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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other
+Stories, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2006 [EBook #2556]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson and an Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+From: "ARGONAUT EDITION" OF THE WORKS OF BRET HARTE, VOL. 12.
+
+P. F. COLLIER & SON
+
+NEW YORK
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
+
+THE MAN AT THE SEMAPHORE
+
+AN ESMERALDA OF ROCKY CANYON
+
+DICK SPINDLER'S FAMILY CHRISTMAS
+
+WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT "JULES'"
+
+THE BOOM IN THE "CALAVERAS CLARION"
+
+THE SECRET OF SOBRIENTE'S WELL
+
+LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
+
+
+
+
+MR. JACK HAMLIN'S MEDIATION
+
+
+At nightfall it began to rain. The wind arose too, and also began to
+buffet a small, struggling, nondescript figure, creeping along the trail
+over the rocky upland meadow towards Rylands's rancho. At times its
+head was hidden in what appeared to be wings thrown upward from its
+shoulders; at times its broad-brimmed hat was cocked jauntily on one
+side, and again the brim was fixed over the face like a visor. At one
+moment a drifting misshapen mass of drapery, at the next its vague
+garments, beaten back hard against the figure, revealed outlines far too
+delicate for that rude enwrapping. For it was Mrs. Rylands herself,
+in her husband's hat and her "hired man's" old blue army overcoat,
+returning from the post-office two miles away. The wind continued its
+aggression until she reached the front door of her newly plastered
+farmhouse, and then a heavier blast shook the pines above the
+low-pitched, shingled roof, and sent a shower of arrowy drops after her
+like a Parthian parting, as she entered. She threw aside the overcoat
+and hat, and somewhat inconsistently entered the sitting-room, to walk
+to the window and look back upon the path she had just traversed. The
+wind and the rain swept down a slope, half meadow, half clearing,--a
+mile away,--to a fringe of sycamores. A mile further lay the stage road,
+where, three hours later, her husband would alight on his return from
+Sacramento. It would be a long wet walk for Joshua Rylands, as their
+only horse had been borrowed by a neighbor.
+
+In that fading light Mrs. Rylands's oval cheek was shining still from
+the raindrops, but there was something in the expression of her worried
+face that might have as readily suggested tears. She was strikingly
+handsome, yet quite as incongruous an ornament to her surroundings as
+she had been to her outer wrappings a moment ago. Even the clothes she
+now stood in hinted an inadaptibility to the weather--the house--the
+position she occupied in it. A figured silk dress, spoiled rather than
+overworn, was still of a quality inconsistent with her evident habits,
+and the lace-edged petticoat that peeped beneath it was draggled with
+mud and unaccustomed usage. Her glossy black hair, which had been tossed
+into curls in some foreign fashion, was now wind-blown into a burlesque
+of it. This incongruity was still further accented by the appearance of
+the room she had entered. It was coldly and severely furnished, making
+the chill of the yet damp white plaster unpleasantly obvious. A black
+harmonium organ stood in one corner, set out with black and white
+hymn-books; a trestle-like table contained a large Bible; half a dozen
+black, horsehair-cushioned chairs stood, geometrically distant, against
+the walls, from which hung four engravings of "Paradise Lost" in black
+mourning frames; some dried ferns and autumn leaves stood in a vase on
+the mantelpiece, as if the chill of the room had prematurely blighted
+them. The coldly glittering grate below was also decorated with withered
+sprays, as if an attempt had been made to burn them, but was frustrated
+through damp. Suddenly recalled to a sense of her wet boots and the
+new carpet, she hurriedly turned away, crossed the hall into the
+dining-room, and thence passed into the kitchen. The "hired girl," a
+large-boned Missourian, a daughter of a neighboring woodman, was peeling
+potatoes at the table. Mrs. Rylands drew a chair before the kitchen
+stove, and put her wet feet on the hob.
+
+"I'll bet a cooky, Mess Rylands, you've done forgot the vanillar," said
+the girl, with a certain domestic and confidential familiarity.
+
+Mrs. Rylands started guiltily. She made a miserable feint of looking in
+her lap and on the table. "I'm afraid I did, Jane, if I didn't bring it
+in HERE."
+
+"That you didn't," returned Jane. "And I reckon ye forgot that 'ar
+pepper-sauce for yer husband."
+
+Mrs. Rylands looked up with piteous contrition. "I really don't know
+what's the matter with me. I certainly went into the shop, and had it on
+my list,--and--really"--
+
+Jane evidently knew her mistress, and smiled with superior toleration.
+"It's kinder bewilderin' goin' in them big shops, and lookin' round them
+stuffed shelves." The shop at the cross roads and post-office was 14
+x 14, but Jane was nurtured on the plains. "Anyhow," she added
+good-humoredly, "the expressman is sure to look in as he goes by, and
+you've time to give him the order."
+
+"But is he SURE to come?" asked Mrs. Rylands anxiously. "Mr. Rylands
+will be so put out without his pepper-sauce."
+
+"He's sure to come ef he knows you're here. Ye kin always kalkilate on
+that."
+
+"Why?" said Mrs. Rylands abstractedly.
+
+"Why? 'cause he just can't keep his eyes off ye! That's why he comes
+every day,--'tain't jest for trade!"
+
+This was quite true, not only of the expressman, but of the butcher
+and baker, and the "candlestick-maker," had there been so advanced a
+vocation at the cross roads. All were equally and curiously attracted
+by her picturesque novelty. Mrs. Rylands knew this herself, but without
+vanity or coquettishness. Possibly that was why the other woman told
+her. She only slightly deepened the lines of discontent in her cheek and
+said abstractedly, "Well, when he comes, YOU ask him."
+
+She dried her shoes, put on a pair of slippers that had a faded splendor
+about them, and went up to her bedroom. Here she hesitated for some time
+between the sewing-machine and her knitting-needles, but finally settled
+upon the latter, and a pair of socks for her husband which she had begun
+a year ago. But she presently despaired of finishing them before
+he returned, three hours hence, and so applied herself to the
+sewing-machine. For a little while its singing hum was heard between the
+blasts that shook the house, but the thread presently snapped, and the
+machine was put aside somewhat impatiently, with a discontented drawing
+of the lines around her handsome mouth. Then she began to "tidy" the
+room, putting a great many things away and bringing out a great many
+more, a process that was necessarily slow, owing to her falling into
+attitudes of minute inspection of certain articles of dress, with
+intervals of trying them on, and observing their effect in her mirror.
+This kind of interruption also occurred while she was putting away some
+books that were lying about on chairs and tables, stopping midway to
+open their pages, becoming interested, and quite finishing one chapter,
+with the book held close against the window to catch the fading light of
+day. The feminine reader will gather from this that Mrs. Rylands, though
+charming, was not facile in domestic duties. She had just glanced at the
+clock, and lit the candle to again set herself to work, and thus bridge
+over the two hours more of waiting, when there came a tap at the door.
+She opened it to Jane.
+
+"There's an entire stranger downstairs, ez hez got a lame hoss and wants
+to borry a fresh one."
+
+"We have none, you know," said Mrs. Rylands, a little impatiently.
+
+"Thet's what I told him. Then he wanted to know ef he could lie by here
+till he could get one or fix up his own hoss."
+
+"As you like; you know if you can manage it," said Mrs. Rylands, a
+little uneasily. "When Mr. Rylands comes you can arrange it between you.
+Where is he now?"
+
+"In the kitchen."
+
+"The kitchen!" echoed Mrs. Rylands.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, I showed him into the parlor, but he kinder shivered his
+shoulders, and reckoned ez how he'd go inter the kitchen. Ye see, ma'am,
+he was all wet, and his shiny big boots was sloppy. But he ain't one o'
+the stuck-up kind, and he's willin' to make hisself cowf'ble before the
+kitchen stove."
+
+"Well, then, he don't want ME," said Mrs. Rylands, with a relieved
+voice.
+
+"Yes'm," said Jane, apparently equally relieved. "Only, I thought I'd
+just tell you."
+
+A few minutes later, in crossing the upper hall, Mrs. Rylands heard
+Jane's voice from the kitchen raised in rustic laughter. Had she been
+satirically inclined, she might have understood Jane's willingness to
+relieve her mistress of the duty of entertaining the stranger; had
+she been philosophical, she might have considered the girl's dreary,
+monotonous life at the rancho, and made allowance for her joy at this
+rare interruption of it. But I fear that Mrs. Rylands was neither
+satirical nor philosophical, and presently, when Jane reentered, with
+color in her alkaline face, and light in her huckleberry eyes, and said
+she was going over to the cattle-sheds in the "far pasture," to see
+if the hired man didn't know of some horse that could be got for the
+stranger, Mrs. Rylands felt a little bitterness in the thought that the
+girl would have scarcely volunteered to go all that distance in the rain
+for HER. Yet, in a few moments she forgot all about it, and even the
+presence of her guest in the house, and in one of her fitful abstracted
+employments passed through the dining-room into the kitchen, and had
+opened the door with an "Oh, Jane!" before she remembered her absence.
+
+The kitchen, lit by a single candle, could be only partly seen by her
+as she stood with her hand on the lock, although she herself was plainly
+visible. There was a pause, and then a quiet, self-possessed, yet
+amused, voice answered:--
+
+"My name isn't Jane, and if you're the lady of the house, I reckon yours
+wasn't ALWAYS Rylands."
+
+At the sound of the voice Mrs. Rylands threw the door wide open, and as
+her eyes fell upon the speaker--her unknown guest--she recoiled with a
+little cry, and a white, startled face. Yet the stranger was young and
+handsome, dressed with a scrupulousness and elegance which even the
+stress of travel had not deranged, and he was looking at her with
+a smile of recognition, mingled with that careless audacity and
+self-possession which seemed to be the characteristic of his face.
+
+"Jack Hamlin!" she gasped.
+
+"That's me, all the time," he responded easily, "and YOU'RE Nell
+Montgomery!"
+
+"How did you know I was here? Who told you?" she said impetuously.
+
+"Nobody! never was so surprised in my life! When you opened that door
+just now you might have knocked me down with a feather." Yet he spoke
+lazily, with an amused face, and looked at her without changing his
+position.
+
+"But you MUST have known SOMETHING! It was no mere accident," she went
+on vehemently, glancing around the room.
+
+"That's where you slip up, Nell," said Hamlin imperturbably. "It WAS an
+accident and a bad one. My horse lamed himself coming down the grade. I
+sighted the nearest shanty, where I thought I might get another horse.
+It happened to be this." For the first time he changed his attitude, and
+leaned back contemplatively in his chair.
+
+She came towards him quickly. "You didn't use to lie, Jack," she said
+hesitatingly.
+
+"Couldn't afford it in my business,--and can't now," said Jack
+cheerfully. "But," he added curiously, as if recognizing something in
+his companion's agitation, and lifting his brown lashes to her, the
+window, and the ceiling, "what's all this about? What's your little game
+here?"
+
+"I'm married," she said, with nervous intensity,--"married, and this is
+my husband's house!"
+
+"Not married straight out!--regularly fixed?"
+
+"Yes," she said hurriedly.
+
+"One of the boys? Don't remember any Rylands. SPELTER used to be very
+sweet on you,--but Spelter mightn't have been his real name?"
+
+"None of our lot! No one you ever knew; a--a straight out, square man,"
+she said quickly.
+
+"I say, Nell, look here! You ought to have shown up your cards without
+even a call. You ought to have told him that you danced at the Casino."
+
+"I did."
+
+"Before he asked you to marry him?"
+
+"Before."
+
+Jack got up from his chair, put his hands in his pockets, and looked
+at her curiously. This Nell Montgomery, this music-hall "dance and song
+girl," this girl of whom so much had been SAID and so little PROVED!
+Well, this was becoming interesting.
+
+"You don't understand," she said, with nervous feverishness; "you
+remember after that row I had with Jim, that night the manager gave us a
+supper,--when he treated me like a dog?"
+
+"He did that," interrupted Jack.
+
+"I felt fit for anything," she said, with a half-hysterical laugh, that
+seemed voiced, however, to check some slumbering memory. "I'd have cut
+my throat or his, it didn't matter which"--
+
+"It mattered something to us, Nell," put in Jack again, with polite
+parenthesis; "don't leave US out in the cold."
+
+"I started from 'Frisco that night on the boat ready to fling myself
+into anything--or the river!" she went on hurriedly. "There was a man
+in the cabin who noticed me, and began to hang around. I thought he
+knew who I was,--had seen me on the posters; and as I didn't feel like
+foolin', I told him so. But he wasn't that kind. He said he saw I was in
+trouble and wanted me to tell him all."
+
+Mr. Hamlin regarded her cheerfully. "And you told him," he said, "how
+you had once run away from your childhood's happy home to go on the
+stage! How you always regretted it, and would have gone back but that
+the doors were shut forever against you! How you longed to leave, but
+the wicked men and women around you always"--
+
+"I didn't!" she burst out, with sudden passion; "you know I didn't. I
+told him everything: who I was, what I had done, what I expected to do
+again. I pointed out the men--who were sitting there, whispering and
+grinning at us, as if they were in the front row of the theatre--and
+said I knew them all, and they knew me. I never spared myself a thing.
+I said what people said of me, and didn't even care to say it wasn't
+true!"
+
+"Oh, come!" protested Jack, in perfunctory politeness.
+
+"He said he liked me for telling the truth, and not being ashamed to do
+it! He said the sin was in the false shame and the hypocrisy; for that's
+the sort of man he is, you see, and that's like him always! He asked if
+I would marry him--out of hand--and do my best to be his lawful wife.
+He said he wanted me to think it over and sleep on it, and to-morrow he
+would come and see me for an answer. I slipped off the boat at 'Frisco,
+and went alone to a hotel where I wasn't known. In the morning I didn't
+know whether he'd keep his word or I'd keep mine. But he came! He said
+he'd marry me that very day, and take me to his farm in Santa Clara.
+I agreed. I thought it would take me out of everybody's knowledge,
+and they'd think me dead! We were married that day, before a regular
+clergyman. I was married under my own name,"--she stopped and looked
+at Jack, with a hysterical laugh,--"but he made me write underneath it,
+'known as Nell Montgomery;' for he said HE wasn't ashamed of it, nor
+should I be."
+
+"Does he wear long hair and stick straws in it?" said Hamlin gravely.
+"Does he 'hear voices' and have 'visions'?"
+
+"He's a shrewd, sensible, hard-working man,--no more mad than you are,
+nor as mad as I was the day I married him. He's lived up to everything
+he's said." She stopped, hesitated in her quick, nervous speech; her lip
+quivered slightly, but she recalled herself, and looking imploringly,
+yet hopelessly, at Jack, gasped, "And that's what's the matter!"
+
+Jack fixed his eyes keenly upon her. "And you?" he said curtly.
+
+"I?" she repeated wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, what have YOU done?" he said, with sudden sharpness.
+
+The wonder was so apparent in her eyes that his keen glance softened.
+"Why," she said bewilderingly, "I have been his dog, his slave,--as far
+as he would let me. I have done everything; I have not been out of the
+house until he almost drove me out. I have never wanted to go anywhere
+or see any one; but he has always insisted upon it. I would have been
+willing to slave here, day and night, and have been happy. But he said
+I must not seem to be ashamed of my past, when he is not. I would have
+worn common homespun clothes and calico frocks, and been glad of it, but
+he insists upon my wearing my best things, even my theatre things; and
+as he can't afford to buy more, I wear these things I had. I know they
+look beastly here, and that I'm a laughing-stock, and when I go out
+I wear almost anything to try and hide them; but," her lip quivered
+dangerously again, "he wants me to do it, and it pleases him."
+
+Jack looked down. After a pause he lifted his lashes towards her
+draggled skirt, and said in an easier, conversational tone, "Yes! I
+thought I knew that dress. I gave it to you for that walking scene in
+'High Life,' didn't I?"
+
+"No," she said quickly, "it was the blue one with silver
+trimming,--don't you remember? I tried to turn it the first year I was
+married, but it never looked the same."
+
+"It was sweetly pretty," said Jack encouragingly, "and with that blue
+hat lined with silver, it was just fetching! Somehow I don't quite
+remember this one," and he looked at it critically.
+
+"I had it at the races in '58, and that supper Judge Boompointer gave us
+at 'Frisco where Colonel Fish upset the table trying to get at Jim. Do
+you know," she said, with a little laugh, "it's got the stains of the
+champagne on it yet; it never would come off. See!" and she held the
+candle with great animation to the breadth of silk before her.
+
+"And there's more of it on the sleeve," said Jack; "isn't there?"
+
+Mrs. Rylands looked reproachfully at Jack.
+
+"That isn't champagne; don't you know what it is?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"It's blood," she said gravely; "when that Mexican cut poor Ned so
+bad,--don't you remember? I held his head upon my arm while you bandaged
+him." She heaved a little sigh, and then added, with a faint laugh,
+"That's the worst thing about the clothes of a girl in the profession,
+they get spoiled or stained before they wear out."
+
+This large truth did not seem to impress Mr. Hamlin. "Why did you leave
+Santa Clara?" he said abruptly, in his previous critical tone.
+
+"Because of the folks there. They were standoffish and ugly. You see,
+Josh"--
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Josh Rylands!--HIM! He told everybody who I was, even those who had
+never seen me in the bills,--how good I was to marry him, how he had
+faith in me and wasn't ashamed,--until they didn't believe we were
+married at all. So they looked another way when they met us, and didn't
+call. And all the while I was glad they didn't, but he wouldn't believe
+it, and allowed I was pining on account of it."
+
+"And were you?"
+
+"I swear to God, Jack, I'd have been content, and more, to have been
+just there with him, seein' nobody, letting every one believe I was dead
+and gone, but he said it was wrong, and weak! Maybe it was," she added,
+with a shy, interrogating look at Jack, of which, however, he took no
+notice. "Then when he found they wouldn't call, what do you think he
+did?"
+
+"Beat you, perhaps," suggested Jack cheerfully.
+
+"He never did a thing to me that wasn't straight out, square, and kind,"
+she said, half indignantly, half hopelessly. "He thought if HIS kind
+of people wouldn't see me, I might like to see my own sort. So without
+saying anything to me, he brought down, of all things! Tinkie Clifford,
+she that used to dance in the cheap variety shows at 'Frisco, and her
+particular friend, Captain Sykes. It would have just killed you, Jack,"
+she said, with a sudden hysteric burst of laughter, "to have seen Josh,
+in his square, straight-out way, trying to be civil and help things
+along. But," she went on, as suddenly relapsing into her former attitude
+of worried appeal, "I couldn't stand it, and when she got to talking
+free and easy before Josh, and Captain Sykes to guzzling champagne,
+she and me had a row. She allowed I was putting on airs, and I made her
+walk, in spite of Josh."
+
+"And Josh seemed to like it," said Hamlin carelessly. "Has he seen her
+since?"
+
+"No; I reckon he's cured of asking that kind of company for me. And then
+we came here. But I persuaded him not to begin by going round telling
+people who I was,--as he did the last time,--but to leave it to folks to
+find out if they wanted to, and he gave in. Then he let me fix up this
+house and furnish it my own way, and I did!"
+
+"Do you mean to say that YOU fixed up that family vault of a
+sitting-room?" said Jack, in horror.
+
+"Yes, I didn't want any fancy furniture or looking-glasses, and such
+like, to attract folks, nor anything to look like the old times. I don't
+think any of the boys would care to come here. And I got rid of a lot of
+sporting travelers, 'wild-cat' managers, and that kind of tramp in this
+way. But"--She hesitated, and her face fell again.
+
+"But what?" said Jack.
+
+"I don't think that Josh likes it either. He brought home the other day
+'My Johnny is a Shoemakiyure,' and wanted me to try it on the organ. But
+it reminded me how we used to get just sick of singing it on and off the
+boards, and I couldn't touch it. He wanted me to go to the circus that
+was touring over at the cross roads, but it was the old Flanigin's
+circus, you know, the one Gussie Riggs used to ride in, with its old
+clown and its old ringmaster and the old 'wheezes,' and I chucked it."
+
+"Look here," said Jack, rising and surveying Mrs. Rylands critically.
+"If you go on at this gait, I'll tell you what that man of yours will
+do. He'll bolt with some of your old friends!"
+
+She turned a quick, scared face upon him for an instant. But only for
+an instant. Her hysteric little laugh returned, at once, followed by her
+weary, worried look. "No, Jack, you don't know him! If it was only that!
+He cares only for me in his own way,--and," she stammered as she went
+on, "I've no luck in making him happy."
+
+She stopped. The wind shook the house and fired a volley of rain
+against the windows. She took advantage of it to draw a torn lace-edged
+handkerchief from her pocket behind, and keeping the tail of her eyes in
+a frightened fashion on Jack, applied the handkerchief furtively, first
+to her nose, and then to her eyes.
+
+"Don't do that," said Jack fastidiously, "it's wet enough outside."
+Nevertheless, he stood up and gazed at her.
+
+"Well," he began.
+
+She timidly drew nearer to him, and took a seat on the kitchen table,
+looking up wistfully into his eyes.
+
+"Well," resumed Jack argumentatively, "if he won't 'chuck' you, why
+don't you 'chuck' HIM?"
+
+She turned quite white, and suddenly dropped her eyes. "Yes," she said,
+almost inaudibly, "lots of girls would do that."
+
+"I don't mean go back to your old life," continued Jack. "I reckon
+you've had enough of that. But get into some business, you know, like
+other women. A bonnet shop, or a candy shop for children, see? I'll
+help start you. I've got a couple of hundred, if not in my own pocket
+in somebody's else, just burning to be used! And then you can look about
+you; and perhaps some square business man will turn up and you can marry
+him. You know you can't live this way, nohow. It's killing you; it ain't
+fair on you, nor on Rylands either."
+
+"No," she said quickly, "it ain't fair on HIM. I know it, I know it
+isn't, I know it isn't," she repeated, "only"--She stopped.
+
+"Only what?" said Jack impatiently.
+
+She did not speak. After a pause she picked up the rolling-pin from
+the table and began absently rolling it down her lap to her knee, as
+if pressing out the stained silk skirt. "Only," she stammered, slowly
+rolling the pin handles in her open palms, "I--I can't leave Josh."
+
+"Why can't you?" said Jack quickly.
+
+"Because--because--I," she went on, with a quivering lip, working the
+rolling-pin heavily down her knee as if she were crushing her answer out
+of it,--"because--I--love him!"
+
+There was a pause, a dash of rain against the window, and another dash
+from her eyes upon her hands, the rolling-pin, and the skirts she had
+gathered up hastily, as she cried, "O Jack! Jack! I never loved anybody
+like him! I never knew what love was! I never knew a man like him
+before! There never WAS one before!"
