him as a pattern
+for "doing up," to that of the unfortunate employer who, while
+showing John how to handle valuable china carefully, had the
+misfortune to drop a plate himself--an accident which was followed
+by the prompt breaking of another by the neophyte, with the
+addition of "Oh, hellee!" in humble imitation of his master.
+
+I have spoken of his general cleanliness; I am reminded of one or
+two exceptions, which I think, however, were errors of zeal.  His
+manner of sprinkling clothes in preparing them for ironing was
+peculiar.  He would fill his mouth with perfectly pure water from a
+glass beside him, and then, by one dexterous movement of his lips
+in a prolonged expiration, squirt the water in an almost invisible
+misty shower on the article before him.  Shocking as this was at
+first to the sensibilities of many American employers, it was
+finally accepted, and even commended.  It was some time after this
+that the mistress of a household, admiring the deft way in which
+her cook had spread a white sauce on certain dishes, was cheerfully
+informed that the method was "allee same."
+
+His recreations at that time were chiefly gambling, for the Chinese
+theatre wherein the latter produced his plays (which lasted for
+several months and comprised the events of a whole dynasty) was not
+yet built.  But he had one or two companies of jugglers who
+occasionally performed also at American theatres.  I remember a
+singular incident which attended the debut of a newly arrived
+company.  It seemed that the company had been taken on their
+Chinese reputation solely, and there had been no previous rehearsal
+before the American stage manager.  The theatre was filled with an
+audience of decorous and respectable San Franciscans of both sexes.
+It was suddenly emptied in the middle of the performance; the
+curtain came down with an alarmed and blushing manager apologizing
+to deserted benches, and the show abruptly terminated.  Exactly
+WHAT had happened never appeared in the public papers, nor in the
+published apology of the manager.  It afforded a few days' mirth
+for wicked San Francisco, and it was epigrammatically summed up in
+the remark that "no woman could be found in San Francisco who was
+at that performance, and no man who was not."  Yet it was alleged
+even by John's worst detractors that he was innocent of any
+intended offense.  Equally innocent, but perhaps more morally
+instructive, was an incident that brought his career as a
+singularly successful physician to a disastrous close.  An ordinary
+native Chinese doctor, practicing entirely among his own
+countrymen, was reputed to have made extraordinary cures with two
+or three American patients.  With no other advertising than this,
+and apparently no other inducement offered to the public than what
+their curiosity suggested, he was presently besieged by hopeful and
+eager sufferers.  Hundreds of patients were turned away from his
+crowded doors.  Two interpreters sat, day and night, translating
+the ills of ailing San Francisco to this medical oracle, and
+dispensing his prescriptions--usually small powders--in exchange
+for current coin.  In vain the regular practitioners pointed out
+that the Chinese possessed no superior medical knowledge, and that
+their religion, which proscribed dissection and autopsies,
+naturally limited their understanding of the body into which they
+put their drugs.  Finally they prevailed upon an eminent Chinese
+authority to give them a list of the remedies generally used in the
+Chinese pharmacopoeia, and this was privately circulated.  For
+obvious reasons I may not repeat it here.  But it was summed up--
+again after the usual Californian epigrammatic style--by the remark
+that "whatever were the comparative merits of Chinese and American
+practice, a simple perusal of the list would prove that the Chinese
+were capable of producing the most powerful emetic known."  The
+craze subsided in a single day; the interpreters and their oracle
+vanished; the Chinese doctors' signs, which had multiplied,
+disappeared, and San Francisco awoke cured of its madness, at the
+cost of some thousand dollars.
+
+My Bohemian wanderings were confined to the limits of the city, for
+the very good reason that there was little elsewhere to go.  San
+Francisco was then bounded on one side by the monotonously restless
+waters of the bay, and on the other by a stretch of equally
+restless and monotonously shifting sand dunes as far as the Pacific
+shore.  Two roads penetrated this waste: one to Lone Mountain--the
+cemetery; the other to the Cliff House--happily described as "an
+eight-mile drive with a cocktail at the end of it."  Nor was the
+humor entirely confined to this felicitous description.  The Cliff
+House itself, half restaurant, half drinking saloon, fronting the
+ocean and the Seal Rock, where disporting seals were the chief
+object of interest, had its own peculiar symbol.  The decanters,
+wine-glasses, and tumblers at the bar were all engraved in old
+English script with the legal initials "L. S." (Locus Sigilli),--
+"the place of the seal."
+
+On the other hand, Lone Mountain, a dreary promontory giving upon
+the Golden Gate and its striking sunsets, had little to soften its
+weird suggestiveness.  As the common goal of the successful and
+unsuccessful, the carved and lettered shaft of the man who had made
+a name, and the staring blank headboard of the man who had none,
+climbed the sandy slopes together.  I have seen the funerals of the
+respectable citizen who had died peacefully in his bed, and the
+notorious desperado who had died "with his boots on," followed by
+an equally impressive cortege of sorrowing friends, and often the
+self-same priest.  But more awful than its barren loneliness was
+the utter absence of peacefulness and rest in this dismal
+promontory.  By some wicked irony of its situation and climate it
+was the personification of unrest and change.  The incessant trade
+winds carried its loose sands hither and thither, uncovering the
+decaying coffins of early pioneers, to bury the wreaths and
+flowers, laid on a grave of to-day, under their obliterating waves.
+No tree to shade them from the glaring sky above could live in
+those winds, no turf would lie there to resist the encroaching sand
+below.  The dead were harried and hustled even in their graves by
+the persistent sun, the unremitting wind, and the unceasing sea.
+The departing mourner saw the contour of the very mountain itself
+change with the shifting dunes as he passed, and his last look
+beyond rested on the hurrying, eager waves forever hastening to the
+Golden Gate.
+
+If I were asked to say what one thing impressed me as the dominant
+and characteristic note of San Francisco, I should say it was this
+untiring presence of sun and wind and sea.  They typified, even if
+they were not, as I sometimes fancied, the actual incentive to the
+fierce, restless life of the city.  I could not think of San
+Francisco without the trade winds; I could not imagine its strange,
+incongruous, multigenerous procession marching to any other music.
+They were always there in my youthful recollections; they were
+there in my more youthful dreams of the past as the mysterious
+vientes generales that blew the Philippine galleons home.
+
+For six months they blew from the northwest, for six months from
+the southwest, with unvarying persistency.  They were there every
+morning, glittering in the equally persistent sunlight, to chase
+the San Franciscan from his slumber; they were there at midday, to
+stir his pulses with their beat; they were there again at night, to
+hurry him through the bleak and flaring gas-lit streets to bed.
+They left their mark on every windward street or fence or gable, on
+the outlying sand dunes; they lashed the slow coasters home, and
+hurried them to sea again; they whipped the bay into turbulence on
+their way to Contra Costa, whose level shoreland oaks they had
+trimmed to windward as cleanly and sharply as with a pruning-
+shears.  Untiring themselves, they allowed no laggards; they drove
+the San Franciscan from the wall against which he would have
+leaned, from the scant shade in which at noontide he might have
+rested.  They turned his smallest fires into conflagrations, and
+kept him ever alert, watchful, and eager.  In return, they
+scavenged his city and held it clean and wholesome; in summer they
+brought him the soft sea-fog for a few hours to soothe his abraded
+surfaces; in winter they brought the rains and dashed the whole
+coast-line with flowers, and the staring sky above it with soft,
+unwonted clouds.  They were always there--strong, vigilant,
+relentless, material, unyielding, triumphant.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Under the Redwoods by Bret Harte
+