+
+To this large, comprehensive, and passionate statement Mr. Jack Hamlin
+made no reply. An audacity so supreme had conquered his. He walked to
+the window, looked out upon the dark, rain-filmed pane that, however,
+reflected no equal change in his own dark eyes, and then returned and
+walked round the kitchen table. When he was at her back, without looking
+at her, he reached out his hand, took her passive one that lay on the
+table in his, grasped it heartily for a single moment, laid it gently
+down, and returned around the table, where he again confronted her
+cheerfully face to face.
+
+"You'll make the riffle yet," he said quietly. "Just now I don't see
+what I could do, or where I could chip in your little game; but if I DO,
+or you do, count me in and let me know. You know where to write,--my old
+address at Sacramento." He walked to the corner, took up his still wet
+serape, threw it over his shoulders, and picked up his broad-brimmed
+riding-hat.
+
+"You're not going, Jack?" she said hesitatingly, as she rubbed her wet
+eyes into a consciousness of his movements. "You'll wait to see HIM?
+He'll be here in an hour."
+
+"I've been here too long already," said Jack. "And the less you say
+about my calling, even accidentally, the better. Nobody will believe
+it,--YOU didn't yourself. In fact, unless you see how I can help you,
+the sooner you consider us all dead and buried, the sooner your luck
+will change. Tell your girl I've found my own horse so much better that
+I have pushed on with him, and give her that."
+
+He threw a gold coin on the table.
+
+"But your horse is still lame," she said wonderingly. "What will you do
+in this storm?"
+
+"Get into the cover of the next wood and camp out. I've done it before."
+
+"But, Jack!"
+
+He suddenly made a slight gesture of warning. His quick ear had caught
+the approach of footsteps along the wet gravel outside. A mischievous
+light slid into his dark eyes as he coolly moved backward to the door
+and, holding it open, said, in a remarkably clear and distinct voice:--
+
+"Yes, as you say, society is becoming very mixed and frivolous
+everywhere, and you'd scarcely know San Francisco now. So delighted,
+however, to have made your acquaintance, and regret my business prevents
+my waiting to see your good husband. So odd that I should have known
+your Aunt Jemima! But, as you say, the world is very small, after all. I
+shall tell the deacon how well you are looking,--in spite of the kitchen
+smoke in your eyes. Good-by! A thousand thanks for your hospitality."
+
+And Jack, bowing profoundly to the ground, backed out upon Jane, the
+hired man, and the expressman, treading, I grieve to say, with some
+deliberation upon the toes of the two latter, in order, possibly, that
+in their momentary pain and discomposure they might not scan too closely
+the face of this ingenious gentleman, as he melted into the night and
+the storm.
+
+Jane entered, with a slight toss of her head.
+
+"Here's your expressman,--ef you're wantin' him NOW."
+
+Mrs. Rylands was too preoccupied to notice her handmaiden's significant
+emphasis, as she indicated a fresh-looking, bashful young fellow, whose
+confusion was evidently heightened by the unexpected egress of Mr.
+Hamlin, and the point-blank presence of the handsome Mrs. Rylands.
+
+"Oh, certainly," said Mrs. Rylands quickly. "So kind of him to oblige
+us. Give him the order, Jane, please."
+
+She turned to escape from the kitchen and these new intruders, when her
+eye fell upon the coin left by Mr. Hamlin. "The gentleman wished you to
+take that for your trouble, Jane," she said hastily, pointing to it, and
+passed out.
+
+Jane cast a withering look after her retreating skirts, and picking the
+coin from the table, turned to the hired man. "Run to the stable after
+that dandified young feller, Dick, and hand that back to him. Ye kin say
+that Jane Mackinnon don't run arrants fur money, nor play gooseberry to
+other folks fur fun."
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+Mr. Joshua Rylands had, according to the vocabulary of his class, "found
+grace" at the age of sixteen, while still in the spiritual state of
+"original sin" and the political one of Missouri. He had not indeed
+found it by persistent youthful seeking or spiritual insight, but
+somewhat violently and turbulently at a camp-meeting. A village boy,
+naturally gentle and impressible, with an original character,--limited,
+however, in education and experience,--he had, after his first rustic
+debauch with some vulgar companions, fallen upon the camp-meeting in
+reckless audacity; and instead of being handed over to the district
+constable, was taken in and placed upon "the anxious bench," "rastled
+with," and exhorted by a strong revivalist preacher, "convicted of sin,"
+and--converted! It is doubtful if the shame of a public arrest and legal
+punishment would have impressed his youthful spirit as much as did this
+spiritual examination and trial, in which he himself became accuser.
+Howbeit, its effect, though punitive, was also exemplary. He at once
+cast off his evil companions; remaining faithful to his conversion, in
+spite of their later "backslidings." When, after the Western fashion,
+the time came for him to forsake his father's farm and seek a new
+"quarter section" on some more remote frontier, he carried into that
+secluded, lonely, half-monkish celibacy of pioneer life--which has been
+the foundation of so much strong Western character--more than the usual
+religious feeling. At once industrious and adventurous, he lived by "the
+Word," as he called it, and Nature as he knew it,--tempted by none of
+the vices or sentiments of civilization. When he finally joined the
+Californian emigration, it was not as a gold-seeker, but as a discoverer
+of new agricultural fields; if the hardship was as great and the rewards
+fewer, he nevertheless knew that he retained his safer isolation and
+independence of spirit. Vice and civilization were to him synonymous
+terms; it was the natural condition of the worldly and unregenerate.
+Such was the man who chanced to meet "Nell Montgomery, the Pearl of the
+Variety Stage," on the Sacramento boat, in one of his forced visits
+to civilization. Without knowing her in her profession, her frank
+exposition of herself did not startle him; he recognized it, accepted
+it, and strove to convert it. And as long as this daughter of Folly
+forsook her evil ways for him, it was a triumph in which there was no
+shame, and might be proclaimed from the housetop. When his neighbors
+thought differently, and avoided them, he saw no inconsistency in
+bringing his wife's old friends to divert her: she might in time convert
+THEM. He had no more fear of her returning to their ways than he had
+of himself "backsliding." Narrow as was his creed, he had none of the
+harshness nor pessimism of the bigot. With the keenest self-scrutiny,
+his credulity regarding others was touching.
+
+The storm was still raging when he alighted that evening from the up
+coach at the trail nearest his house. Although incumbered with a
+heavy carpet-bag, he started resignedly on his two-mile tramp without
+begrudging the neighborly act of his wife which had deprived him of
+his horse. It was "like her" to do these things in her good-humored
+abstraction, an abstraction, however, that sometimes worried him, from
+the fear that it indicated some unhappiness with her present lot. He was
+longing to rejoin her after his absence of three days, the longest time
+they had been separated since their marriage, and he hurried on with
+a certain lover-like excitement, quite new to his usually calm and
+temperate blood.
+
+Struggling with the storm and darkness, but always with the happy
+consciousness of drawing nearer to her in that struggle, he labored on,
+finding his perilous way over the indistinguishable trail by certain
+landmarks in the distance, visible only to his pioneer eye. That heavier
+shadow to the right was not the hillside, but the SLOPE to the distant
+hill; that low, regular line immediately before him was not a fence or
+wall, but the line of distant gigantic woods, a mile from his home. Yet
+as he began to descend the slope towards the wood, he stopped and rubbed
+his eyes. There was distinctly a light in it. His first idea was that he
+had lost the trail and was nearing the woodman Mackinnon's cabin. But a
+more careful scrutiny revealed to him that it was really the wood, and
+the light was a camp-fire. It was a rough night for camping out, but
+they were probably some belated prospectors.
+
+When he had reached the fringe of woodland, he could see quite plainly
+that the fire was built beside one of the large pines, and that the
+little encampment, which looked quite comfortable and secluded from the
+storm-beaten trail, was occupied apparently by a single figure. By the
+good glow of the leaping fire, that figure standing erect before it,
+elegantly shaped, in the graceful folds of a serape, looked singularly
+romantic and picturesque, and reminded Joshua Rylands--whose ideas of
+art were purely reminiscent of boyish reading--of some picture in a
+novel. The heavy black columns of the pines, glancing out of the concave
+shadow, also seemed a fitting background to what might have been a scene
+in a play. So strongly was he impressed by it that but for his anxiety
+to reach his home, still a mile distant, and the fact that he was
+already late, he would have penetrated the wood and the seclusion of the
+stranger with an offer of hospitality for the night. The man, however,
+was evidently capable of taking care of himself, and the outline of a
+tethered horse was faintly visible under another tree. It might be
+a surveyor or engineer,--the only men of a better class who were
+itinerant.
+
+But another and even greater surprise greeted him as he toiled up the
+rocky slope towards his farmhouse. The windows of the sitting-room,
+which were usually blank and black by night, were glittering with
+unfamiliar light. Like most farmers, he seldom used the room except for
+formal company, his wife usually avoiding it, and even he himself now
+preferred the dining-room or the kitchen. His first suggestion that his
+wife had visitors gave him a sense of pleasure on her account, mingled,
+however, with a slight uneasiness of his own which he could not account
+for. More than that, as he approached nearer he could hear the swell of
+the organ above the roar of the swaying pines, and the cadences were
+not of a devotional character. He hesitated for a moment, as he had
+hesitated at the fire in the woods; yet it was surely his own house! He
+hurried to the door, opened it; not only the light of the sitting-room
+streamed into the hall, but the ruddier glow of an actual fire in the
+disused grate! The familiar dark furniture had been rearranged to catch
+some of the glow and relieve its sombreness. And his wife, rising from
+the music-stool, was the room's only occupant!
+
+Mrs. Rylands gazed anxiously and timidly at her husband's astonished
+face, as he threw off his waterproof and laid down his carpet-bag. Her
+own face was a little flurried with excitement, and his, half hidden in
+his tawny beard, and, possibly owing to his self-introspective nature,
+never spontaneously sympathetic, still expressed only wonder! Mrs.
+Rylands was a little frightened. It is sometimes dangerous to meddle
+with a man's habits, even when he has grown weary of them.
+
+"I thought," she began hesitatingly, "that it would be more cheerful for
+you in here, this stormy evening. I thought you might like to put your
+wet things to dry in the kitchen, and we could sit here together, after
+supper, alone."
+
+I am afraid that Mrs. Rylands did not offer all her thoughts. Ever
+since Mr. Hamlin's departure she had been uneasy and excited, sometimes
+falling into fits of dejection, and again lighting up into hysterical
+levity; at other times carefully examining her wardrobe, and then with a
+sudden impulse rushing downstairs again to give orders for her husband's
+supper, and to make the extraordinary changes in the sitting-room
+already noted. Only a few moments before he arrived, she had covertly
+brought down a piece of music, and put aside the hymn-books, and taken,
+with a little laugh, a pack of cards from her pocket, which she placed
+behind the already dismantled vase on the chimney.
+
+"I reckoned you had company, Ellen," he said gravely, kissing her.
+
+"No," she said quickly. "That is," she stopped with a sudden surge of
+color in her face that startled her, "there was--a man--here, in the
+kitchen--who had a lame horse, and who wanted to get a fresh one. But
+he went away an hour ago. And he wasn't in this room--at least, after it
+was fixed up. So I've had no company."
+
+She felt herself again blushing at having blushed, and a little
+terrified. There was no reason for it. But for Jack's warning, she would
+have been quite ready to tell her husband all. She had never blushed
+before him over her past life; why she should now blush over seeing
+Jack, of all people! made her utter a little hysterical laugh. I am
+afraid that this experienced little woman took it for granted that her
+husband knew that if Jack or any man had been there as a clandestine
+lover, she would not have blushed at all. Yet with all her experience,
+she did not know that she had blushed simply because it was to Jack that
+she had confessed that she loved the man before her. Her husband noted
+the blush as part of her general excitement. He permitted her to drag
+him into the room and seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on
+one knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at
+this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to the
+kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had lighted
+up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable and cheerful.
+Still he was a little worried; was there not in these changes a falling
+away from the grace of self-abnegation which she had so sedulously
+practiced?
+
+When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr. Rylands,
+had he not been more engaged in these late domestic changes, might
+have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him with a certain
+commiserating air that was remarkable by its contrast with the frigid
+ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not
+escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure
+had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with
+a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The
+comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to,
+Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua
+thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands
+pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane
+gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him. Mrs.
+Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. "I am afraid Jane doesn't like
+my sending away the expressman just after I had also dismissed the
+stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her without company,"
+she said unwisely.
+
+Mr. Rylands did not laugh. "I reckon," he returned slowly, "that Jane
+must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein' outer the
+world, without any of our glory in the cause of it."
+
+Nevertheless, when supper was over, and the pair were seated in the
+sitting-room before the fire, this episode was forgotten. Mrs. Rylands
+produced her husband's pipe and tobacco-pouch. He looked around the
+formal walls and hesitated. He had been in the habit of smoking in the
+kitchen.
+
+"Why not here?" said Mrs. Rylands, with a sudden little note of
+decision. "Why should we keep this room only for company that don't
+come? I call it silly."
+
+This struck Mr. Rylands as logical. Besides, undoubtedly the fire had
+mellowed the room. After a puff or two he looked at his wife musingly.
+"Couldn't you make yourself one of them cigarettys, as they call 'em?
+Here's the tobacco, and I'll get you the paper."
+
+"I COULD," she said tentatively. Then suddenly, "What made you think of
+it? You never saw ME smoke!"
+
+"No," said Rylands, "but that lady, your old friend, Miss Clifford,
+does, and I thought you might be hankering after it."
+
+"How do you know Tinkie Clifford smokes?" said Mrs. Rylands quickly.
+
+"She lit a cigaretty that day she called."
+
+"I hate it," said Mrs. Rylands shortly.
+
+Mr. Rylands nodded approval, and puffed meditatively.
+
+"Josh, have you seen that girl since?"
+
+"No," said Joshua.
+
+"Nor any other girl like her?"
+
+"No," said Joshua wonderingly. "You see I only got to know her on your
+account, Ellen, that she might see you."
+
+"Well, don't you do it any more! None of 'em! Promise me!" She leaned
+forward eagerly in her chair.
+
+"But Ellen,"--her husband began gravely.
+
+"I know what you're going to say, but they can't do me any good, and you
+can't do them any good as you did ME, so there!"
+
+Mr. Rylands was silent, and smiled meditatively.
+
+"Josh!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When you met me that night on the Sacramento boat, and looked at me,
+did you--did I," she hesitated,--"did you look at me because I had been
+crying?"
+
+"I thought you were troubled in spirit, and looked so."
+
+"I suppose I looked worried, of course; I had no time to change or even
+fix my hair; I had on that green dress, and it NEVER was becoming. And
+you only spoke to me on account of my awful looks?"
+
+"I saw only your wrestling soul, Ellen, and I thought you needed comfort
+and help."
+
+She was silent for a moment, and then, leaning forward, picked up the
+poker and began to thrust it absently between the bars.
+
+"And if it had been some other girl crying and looking awful, you'd have
+spoken to her all the same?"
+
+This was a new idea to Mr. Rylands, but with most men logic is supreme.
+"I suppose I would," he said slowly.
+
+"And married her?" She rattled the bars of the grate with the poker as
+if to drown the inevitable reply.
+
+Mr. Rylands loved the woman before him, but it pleased him to think that
+he loved truth better. "If it had been necessary to her salvation, yes,"
+he said.
+
+"Not Tinkie?" she said suddenly.
+
+"SHE never would have been in your contrite condition."
+
+"Much you know! Girls like that can cry as well as laugh, just as they
+want to. Well! I suppose I DID look horrid." Nevertheless, she seemed
+to gain some gratification from her husband's reply, and changed
+the subject as if fearful of losing that satisfaction by further
+questioning.
+
+"I tried some of those songs you brought, but I don't think they go
+well with the harmonium," she said, pointing to some music on its rack,
+"except one. Just listen." She rose, and with the same nervous quickness
+she had shown before, went to the instrument and began to sing and play.
+There was a hopeless incongruity between the character of the instrument
+and the spirit of the song. Mrs. Rylands's voice was rather forced and
+crudely trained, but Joshua Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered
+by the fire and conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt
+it good. Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair
+performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine fringes
+of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his hand nearest
+her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys, or her eyes from
+the music, said tentatively:--
+
+"You know there's a chorus just here! Why can't you try it with me?"
+
+Mr. Rylands hesitated a moment, then, with a preliminary cough, lifted a
+voice as crude as hers, but powerful through much camp-meeting exercise,
+and roared a chorus which was remarkable chiefly for requiring that
+archness and playfulness in execution which he lacked. As the whole
+house seemed to dilate with the sound, and the wind outside to withhold
+its fury, Mr. Rylands felt that physical delight which children feel
+in personal outcry, and was grateful to his wife for the opportunity.
+Laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder, he noticed for the first
+time that she was in a kind of evening-dress, and that her delicate
+white shoulder shone through the black lace that enveloped it.
+
+For an instant Mr. Rylands was shocked at this unwonted exposure. He
+had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were
+alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested
+with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this
+indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man's mind went back to Jane,
+to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom might
+have noticed it also.
+
+"You have a new dress," he said slowly, "have you worn it all day?"
+
+"No," she said, with a timid smile. "I only put it on just before you
+came. It's the one I used to wear in the ballroom scene in 'Gay Times in
+'Frisco.' You don't know it, I know. I thought I would wear it tonight,
+and then," she suddenly grasped his hand, "you'll let me put all these
+things away forever! Won't you, Josh? I've seen such nice pretty calico
+at the store to-day, and I can make up one or two home dresses, like
+Jane's, only better fitting, of course. In fact, I asked them to send
+the roll up here to-morrow for you to see."
+
+Mr. Rylands felt relieved. Perhaps his views had changed about the moral
+effect of her retaining these symbols of her past, for he consented to
+the calico dresses, not, however, without an inward suspicion that she
+would not look so well in them, and that the one she had on was more
+becoming.
+
+Meantime she tried another piece of music. It was equally incongruous
+and slightly Bacchantic.
+
+"There used to be a mighty pretty dance went to that," she said, nodding
+her head in time with the music, and assisting the heavily spasmodic
+attempts of the instrument with the pleasant levity of her voice. "I
+used to do it."
+
+"Ye might try it now, Ellen," suggested her husband, with a
+half-frightened, half-amused tolerance.
+
+"YOU play, then," said Mrs. Rylands quickly, offering her seat to him.
+
+Mr. Rylands sat down to the harmonium, as Mrs. Rylands briskly moved
+the table and chairs against the wall. Mr. Rylands played slowly and
+strenuously, as from a conscientious regard of the instrument. Mrs.
+Rylands stood in the centre of the floor, making a rather pretty,
+animated picture, as she again stimulated the heavy harmonium swell not
+only with her voice but her hands and feet. Presently she began to skip.
+
+I should warn the reader here that this was before the "shawl" or
+"skirt" dancing was in vogue, and I am afraid that pretty Mrs. Rylands's
+performances would now be voted slow. Her silk skirt and frilled
+petticoat were lifted just over her small ankles and tiny bronze-kid
+shoes. In the course of a pirouette or two, there was a slight further
+revelation of blue silk stockings and some delicate embroidery, but
+really nothing more than may be seen in the sweep of a modern waltz.
+Suddenly the music ceased. Mr. Rylands had left the harmonium and walked
+over to the hearth. Mrs. Rylands stopped, and came towards him with a
+flushed, anxious face.
+
+"It don't seem to go right, does it?" she said, with her nervous laugh.
+"I suppose I'm getting too old now, and I don't quite remember it."
+
+"Better forget it altogether," he replied gravely. He stopped at seeing
+a singular change in her face, and added awkwardly, "When I told you I
+didn't want you to be ashamed of your past, nor to try to forget what
+you were, I didn't mean such things as that!"
+
+"What did you mean?" she said timidly.
+
+The truth was that Mr. Rylands did not know. He had known this sort of
+thing only in the abstract. He had never had the least acquaintance with
+the class to which his wife had belonged, nor known anything of their
+methods. It was a revelation to him now, in the woman he loved, and who
+was his wife. He was not shocked so much as he was frightened.
+
+"You shall have the dress to-morrow, Ellen," he said gently, "and
+you can put away these gewgaws. You don't need to look like Tinkie
+Clifford."
+
+He did not see the look of triumph that lit up her eye, but added, "Go
+on and play."
+
+She sat down obediently to the instrument. He watched her for a few
+moments from the toe of her kid slipper on the pedals to the swell
+of her shoulders above the keyboard, with a strange, abstracted face.
+Presently she stopped and came over to him.
+
+"And when I've got these nice calico frocks, and you can't tell me from
+Jane, and I'm a good housekeeper, and settle down to be a farmer's wife,
+maybe I'll have a secret to tell you."
+
+"A secret?" he repeated gravely. "Why not now?"
+
+Her face was quite aglow with excitement and a certain timid mischief as
+she laughed: "Not while you are so solemn. It can wait."
+
+He looked at his watch. "I must give some orders to Jim about the stock
+before he turns in," he said.
+
+"He's gone to the stables already," said Mrs. Rylands.
+
+"No matter; I can go there and find him."
+
+"Shall I bring your boots?" she said quickly.
+
+"I'll put them on when I pass through the kitchen. I won't be long away.
+Now go to bed. You are looking tired," he said gently, as he gazed at
+the drawn lines about her eyes and mouth. Her former pretty color
+struck him also as having changed of late, and as being irregular and
+inharmonious.
+
+As Mrs. Rylands obediently ascended the stairs she heaved a faint sigh,
+her only recognition of her husband's criticism. He turned and passed
+quickly into the kitchen. He wanted to be alone to collect his thoughts.
+But he was surprised to find Jane still there, sitting bolt upright in
+a chair in the corner. Apparently she had been expecting him, for as he
+entered she stood up, and wiped her cheek and mouth with one hand, as if
+to compress her lips the more tightly.
+
+"I reckoned," she began, "that unless you war for forgettin' everythin'
+in these yer goings on, ye'd be passin' through here to tend to your
+stock. I've got a word to say to ye, Mr. Rylands. When I first kem over
+here to help, I got word from the folks around that your wife afore
+you married her was just one o' them bally dancers. Well, that was YOUR
+lookout, not mine! Jane Mackinnon ain't the kind to take everybody's
+sayin' as gospil, but she kalkilates to treat folks ez she finds 'em.
+When she finds 'em lyin' and deceivin'; when she finds em purtendin' one
+thing and doin' another; when she finds 'em makin' fools tumble to 'em;
+playing soots on their own husbands, and turnin' an honest house into a
+music-hall and a fandango shop, she kicks! You hear me! Jane Mackinnon
+kicks!"
+
+"What do you mean?" said Mr. Rylands sternly.
+
+"I mean," said Miss Mackinnon, striking her hips with the back of her
+hands smartly, and accenting each word that dropped like a bullet from
+her mouth with an additional blow,--"I--mean--that--your--wife--had
+one--of--her--old--hangers-on--from--'Frisco--here--in--this
+very--kitchen--all--the--arternoon; there! I mean that whiles she was
+waitin' here for you, she was canoodlin' and cryin' over old times with
+him! I saw her myself through the winder. That's what I mean, Mr. Joshua
+Rylands."
+
+"It's false! She had some poor stranger here with a lame horse. She told
+me so herself."
+
+Jane Mackinnon laughed shrilly.
+
+"Did she tell you that the poor stranger was young and pretty-faced,
+with black moustarches? that his store clothes must have cost a fortin,
+saying nothing of his gold-lined, broadcloth sarrapper? Did she say that
+his horse was so lame that when I went to get another he wouldn't WAIT
+for it? Did she tell you WHO he was?"
+
+"No, she did not know," said Rylands sternly, but with a whitening face.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you! The gambler, the shooter!--the man whose name
+is black enough to stain any woman he knows. Jim recognized him like
+a shot; he sez, the moment he clapped eyes on him at the door, 'Dod
+blasted, if it ain't Jack Hamlin!'"
+
+Little as Mr. Rylands knew of the world, he had heard that name. But it
+was not THAT he was thinking of. He was thinking of the camp-fire in the
+wood, the handsome figure before it, the tethered horse. He was thinking
+of the lighted sitting-room, the fire, his wife's bare shoulders, her
+slippers, stockings, and the dance. He saw it all,--a lightning-flash to
+his dull imagination. The room seemed to expand and then grow smaller,
+the figure of Jane to sway backwards and forwards before him. He
+murmured the name of God with lips that were voiceless, caught at the
+kitchen table to steady himself, held it till he felt his arms grow
+rigid, and then recovered himself,--white, cold, and sane.
+
+"Speak a word of this to HER," he said deliberately, "enter her room
+while I'm gone, even leave the kitchen before I come back, and I'll
+throw you into the road. Tell that hired man, if he dares to breathe it
+to a soul I'll strangle him."
+
+The unlooked-for rage of this quiet, God-fearing man, and dupe, as she
+believed, was terrible, but convincing. She shrank back into the corner
+as he coolly drew on his boots and waterproof, and without another word
+left the house.
+
+He knew what he was going to do as well as if it had been ordained for
+him. He knew he would find the young man in the wood; for whatever were
+the truth of the other stories, he and the visitor were identical; he
+had seen him with his own eyes. He would confront him face to face and
+know all; and until then, he could not see his wife again. He walked on
+rapidly, but without feverishness or mental confusion. He saw his duty
+plainly,--if Ellen had "backslidden," he must give her another trial.
+These were his articles of faith. He should not put her away; but she
+should nevermore be wife to him. It was HE who had tempted her, it was
+true; perhaps God would forgive her for that reason, but HE could never
+love her again.
+
+The fury of the storm had somewhat abated as he reached the wood. The
+fire was still there, but no longer a leaping flame. A dull glow in
+the darkness of the forest aisles was all that indicated its position.
+Rylands at once plunged in that direction; he was near enough to see the
+red embers when he heard a sharp click, and a voice called:--
+
+"Hold up!"
+
+Mr. Hamlin was a light sleeper. The crackle of underbrush had been
+enough to disturb him. The voice was his; the click was the cocking of
+his revolver.
+
+Rylands was no coward, but halted diplomatically.
+
+"Now, then," said Mr. Hamlin's voice, "a little more this way, IN THE
+LIGHT, if you please!"
+
+Rylands moved as directed, and saw Mr. Hamlin lying before the fire,
+resting easily on one hand, with his revolver in the other.
+
+"Thank you!" said Jack. "Excuse my precautions, but it is night, and
+this is, for the present, my bedroom."
+
+"My name is Rylands; you called at my house this afternoon and saw my
+wife," said Rylands slowly.
+
+"I did," said Hamlin. "It was mighty kind of you to return my call so
+soon, but I didn't expect it."
+
+"I reckon not. But I know who you are, and that you are an old associate
+of hers, in the days of her sin and unregeneration. I want you to answer
+me, before God and man, what was your purpose in coming there to-day?"
+
+"Look here! I don't think it's necessary to drag in strangers to hear my
+answer," said Jack, lying down again, "but I came to borrow a horse."
+
+"Is that the truth?"
+
+Jack got upon his feet very solemnly, put on his hat, drew down his
+waistcoat, and approached Mr. Rylands with his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Mr. Rylands," he said, with great suavity of manner, "this is the
+second time today that I have had the honor of having my word doubted by
+your family. Your wife was good enough to question my assertion that I
+didn't know that she was living here, but that was a woman's vanity. You
+have no such excuse. There is my horse yonder, lame, as you may see. I
+didn't lame him for the sake of seeing your wife nor you."
+
+There was that in Mr. Hamlin's audacity and perfect self-possession
+which, even while it irritated, never suggested deceit. He was too
+reckless of consequence to lie. Mr. Rylands was staggered and half
+convinced. Nevertheless, he hesitated.
+
+"Dare you tell me everything that happened between my wife and you?"
+
+"Dare you listen?" said Mr. Hamlin quietly.
+
+Mr. Rylands turned a little white. After a moment he said:--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good!" said Mr. Hamlin. "I like your grit, though I don't mind telling
+you it's the ONLY thing I like about you. Sit down. Well, I haven't seen
+Nell Montgomery for three years until I met her as your wife, at your
+house. She was surprised as I was, and frightened as I wasn't. She spent
+the whole interview in telling me the history of her marriage and her
+life with you, and nothing more. I cannot say that it was remarkably
+entertaining, or that she was as amusing as your wife as she was as Nell
+Montgomery, the variety actress. When she had finished, I came away."
+
+Mr. Rylands, who had seated himself, made a movement as if to rise. But
+Mr. Hamlin laid his hand on his knee.
+
+"I asked you if you dared to listen. I have something myself to say of
+that interview. I found your wife wearing the old dresses that other men
+had given her, and she said she wore them because she thought it pleased
+you. I found that you, who are questioning my calling upon her, had
+already got the worst of her old chums to visit her without asking her
+consent; I found that instead of being the first one to lie for her
+and hide her, you were the first one to tell anybody her history, just
+because you thought it was to the glory of God generally, and of Joshua
+Rylands in particular."
+
+"A man's motives are his own," stammered Rylands.
+
+"Sorry you didn't see it when you questioned mine just now," said Jack
+coolly.
+
+"Then she complained to you?" said Rylands hesitatingly.
+
+"I didn't say that," said Jack shortly.
+
+"But you found her unhappy?"
+
+"Damnably."
+
+"And you advised her"--said Rylands tentatively.
+
+"I advised her to chuck you and try to get a better husband." He paused,
+and then added, with a disgusted laugh, "but she didn't tumble to it,
+for a d----d silly reason."
+
+"What reason?" said Rylands hurriedly.
+
+"Said she LOVED you," returned Jack, kicking a brand back into the fire.
+Mr. Rylands's white cheeks flamed out suddenly like the brand. Seeing
+which, Jack turned upon him deliberately.
+
+"Mr. Joshua Rylands, I've seen many fools in my time. I've seen men
+holding four aces backed down because they thought they KNEW the other
+man had a royal flush! I've seen a man sell his claim for a wild-cat
+share, with the gold lying a foot below him in the ground he walked on.
+I've seen a dead shot shoot wild because he THOUGHT he saw something in
+the other man's eye. I've seen a heap of God-forsaken fools, but I never
+saw one before who claimed God as a pal. You've got a wife a d----d
+sight truer to you for what you call her 'sin,' than you've ever been
+to her, with all your d----d salvation! And as you couldn't make her
+otherwise, though you've tried to hard enough, it seems to me that for
+square downright chuckle-headedness, you can take the cake! Good-night!
+Now, run away and play! You're making me tired."
+
+"One moment," said Mr. Rylands awkwardly and hurriedly. "I may have
+wronged you; I was mistaken. Won't you come back with me and accept
+my--our--hospitality?"
+
+"Not much," said Jack. "I left your house because I thought it better
+for you and her that no one should know of my being there."
+
+"But you were already recognized," said Mr. Rylands. "It was Jane who
+lied about you, and your return with me will confute her slanders."
+
+"Who?" asked Jack.
+
+"Jane, our hired girl."
+
+Mr. Hamlin uttered an indescribable laugh.
+
+"That's just as well! You simply tell Jane you SAW me; that I was
+greatly shocked at what she said, but that I forgive her. I don't think
+she'll say any more."
+
+
+Strange to add, Mr. Hamlin's surmise was correct. Mr. Rylands found Jane
+still in the kitchen alone, terrified, remorseful, yet ever after
+silent on the subject. Stranger still, the hired man became equally
+uncommunicative. Mrs. Rylands, attributing her husband's absence only
+to care of the stock, had gone to bed in a feverish condition, and Mr.
+Rylands did not deem it prudent to tell her of his interview. The next
+day she sent for the doctor, and it was deemed necessary for her to
+keep her bed for a few days. Her husband was singularly attentive and
+considerate during that time, and it was probable that Mrs. Rylands
+seized that opportunity to tell him the secret she spoke of the night
+before. Whatever it was,--for it was not generally known for a few
+months later,--it seemed to draw them closer together, imparted a
+protecting dignity to Joshua Rylands, which took the place of his
+former selfish austerity, gave them a future to talk of confidentially,
+hopefully, and sometimes foolishly, which took the place of their more
+foolish past, and when the roll of calico came from the cross roads, it
+contained also a quantity of fine linen, laces, small caps, and other
+trifles, somewhat in contrast to the more homely materials ordered.
+
+And when three months were past, the sitting-room was often lit up and
+made cheerful, particularly on that supreme occasion when, with a great
+deal of enthusiasm, all the women of the countryside flocked to see Mrs.
+Rylands and her first baby. And a more considerate and devoted couple
+than the father and mother they had never known.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN AT THE SEMAPHORE
+
+
+In the early days of the Californian immigration, on the extremest point
+of the sandy peninsula, where the bay of San Francisco debouches into
+the Pacific, there stood a semaphore telegraph. Tossing its black arms
+against the sky,--with its back to the Golden Gate and that vast expanse
+of sea whose nearest shore was Japan,--it signified to another semaphore
+further inland the "rigs" of incoming vessels, by certain uncouth signs,
+which were again passed on to Telegraph Hill, San Francisco, where they
+reappeared on a third semaphore, and read to the initiated "schooner,"
+"brig" "ship," or "steamer." But all homesick San Francisco had learned
+the last sign, and on certain days of the month every eye was turned to
+welcome those gaunt arms widely extended at right angles, which meant
+"sidewheel steamer" (the only steamer which carried the mails) and
+"letters from home." In the joyful reception accorded to that herald of
+glad tidings, very few thought of the lonely watcher on the sand dunes
+who dispatched them, or even knew of that desolate Station.
+
+For desolate it was beyond description. The Presidio, with its
+voiceless, dismounted cannon and empty embrasures hidden in a hollow,
+and the Mission Dolores, with its crumbling walls and belfry tower lost
+in another, made the ultima thule of all San Francisco wandering. The
+Cliff house and Fort Point did not then exist; from Black Point the
+curving line of shore of "Yerba Buena"--or San Francisco--showed only
+a stretch of glittering wind-swept sand dunes, interspersed with
+straggling gullies of half-buried black "scrub oak." The long six
+months' summer sun fiercely beat upon it from the cloudless sky above;
+the long six months' trade winds fiercely beat upon it from the west;
+the monotonous roll-call of the long Pacific surges regularly beat upon
+it from the sea. Almost impossible to face by day through sliding sands
+and buffeting winds, at night it was impracticable through the dense
+sea-fog that stole softly through the Golden Gate at sunset. Thence,
+until morning, sea and shore were a trackless waste, bounded only by the
+warning thunders of the unseen sea. The station itself, a rudely built
+cabin, with two windows,--one furnished with a telescope,--looked like
+a heap of driftwood, or a stranded wreck left by the retiring sea; the
+semaphore--the only object for leagues--lifted above the undulating
+dunes, took upon itself various shapes, more or less gloomy, according
+to the hour or weather,--a blasted tree, the masts and clinging spars
+of a beached ship, a dismantled gallows; or, with the background of a
+golden sunset across the Gate, and its arms extended at right angles,
+to a more hopeful fancy it might have seemed the missionary Cross, which
+the enthusiast Portala lifted on that heathen shore a hundred years
+before.
+
+Not that Dick Jarman--the solitary station keeper--ever indulged this
+fancy. An escaped convict from one of her Britannic Majesty's penal
+colonies, a "stowaway" in the hold of an Australian ship, he had landed
+penniless in San Francisco, fearful of contact with his more honest
+countrymen already there, and liable to detection at any moment. Luckily
+for him, the English immigration consisted mainly of gold-seekers en
+route to Sacramento and the southern mines. He was prudent enough to
+resist the temptation to follow them, and accepted the post of semaphore
+keeper,--the first work offered him,--which the meanest immigrant,
+filled with dreams of gold, would have scorned. His employers asked him
+no questions, and demanded no references; his post could be scarcely
+deemed one of trust,--there was no property for him to abscond with but
+the telescope; he was removed from temptation and evil company in his
+lonely waste; his duties were as mechanical as the instrument he worked,
+and interruption of them would be instantly known at San Francisco. For
+this he would receive his board and lodging and seventy-five dollars a
+month,--a sum to be ridiculed in those "flush days," but which seemed to
+the broken-spirited and half-famished stowaway a princely independence.
+
+And then there was rest and security! He was free from that torturing
+anxiety and fear of detection which had haunted him night and day for
+three months. The ceaseless vigilance and watchful dread he had known
+since his escape, he could lay aside now. The rude cabin on the sand
+dune was to him as the long-sought cave to some hunted animal. It seemed
+impossible that any one would seek him there. He was spared alike the
+contact of his enemies or the shame of recognizing even a friendly face,
+until by each he would be forgotten. From his coign of vantage on that
+desolate waste, and with the aid of his telescope, no stranger could
+approach within two or three miles of his cabin without undergoing his
+scrutiny. And at the worst, if he was pursued here, before him was the
+trackless shore and the boundless sea!
+
+And at times there was a certain satisfaction in watching, unseen and in
+perfect security, the decks of passing ships. With the aid of his glass
+he could mingle again with the world from which he was debarred, and
+gloomily wonder who among those passengers knew their solitary watcher,
+or had heard of his deeds; it might have made him gloomier had he known
+that in those eager faces turned towards the golden haven there was
+little thought of anything but themselves. He tried to read in faces on
+board the few outgoing ships the record of their success with a strange
+envy. They were returning home! HOME! For sometimes--but seldom--he
+thought of his own home and his past. It was a miserable past of forgery
+and embezzlement that had culminated a career of youthful dissipation
+and self-indulgence, and shut him out, forever, from the staid old
+English cathedral town where he was born. He knew that his relations
+believed and wished him dead. He thought of this past with little
+pleasure, but with little remorse. Like most of his stamp, he believed
+it was ill-luck, chance, somebody else's fault, but never his own
+responsible action. He would not repent; he would be wiser only. And he
+would not be retaken--alive!
+
+Two or three months passed in this monotonous duty, in which he partly
+recovered his strength and his nerves. He lost his furtive, restless,
+watchful look; the bracing sea air and the burning sun put into his face
+the healthy tan and the uplifted frankness of a sailor. His eyes grew
+keener from long scanning of the horizon; he knew where to look
+for sails, from the creeping coastwise schooner to the far-rounding
+merchantman from Cape Horn. He knew the faint line of haze that
+indicated the steamer long before her masts and funnels became visible.
+He saw no soul except the solitary boatman of the little "plunger,"
+who landed his weekly provisions at a small cove hard by. The boatman
+thought his secretiveness and reticence only the surliness of his
+nation, and cared little for a man who never asked for the news, and to
+whom he brought no letters. The long nights which wrapped the cabin in
+sea-fog, and at first seemed to heighten the exile's sense of security,
+by degrees, however, became monotonous, and incited an odd restlessness,
+which he was wont to oppose by whiskey,--allowed as a part of his
+stores,--which, while it dulled his sensibilities, he, however, never
+permitted to interfere with his mechanical duties.
+
+He had been there five months, and the hills on the opposite shore
+between Tamalpais were already beginning to show their russet yellow
+sides. One bright morning he was watching the little fleet of Italian
+fishing-boats hovering in the bay. This was always a picturesque
+spectacle, perhaps the only one that relieved the general monotony of
+his outlook. The quaint lateen sails of dull red, or yellow, showing
+against the sparkling waters, and the red caps or handkerchiefs of the
+fishermen, might have attracted even a more abstracted man. Suddenly one
+of the larger boats tacked, and made directly for the little cove
+where his weekly plunger used to land. In an instant he was alert
+and suspicious. But a close examination of the boat through his glass
+satisfied him that it contained, in addition to the crew, only two or
+three women, apparently the family of the fishermen. As it ran up on
+the beach and the entire party disembarked he could see it was merely
+a careless, peaceable invasion, and he thought no more about it. The
+strangers wandered about the sands, gesticulating and laughing; they
+brought a pot ashore, built a fire, and cooked a homely meal. He
+could see that from time to time the semaphore--evidently a novelty to
+them--had attracted their attention; and having occasion to signal the
+arrival of a bark, the working of the uncouth arms of the instrument
+drew the children in half-frightened curiosity towards it, although the
+others held aloof, as if fearful of trespassing upon some work of the
+government, no doubt secretly guarded by the police. A few mornings
+later he was surprised to see upon the beach, near the same locality,
+a small heap of lumber which had evidently been landed in the early
+morning fog. The next day an old tent appeared on the spot, and the
+men, evidently fishermen, began the erection of a rude cabin beside it.
+Jarman had been long enough there to know that it was government land,
+and that these manifestly humble "squatters" upon it would not be
+interfered with for some time to come. He began to be uneasy again; it
+was true they were fully half a mile from him, and they were foreigners;
+but might not their reckless invasion of the law attract others, in
+this lawless country, to do the same? It ought to be stopped. For once
+Richard Jarman sided with legal authority.
+
+But when the cabin was completed, it was evident from what he saw of its
+rude structure that it was only a temporary shelter for the fisherman's
+family and the stores, and refitting of the fishing-boat, more
+convenient to them than the San Francisco wharves. The beach was
+utilized for the mending of nets and sails, and thus became half
+picturesque. In spite of the keen northwestern trades, the cloudless,
+sunshiny mornings tempted these southerners back to their native al
+fresco existence; they not only basked in the sun, but many of their
+household duties, and even the mysteries of their toilet, were performed
+in the open air. They did not seem to care to penetrate into the
+desolate region behind them; their half-amphibious habit kept them near
+the water's edge, and Richard Jarman, after taking his limited walks
+for the first few mornings in another direction, found it no longer
+necessary to avoid the locality, and even forgot their propinquity.
+
+But one morning, as the fog was clearing away and the sparkle of the
+distant sea was beginning to show from his window, he rose from his
+belated breakfast to fetch water from the "breaker" outside, which had
+to be replenished weekly from Sancelito, as there was no spring in his
+vicinity. As he opened the door, he was inexpressibly startled by the
+figure of a young woman standing in front of it, who, however, half
+fearfully, half laughingly withdrew before him. But his own manifest
+disturbance apparently gave her courage.
+
+"I jess was looking at that thing," she said bashfully, pointing to the
+semaphore.
+
+He was still more astonished, for, looking at her dark eyes and olive
+complexion, he had expected her to speak Italian or broken English. And,
+possibly because for a long time he had seen and known little of women,
+he was quite struck with her good looks. He hesitated, stammered, and
+then said:--
+
+"Won't you come in?"
+
+She drew back still farther and made a rapid gesture of negation with
+her head, her hand, and even her whole lithe figure. Then she said, with
+a decided American intonation:--
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Why not?" said Jarman mechanically.
+
+The girl sidled up against the cabin, keeping her eyes fixed on Jarman
+with a certain youthful shrewdness.
+
+"Oh, you know!" she said.
+
+"I really do not. Tell me why."
+
+She drew herself up against the wall a little proudly, though still
+youthfully, with her hands behind her.
+
+"I ain't that kind of girl," she said simply.
+
+The blood rushed to Jarman's checks. Dissipated and abandoned as his
+life had been, small respecter of women as he was, he was shocked and
+shamed. Knowing too, as he did, how absorbed he was in other things, he
+was indignant, because not guilty.
+
+"Do as you please, then," he said shortly, and reentered the cabin. But
+the next moment he saw his error in betraying an irritation that was
+open to misconstruction. He came out again, scarcely looking at the
+girl, who was lounging away.
+
+"Do you want me to explain to you how the thing works?" he said
+indifferently. "I can't show you unless a ship comes in."
+
+The girl's eyes brightened softly as she turned to him.
+
+"Do tell me," she said, with an anticipatory smile and flash of white
+teeth. "Won't you?"
+
+She certainly was very pretty and simple, in spite of her late speech.
+Jarman briefly explained to her the movements of the semaphore arms and
+their different significance. She listened with her capped head a little
+on one side like an attentive bird, and her arms unconsciously imitating
+the signs. Certainly, for all that she SPOKE like an American, her
+gesticulation was Italian.
+
+"And then," she said triumphantly when he paused, "when the sailors see
+that sign up they know they are coming in the harbor."
+
+Jarman smiled, as he had not smiled since he had been there. He
+corrected this mistake of her eager haste to show her intelligence, and,
+taking the telescope, pointed out the other semaphore,--a thin black
+outline on a distant inland hill. He then explained how HIS signs were
+repeated by that instrument to San Francisco.
+
+"My! Why, I always allowed that was only the cross stuck up in the Lone
+Mountain Cemetery," she said.
+
+"You are a Catholic?"
+
+"I reckon."
+
+"And you are an Italian?"
+
+"Father is, but mother was a 'Merikan, same as me. Mother's dead."
+
+"And your father is the fisherman yonder?"
+
+"Yes,--but," with a look of pride, "he's got the biggest boat of any."
+
+"And only you and your family are ashore here?"
+
+"Yes, and sometimes Mark." She laughed an odd little laugh.
+
+"Mark? Who's he?" he asked quickly.
+
+He had not noticed the sudden coquettish pose and half-affected
+bashfulness of the girl; he was thinking only of the possibility of
+detection by strangers.
+
+"Oh, he is Marco Franti, but I call him 'Mark.' It's the same name, you
+know, and it makes him mad," said the girl, with the same suggestion of
+archness and coquetry.
+
+But all this was lost on Jarman.
+
+"Oh, another Italian," he said, relieved. She turned away a little
+awkwardly when he added, "But you haven't told me YOUR name, you know."
+
+"Cara."
+
+"Cara,--that's 'dear' in Italian, isn't it?" he said, with a
+reminiscence of the opera and a half smile.
+
+"Yes," she said a little scornfully, "but it means Carlotta,--Charlotte,
+you know. Some girls call me Charley," she said hurriedly.
+
+"I see--Cara--or Carlotta Franti."
+
+To his surprise she burst into a peal of laughter.
+
+"I reckon not YET. Franti is Mark's name, not mine. Mine is
+Murano,--Carlotta Murano. Good-by." She moved away, then stopped
+suddenly and said, "I'm comin' again some time when the thing is
+working," and with a nod of her head, ran away. He looked after her;
+could see the outlines of her youthful figure in her slim cotton
+gown,--limp and clinging in the damp sea air, and the sudden revelation
+of her bare ankles thrust stockingless into canvas shoes.
+
+He went back into his cabin, when presently his attention was engrossed
+by an incoming vessel. He made the signals, half expecting, almost
+hoping, that the girl would return to watch him. But her figure was
+already lost in the sand dunes. Yet he fancied he still heard the echoes
+of her voice and his own in this cabin which had so long been dumb and
+voiceless, and he now started at every sound. For the first time he
+became aware of the dreadful disorder and untidiness of its uninvaded
+privacy. He could scarcely believe he had been living with his stove,
+his bed, and cooking utensils all in one corner of the barnlike room,
+and he began to put them "to rights" in a rough, hard formality,
+strongly suggestive of his convict experience. He rolled up his blankets
+into a hard cylinder at the head of his cot. He scraped out his kettles
+and saucepans, and even "washed down" the floor, afterwards sprinkling
+clean dry sand, hot with the noonday sunshine, on its half-dried boards.
+In arranging these domestic details he had to change the position of a
+little mirror; and glancing at it for the first time in many days, he
+was dissatisfied with his straggling beard,--grown during his voyage
+from Australia,--and although he had retained it as a disguise, he at
+once shaved it off, leaving only a mustache, and revealing a face from
+which a healthier life and out-of-door existence had removed the last
+traces of vice and dissipation. But he did not know it.
+
+All the next day he thought of his fair visitor, and found himself often
+repeating her odd remark that she was "not that kind of girl," with a
+smile that was alternately significant or vacant. Evidently she could
+take care of herself, he thought, although her very good looks no doubt
+had exposed her to the rude attentions of fishermen or the common drift
+of San Francisco wharves. Perhaps this was why her father brought her
+here. When the day passed and she came not, he began vaguely to wonder
+if he had been rude to her. Perhaps he had taken her simple remark too
+seriously; perhaps she had expected he would only laugh, and had found
+him dull and stupid. Perhaps he had thrown away an opportunity. An
+opportunity for what? To renew his old life and habits? No, no! The
+horrors of his recent imprisonment and escape were still too fresh in
+his memory; he was not safe yet. Then he wondered if he had not grown
+spiritless and pigeon-livered in his solitude and loneliness. The next
+day he searched for her with his glass, and saw her playing with one
+of the children on the beach,--a very picture of child or nymphlike
+innocence. Perhaps it was because she was not "that kind of girl" that
+she had attracted him. He laughed bitterly. Yes; that was very funny;
+he, an escaped convict, drawn towards honest, simple innocence! Yet he
+knew--he was positive--he had not thought of any ill when he spoke to
+her. He took a singular, a ridiculous pride in and credit to himself for
+that. He repeated it incessantly to himself. Then what made her angry?
+Himself! The devil! Did he carry, then, the record of his past life
+forever in his face--in his speech--in his manners? The thought made
+him sullen. The next day he would not look towards the shore; it was
+wonderful what excitement and satisfaction he got out of that strange
+act of self-denial; it made the day seem full that had been so vacant
+before; yet he could not tell why or wherefore. He felt injured, but he
+rather liked it. Yet in the night he was struck with the idea that she
+might have gone back to San Francisco, and he lay awake longing for
+the morning light to satisfy him. Yet when the fog cleared, and from
+a nearer point, behind a sand dune, he discovered, by the aid of his
+glass, that she was seated on the sun-warmed sands combing out her long
+hair like a mermaid, he immediately returned to the cabin, and that
+morning looked no more that way. In the afternoon, there being no sails
+in sight, he turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the
+ocean, halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the
+breaking Pacific surges. Here he was surprised to see a little child,
+half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume, or running
+after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that chased each other
+over the wet sand, and only a little further on, to come upon Cara
+herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her round chin in her
+hands, apparently gazing over the waste of waters before her. A sudden
+and inexplicable shyness overtook him. He hesitated, and stepped
+half-hidden in a gully between the sand dunes.
+
+As yet he had not been observed; the young girl called to the child and,
+suddenly rising, threw off her red cap and shawl and quietly began to
+disrobe herself. A couple of coarse towels were at her feet. Jarman
+instantly comprehended that she was going to bathe with the child. She
+undoubtedly knew as well as he did that she was safe in that solitude;
+that no one could intrude upon her privacy from the bay shore, nor from
+the desolate inland trail to the sea, without her knowledge. Of his
+own contiguity she had evidently taken no thought, believing him safely
+housed in his cabin beside the semaphore. She lifted her hands, and with
+a sudden movement shook out her long hair and let it fall down her back
+at the same moment that her unloosened blouse began to slip from her
+shoulders. Richard Jarman turned quickly and walked noiselessly and
+rapidly away, until the little hillock had shut out the beach.
+
+His retreat was as sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his
+intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly
+instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the
+South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins,
+but they had provoked no such instinct as that which possessed him now.
+More than that, he swept a quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on
+either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him
+from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward. From time to time
+the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and
+shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the
+more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not
+turn his head. He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had
+ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin. He had not gone
+many yards before he heard the twitter of voices and smothered laughter
+behind him. He turned; it was Cara and the child,--a girl of six or
+seven. Cara's face was rosy,--possibly from her bath, and possibly
+from some shame-faced consciousness. He slackened his pace, and as they
+ranged beside him said, "Good-morning!"
+
+"Lord!" said Cara, stifling another laugh, "we didn't know you were
+around; we thought you were always 'tending your telegraph, didn't we,
+Lucy?" (to the child, who was convulsed with mirth and sheepishness).
+"Why, we've been taking a wash in the sea." She tried to gather up her
+long hair, which had been left to stray over her shoulders and dry in
+the sunlight, and even made a slight pretense of trying to conceal the
+wet towels they were carrying.
+
+Jarman did not laugh. "If you had told me," he said gravely, "I could
+have kept watch for you with my glass while you were there. I could see
+further than you."
+
+"Tould you see US?" asked the little girl, with hopeful vivacity.
+
+"No!" said Jarman, with masterly evasion. "There are little sandhills
+between this and the beach."
+
+"Then how tould other people see us?" persisted the child.
+
+Jarman could see that the older girl was evidently embarrassed, and
+changed the subject. "I sometimes go out," he said, "when I can see
+there are no vessels in sight, and I take ray glass with me. I can
+always get back in time to make signals. I thought, in fact," he said,
+glancing at Cara's brightening face, "that I might get as far as
+your house on the shore some day." To his surprise, her embarrassment
+suddenly seemed to increase, although she had looked relieved before,
+and she did not reply. After a moment she said abruptly:--
+
+"Did you ever see the sea-lions?"
+
+"No," said Jarman.
+
+"Not the big ones on Seal Rock, beyond the cliffs?" continued the girl,
+in real astonishment.
+
+"No," repeated Jarman. "I never walked in that direction." He vaguely
+remembered that they were a curiosity which sometimes attracted parties
+thither, and for that reason he had avoided the spot.
+
+"Why, I have sailed all around the rock in father's boat," continued
+Cara, with importance. "That's the best way to see 'em, and folks from
+Frisco sometimes takes a sail out there just on purpose,--it's too sandy
+to walk or drive there. But it's only a step from here. Look here!" she
+said suddenly, and frankly opening her fine eyes upon him. "I'm going
+to take Lucy there to-morrow, and I'll show you." Jarman felt his cheeks
+flush quickly with a pleasure that embarrassed him. "It won't take
+long," added Cara, mistaking his momentary hesitation, "and you can
+leave your telegraph alone. Nobody will be there, so no one will see you
+and nobody know it."
+
+He would have gone then, anyway, he knew, yet in his absurd
+self-consciousness he was glad that her last suggestion had relieved him
+of a sense of reckless compliance. He assented eagerly, when with a wave
+of her hand, a flash of her white teeth, and the same abruptness she had
+shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away
+in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had
+not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE
+evidently as averse to it? With the subtle pleasure that this admission
+gave him there was a faint stirring of suspicion.
+
+It was gone when he found her and Lucy the next morning, radiant with
+the sunshine, before his door. The restraint of their previous meetings
+had been removed in some mysterious way, and they chatted gayly as they
+walked towards the cliffs. She asked him frankly many questions about
+himself, why he had come there, and if he "wasn't lonely;" she answered
+frankly--I fear much more frankly than he answered her--the many
+questions he asked her about herself and her friends. When they reached
+the cliffs they descended to the beach, which they found deserted.
+Before them--it seemed scarce a pistol shot from the shore arose a high,
+broad rock, beaten at its base by the long Pacific surf, on which a
+number of shapeless animals were uncouthly disporting. This was Seal
+Rock, the goal of their journey.
+
+Yet after a few moments they no longer looked at it, but seated on the
+sand, with Lucy gathering shells at the water's edge, they continued
+their talk. Presently the talk became eager confidences, and
+then,--there were long and dangerous lapses of silence, when both were
+fain to make perfunctory talk with Lucy on the beach. After one of those
+silences Jarman said:--
+
+"Do you know I rather thought yesterday you didn't want me to come to
+your father's house. Why was that?"
+
+"Because Marco was there," said the girl frankly.
+
+"What had HE to do with it?" said Jarman abruptly.
+
+"He wants to marry me."
+
+"And do you want to marry HIM?" said Jarman quickly.
+
+"No," said the girl passionately.
+
+"Why don't you get rid of him, then?"
+
+"I can't, he's hiding here,--he's father's friend."
+
+"Hiding? What's he been doing?"
+
+"Stealing. Stealing gold-dust from miners. I never cared for him anyway.
+And I hate a thief!"
+
+She looked up quickly. Jarman had risen to his feet, his face turned to
+sea.
+
+"What are you looking at?" she said wonderingly.
+
+"A ship," said Jarman, in a strange, hoarse voice. "I must hurry back
+and signal. I'm afraid I haven't even time to walk with you,--I must run
+for it. Good-by!"
+
+He turned without offering his hand and ran hurriedly in the direction
+of the semaphore.
+
+Cara, discomfited, turned her black eyes to the sea. But it seemed empty
+as before, no sail, no ship on the horizon line, only a little schooner
+slowly beating out of the Gate. Ah, well! It no doubt was there,--that
+sail,--though she could not see it; how keen and far-seeing his
+handsome, honest eyes were! She heaved a little sigh, and, calling Lucy
+to her side, began to make her way homeward. But she kept her eyes on
+the semaphore; it seemed to her the next thing to seeing him,--this man
+she was beginning to love. She waited for the gaunt arms to move with
+the signal of the vessel he had seen. But, strange to say, it was
+motionless. He must have been mistaken.
+
+All this, however, was driven from her mind in the excitement that she
+found on her return thrilling her own family. They had been warned that
+a police boat with detectives on board had been dispatched from San
+Francisco to the cove. Luckily, they had managed to convey the fugitive
+Franti on board a coastwise schooner,--Cara started as she remembered
+the one she had seen beating out of the Gate,--and he was now safe from
+pursuit. Cara felt relieved; at the same time she felt a strange joy
+at her heart, which sent the conscious blood to her cheek. She was not
+thinking of the escaped Marco, but of Jarman. Later, when the police
+boat arrived,--whether the detectives had been forewarned of Marco's
+escape or not,--they contented themselves with a formal search of the
+little fishing-hut and departed. But their boat remained lying off the
+shore.
+
+That night Cara tossed sleeplessly on her bed; she was sorry she had
+ever spoken of Marco to Jarman. It was unnecessary now; perhaps he
+disbelieved her and thought she loved Marco; perhaps that was the reason
+of his strange and abrupt leave-taking that afternoon. She longed for
+the next day, she could tell him everything now.
+
+Towards morning she slept fitfully, but was awakened by the sound of
+voices on the sands outside the hut. Its flimsy structure, already
+warped by the fierce day-long sun, allowed her through chinks and
+crevices not only to recognize the voices of the detectives, but to hear
+distinctly what they said. Suddenly the name of Jarman struck upon her
+ear. She sat upright in bed, breathless.
+
+"Are you sure it's the same man?" asked a second voice.
+
+"Perfectly," answered the first. "He was tracked to 'Frisco, but
+disappeared the day he landed. We knew from our agents that he never
+left the bay. And when we found that somebody answering his description
+got the post of telegraph operator out here, we knew that we had spotted
+our man and the L250 sterling offered for his capture."
+
+"But that was five months ago. Why didn't you take him then?"
+
+"Couldn't! For we couldn't hold him without the extradition papers from
+Australia. We sent for 'em; they're due to-day or to-morrow on the mail
+steamer."
+
+"But he might have got away at any time?"
+
+"He couldn't without our knowing it. Don't you see? Every time the
+signals went up, we in San Francisco knew he was at his post. We had him
+safe, out here on these sandhills, as if he'd been under lock and key in
+'Frisco. He was his own keeper, and reported to us."
+
+"But since you're here and expect the papers to-morrow, why don't you
+'cop' him now?"
+
+"Because there isn't a judge in San Francisco that would hold him
+a moment unless he had those extradition papers before him. He'd be
+discharged, and escape."
+
+"Then what are you going to do?"
+
+"As soon as the steamer is signaled in 'Frisco, we'll board her in the
+bay, get the papers, and drop down upon him."
+
+"I see; and as HE'S the signal man, the darned fool"--
+
+"Will give the signal himself."
+
+The laugh that followed was so cruel that the young girl shuddered. But
+the next moment she slipped from the bed, erect, pale, and determined.
+
+The voices seemed gradually to retreat. She dressed herself hurriedly,
+and passed noiselessly through the room of her still sleeping parent,
+and passed out. A gray fog was lifting slowly over the sands and sea,
+and the police boat was gone. She no longer hesitated, but ran quickly
+in the direction of Jarman's cabin. As she ran, her mind seemed to be
+swept clear of all illusion and fancy; she saw plainly everything that
+had happened; she knew the mystery of Jarman's presence here,--the
+secret of his life,--the dreadful cruelty of her remark to him,--the man
+that she knew now she loved. The sun was painting the black arms of the
+semaphore as she toiled over the last stretch of sand and knocked
+loudly at the door. There was no reply. She knocked again; the cabin was
+silent. Had he already fled?--and without seeing her and knowing all!
+She tried the handle of the door; it yielded; she stepped boldly into
+the room, with his name upon her lips. He was lying fully dressed upon
+his couch. She ran eagerly to his side and stopped. It needed only a
+single glance at his congested face, his lips parted with his heavy
+breath, to see that the man was hopelessly, helplessly drunk!
+
+Yet even then, without knowing that it was her thoughtless speech which
+had driven him to seek this foolish oblivion of remorse and sorrow,
+she saw only his HELPLESSNESS. She tried in vain to rouse him; he
+only muttered a few incoherent words and sank back again. She looked
+despairingly around. Something must be done; the steamer might be
+visible at any moment. Ah, yes,--the telescope! She seized it and swept
+the horizon. There was a faint streak of haze against the line of sea
+and sky, abreast the Golden Gate. He had once told her what it meant.
+It WAS the steamer! A sudden thought leaped into her clear and active
+brain. If the police boat should chance to see that haze too, and saw
+no warning signal from the semaphore, they would suspect something. That
+signal must be made, BUT NOT THE RIGHT ONE! She remembered quickly
+how he had explained to her the difference between the signals for a
+coasting steamer and the one that brought the mails. At that distance
+the police boat could not detect whether the semaphore's arms were
+extended to perfect right angles for the mail steamer, or if the left
+arm slightly deflected for a coasting steamer. She ran out to the
+windlass and seized the crank. For a moment it defied her strength; she
+redoubled her efforts: it began to creak and groan, the great arms were
+slowly uplifted, and the signal made.
+
+But the familiar sounds of the moving machinery had pierced through
+Jarman's sluggish consciousness as no other sound in heaven or earth
+could have done, and awakened him to the one dominant sense he had
+left,--the habit of duty. She heard him roll from the bed with an oath,
+stumble to the door, and saw him dash forward with an affrighted face,
+and plunge his head into a bucket of water. He emerged from it pale and
+dripping, but with the full light of reason and consciousness in his
+eyes. He started when he saw her; even then she would have fled, but he
+caught her firmly by the wrist.
+
+Then with a hurried, trembling voice she told him all and everything. He
+listened in silence, and only at the end raised her hand gravely to his
+lips.
+
+"And now," she added tremulously, "you must fly--quick--at once; or it
+will be too late!"
+
+But Richard Jarman walked slowly to the door of his cabin, still holding
+her hand, and said quietly, pointing to his only chair:--
+
+"Sit down; we must talk first."
+
+What they said was never known, but a few moments later they left the
+cabin, Jarman carrying in a small bag all his possessions, and Cara
+leaning on his arm. An hour later the priest of the Mission Dolores was
+called upon to unite in matrimony a frank, honest-looking sailor and an
+Italian gypsy-looking girl. There were many hasty unions in those days,
+and the Holy Church was only too glad to be able to give them its
+legal indorsement. But the good Padre was a little sorry for the honest
+sailor, and gave the girl some serious advice.
+
+The San Francisco papers the next morning threw some dubious light upon
+the matter in a paragraph headed, "Another Police Fiasco."
+
+"We understand that the indefatigable police of San Francisco, after
+ascertaining that Marco Franti, the noted gold-dust thief, was hiding on
+the shore near the Presidio, proceeded there with great solemnity, and
+arrived, as usual, a few hours after their man had escaped. But the
+climax of incapacity was reached when, as it is alleged, the sweetheart
+of the absconding Franti, and daughter of a brother fisherman, eloped
+still later, and joined her lover under the very noses of the police.
+The attempt of the detectives to excuse themselves at headquarters by
+reporting that they were also on the track of an alleged escaped Sydney
+Duck was received with the derision and skepticism it deserved, as it
+seemed that these worthies mistook the mail steamer, which they should
+have boarded to get certain extradition papers, for a coasting steamer."
+
+*****
+
+It was not until four years later that Murano was delighted to recognize
+in the husband of his long-lost daughter a very rich cattle-owner in
+Southern California, called Jarman; but he never knew that he had been
+an escaped convict from Sydney, who had lately received a full pardon
+through the instrumentality of divers distinguished people in Australia.
+
+
+
+
+AN ESMERALDA OF ROCKY CANYON
+
+
+It is to be feared that the hero of this chronicle began life as an
+impostor. He was offered to the credulous and sympathetic family of a
+San Francisco citizen as a lamb, who, unless bought as a playmate
+for the children, would inevitably pass into the butcher's hands.
+A combination of refined sensibility and urban ignorance of nature
+prevented them from discerning certain glaring facts that betrayed his
+caprid origin. So a ribbon was duly tied round his neck, and in pleasing
+emulation of the legendary "Mary," he was taken to school by the
+confiding children. Here, alas the fraud was discovered, and history was
+reversed by his being turned out by the teacher, because he was NOT "a
+lamb at school." Nevertheless, the kind-hearted mother of the family
+persisted in retaining him, on the plea that he might yet become
+"useful." To her husband's feeble suggestion of "gloves," she returned
+a scornful negative, and spoke of the weakly infant of a neighbor, who
+might later receive nourishment from this providential animal. But even
+this hope was destroyed by the eventual discovery of his sex. Nothing
+remained now but to accept him as an ordinary kid, and to find amusement
+in his accomplishments,--eating, climbing, and butting. It must be
+confessed that these were of a superior quality; a capacity to eat
+everything from a cambric handkerchief to an election poster, an
+agility which brought him even to the roofs of houses, and a power of
+overturning by a single push the chubbiest child who opposed him, made
+him a fearful joy to the nursery. This last quality was incautiously
+developed in him by a negro boy-servant, who, later, was hurriedly
+propelled down a flight of stairs by his too proficient scholar.
+Having once tasted victory, "Billy" needed no further incitement to his
+performances. The small wagon which he sometimes consented to draw for
+the benefit of the children never hindered his attempts to butt the
+passer-by. On the contrary, on well-known scientific principles he added
+the impact of the bodies of the children projected over his head in his
+charge, and the infelicitous pedestrian found himself not only knocked
+off his legs by Billy, but bombarded by the whole nursery.
+
+Delightful as was this recreation to juvenile limbs, it was felt to be
+dangerous to the adult public. Indignant protestations were made, and
+as Billy could not be kept in the house, he may be said to have at
+last butted himself out of that sympathetic family and into a hard and
+unfeeling world. One morning he broke his tether in the small back yard.
+For several days thereafter he displayed himself in guilty freedom on
+the tops of adjacent walls and outhouses. The San Francisco suburb
+where his credulous protectors lived was still in a volcanic state
+of disruption, caused by the grading of new streets through rocks and
+sandhills. In consequence the roofs of some houses were on the level
+of the doorsteps of others, and were especially adapted to Billy's
+performances. One afternoon, to the admiring and perplexed eyes of the
+nursery, he was discovered standing on the apex of a neighbor's new
+Elizabethan chimney, on a space scarcely larger than the crown of a hat,
+calmly surveying the world beneath him. High infantile voices appealed
+to him in vain; baby arms were outstretched to him in hopeless
+invitation; he remained exalted and obdurate, like Milton's hero,
+probably by his own merit "raised to that bad eminence." Indeed, there
+was already something Satanic in his budding horns and pointed mask as
+the smoke curled softly around him. Then he appropriately vanished,
+and San Francisco knew him no more. At the same time, however, one Owen
+M'Ginnis, a neighboring sandhill squatter, also disappeared, leaving San
+Francisco for the southern mines, and he was said to have taken Billy
+with him,--for no conceivable reason except for companionship. Howbeit,
+it was the turning-point of Billy's career; such restraint as kindness,
+civilization, or even policemen had exercised upon his nature was gone.
+He retained, I fear, a certain wicked intelligence, picked up in San
+Francisco with the newspapers and theatrical and election posters he
+had consumed. He reappeared at Rocky Canyon among the miners as an
+exceedingly agile chamois, with the low cunning of a satyr. That was all
+that civilization had done for him!
+
+If Mr. M'Ginnis had fondly conceived that he would make Billy "useful,"
+as well as companionable, he was singularly mistaken. Horses and mules
+were scarce in Rocky Canyon, and he attempted to utilize Billy by making
+him draw a small cart, laden with auriferous earth, from his claim to
+the river. Billy, rapidly gaining strength, was quite equal to the task,
+but alas! not his inborn propensity. An incautious gesture from the
+first passing miner Billy chose to construe into the usual challenge.
+Lowering his head, from which his budding horns had been already pruned
+by his master, he instantly went for his challenger, cart and all. Again
+the scientific law already pointed out prevailed. With the shock of
+the onset the entire contents of the cart arose and poured over the
+astonished miner, burying him from sight. In any other but a Californian
+mining-camp such a propensity in a draught animal would have been
+condemned, on account of the damage and suffering it entailed, but in
+Rocky Canyon it proved unprofitable to the owner from the very
+amusement and interest it excited. Miners lay in wait for Billy with
+a "greenhorn," or new-comer, whom they would put up to challenge the
+animal by some indiscreet gesture. In this way hardly a cartload of
+"pay-gravel" ever arrived safely at its destination, and the unfortunate
+M'Ginnis was compelled to withdraw Billy as a beast of burden. It
+was whispered that so great had his propensity become, under repeated
+provocation, that M'Ginnis himself was no longer safe. Going ahead
+of his cart one day to remove a fallen bough from the trail, Billy
+construed the act of stooping into a playful challenge from his
+master,--with the inevitable result.
+
+The next day M'Ginnis appeared with a wheelbarrow, but without Billy.
+From that day he was relegated to the rocky crags above the camp, from
+whence he was only lured occasionally by the mischievous miners, who
+wished to exhibit his peculiar performances. For although Billy had
+ample food and sustenance among the crags, he had still a civilized
+longing for posters; and whenever a circus, a concert, or a political
+meeting was "billed" in the settlement, he was on hand while the paste
+was yet fresh and succulent. In this way it was averred that he
+once removed a gigantic theatre bill setting forth the charms of the
+"Sacramento Pet," and being caught in the act by the advance agent, was
+pursued through the main street, carrying the damp bill on his horns,
+eventually affixing it, after his own peculiar fashion, on the back of
+Judge Boompointer, who was standing in front of his own court-house.
+
+In connection with the visits of this young lady another story
+concerning Billy survives in the legends of Rocky Canyon. Colonel
+Starbottle was at that time passing through the settlement on election
+business, and it was part of his chivalrous admiration for the sex to
+pay a visit to the pretty actress. The single waiting-room of the little
+hotel gave upon the veranda, which was also level with the street. After
+a brief yet gallant interview, in which he oratorically expressed
+the gratitude of the settlement with old-fashioned Southern courtesy,
+Colonel Starbottle lifted the chubby little hand of the "Pet" to his
+lips, and, with a low bow, backed out upon the veranda. But the Pet was
+astounded by his instant reappearance, and by his apparently casting
+himself passionately and hurriedly at her feet! It is needless to say
+that he was followed closely by Billy, who from the street had casually
+noticed him, and construed his novel exit into an ungentlemanly
+challenge.
+
+Billy's visits, however, became less frequent, and as Rocky Canyon
+underwent the changes incidental to mining settlements, he was presently
+forgotten in the invasion of a few Southwestern families, and the
+adoption of amusements less practical and turbulent than he had
+afforded. It was alleged that he was still seen in the more secluded
+fastnesses of the mountains, having reverted to a wild state, and it was
+suggested by one or two of the more adventurous that he might yet become
+edible, and a fair object of chase. A traveler through the Upper Pass of
+the canyon related how he had seen a savage-looking, hairy animal like
+a small elk perched upon inaccessible rocks, but always out of gunshot.
+But these and other legends were set at naught and overthrown by an
+unexpected incident.
+
+The Pioneer Coach was toiling up the long grade towards Skinners Pass
+when Yuba Bill suddenly pulled up, with his feet on the brake.
+
+"Jimminy!" he ejaculated, drawing a deep breath.
+
+The startled passenger beside him on the box followed the direction of
+his eyes. Through an opening in the wayside pines he could see, a few
+hundred yards away, a cuplike hollow in the hillside of the vividest
+green. In the centre a young girl of fifteen or sixteen was dancing and
+keeping step to the castanet "click" of a pair of "bones," such as negro
+minstrels use, held in her hands above her head. But, more singular
+still, a few paces before her a large goat, with its neck roughly
+wreathed with flowers and vines, was taking ungainly bounds and leaps
+in imitation of its companion. The wild background of the Sierras, the
+pastoral hollow, the incongruousness of the figures, and the vivid color
+of the girl's red flannel petticoat showing beneath her calico skirt,
+that had been pinned around her waist, made a striking picture, which
+by this time had attracted all eyes. Perhaps the dancing of the girl
+suggested a negro "break-down" rather than any known sylvan measure; but
+all this, and even the clatter of the bones, was made gracious by the
+distance.
+
+"Esmeralda! by the living Harry!" shouted the excited passenger on the
+box.
+
+Yuba Bill took his feet off the brake, and turned a look of deep scorn
+upon his companion as he gathered the reins again.
+
+"It's that blanked goat, outer Rocky Canyon beyond, and Polly Harkness!
+How did she ever come to take up with HIM?"
+
+Nevertheless, as soon as the coach reached Rocky Canyon, the story was
+quickly told by the passengers, corroborated by Yuba Bill, and highly
+colored by the observer on the box-seat. Harkness was known to be a
+new-comer who lived with his wife and only daughter on the other side of
+Skinners Pass. He was a "logger" and charcoal-burner, who had eaten his
+way into the serried ranks of pines below the pass, and established in
+these efforts an almost insurmountable cordon of fallen trees, stripped
+bark, and charcoal pits around the clearing where his rude log
+hut stood,--which kept his seclusion unbroken. He was said to be a
+half-savage mountaineer from Georgia, in whose rude fastnesses he had
+distilled unlawful whiskey, and that his tastes and habits unfitted him
+for civilization. His wife chewed and smoked; he was believed to make a
+fiery brew of his own from acorns and pine nuts; he seldom came to Rocky
+Canyon except for provisions; his logs were slipped down a "shoot" or
+slide to the river, where they voyaged once a month to a distant mill,
+but HE did not accompany them. The daughter, seldom seen at Rocky
+Canyon, was a half-grown girl, brown as autumn fern, wild-eyed,
+disheveled, in a homespun skirt, sunbonnet, and boy's brogans. Such were
+the plain facts which skeptical Rocky Canyon opposed to the passengers'
+legends. Nevertheless, some of the younger miners found it not out of
+their way to go over Skinners Pass on the journey to the river, but with
+what success was not told. It was said, however, that a celebrated New
+York artist, making a tour of California, was on the coach one day going
+through the pass, and preserved the memory of what he saw there in a
+well-known picture entitled "Dancing Nymph and Satyr," said by competent
+critics to be "replete with the study of Greek life." This did not
+affect Rocky Canyon, where the study of mythology was presumably
+displaced by an experience of more wonderful flesh-and-blood people, but
+later it was remembered with some significance.
+
+Among the improvements already noted, a zinc and wooden chapel had been
+erected in the main street, where a certain popular revivalist preacher
+of a peculiar Southwestern sect regularly held exhortatory services. His
+rude emotional power over his ignorant fellow-sectarians was well known,
+while curiosity drew others. His effect upon the females of his flock
+was hysterical and sensational. Women prematurely aged by frontier
+drudgery and child-bearing, girls who had known only the rigors and
+pains of a half-equipped, ill-nourished youth in their battling with the
+hard realities of nature around them, all found a strange fascination in
+the extravagant glories and privileges of the unseen world he pictured
+to them, which they might have found in the fairy tales and nursery
+legends of civilized children, had they known them. Personally he was
+not attractive; his thin pointed face, and bushy hair rising on
+either side of his square forehead in two rounded knots, and his long,
+straggling, wiry beard dropping from a strong neck and shoulders,
+were indeed of a common Southwestern type; yet in him they suggested
+something more. This was voiced by a miner who attended his first
+service, and as the Reverend Mr. Withholder rose in the pulpit, the
+former was heard to audibly ejaculate, "Dod blasted!--if it ain't
+Billy!" But when on the following Sunday, to everybody's astonishment,
+Polly Harkness, in a new white muslin frock and broad-brimmed Leghorn
+hat, appeared before the church door with the real Billy, and exchanged
+conversation with the preacher, the likeness was appalling.
+
+I grieve to say that the goat was at once christened by Rocky Canyon as
+"The Reverend Billy," and the minister himself was Billy's "brother."
+More than that, when an attempt was made by outsiders, during
+the service, to inveigle the tethered goat into his old butting
+performances, and he took not the least notice of their insults and
+challenges, the epithet "blanked hypocrite" was added to his title.
+
+Had he really reformed? Had his pastoral life with his nymph-like
+mistress completely cured him of his pugnacious propensity, or had
+he simply found it was inconsistent with his dancing, and seriously
+interfered with his "fancy steps"? Had he found tracts and hymn-books
+were as edible as theatre posters? These were questions that Rocky
+canyon discussed lightly, although there was always the more serious
+mystery of the relations of the Reverend Mr. Withholder, Polly Harkness,
+and the goat towards each other. The appearance of Polly at church was
+no doubt due to the minister's active canvass of the districts. But had
+he ever heard of Polly's dancing with the goat? And where in this plain,
+angular, badly dressed Polly was hidden that beautiful vision of the
+dancing nymph which had enthralled so many? And when had Billy ever
+given any suggestion of his Terpsichorean abilities--before or since?
+Were there any "points" of the kind to be discerned in him now? None!
+Was it not more probable that the Reverend Mr. Withholder had himself
+been dancing with Polly, and been mistaken for the goat? Passengers who
+could have been so deceived with regard to Polly's beauty might have as
+easily mistaken the minister for Billy. About this time another incident
+occurred which increased the mystery.
+
+The only male in the settlement who apparently dissented from the
+popular opinion regarding Polly was a new-comer, Jack Filgee. While
+discrediting her performance with the goat,--which he had never
+seen,--he was evidently greatly prepossessed with the girl herself.
+Unfortunately, he was equally addicted to drinking, and as he was
+exceedingly shy and timid when sober, and quite unpresentable at other
+times, his wooing, if it could be so called, progressed but slowly.
+Yet when he found that Polly went to church, he listened so far to the
+exhortations of the Reverend Mr. Withholder as to promise to come
+to "Bible class" immediately after the Sunday service. It was a hot
+afternoon, and Jack, who had kept sober for two days, incautiously
+fortified himself for the ordeal by taking a drink before arriving. He
+was nervously early, and immediately took a seat in the empty church
+near the open door. The quiet of the building, the drowsy buzzing of
+flies, and perhaps the soporific effect of the liquor caused his eyes
+to close and his head to fall forward on his breast repeatedly. He
+was recovering himself for the fourth time when he suddenly received a
+violent cuff on the ear, and was knocked backward off the bench on which
+he was sitting. That was all he knew.
+
+He picked himself up with a certain dignity, partly new to him, and
+partly the result of his condition, and staggered, somewhat bruised and
+disheveled, to the nearest saloon. Here a few frequenters who had
+seen him pass, who knew his errand and the devotion to Polly which had
+induced it, exhibited a natural concern.
+
+"How's things down at the gospel shop?" said one. "Look as ef you'd been
+wrastlin' with the Sperit, Jack!"
+
+"Old man must hev exhorted pow'ful," said another, glancing at his
+disordered Sunday attire.
+
+"Ain't be'n hevin' a row with Polly? I'm told she slings an awful left."
+
+Jack, instead of replying, poured out a dram of whiskey, drank it,
+and putting down his glass, leaned heavily against the counter as he
+surveyed his questioners with a sorrow chastened by reproachful dignity.
+
+"I'm a stranger here, gentlemen," he said slowly "ye've known me only a
+little; but ez ye've seen me both blind drunk and sober, I reckon ye've
+caught on to my gin'ral gait! Now I wanter put it to you, ez fair-minded
+men, ef you ever saw me strike a parson?"
+
+"No," said a chorus of sympathetic voices. The barkeeper, however, with
+a swift recollection of Polly and the Reverend Withholder, and some
+possible contingent jealousy in Jack, added prudently, "Not yet."
+
+The chorus instantly added reflectively, "Well, no not yet."
+
+"Did ye ever," continued Jack solemnly, "know me to cuss, sass,
+bully-rag, or say anything agin parsons, or the church?"
+
+"No," said the crowd, overthrowing prudence in curiosity, "ye never
+did,--we swear it! And now, what's up?"
+
+"I ain't what you call 'a member in good standin','" he went on,
+artistically protracting his climax. "I ain't be'n convicted o' sin;
+I ain't 'a meek an' lowly follower;' I ain't be'n exactly what I orter
+be'n; I hevn't lived anywhere up to my lights; but is thet a reason why
+a parson should strike me?"
+
+"Why? What? When did he? Who did?" asked the eager crowd, with one
+voice.
+
+Jack then painfully related how he had been invited by the Reverend
+Mr. Withholder to attend the Bible class. How he had arrived early,
+and found the church empty. How he had taken a seat near the door to
+be handy when the parson came. How he just felt "kinder kam and good,"
+listenin' to the flies buzzing, and must have fallen asleep,--only he
+pulled himself up every time,--though, after all, it warn't no crime to
+fall asleep in an empty church! How "all of a suddent" the parson came
+in, "give him a clip side o' the head," and knocked him off the bench,
+and left him there!
+
+"But what did he SAY?" queried the crowd.
+
+"Nuthin'. Afore I could get up, he got away."
+
+"Are you sure it was him?" they asked. "You know you SAY you was
+asleep."
+
+"Am I sure?" repeated Jack scornfully. "Don't I know thet face and
+beard? Didn't I feel it hangin' over me?"
+
+"What are you going to do about it?" continued the crowd eagerly.
+
+"Wait till he comes out--and you'll see," said Jack, with dignity.
+
+This was enough for the crowd; they gathered excitedly at the door,
+where Jack was already standing, looking towards the church. The moments
+dragged slowly; it might be a long meeting. Suddenly the church door
+opened and a figure appeared, looking up and down the street. Jack
+colored--he recognized Polly--and stepped out into the road. The crowd
+delicately, but somewhat disappointedly, drew back in the saloon. They
+did not care to interfere in THAT sort of thing.
+
+Polly saw him, and came hurriedly towards him. She was holding something
+in her hand.
+
+"I picked this up on the church floor," she said shyly, "so I reckoned
+you HAD be'n there,--though the parson said you hadn't,--and I just
+excused myself and ran out to give it ye. It's yourn, ain't it?"
+She held up a gold specimen pin, which he had put on in honor of the
+occasion. "I had a harder time, though, to git this yer,--it's yourn
+too,--for Billy was laying down in the yard, back o' the church, and
+just comf'bly swallerin' it."
+
+"Who?" said Jack quickly.
+
+"Billy,--my goat."
+
+Jack drew a long breath, and glanced back at the saloon. "Ye ain't goin'
+back to class now, are ye?" he said hurriedly. "Ef you ain't, I'll--I'll
+see ye home."
+
+"I don't mind," said Polly demurely, "if it ain't takin' ye outer y'ur
+way."
+
+Jack offered his arm, and hurrying past the saloon, the happy pair were
+soon on the road to Skinners Pass.
+
+
+Jack did not, I regret to say, confess his blunder, but left the
+Reverend Mr. Withholder to remain under suspicion of having committed an
+unprovoked assault and battery. It was characteristic of Rocky Canyon,
+however, that this suspicion, far from injuring his clerical reputation,
+incited a respect that had been hitherto denied him. A man who could
+hit out straight from the shoulder had, in the language of the critics,
+"suthin' in him." Oddly enough, the crowd that had at first sympathized
+with Jack now began to admit provocations. His subsequent silence, a
+disposition when questioned on the subject to smile inanely, and, later,
+when insidiously asked if he had ever seen Polly dancing with the goat,
+his bursting into uproarious laughter completely turned the current of
+opinion against him. The public mind, however, soon became engrossed by
+a more interesting incident.
+
+The Reverend Mr. Withholder had organized a series of Biblical tableaux
+at Skinnerstown for the benefit of his church. Illustrations were to be
+given of "Rebecca at the Well," "The Finding of Moses," "Joseph and
+his Brethren;" but Rocky Canyon was more particularly excited by the
+announcement that Polly Harkness would personate "Jephthah's Daughter."
+On the evening of the performance, however, it was found that this
+tableau had been withdrawn and another substituted, for reasons not
+given. Rocky Canyon, naturally indignant at this omission to represent
+native talent, indulged in a hundred wild surmises. But it was generally
+believed that Jack Filgee's revengeful animosity to the Reverend Mr.
+Withholder was at the bottom of it. Jack, as usual, smiled inanely, but
+nothing was to be got from him. It was not until a few days later, when
+another incident crowned the climax of these mysteries, that a full
+disclosure came from his lips.
+
+One morning a flaming poster was displayed at Rocky Canyon, with a
+charming picture of the "Sacramento Pet" in the briefest of skirts,
+disporting with a tambourine before a goat garlanded with flowers, who
+bore, however, an undoubted likeness to Billy. The text in enormous
+letters, and bristling with points of admiration, stated that the "Pet"
+would appear as "Esmeralda," assisted by a performing goat, especially
+trained by the gifted actress. The goat would dance, play cards, and
+perform those tricks of magic familiar to the readers of Victor Hugo's
+beautiful story of the "Hunchback of Notre Dame," and finally knock
+down and overthrow the designing seducer, Captain Phoebus. The marvelous
+spectacle would be produced under the patronage of the Hon. Colonel
+Starbottle and the Mayor of Skinnerstown.
+
+As all Rocky Canyon gathered open-mouthed around the poster, Jack
+demurely joined the group. Every eye was turned upon him.
+
+"It don't look as if yer Polly was in THIS show, any more than she
+was in the tablows," said one, trying to conceal his curiosity under a
+slight sneer. "She don't seem to be doin' any dancin'!"
+
+"She never DID any dancin'," said Jack, with a smile.
+
+"Never DID! Then what was all these yarns about her dancin' up at the
+pass?"
+
+"It was the Sacramento Pet who did all the dancin'; Polly only LENT
+the goat. Ye see, the Pet kinder took a shine to Billy arter he bowled
+Starbottle over thet day at the hotel, and she thought she might teach
+him tricks. So she DID, doing all her teachin' and stage-rehearsin' up
+there at the pass, so's to be outer sight, and keep this thing dark. She
+bribed Polly to lend her the goat and keep her secret, and Polly never
+let on a word to anybody but me."
+
+"Then it was the Pet that Yuba Bill saw dancin' from the coach?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that yer artist from New York painted as an 'Imp and Satire'?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then that's how Polly didn't show up in them tablows at Skinnerstown?
+It was Withholder who kinder smelt a rat, eh? and found out it was only
+a theayter gal all along that did the dancin'?"
+
+"Well, you see," said Jack, with affected hesitation, "thet's another
+yarn. I don't know mebbe ez I oughter tell it. Et ain't got anything
+to do with this advertisement o' the Pet, and might be rough on old man
+Withholder! Ye mustn't ask me, boys."
+
+But there was that in his eye, and above all in this lazy
+procrastination of the true humorist when he is approaching his climax,
+which rendered the crowd clamorous and unappeasable. They WOULD have the
+story!
+
+Seeing which, Jack leaned back against a rock with great gravity, put
+his hands in his pockets, looked discontentedly at the ground, and
+began: "You see, boys, old Parson Withholder had heard all these yarns
+about Polly and thet trick-goat, and he kinder reckoned that she might
+do for some one of his tablows. So he axed her if she'd mind standin'
+with the goat and a tambourine for Jephthah's Daughter, at about the
+time when old Jeph comes home, sailin' in and vowin' he'll kill the
+first thing he sees,--jest as it is in the Bible story. Well, Polly
+didn't like to say it wasn't HER that performed with the goat, but the
+Pet, for thet would give the Pet dead away; so Polly agrees to come thar
+with the goat and rehearse the tablow. Well, Polly's thar, a little
+shy; and Billy,--you bet HE'S all there, and ready for the fun; but the
+darned fool who plays Jephthah ain't worth shucks, and when HE comes
+in he does nothin' but grin at Polly and seem skeert at the goat. This
+makes old Withholder jest wild, and at last he goes on the platform
+hisself to show them how the thing oughter be done. So he comes bustlin'
+and prancin' in, and ketches sight o' Polly dancin' in with the goat to
+welcome him; and then he clasps his hands--so--and drops on his knees,
+and hangs down his head--so--and sez, 'Me chyld! me vow! Oh,
+heavens!' But jest then Billy--who's gettin' rather tired o' all this
+foolishness--kinder slues round on his hind legs, and ketches sight o'
+the parson!" Jack paused a moment, and thrusting his hands still deeper
+in his pockets, said lazily, "I don't know if you fellers have noticed
+how much old Withholder looks like Billy?"
+
+There was a rapid and impatient chorus of "Yes! yes!" and "Go on!"
+
+"Well," continued Jack, "when Billy sees Withholder kneelin' thar
+with his head down, he gives a kind o' joyous leap and claps his hoofs
+together, ez much ez to say, 'I'm on in this scene,' drops his own head,
+and jest lights out for the parson!"
+
+"And butts him clean through the side scenes into the street,"
+interrupted a delighted auditor.
+
+But Jack's face never changed. "Ye think so?" he said gravely. "But
+thet's jest whar ye slip up; and thet's jest whar Billy slipped up!" he
+added slowly. "Mebbe ye've noticed, too, thet the parson's built kinder
+solid about the head and shoulders. It mought hev be'n thet, or thet
+Billy didn't get a fair start, but thet goat went down on his fore legs
+like a shot, and the parson gave one heave, and jest scooted him off the
+platform! Then the parson reckoned thet this yer 'tablow' had better
+be left out, as thar didn't seem to be any other man who could play
+Jephthah, and it wasn't dignified for HIM to take the part. But the
+parson allowed thet it might be a great moral lesson to Billy!"
+
+And it WAS, for from that moment Billy never attempted to butt again.
+He performed with great docility later on in the Pet's engagement at
+Skinnerstown; he played a distinguished role throughout the provinces;
+he had had the advantages of Art from "the Pet," and of Simplicity from
+Polly, but only Rocky Canyon knew that his real education had come with
+his first rehearsal with the Reverend Mr. Withholder.
+
+
+
+
+DICK SPINDLER'S FAMILY CHRISTMAS
+
+
+There was surprise and sometimes disappointment in Rough and Ready, when
+it was known that Dick Spindler intended to give a "family" Christmas
+party at his own house. That he should take an early opportunity to
+celebrate his good fortune and show hospitality was only expected from
+the man who had just made a handsome "strike" on his claim; but that it
+should assume so conservative, old-fashioned, and respectable a form was
+quite unlooked-for by Rough and Ready, and was thought by some a trifle
+pretentious. There were not half-a-dozen families in Rough and Ready;
+nobody ever knew before that Spindler had any relations, and this
+"ringing in" of strangers to the settlement seemed to indicate at least
+a lack of public spirit. "He might," urged one of his critics, "hev
+given the boys,--that had worked alongside o' him in the ditches by day,
+and slung lies with him around the camp-fire by night,--he might hev
+given them a square 'blow out,' and kep' the leavin's for his old
+Spindler crew, just as other families do. Why, when old man Scudder had
+his house-raisin' last year, his family lived for a week on what was
+left over, arter the boys had waltzed through the house that night,--and
+the Scudders warn't strangers, either." It was also evident that there
+was an uneasy feeling that Spindler's action indicated an unhallowed
+leaning towards the minority of respectability and exclusiveness, and
+a desertion--without the excuse of matrimony--of the convivial and
+independent bachelor majority of Rough and Ready.
+
+"Ef he was stuck after some gal and was kinder looking ahead, I'd hev
+understood it," argued another critic.
+
+"Don't ye be too sure he ain't," said Uncle Jim Starbuck gloomily.
+"Ye'll find that some blamed woman is at the bottom of this yer 'family'
+gathering. That and trouble ez almost all they're made for!"
+
+There happened to be some truth in this dark prophecy, but none of the
+kind that the misogynist supposed. In fact, Spindler had called a
+few evenings before at the house of the Rev. Mr. Saltover, and Mrs.
+Saltover, having one of her "Saleratus headaches," had turned him over
+to her widow sister, Mrs. Huldy Price, who obediently bestowed upon
+him that practical and critical attention which she divided with the
+stocking she was darning. She was a woman of thirty-five, of singular
+nerve and practical wisdom, who had once smuggled her wounded husband
+home from a border affray, calmly made coffee for his deceived pursuers
+while he lay hidden in the loft, walked four miles for that medical
+assistance which arrived too late to save him, buried him secretly in
+his own "quarter section," with only one other witness and mourner, and
+so saved her position and property in that wild community, who believed
+he had fled. There was very little of this experience to be traced in
+her round, fresh-colored brunette cheek, her calm black eyes, set in
+a prickly hedge of stiff lashes, her plump figure, or her frank,
+courageous laugh. The latter appeared as a smile when she welcomed Mr.
+Spindler. "She hadn't seen him for a coon's age," but "reckoned he was
+busy fixin' up his new house."
+
+"Well, yes," said Spindler, with a slight hesitation, "ye see, I'm
+reckonin' to hev a kinder Christmas gatherin' of my"--he was about to
+say "folks," but dismissed it for "relations," and finally settled upon
+"relatives" as being more correct in a preacher's house.
+
+Mrs. Price thought it a very good idea. Christmas was the natural season
+for the family to gather to "see who's here and who's there, who's
+gettin' on and who isn't, and who's dead and buried. It was lucky
+for them who were so placed that they could do so and be joyful."
+Her invincible philosophy probably carried her past any dangerous
+recollections of the lonely grave in Kansas, and holding up the stocking
+to the light, she glanced cheerfully along its level to Mr. Spindler's
+embarrassed face by the fire.
+
+"Well, I can't say much ez to that," responded Spindler, still
+awkwardly, "for you see I don't know much about it anyway."
+
+"How long since you've seen 'em?" asked Mrs. Price, apparently
+addressing herself to the stocking.
+
+Spindler gave a weak laugh. "Well, you see, ef it comes to that, I've
+never seen 'em!"
+
+Mrs. Price put the stocking in her lap and opened her direct eyes
+on Spindler. "Never seen 'em?" she repeated. "Then, they're not near
+relations?"
+
+"There are three cousins," said Spindler, checking them off on his
+fingers, "a half-uncle, a kind of brother-in-law,--that is, the brother
+of my sister-in-law's second husband,--and a niece. That's six."
+
+"But if you've not seen them, I suppose they've corresponded with you?"
+said Mrs. Price.
+
+"They've nearly all of 'em written to me for money, seeing my name
+in the paper ez hevin' made a strike," returned Spindler simply; "and
+hevin' sent it, I jest know their addresses."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Price, returning to the stocking.
+
+Something in the tone of her ejaculation increased Spindler's
+embarrassment, but it also made him desperate. "You see, Mrs. Price,"
+he blurted out, "I oughter tell ye that I reckon they are the folks that
+'hevn't got on,' don't you see, and so it seemed only the square thing
+for me, ez had 'got on,' to give them a sort o' Christmas festival.
+Suthin', don't ye know, like what your brother-in-law was sayin' last
+Sunday in the pulpit about this yer peace and goodwill 'twixt man and
+man."
+
+Mrs. Price looked again at the man before her. His sallow, perplexed
+face exhibited some doubt, yet a certain determination, regarding
+the prospect the quotation had opened to him. "A very good idea, Mr.
+Spindler, and one that does you great credit," she said gravely.
+
+"I'm mighty glad to hear you say so, Mrs. Price," he said, with an
+accent of great relief, "for I reckoned to ask you a great favor! You
+see," he fell into his former hesitation, "that is--the fact is--that
+this sort o' thing is rather suddent to me,--a little outer my line,
+don't you see, and I was goin' to ask ye ef you'd mind takin' the hull
+thing in hand and runnin it for me."
+
+"Running it for you," said Mrs. Price, with a quick eye-shot from under
+the edge of her lashes. "Man alive! What are you thinking of?"
+
+"Bossin' the whole job for me," hurried on Spindler, with nervous
+desperation. "Gettin' together all the things and makin' ready for
+'em,--orderin' in everythin' that's wanted, and fixin' up the rooms,--I
+kin step out while you're doin' it,--and then helpin' me receivin' 'em,
+and sittin' at the head o' the table, you know,--like ez ef you was the
+mistress."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Price, with her frank laugh, "that's the duty of one of
+your relations,--your niece, for instance,--or cousin, if one of them is
+a woman."
+
+"But," persisted Spindler, "you see, they're strangers to me; I don't
+know 'em, and I do you. You'd make it easy for 'em,--and for me,--don't
+you see? Kinder introduce 'em,--don't you know? A woman of your gin'ral
+experience would smooth down all them little difficulties," continued
+Spindler, with a vague recollection of the Kansas story, "and put
+everybody on velvet. Don't say 'No,' Mrs. Price! I'm just kalkilatin' on
+you."
+
+Sincerity and persistency in a man goes a great way with even the best
+of women. Mrs. Price, who had at first received Spindler's request as an
+amusing originality, now began to incline secretly towards it. And, of
+course, began to suggest objections.
+
+"I'm afraid it won't do," she said thoughtfully, awakening to the fact
+that it would do and could be done. "You see, I've promised to spend
+Christmas at Sacramento with my nieces from Baltimore. And then there's
+Mrs. Saltover and my sister to consult."
+
+But here Spindler's simple face showed such signs of distress that the
+widow declared she would "think it over,"--a process which the sanguine
+Spindler seemed to consider so nearly akin to talking it over that Mrs.
+Price began to believe it herself, as he hopefully departed.
+
+She "thought it over" sufficiently to go to Sacramento and excuse
+herself to her nieces. But here she permitted herself to "talk it over,"
+to the infinite delight of those Baltimore girls, who thought this
+extravaganza of Spindler's "so Californian and eccentric!" So that it
+was not strange that presently the news came back to Rough and Ready,
+and his old associates learned for the first time that he had never seen
+his relatives, and that they would be doubly strangers. This did not
+increase his popularity; neither, I grieve to say, did the intelligence
+that his relatives were probably poor, and that the Reverend Mr.
+Saltover had approved of his course, and had likened it to the rich
+man's feast, to which the halt and blind were invited. Indeed, the
+allusion was supposed to add hypocrisy and a bid for popularity to
+Spindler's defection, for it was argued that he might have feasted
+"Wall-eyed Joe" or "Tangle-foot Billy,"--who had once been "chawed" by
+a bear while prospecting,--if he had been sincere. Howbeit, Spindler's
+faith was oblivious to these criticisms, in his joy at Mr. Saltover's
+adhesion to his plans and the loan of Mrs. Price as a hostess. In
+fact, he proposed to her that the invitation should also convey that
+information in the expression, "by the kind permission of the Rev. Mr.
+Saltover," as a guarantee of good faith, but the widow would have none
+of it. The invitations were duly written and dispatched.
+
+"Suppose," suggested Spindler, with a sudden lugubrious
+apprehension,--"suppose they shouldn't come?"
+
+"Have no fear of that," said Mrs. Price, with a frank laugh.
+
+"Or ef they was dead," continued Spindler.
+
+"They couldn't all be dead," said the widow cheerfully.
+
+"I've written to another cousin by marriage," said Spindler dubiously,
+"in case of accident; I didn't think of him before, because he was
+rich."
+
+"And have you ever seen him either, Mr. Spindler?" asked the widow, with
+a slight mischievousness.
+
+"Lordy! No!" he responded, with unaffected concern.
+
+Only one mistake was made by Mrs. Price in her arrangements for the
+party. She had noticed what the simple-minded Spindler could never have
+conceived,--the feeling towards him held by his old associates, and had
+tactfully suggested that a general invitation should be extended to them
+in the evening.
+
+"You can have refreshments, you know, too, after the dinner, and games
+and music."
+
+"But," said the unsophisticated host, "won't the boys think I'm playing
+it rather low down on them, so to speak, givin' 'em a kind o' second
+table, as ef it was the tailings after a strike?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Price, with decision. "It's quite fashionable in
+San Francisco, and just the thing to do."
+
+To this decision Spindler, in his blind faith in the widow's management,
+weakly yielded. An announcement in the "Weekly Banner" that, "On
+Christmas evening Richard Spindler, Esq., proposed to entertain his
+friends and fellow citizens at an 'at home,' in his own residence,"
+not only widened the breach between him and the "boys," but awakened an
+active resentment that only waited for an outlet. It was understood that
+they were all coming; but that they should have "some fun out of it"
+which might not coincide with Spindler's nor his relatives' sense of
+humor seemed a foregone conclusion.
+
+Unfortunately, too, subsequent events lent themselves to this irony of
+the situation.
+
+He was so obviously sincere in his intent, and, above all, seemed to
+place such a pathetic reliance on her judgment, that she hesitated to
+let him know the shock his revelation had given her. And what might his
+other relations prove to be? Good Lord! Yet, oddly enough, she was so
+prepossessed by him, and so fascinated by his very Quixotism, that it
+was perhaps for these complex reasons that she said a little stiffly:--
+
+"One of these cousins, I see, is a lady, and then there is your niece.
+Do you know anything about them, Mr. Spindler?"
+
+His face grew serious. "No more than I know of the others," he said
+apologetically. After a moment's hesitation he went on: "Now you speak
+of it, it seems to me I've heard that my niece was di-vorced. But," he
+added, brightening up, "I've heard that she was popular."
+
+Mrs. Price gave a short laugh, and was silent for a few minutes. Then
+this sublime little woman looked up at him. What he might have seen in
+her eyes was more than he expected, or, I fear, deserved. "Cheer up, Mr.
+Spindler," she said manfully. "I'll see you through this thing, don't
+you mind! But don't you say anything about--about--this Vigilance
+Committee business to anybody. Nor about your niece--it was your niece,
+wasn't it?--being divorced. Charley (the late Mr. Price) had a queer
+sort of sister, who--but that's neither here nor there! And your niece
+mayn't come, you know; or if she does, you ain't bound to bring her out
+to the general company."
+
+At parting, Spindler, in sheer gratefulness, pressed her hand, and
+lingered so long over it that a little color sprang into the widow's
+brown cheek. Perhaps a fresh courage sprang into her heart, too, for
+she went to Sacramento the next day, previously enjoining Spindler on no
+account to show any answers he might receive. At Sacramento her nieces
+flew to her with confidences.
+
+"We so wanted to see you, Aunt Huldy, for we've heard something so
+delightful about your funny Christmas Party!" Mrs. Price's heart sank,
+but her eyes snapped. "Only think of it! One of Mr. Spindler's long-lost
+relatives--a Mr. Wragg--lives in this hotel, and papa knows him. He's
+a sort of half-uncle, I believe, and he's just furious that Spindler
+should have invited him. He showed papa the letter; said it was
+the greatest piece of insolence in the world; that Spindler was an
+ostentatious fool, who had made a little money and wanted to use him
+to get into society; and the fun of the whole thing was that this
+half-uncle and whole brute is himself a parvenu,--a vulgar, ostentatious
+creature, who was only a"--
+
+"Never mind what he was, Kate," interrupted Mrs. Price hastily. "I call
+his conduct a shame."
+
+"So do we," said both girls eagerly. After a pause Kate clasped her
+knees with her locked fingers, and rocking backwards and forwards, said,
+"Milly and I have got an idea, and don't you say 'No' to it. We've had
+it ever since that brute talked in that way. Now, through him, we know
+more about this Mr. Spindler's family connections than you do; and we
+know all the trouble you and he'll have in getting up this party. You
+understand? Now, we first want to know what Spindler's like. Is he a
+savage, bearded creature, like the miners we saw on the boat?"
+
+Mrs. Price said that, on the contrary, he was very gentle, soft-spoken,
+and rather good-looking.
+
+"Young or old?"
+
+"Young,--in fact, a mere boy, as you may judge from his actions,"
+returned Mrs. Price, with a suggestive matronly air.
+
+Kate here put up a long-handled eyeglass to her fine gray eyes, fitted
+it ostentatiously over her aquiline nose, and then said, in a voice of
+simulated horror, "Aunt Huldy,--this revelation is shocking!"
+
+Mrs. Price laughed her usual frank laugh, albeit her brown cheek took
+upon it a faint tint of Indian red. "If that's the wonderful idea you
+girls have got, I don't see how it's going to help matters," she said
+dryly.
+
+"No, that's not it? We really have an idea. Now look here."
+
+Mrs. Price "looked here." This process seemed to the superficial
+observer to be merely submitting her waist and shoulders to the arms of
+her nieces, and her ears to their confidential and coaxing voices.
+
+Twice she said "it couldn't be thought of," and "it was impossible;"
+once addressed Kate as "You limb!" and finally said that she "wouldn't
+promise, but might write!"
+
+*****
+
+It was two days before Christmas. There was nothing in the air, sky,
+or landscape of that Sierran slope to suggest the season to the Eastern
+stranger. A soft rain had been dropping for a week on laurel, pine, and
+buckeye, and the blades of springing grasses and shyly opening flowers.
+Sedate and silent hillsides that had grown dumb and parched towards the
+end of the dry season became gently articulate again; there were murmurs
+in hushed and forgotten canyons, the leap and laugh of water among the
+dry bones of dusty creeks, and the full song of the larger forks and
+rivers. Southwest winds brought the warm odor of the pine sap swelling
+in the forest, or the faint, far-off spice of wild mustard springing
+in the lower valleys. But, as if by some irony of Nature, this gentle
+invasion of spring in the wild wood brought only disturbance and
+discomfort to the haunts and works of man. The ditches were overflowed,
+the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails
+and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach
+from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its
+wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud
+and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford,
+and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough
+and Ready. A week of enforced idleness on the river "Bar" had driven
+the miners to the more comfortable recreation of the saloon bar, its
+mirrors, its florid paintings, its armchairs, and its stove. The steam
+of their wet boots and the smoke of their pipes hung over the latter
+like the sacrificial incense from an altar. But the attitude of the men
+was more critical and censorious than contented, and showed little of
+the gentleness of the weather or season.
+
+"Did you hear if the stage brought down any more relations of
+Spindler's?"
+
+The barkeeper, to whom this question was addressed, shifted his lounging
+position against the bar and said, "I reckon not, ez far ez I know."
+
+"And that old bloat of a second cousin--that crimson beak--what kem
+down yesterday,--he ain't bin hangin' round here today for his reg'lar
+pizon?"
+
+"No," said the barkeeper thoughtfully, "I reckon Spindler's got him
+locked up, and is settin' on him to keep him sober till after Christmas,
+and prevent you boys gettin' at him."
+
+"He'll have the jimjams before that," returned the first speaker; "and
+how about that dead beat of a half-nephew who borrowed twenty dollars of
+Yuba Bill on the way down, and then wanted to get off at Shootersvilie,
+but Bill wouldn't let him, and scooted him down to Spindler's and
+collected the money from Spindler himself afore he'd give him up?"
+
+"He's up thar with the rest of the menagerie," said the barkeeper, "but
+I reckon that Mrs. Price hez bin feedin' him up. And ye know the old
+woman--that fifty-fifth cousin by marriage--whom Joe Chandler swears he
+remembers ez an old cook for a Chinese restaurant in Stockton,--darn my
+skin ef that Mrs. Price hasn't rigged her out in some fancy duds of her
+own, and made her look quite decent."
+
+A deep groan here broke from Uncle Jim Starbuck.
+
+"Didn't I tell ye?" he said, turning appealingly to the others. "It's
+that darned widow that's at the bottom of it all! She first put Spindler
+up to givin' the party, and now, darn my skin, ef she ain't goin to fix
+up these ragamuffins and drill 'em so we can't get any fun outer 'em
+after all! And it's bein' a woman that's bossin' the job, and not
+Spindler, we've got to draw things mighty fine and not cut up too rough,
+or some of the boys will kick."
+
+"You bet," said a surly but decided voice in the crowd.
+
+"And," said another voice, "Mrs. Price didn't live in 'Bleeding Kansas'
+for nothing."
+
+"Wot's the programme you've settled on, Uncle Jim?" said the barkeeper
+lightly, to check what seemed to promise a dangerous discussion.
+
+"Well," said Starbuck, "we kalkilate to gather early Christmas night in
+Hooper's Hollow and rig ourselves up Injun fashion, and then start for
+Spindler's with pitch-pine torches, and have a 'torchlight dance' around
+the house; them who does the dancin' and yellin' outside takin' their
+turn at goin' in and hevin' refreshment. Jake Cooledge, of Boston, sez
+if anybody objects to it, we've only got to say we're 'Mummers of the
+Olden Times,' sabe? Then, later, we'll have 'Them Sabbath Evening Bells'
+performed on prospectin' pans by the band. Then, at the finish, Jake
+Cooledge is goin' to give one of his surkastic speeches,--kinder
+welcomin' Spindler's family to the Free Openin' o' Spindler's Almshouse
+and Reformatory." He paused, possibly for that approbation which,
+however, did not seem to come spontaneously. "It ain't much," he added
+apologetically, "for we're hampered by women; but we'll add to the
+programme ez we see how things pan out. Ye see, from what we can hear,
+all of Spindler's relations ain't on hand yet! We've got to wait, like
+in elckshun times, for 'returns from the back counties.' Hello! What's
+that?"
+
+It was the swish and splutter of hoofs on the road before the door. The
+Sacramento coach! In an instant every man was expectant, and Starbuck
+darted outside on the platform. Then there was the usual greeting and
+bustle, the hurried ingress of thirsty passengers into the saloon, and a
+pause. Uncle Jim returned, excitedly and pantingly. "Look yer, boys! Ef
+this ain't the richest thing out! They say there's two more relations o'
+Spindler's on the coach, come down as express freight, consigned,--d'ye
+hear?--consigned to Spindler!"
+
+"Stiffs, in coffins?" suggested an eager voice.
+
+"I didn't get to hear more. But here they are."
+
+There was the sudden irruption of a laughing, curious crowd into the
+bar-room, led by Yuba Bill, the driver. Then the crowd parted, and
+out of their midst stepped two children, a boy and a girl, the oldest
+apparently of not more than six years, holding each other's hands. They
+were coarsely yet cleanly dressed, and with a certain uniform precision
+that suggested formal charity. But more remarkable than all, around the
+neck of each was a little steel chain, from which depended the regular
+check and label of the powerful Express Company, Wells; Fargo & Co., and
+the words: "To Richard Spindler." "Fragile." "With great care." "Collect
+on delivery." Occasionally their little hands went up automatically and
+touched their labels, as if to show them. They surveyed the crowd, the
+floor, the gilded bar, and Yuba Bill without fear and without wonder.
+There was a pathetic suggestion that they were accustomed to this
+observation.
+
+"Now, Bobby," said Yuba Bill, leaning back against the bar, with an air
+half-paternal, half-managerial, "tell these gents how you came here."
+
+"By Wellth, Fargoth Expreth," lisped Bobby.
+
+"Whar from?"
+
+"Wed Hill, Owegon."
+
+"Red Hill, Oregon? Why, it's a thousand miles from here," said a
+bystander.
+
+"I reckon," said Yuba Bill coolly, "they kem by stage to Portland, by
+steamer to 'Frisco, steamer again to Stockton, and then by stage over
+the whole line. Allers by Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express, from agent to
+agent, and from messenger to messenger. Fact! They ain't bin tetched or
+handled by any one but the Kempany's agents; they ain't had a line or
+direction except them checks around their necks! And they've wanted for
+nothin' else. Why, I've carried heaps o' treasure before, gentlemen,
+and once a hundred thousand dollars in greenbacks, but I never carried
+anythin' that was watched and guarded as them kids! Why, the division
+inspector at Stockton wanted to go with 'em over the line; but Jim
+Bracy, the messenger, said he'd call it a reflection on himself and
+resign, ef they didn't give 'em to him with the other packages! Ye had a
+pretty good time, Bobby, didn't ye? Plenty to eat and drink, eh?"
+
+The two children laughed a little weak laugh, turned each other
+bashfully around, and then looked up shyly at Yuba Bill and said,
+"Yeth."
+
+"Do you know where you are goin'?" asked Starbuck, in a constrained
+voice.
+
+It was the little girl who answered quickly and eagerly:--
+
+"Yes, to Krissmass and Sandy Claus."
+
+"To what?" asked Starbuck.
+
+Here the boy interposed with a superior air:--
+
+"Thee meanth Couthin Dick. He'th got Krithmath."
+
+"Where's your mother?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"And your father?"
+
+"In orthpittal."
+
+There was a laugh somewhere on the outskirts of the crowd. Every one
+faced angrily in that direction, but the laugher had disappeared. Yuba
+Bill, however, sent his voice after him. "Yes, in hospital! Funny, ain't
+it?--amoosin' place! Try it. Step over here, and in five minutes, by the
+living Hoky, I'll qualify you for admission, and not charge you a cent!"
+He stopped, gave a sweeping glance of dissatisfaction around him, and
+then, leaning back against the bar, beckoned to some one near the door,
+and said in a disgusted tone, "You tell these galoots how it happened,
+Bracy. They make me sick!"
+
+Thus appealed to, Bracy, the express messenger, stepped forward in Yuba
+Bill's place.
+
+"It's nothing particular, gentlemen," he said, with a laugh, "only
+it seems that some man called Spindler, who lives about here, sent an
+invitation to the father of these children to bring his family to a
+Christmas party. It wasn't a bad sort of thing for Spindler to do,
+considering that they were his poor relations, though they didn't know
+him from Adam,--was it?" He paused; several of the bystanders cleared
+their throats, but said nothing. "At least," resumed Bracy, "that's what
+the boys up at Red Hill, Oregon, thought, when they heard of it. Well,
+as the father was in hospital with a broken leg, and the mother only a
+few weeks dead, the boys thought it mighty rough on these poor kids if
+they were done out of their fun because they had no one to bring them.
+The boys couldn't afford to go themselves, but they got a little money
+together, and then got the idea of sendin' 'em by express. Our agent at
+Red Hill tumbled to the idea at once; but he wouldn't take any money in
+advance, and said he would send 'em 'C. O. D.' like any other package.
+And he did, and here they are! That's all! And now, gentlemen, as I've
+got to deliver them personally to this Spindler, and get his receipt and
+take off their checks, I reckon we must toddle. Come, Bill, help take
+'em up!"
+
+"Hold on!" said a dozen voices. A dozen hands were thrust into a dozen
+pockets; I grieve to say some were regretfully withdrawn empty, for it
+was a hard season in Rough and Ready. But the expressman stepped before
+them, with warning, uplifted hand.
+
+"Not a cent, boys,--not a cent! Wells, Fargo's Express Company don't
+undertake to carry bullion with those kids, at least on the same
+contract!" He laughed, and then looking around him, said confidentially
+in a lower voice, which, however, was quite audible to the children,
+"There's as much as three bags of silver in quarter and half dollars in
+my treasure box in the coach that has been poured, yes, just showered
+upon them, ever since they started, and have been passed over from agent
+to agent and messenger to messenger,--enough to pay their passage from
+here to China! It's time to say quits now. But bet your life, they are
+not going to that Christmas party poor!"
+
+He caught up the boy, as Yuba Bill lifted the little girl to his
+shoulder, and both passed out. Then one by one the loungers in the
+bar-room silently and awkwardly followed, and when the barkeeper turned
+back from putting away his decanters and glasses, to his astonishment
+the room was empty.
+
+*****
+
+Spindler's house, or "Spindler's Splurge," as Rough and Ready chose to
+call it, stood above the settlement, on a deforested hillside, which,
+however, revenged itself by producing not enough vegetation to cover
+even the few stumps that were ineradicable. A large wooden structure
+in the pseudo-classic style affected by Westerners, with an incongruous
+cupola, it was oddly enough relieved by a still more incongruous veranda
+extending around its four sides, upheld by wooden Doric columns, which
+were already picturesquely covered with flowering vines and sun-loving
+roses. Mr. Spindler had trusted the furnishing of its interior to the
+same contractor who had upholstered the gilded bar-room of the Eureka
+Saloon, and who had apparently bestowed the same design and material,
+impartially, on each. There were gilded mirrors all over the house and
+chilly marble-topped tables, gilt plaster Cupids in the corners, and
+stuccoed lions "in the way" everywhere. The tactful hands of Mrs. Price
+had screened some of these with seasonable laurels, fir boughs, and
+berries, and had imparted a slight Christmas flavor to the house. But
+the greater part of her time had been employed in trying to subdue the
+eccentricities of Spindler's amazing relations; in tranquilizing Mrs.
+"Aunt" Martha Spindler,--the elderly cook before alluded to,--who was
+inclined to regard the gilded splendors of the house as indicative
+of dangerous immorality; in restraining "Cousin" Morley Hewlett
+from considering the dining-room buffet as a bar for "intermittent
+refreshment;" and in keeping the weak-minded nephew, Phinney Spindler,
+from shooting at bottles from the veranda, wearing his uncle's clothes,
+or running up an account in his uncle's name for various articles at
+the general stores. Yet the unlooked-for arrival of the two children had
+been the one great compensation and diversion for her. She wrote at once
+to her nieces a brief account of her miraculous deliverance. "I think
+these poor children dropped from the skies here to make our Christmas
+party possible, to say nothing of the sympathy they have created in
+Rough and Ready for Spindler. He is going to keep them as long as
+he can, and is writing to the father. Think of the poor little tots
+traveling a thousand miles to 'Krissmass,' as they call it!--though they
+were so well cared for by the messengers that their little bodies were
+positively stuffed like quails. So, you see, dear, we will be able to
+get along without airing your famous idea. I'm sorry, for I know you're
+just dying to see it all."
+
+Whatever Kate's "idea" might have been, there certainly seemed now no
+need of any extraneous aid to Mrs. Price's management. Christmas came at
+last, and the dinner passed off without serious disaster. But the ordeal
+of the reception of Rough and Ready was still to come. For Mrs. Price
+well knew that although "the boys" were more subdued, and, indeed,
+inclined to sympathize with their host's uncouth endeavor, there was
+still much in the aspect of Spindler's relations to excite their sense
+of the ludicrous.
+
+But here Fortune again favored the house of Spindler with a dramatic
+surprise, even greater than the advent of the children had been. In the
+change that had come over Rough and Ready, "the boys" had decided, out
+of deference to the women and children, to omit the first part of their
+programme, and had approached and entered the house as soberly and
+quietly as ordinary guests. But before they had shaken hands with the
+host and hostess, and seen the relations, the clatter of wheels was
+heard before the open door, and its lights flashed upon a carriage and
+pair,--an actual private carriage,--the like of which had not been seen
+since the governor of the State had come down to open the new ditch!
+Then there was a pause, the flash of the carriage lamps upon white silk,
+the light tread of a satin foot on the veranda and in the hall, and the
+entrance of a vision of loveliness! Middle-aged men and old dwellers
+of cities remembered their youth; younger men bethought themselves of
+Cinderella and the Prince! There was a thrill and a hush as this last
+guest--a beautiful girl, radiant with youth and adornment--put a dainty
+glass to her sparkling eye and advanced familiarly, with outstretched
+hand, to Dick Spindler. Mrs. Price gave a single gasp, and drew back
+speechless.
+
+"Uncle Dick," said a laughing contralto voice, which, indeed, somewhat
+recalled Mrs. Price's own, in its courageous frankness, "I am so
+delighted to come, even if a little late, and so sorry that Mr. M'Kenna
+could not come on account of business."
+
+Everybody listened eagerly, but none more eagerly and surprisingly than
+the host himself. M'Kenna! The rich cousin who had never answered the
+invitation! And Uncle Dick! This, then, was his divorced niece! Yet even
+in his astonishment he remembered that of course no one but himself and
+Mrs. Price knew it,--and that lady had glanced discreetly away.
+
+"Yes," continued the half-niece brightly. "I came from Sacramento with
+some friends to Shootersville, and from thence I drove here; and though
+I must return to-night, I could not forego the pleasure of coming, if
+it was only for an hour or two, to answer the invitation of the uncle I
+have not seen for years." She paused, and, raising her glasses, turned a
+politely questioning eye towards Mrs. Price. "One of our relations?" she
+said smilingly to Spindler.
+
+"No," said Spindler, with some embarrassment, "a--a friend!"
+
+The half-niece extended her hand. Mrs. Price took it.
+
+But the fair stranger,--what she did and said were the only things
+remembered in Rough and Ready on that festive occasion; no one thought
+of the other relations; no one recalled them nor their eccentricities;
+Spindler himself was forgotten. People only recollected how Spindler's
+lovely niece lavished her smiles and courtesies on every one, and
+brought to her feet particularly the misogynist Starbuck and the
+sarcastic Cooledge, oblivious of his previous speech; how she sat at
+the piano and sang like an angel, hushing the most hilarious and excited
+into sentimental and even maudlin silence; how, graceful as a nymph, she
+led with "Uncle Dick" a Virginia reel until the whole assembly joined,
+eager for a passing touch of her dainty hand in its changes; how, when
+two hours had passed,--all too swiftly for the guests,--they stood with
+bared heads and glistening eyes on the veranda to see the fairy coach
+whirl the fairy princess away! How--but this incident was never known to
+Rough and Ready.
+
+It happened in the sacred dressing-room, where Mrs. Price was cloaking
+with her own hands the departing half-niece of Mr. Spindler. Taking that
+opportunity to seize the lovely relative by the shoulders and shake her
+violently, she said: "Oh, yes, and it's all very well for you, Kate, you
+limb! For you're going away, and will never see Rough and Ready and poor
+Spindler again. But what am I to do, miss? How am I to face it out?
+For you know I've got to tell him at least that you're no half-niece of
+his!"
+
+"Have you?" said the young lady.
+
+"Have I?" repeated the widow impatiently. "Have I? Of course I have!
+What are you thinking of?"
+
+"I was thinking, aunty," said the girl audaciously, "that from what
+I've seen and heard to-night, if I'm not his half-niece now, it's only a
+question of time! So you'd better wait. Good-night, dear."
+
+And, really,--it turned out that she was right!
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT "JULES'"
+
+
+When the waters were up at "Jules'" there was little else up on that
+monotonous level. For the few inhabitants who calmly and methodically
+moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the flood
+had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them. A dozen
+half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the waters,
+without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight more like the
+ruins of centuries than of a few days. There was no current to sap their
+slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing stirred that silent lake
+but the occasional shot-like indentations of a passing raindrop, or,
+still more rarely, a raft, made of a single log, propelled by some
+citizen on a tour of inspection of his cabin roof-tree, where some of
+his goods were still stored. There was no sense of terror in this bland
+obliteration of the little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up
+cabin would have been more impressive than this stupid and even
+grotesquely placid effect of the rival destroying element. People took
+it naturally; the water went as it had come,--slowly, impassively,
+noiselessly; a few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins,
+and in a week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their
+doors as the winter mud had lain. The waters of Rattlesnake Creek
+dropped below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made
+a detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation to
+this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in those
+breaches in the banks made by the overflow. To wait for the "old
+Rattlesnake sluicing" was a vernal hope of the trusting miner.
+
+The history of "Jules'," however, was once destined to offer a singular
+interruption of this peaceful and methodical process. The winter of
+1859-60 was an exceptional one. But little rain had fallen in the
+valleys, although the snow lay deep in the high Sierras. Passes were
+choked, ravines filled, and glaciers found on their slopes. And when the
+tardy rains came with the withheld southwesterly "trades," the regular
+phenomenon recurred; Jules' Flat silently, noiselessly, and peacefully
+went under water; the inhabitants moved to the higher ground, perhaps
+a little more expeditiously from an impatience born of the delay. The
+stagecoach from Marysville made its usual detour and stopped before the
+temporary hotel, express offices, and general store of "Jules'," under
+canvas, bark, and the limp leaves of a spreading alder. It deposited a
+single passenger,--Miles Hemmingway, of San Francisco, but originally of
+Boston,--the young secretary of a mining company, dispatched to report
+upon the alleged auriferous value of "Jules'." Of this he had been by
+no means impressed as he looked down upon the submerged cabins from the
+box-seat of the coach and listened to the driver's lazy recital of
+the flood, and of the singularly patient acceptance of it by the
+inhabitants.
+
+It was the old story of the southwestern miner's indolence and
+incompetency,--utterly distasteful to his northern habits of thought
+and education. Here was their old fatuous endurance of Nature's wild
+caprices, without that struggle against them which brought others
+strength and success; here was the old philosophy which accepted the
+prairie fire and cyclone, and survived them without advancement,
+yet without repining. Perhaps in different places and surroundings a
+submission so stoic might have impressed him; in gentlemen who tucked
+their dirty trousers in their muddy boots and lived only for the gold
+they dug, it did not seem to him heroic. Nor was he mollified as
+he stood beside the rude refreshment bar--a few planks laid on
+trestles--and drank his coffee beneath the dripping canvas roof, with an
+odd recollection of his boyhood and an inclement Sunday-school picnic.
+Yet these men had been living in this shiftless fashion for three weeks!
+It exasperated him still more to think that he might have to wait there
+a few days longer for the water to subside sufficiently for him to make
+his examination and report. As he took a proffered seat on a candle-box,
+which tilted under him, and another survey of the feeble makeshifts
+around him, his irascibility found vent.
+
+"Why, in the name of God, didn't you, after you had been flooded out
+ONCE, build your cabins PERMANENTLY on higher ground?"
+
+Although the tone of his voice was more disturbing than his question, it
+pleased one of the loungers to affect to take it literally.
+
+"Well, ez you've put it that way,--'in the name of God!'"--returned the
+man lazily, "it mout hev struck us that ez HE was bossin' the job, so
+to speak, and handlin' things round here generally, we might leave it to
+Him. It wasn't OUR flood to monkey with."
+
+"And as He didn't coven-ant, so to speak, to look arter this higher
+ground 'speshally, and make an Ararat of it for us, ez far ez we
+could see, we didn't see any reason for SETTLIN' yer," put in a second
+speaker, with equal laziness.
+
+The secretary saw his mistake instantly, and had experience enough
+of Western humor not to prolong the disadvantage of his unfortunate
+adjuration. He colored slightly and said, with a smile, "You know what
+I mean; you could have protected yourselves better. A levee on the bank
+would have kept you clear of the highest watermark."
+
+"Hey you ever heard WHAT the highest watermark was?" said the first
+speaker, turning to another of the loungers without looking at the
+secretary.
+
+"Never heard it,--didn't know there was a limit before," responded the
+man.
+
+The first speaker turned back to the secretary. "Did you ever know what
+happened at 'Bulger's,' on the North Fork? They had one o' them levees."
+
+"No. What happened?" asked the secretary impatiently.
+
+"They was fixed suthin' like us," returned the first speaker. "THEY
+allowed they'd build a levee above THEIR highest watermark, and did. It
+worked like a charm at first; but the water hed to go somewhere, and it
+kinder collected at the first bend. Then it sorter raised itself on its
+elbows one day, and looked over the levee down upon whar some of the
+boys was washin' quite comf'ble. Then it paid no sorter attention to the
+limit o' that high watermark, but went six inches better! Not slow and
+quiet like ez it useter to, ez it does HERE, kinder fillin' up from
+below, but went over with a rush and a current, hevin' of course the
+whole height of the levee to fall on t'other side where the boys were
+sluicing." He paused, and amidst a profound silence added, "They say
+that 'Bulger's' was scattered promiscuous-like all along the fort for
+five miles. I only know that one of his mules and a section of sluicing
+was picked up at Red Flat, eight miles away!"
+
+Mr. Hemmingway felt that there WAS an answer to this, but, being wise,
+also felt that it would be unavailing. He smiled politely and said
+nothing, at which the first speaker turned to him:--
+
+"Thar ain't anything to see to-day, but to-morrow, ez things go, the
+water oughter be droppin'. Mebbe you'd like to wash up now and clean
+yourself," he added, with a glance at Hemmingway's small portmanteau.
+"Ez we thought you'd likely be crowded here, we've rigged up a corner
+for you at Stanton's shanty with the women."
+
+The young man's cheek flushed slightly at some possible irony in this,
+and he protested with considerable stress that he was quite ready "to
+rough it" where he was.
+
+"I reckon it's already fixed," returned the man decisively, "so you'd
+better come and I'll show you the way."
+
+"One moment," said Hemmingway, with a smile; "my credentials are
+addressed to the manager of the Boone Ditch Company at 'Jules'.' Perhaps
+I ought to see him first."
+
+"All right; he's Stanton."
+
+"And"--hesitated the secretary, "YOU, who appear to understand the
+locality so well,--I trust I may have the pleasure"--
+
+"Oh, I'm Jules."
+
+The secretary was a little startled and amused. So "Jules" was a person,
+and not a place!
+
+"Then you're a pioneer?" asked Hemmingway, a little less dictatorially,
+as they passed out under the dripping trees.
+
+"I struck this creek in the fall of '49, comin' over Livermore's
+Pass with Stanton," returned Jules, with great brevity of speech and
+deliberate tardiness of delivery. "Sent for my wife and two children the
+next year; wife died same winter, change bein' too sudden for her, and
+contractin' chills and fever at Sweetwater. When I kem here first thar
+wasn't six inches o' water in the creek; out there was a heap of it over
+there where you see them yallowish-green patches and strips o' brush
+and grass; all that war water then, and all that growth hez sprung up
+since."
+
+Hemmingway looked around him. The "higher ground" where they stood was
+in reality only a mound-like elevation above the dead level of the flat,
+and the few trees were merely recent young willows and alders. The area
+of actual depression was much greater than he had imagined, and its
+resemblance to the bed of some prehistoric inland sea struck him
+forcibly. A previous larger inundation than Jules' brief experience had
+ever known had been by no means improbable. His cheek reddened at his
+previous hasty indictment of the settlers' ignorance and shiftlessness,
+and the thought that he had probably committed his employers to his
+own rash confidence and superiority of judgment. However, there was no
+evidence that this diluvial record was not of the remote past. He smiled
+again with greater security as he thought of the geological changes that
+had since tempered these cataclysms, and the amelioration brought by
+settlement and cultivation. Nevertheless, he would make a thorough
+examination to-morrow.
+
+Stanton's cabin was the furthest of these temporary habitations, and
+was partly on the declivity which began to slope to the river's bank. It
+was, like the others, a rough shanty of unplaned boards, but, unlike the
+others, it had a base of logs laid lengthwise on the ground and parallel
+with each other, on which the flooring and structure were securely
+fastened. This gave it the appearance of a box slid on runners, or a
+Noah's Ark whose bulk had been reduced. Jules explained that the logs,
+laid in that manner, kept the shanty warmer and free from damp. In reply
+to Hemmingway's suggestion that it was a great waste of material, Jules
+simply replied that the logs were the "flotsam and jetsam" of the creek
+from the overflowed mills below.
+
+Hemmingway again smiled. It was again the old story of Western waste
+and prodigality. Accompanied by Jules, however, he climbed up the huge,
+slippery logs which made a platform before the door, and entered.
+
+The single room was unequally divided; the larger part containing three
+beds, by day rolled in a single pile in one corner to make room for a
+table and chairs. A few dresses hanging from nails on the wall showed
+that it was the women's room. The smaller compartment was again
+subdivided by a hanging blanket, behind which was a rude bunk or berth
+against the wall, a table made of a packing-box, containing a tin basin
+and a can of water. This was his apartment.
+
+"The women-folks are down the creek, bakin', to-day," said Jules
+explanatorily; "but I reckon that one of 'em will be up here in a jiffy
+to make supper, so you just take it easy till they come. I've got to
+meander over to the claim afore I turn in, but you just lie by to-night
+and take a rest."
+
+He turned away, leaving Hemmingway standing in the doorway still
+distraught and hesitating. Nor did the young man recognize the delicacy
+of Jules' leave-taking until he had unstrapped his portmanteau and found
+himself alone, free to make his toilet, unembarrassed by company. But
+even then he would have preferred the rough companionship of the miners
+in the common dormitory of the general store to this intrusion upon
+the half-civilization of the women, their pitiable little comforts and
+secret makeshifts. His disgust of his own indecision which brought him
+there naturally recoiled in the direction of his host and hostesses, and
+after a hurried ablution, a change of linen, and an attempt to remove
+the stains of travel from his clothes, he strode out impatiently into
+the open air again.
+
+It was singularly mild even for the season. The southwest trades blew
+softly, and whispered to him of San Francisco and the distant Pacific,
+with its long, steady swell. He turned again to the overflowed Flat
+beneath him, and the sluggish yellow water that scarcely broke a ripple
+against the walls of the half-submerged cabins. And this was the water
+for whose going down they were waiting with an immobility as tranquil
+as the waters themselves! What marvelous incompetency,--or what infinite
+patience! He knew, of course, their expected compensation in this
+"ground sluicing" at Nature's own hand; the long rifts in the banks of
+the creek which so often showed "the color" in the sparkling scales of
+river gold disclosed by the action of the water; the heaps of reddish
+mud left after its subsidence around the walls of the cabins,--a deposit
+that often contained a treasure a dozen times more valuable than the
+cabin itself! And then he heard behind him a laugh, a short and panting
+breath, and turning, beheld a young woman running towards him.
+
+In his first astounded sight of her, in her limp nankeen sunbonnet,
+thrown back from her head by the impetus of her flight, he saw only too
+much hair, two much white teeth, too much eye-flash, and, above
+all,--as it appeared to him,--too much confidence in the power of these
+qualities. Even as she ran, it seemed to him that she was pulling down
+ostentatiously the rolled-up sleeves of her pink calico gown over her
+shapely arms. I am inclined to think that the young gentleman's temper
+was at fault, and his conclusion hasty; a calmer observer would have
+detected nothing of this in her frankly cheerful voice. Nevertheless,
+her evident pleasure in the meeting seemed to him only obtrusive
+coquetry.
+
+"Lordy! I reckoned to git here afore you'd get through fixin' up, and in
+time to do a little prinkin' myself, and here you're out already." She
+laughed, glancing at his clean shirt and damp hair. "But all the same,
+we kin have a talk, and you kin tell me all the news afore the other
+wimmen get up here. It's a coon's age since I was at Sacramento and
+saw anybody or anything." She stopped and, instinctively detecting some
+vague reticence in the man before her, said, still laughing, "You're Mr.
+Hemmingway, ain't you?"
+
+Hemmingway took off his hat quickly, with a slight start at his
+forgetfulness. "I beg your pardon; yes, certainly."
+
+"Aunty Stanton thought it was 'Hummingbird,'" said the girl, with a
+laugh, "but I reckoned not. I'm Jinney Jules, you know; folks call me
+'J. J.' It wouldn't do for a Hummingbird and a Jay Jay to be in the same
+camp, would it? It would be just TOO funny!"
+
+Hemmingway did not find the humor of this so singularly exhaustive, but
+he was already beginning to be ashamed of his attitude towards her. "I'm
+very sorry to be giving you all this trouble by my intrusion, for I was
+quite willing to stay at the store yonder. Indeed," he added, with
+a burst of frankness quite as sincere as her own, "if you think your
+father will not be offended, I would gladly go there now."
+
+If he still believed in her coquetry and vanity, he would have been
+undeceived and crushed by the equal and sincere frankness with which she
+met this ungallant speech.
+
+"No! I reckon he wouldn't care, if you'd be as comf'ble and fit for
+to-morrow. But ye WOULDN'T," she said reflectively. "The boys thar
+sit up late over euchre, and swear a heap, and Simpson, who'd sleep
+alongside of ye, snores pow'ful, I've heard. Aunty Stanton kin do her
+level at that, too, and they say"--with a laugh--"that I kin, too, but
+you're away off in that corner, and it won't reach you. So, takin' it
+all, by the large, you'd better stay whar ye are. We wimmen, that is,
+the most of us, will be off and away down to Rattlesnake Bar shoppin'
+afore sun up, so ye'll sleep ez long ez ye want to, and find yer
+breakfast ready when ye wake. So I'll jest set to and get ye some
+supper, and ye kin tell me all the doin's in Sacramento and 'Frisco
+while I'm workin'."
+
+In spite of her unconscious rebuff to his own vanity, Hemmingway felt a
+sense of relief and less constraint in his relations to this decidedly
+provincial hostess.
+
+"Can I help you in any way?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Well, ye MIGHT bring me an armful o' wood from the pile under the
+alders, ef ye ain't afraid o' dirtyin' your coat," she said tentatively.
+
+Mr. Hemmingway was not afraid; he declared himself delighted. He brought
+a generous armful of small cut willow boughs, and deposited them before
+a small stove, which seemed a temporary substitute for the usual large
+adobe chimney that generally occupied the entire gable of a miner's
+cabin. An elbow and short length of stovepipe carried the smoke through
+the cabin side. But he also noticed that his fair companion had used
+the interval to put on a pair of white cuffs and a collar. However, she
+brushed the green moss from his sleeve with some toweling, and although
+this operation brought her so near to him that her breath--as soft and
+warm as the southwest trades--stirred his hair, it was evident that this
+contiguity was only frontier familiarity, as far removed from conscious
+coquetry as it was, perhaps, from educated delicacy.
+
+"The boys gin'rally kem to take up enough wood for me to begin with,"
+she said, "but I reckon they didn't know I was comin' up so soon."
+
+Hemmingway's distrust returned a little at this obvious suggestion that
+he was only a substitute for their general gallantry, but he smiled and
+said somewhat bluntly, "I don't suppose you lack for admirers here."
+
+The girl, however, took him literally. "Lordy, no! Me and Mamie Robinson
+are the only girls for fifteen miles along the creek. ADMIRIN'! I call
+it jest PESTERIN' sometimes! I reckon I'll hev to keep a dog!"
+
+Hemmingway shivered. Yes, she was not only conscious, but spoilt
+already. He pictured to himself the uncouth gallantries of the
+settlement, the provincial badinage, the feeble rivalries of the young
+men whom he had seen at the general store. Undoubtedly this was what she
+was expecting in HIM!
+
+"Well," she said, turning from the fire she had kindled, "while I'm
+settin' the table, tell me what's a-doin' in Sacramento! I reckon you've
+got heaps of lady friends thar,--I'm told there's lots of fashions just
+from the States."
+
+"I'm afraid I don't know enough of them to interest you," he said dryly.
+
+"Go on and talk," she replied. "Why, when Tom Flynn kem back from
+Sacramento, and he warn't thar more nor a week, he jest slung yarns
+about his doin's thar to last the hull rainy season."
+
+Half amused and half annoyed, Hemmingway seated himself on the little
+platform beside the open door, and began a conscientious description of
+the progress of Sacramento, its new buildings, hotels, and theatres,
+as it had struck him on his last visit. For a while he was somewhat
+entertained by the girl's vivacity and eager questioning, but presently
+it began to pall. He continued, however, with a grim sense of duty, and
+partly as a reason for watching her in her household duties. Certainly
+she was graceful! Her tall, lithe, but beautifully moulded figure,
+even in its characteristic southwestern indolence, fell into poses as
+picturesque as they were unconscious. She lifted the big molasses-can
+from its shelf on the rafters with the attitude of a Greek water-bearer.
+She upheaved the heavy flour-sack to the same secure shelf with the
+upraised palms of an Egyptian caryatid. Suddenly she interrupted
+Hemmingway's perfunctory talk with a hearty laugh. He started, looked
+up from his seat on the platform, and saw that she was standing over him
+and regarding him with a kind of mischievous pity.
+
+"Look here," she said, "I reckon that'll do! You kin pull up short! I
+kin see what's the matter with you; you're jest plumb tired, tuckered
+out, and want to turn in! So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper
+ready and never mind me." In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising
+color. The girl only shook her head. "Don't tell me! You ain't keering
+to talk, and you're only playin' Sacramento statistics on me," she
+retorted, with unfeigned cheerfulness. "Anyhow, here's the wimmen
+comin', and supper is ready."
+
+There was a sound of weary, resigned ejaculations and pantings, and
+three gaunt women in lustreless alpaca gowns appeared before the cabin.
+They seemed prematurely aged and worn with labor, anxiety, and ill
+nourishment. Doubtless somewhere in these ruins a flower like Jay Jules
+had once flourished; doubtless somewhere in that graceful nymph herself
+the germ of this dreary maturity was hidden. Hemmingway welcomed them
+with a seriousness equal to their own. The supper was partaken with the
+kind of joyless formality which in the southwest is supposed to indicate
+deep respect, even the cheerful Jay falling under the influence, and it
+was with a feeling of relief that at last the young man retired to his
+fenced-off corner for solitude and repose. He gathered, however,
+that before "sun up" the next morning the elder women were going to
+Rattlesnake Bar for the weekly shopping, leaving Jay as before to
+prepare his breakfast and then join them later. It was already a change
+in his sentiments to find himself looking forward to that tete-a-tete
+with the young girl, as a chance of redeeming his character in her
+eyes. He was beginning to feel he had been stupid, unready, and withal
+prejudiced. He undressed himself in his seclusion, broken only by the
+monotonous voices in the adjoining apartment. From time to time he
+heard fragments and scraps of their conversation, always in reference to
+affairs of the household and settlement, but never of himself,--not even
+the suggestion of a prudent lowering of their voices,--and fell asleep.
+He woke up twice in the night with a sensation of cold so marked and
+distinct from his experience of the early evening, that he was fain to
+pile his clothes over his blankets to keep warm. He fell asleep again,
+coming once more to consciousness with a sense of a slight jar, but
+relapsing again into slumber for he knew not how long. Then he was
+fully awakened by a voice calling him, and, opening his eyes, beheld the
+blanket partition put aside, and the face of Jay thrust forward. To
+his surprise it wore a look of excited astonishment dominated by
+irrepressible laughter.
+
+"Get up quick as you kin," she said gaspingly; "this is about the
+killingest thing that ever happened!"
+
+She disappeared, but he could still hear her laughing, and to his utter
+astonishment with her disappearance the floor seemed to change its
+level. A giddy feeling seized him; he put his feet to the floor; it
+was unmistakably wet and oozing. He hurriedly clothed himself, still
+accompanied by the strange feeling of oscillation and giddiness, and
+passed though the opening into the next room. Again his step produced
+the same effect upon the floor, and he actually stumbled against her
+shaking figure, as she wiped the tears of uncontrollable mirth from her
+eyes with her apron. The contact seemed to upset her remaining gravity.
+She dropped into a chair, and, pointing to the open door, gasped, "Look
+thar! Lordy! How's that for high?" threw her apron over her head, and
+gave way to an uproarious fit of laughter.
+
+Hemmingway turned to the open door. A lake was before him on the level
+of the cabin. He stepped forward on the platform; the water was right
+and left, all around him. The platform dipped slightly to his step. The
+cabin was afloat,--afloat upon its base of logs like a raft, the whole
+structure upheld by the floor on which the logs were securely fastened.
+The high ground had disappeared--the river--its banks the green area
+beyond. They, and THEY alone, were afloat upon an inland sea.
+
+He turned an astounded and serious face upon her mirth. "When did it
+happen?" he demanded. She checked her laugh, more from a sense of polite
+deference to his mood than any fear, and said quietly, "That gets me.
+Everything was all right two hours ago when the wimmen left. It was
+too early to get your breakfast and rouse ye out, and I felt asleep, I
+reckon, until I felt a kind o' slump and a jar." Hemmingway remembered
+his own half-conscious sensation. "Then I got up and saw we was adrift.
+I didn't waken ye, for I thought it was only a sort of wave that would
+pass. It wasn't until I saw we were movin' and the hull rising ground
+gettin' away, that I thought o' callin' ye."
+
+He thought of the vanished general store, of her father, the workers on
+the bank, the helpless women on their way to the Bar, and turned almost
+savagely on her.
+
+"But the others,--where are they?" he said indignantly. "Do you call
+that a laughing matter?"
+
+She stopped at the sound of his voice as at a blow. Her face hardened
+into immobility, yet when she replied it was with the deliberate
+indolence of her father. "The wimmen are up on the hills by this time.
+The boys hev bin drowned out many times afore this and got clear off,
+on sluice boxes and timber, without squealing. Tom Flynn went down
+ten miles to Sayer's once on two bar'ls, and I never heard that HE was
+cryin' when they picked him up."
+
+A flush came to Hemmingway's cheek, but with it a gleam of intelligence.
+Of course the inundation was known to them FIRST, and there was the
+wreckage to support them. They had clearly saved themselves. If they had
+abandoned the cabin, it was because they knew its security, perhaps had
+even seen it safely adrift.
+
+"Has this ever happened to the cabin before?" he asked, as he thought of
+its peculiar base.
+
+"No."
+
+He looked at the water again. There was a decided current. The overflow
+was evidently no part of the original inundation. He put his hand in
+the water. It was icy cold. Yes, he understood it now. It was the sudden
+melting of snow in the Sierras which had brought this volume down the
+canyon. But was there more still to come?
+
+"Have you anything like a long pole or stick in the cabin?"
+
+"Nary," said the girl, opening her big eyes and shaking her head with
+a simulation of despair, which was, however, flatly contradicted by her
+laughing mouth.
+
+"Nor any cord or twine?" he continued.
+
+She handed him a ball of coarse twine.
+
+"May I take a couple of these hooks?" he asked, pointing to some rough
+iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.
+
+She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind,
+and affixed them to the twine.
+
+"Fishin'?" she asked demurely.
+
+"Exactly," he replied gravely.
+
+He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet,
+straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one
+or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught
+in the hooks. He examined them attentively.
+
+"We're not in the creek," he said, "nor in the old overflow. There's no
+mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don't grow near water."
+
+"Now, that's mighty cute of you," she said admiringly, as she knelt
+beside him on the platform. "Let's see what you've caught. Look yer!"
+she added, suddenly lifting a limp stalk, "that's 'old man,' and thar
+ain't a scrap of it grows nearer than Springer's Rise,--four miles from
+home."
+
+"Are you sure?" he asked quickly.
+
+"Sure as pop! I used to go huntin' it for smellidge."
+
+"For what?" he said, with a bewildered smile.
+
+"For this,"--she thrust the leaves to his nose and then to her own
+pink nostrils; "for--for"--she hesitated, and then with a mischievous
+simulation of correctness added, "for the perfume."
+
+He looked at her admiringly. For all her five feet ten inches, what
+a mere child she was, after all! What a fool he was to have taken a
+resentful attitude towards her! How charming and graceful she looked,
+kneeling there beside him!
+
+"Tell me," he said suddenly, in a gentler voice, "what were you laughing
+at just now?"
+
+Her brown eyes wavered for a moment, and then brimmed with merriment.
+She threw herself sideways, in a leaning posture, supporting herself on
+one arm, while with her other hand she slowly drew out her apron string,
+as she said, in a demure voice:--
+
+"Well, I reckoned it was jest too killin' to think of you, who didn't
+want to talk to me, and would hev given your hull pile to hev skipped
+out o' this, jest stuck here alongside o' me, whether you would or no,
+for Lord knows how long!"
+
+"But that was last night," he said, in a tone of raillery. "I was tired,
+and you said so yourself, you know. But I'm ready to talk now. What
+shall I tell you?"
+
+"Anything," said the girl, with a laugh.
+
+"What I am thinking of?" he said, with frankly admiring eyes.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Everything?"
+
+"Yes, everything." She stopped, and leaning forward, suddenly caught
+the brim of his soft felt hat, and drawing it down smartly over his
+audacious eyes, said, "Everything BUT THAT."
+
+It was with some difficulty and some greater embarrassment that he
+succeeded in getting his eyes free again. When he did so, she had risen
+and entered the cabin. Disconcerted as he was, he was relieved to see
+that her expression of amusement was unchanged. Was her act a piece
+of rustic coquetry, or had she resented his advances? Nor did her next
+words settle the question.
+
+"Ye kin do yer nice talk and philanderin' after we've settled whar we
+are, what we're goin', and what's goin' to happen. Jest now it 'pears
+to me that ez these yere logs are the only thing betwixt us and 'kingdom
+come,' ye'd better be hustlin' round with a few spikes to clinch 'em to
+the floor."
+
+She handed him a hammer and a few spikes. He obediently set to work,
+with little confidence, however, in the security of the fastening. There
+was neither rope nor chain for lashing the logs together; a stronger
+current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would
+loosen them and wreck the cabin. But he said nothing. It was the girl
+who broke the silence.
+
+"What's your front name?"
+
+"Miles."
+
+"MILES,--that's a funny name. I reckon that's why you war so FAR OFF and
+DISTANT at first."
+
+Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so. "But," he added,
+"when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me."
+
+"But you was moving faster than the shanty was. I reckon you don't take
+that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento! However, you kin talk
+now."
+
+"But you forget I don't know 'where we are,' nor 'what's going to
+happen.'"
+
+"But I do," she said quietly. "In a couple of hours we'll be picked up,
+so you'll be free again."
+
+Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again
+and look out. There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed
+motionless. Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was
+wanting. They were apparently in the same position as before, but his
+sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling. He came back
+and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous
+praise of his knowledge. To his surprise she only laughed and said
+lazily, "We'll be all right, and you'll be free, in about two hours."
+
+"I see no sign of it," he said, looking through the door again.
+
+"That's because you're looking in the water and the sky and the mud for
+it," she said, with a laugh. "I reckon you've been trained to watch them
+things a heap better than to study the folks about here."
+
+"I daresay you're right," said Hemmingway cheerfully, "but I don't
+clearly see what the folks about here have to do with our situation just
+now."
+
+"You'll see," she said, with a smile of mischievous mystery. "All the
+same," she added, with a sudden and dangerous softness in her eyes, "I
+ain't sayin' that YOU ain't kinder right neither."
+
+An hour ago he would have laughed at the thought that a mere look and
+sentence like this from the girl could have made his heart beat. "Then I
+may go on and talk?"
+
+She smiled, but her eyes said, "Yes," plainly.
+
+He turned to take a chair near her. Suddenly the cabin trembled, there
+was a sound of scraping, a bump, and then the whole structure tilted to
+one side and they were both thrown violently towards the corner, with a
+swift inrush of water. Hemmingway quickly caught the girl by the waist;
+she clung to him instinctively, yet still laughing, as with a desperate
+effort he succeeded in dragging her to the upper side of the slanting
+cabin, and momentarily restoring its equilibrium. They remained for an
+instant breathless. But in that instant he had drawn her face to his and
+kissed her.
+
+She disengaged herself gently with neither excitement nor emotion, and
+pointing to the open door said, "Look there!"
+
+Two of the logs which formed the foundation of their floor were quietly
+floating in the water before the cabin! The submerged obstacle or snag
+which had torn them from their fastening was still holding the cabin
+fast. Hemmingway saw the danger. He ran along the narrow ledge to the
+point of contact and unhesitatingly leaped into the icy cold water. It
+reached his armpits before his feet struck the obstacle,--evidently a
+stump with a projecting branch. Bracing himself against it, he shoved
+off the cabin. But when he struck out to follow it, he found that the
+log nearest him was loose and his grasp might tear it away. At the
+same moment, however, a pink calico arm fluttered above his head, and a
+strong grasp seized his coat collar. The cabin half revolved as the girl
+dragged him into the open door.
+
+"You bantam!" she said, with a laugh, "why didn't you let ME do that?
+I'm taller than you! But," she added, looking at his dripping clothes
+and dragging out a blanket from the corner, "I couldn't dry myself
+as quick as you kin!" To her surprise, however, Hemmingway tossed the
+blanket aside, and pointing to the floor, which was already filmed with
+water, ran to the still warm stove, detached it from its pipe, and threw
+it overboard. The sack of flour, bacon, molasses, and sugar, and all the
+heavier articles followed it into the stream. Relieved of their weight
+the cabin base rose an inch or two higher. Then he sat down and said,
+"There! that may keep us afloat for that 'couple of hours' you speak of.
+So I suppose I may talk now!"
+
+"Ye haven't no time," she said, in a graver voice. "It won't be as long
+as a couple of hours now. Look over thar!"
+
+He looked where she pointed across the gray expanse of water. At first
+he could see nothing. Presently he saw a mere dot on its face which at
+times changed to a single black line.
+
+"It's a log, like these," he said.
+
+"It's no log. It's an Injun dug-out*--comin' for me."
+
+     * A canoe made from a hollowed log.
+
+"Your father?" he said joyfully.
+
+She smiled pityingly. "It's Tom Flynn. Father's got suthin' else to look
+arter. Tom Flynn hasn't."
+
+"And who's Tom Flynn?" he asked, with an odd sensation.
+
+"The man I'm engaged to," she said gravely, with a slight color.
+
+The rose that blossomed on her cheek faded in his. There was a moment of
+silence. Then he said frankly, "I owe you some apology. Forgive my folly
+and impertinence a moment ago. How could I have known this?"
+
+"You took no more than you deserved, or that Tom would have objected
+to," she said, with a little laugh. "You've been mighty kind and handy."
+
+She held out her hand; their fingers closed together in a frank
+pressure. Then his mind went back to his work, which he had
+forgotten,--to his first impressions of the camp and of her. They both
+stood silent, watching the canoe, now quite visible, and the man that
+was paddling it, with an intensity that both felt was insincere.
+
+"I'm afraid," he said, with a forced laugh, "that I was a little too
+hasty in disposing of your goods and possessions. We could have kept
+afloat a little longer."
+
+"It's all the same," she said, with a slight laugh; "it's jest as well
+we didn't look too comf'ble--to HIM."
+
+He did not reply; he did not dare to look at her. Yes! It was the same
+coquette he had seen last night. His first impressions were correct.
+
+The canoe came on rapidly now, propelled by a powerful arm. In a few
+moments it was alongside, and its owner leaped on the platform. It was
+the gentleman with his trousers tucked in his boots, the second voice
+in the gloomy discussion in the general store last evening. He nodded
+simply to the girl, and shook Hemmingway's hand warmly.
+
+Then he made a hurried apology for his delay: it was so difficult to
+find "the lay" of the drifted cabin. He had struck out first for the
+most dangerous spot,--the "old clearing," on the right bank, with its
+stumps and new growths,--and it seemed he was right. And all the rest
+were safe, and "nobody was hurt."
+
+"All the same, Tom," she said, when they were seated and paddling off
+again, "you don't know HOW NEAR YOU CAME TO LOSING ME." Then she
+raised her beautiful eyes and looked significantly, not at HIM, but at
+Hemmingway.
+
+When the water was down at "Jules'" the next day, they found certain
+curious changes and some gold, and the secretary was able to make a
+favorable report. But he made none whatever of his impressions "when
+the water was up at 'Jules','" though he often wondered if they were
+strictly trustworthy.
+
+
+
+
+THE BOOM IN THE "CALAVERAS CLARION"
+
+
+The editorial sanctum of the "Calaveras Clarion" opened upon the
+"composing-room" of that paper on the one side, and gave apparently upon
+the rest of Calaveras County upon the other. For, situated on the very
+outskirts of the settlement and the summit of a very steep hill, the
+pines sloped away from the editorial windows to the long valley of the
+South Fork and--infinity. The little wooden building had invaded Nature
+without subduing it. It was filled night and day with the murmur of
+pines and their fragrance. Squirrels scampered over its roof when it was
+not preoccupied by woodpeckers, and a printer's devil had once seen a
+nest-building blue jay enter the composing window, flutter before one
+of the slanting type-cases with an air of deliberate selection, and then
+fly off with a vowel in its bill.
+
+Amidst these sylvan surroundings the temporary editor of the "Clarion"
+sat at his sanctum, reading the proofs of an editorial. As he was
+occupying that position during a six weeks' absence of the bona fide
+editor and proprietor, he was consequently reading the proof with some
+anxiety and responsibility. It had been suggested to him by certain
+citizens that the "Clarion" needed a firmer and more aggressive policy
+towards the Bill before the Legislature for the wagon road to the South
+Fork. Several Assembly men had been "got at" by the rival settlement of
+Liberty Hill, and a scathing exposure and denunciation of such methods
+was necessary. The interests of their own township were also to be
+"whooped up." All this had been vigorously explained to him, and he had
+grasped the spirit, if not always the facts, of his informants. It is
+to be feared, therefore, that he was perusing his article more with
+reference to its vigor than his own convictions. And yet he was not so
+greatly absorbed as to be unmindful of the murmur of the pines
+without, his half-savage environment, and the lazy talk of his sole
+companions,--the foreman and printer in the adjoining room.
+
+"Bet your life! I've always said that a man INSIDE a newspaper office
+could hold his own agin any outsider that wanted to play rough or tried
+to raid the office! Thar's the press, and thar's the printin' ink and
+roller! Folks talk a heap o' the power o' the Press!--I tell ye, ye
+don't half know it. Why, when old Kernel Fish was editin' the 'Sierra
+Banner,' one o' them bullies that he'd lampooned in the 'Banner' fought
+his way past the Kernel in the office, into the composin'-room, to
+wreck everythin' and 'pye' all the types. Spoffrel--ye don't remember
+Spoffrel?--little red-haired man?--was foreman. Spoffrel fended him off
+with the roller and got one good dab inter his eyes that blinded him,
+and then Spoffrel sorter skirmished him over to the press,--a plain
+lever just like ours,--whar the locked-up form of the inside was still
+a-lyin'! Then, quick as lightnin', Spoffrel tilts him over agin it, and
+HE throws out his hand and ketches hold o' the form to steady himself,
+when Spoffrel just runs the form and the hand under the press and down
+with the lever! And that held the feller fast as grim death! And when
+at last he begs off, and Spoff lets him loose, the hull o' that 'ere
+lampooning article he objected to was printed right onto the skin o' his
+hand! Fact, and it wouldn't come off, either."
+
+"Gosh, but I'd like to hev seen it," said the printer. "There ain't any
+chance, I reckon, o' such a sight here. The boss don't take no risks
+lampoonin', and he" (the editor knew he was being indicated by some
+unseen gesture of the unseen workman) "ain't that style."
+
+"Ye never kin tell," said the foreman didactically, "what might happen!
+I've known editors to get into a fight jest for a little innercent
+bedevilin' o' the opposite party. Sometimes for a misprint. Old man
+Pritchard of the 'Argus' oncet had a hole blown through his arm because
+his proofreader had called Colonel Starbottle's speech an 'ignominious'
+defense, when the old man hed written 'ingenuous' defense."
+
+The editor paused in his proof-reading. He had just come upon the
+sentence: "We cannot congratulate Liberty Hill--in its superior
+elevation--upon the ignominious silence of the representative of all
+Calaveras when this infamous Bill was introduced." He referred to his
+copy. Yes! He had certainly written "ignominious,"--that was what his
+informants had suggested. But was he sure they were right? He had a
+vague recollection, also, that the representative alluded to--Senator
+Bradley--had fought two duels, and was a "good" though somewhat
+impulsive shot! He might alter the word to "ingenuous" or "ingenious,"
+either would be finely sarcastic, but then--there was his foreman, who
+would detect it! He would wait until he had finished the entire article.
+In that occupation he became oblivious of the next room, of a silence,
+a whispered conversation, which ended with a rapping at the door and the
+appearance of the foreman in the doorway.
+
+"There's a man in the office who wants to see the editor," he said.
+
+"Show him in," replied the editor briefly. He was, however, conscious
+that there was a singular significance in his foreman's manner, and an
+eager apparition of the other printer over the foreman's shoulder.
+
+"He's carryin' a shot-gun, and is a man twice as big as you be," said
+the foreman gravely.
+
+The editor quickly recalled his own brief and as yet blameless record
+in the "Clarion." "Perhaps," he said tentatively, with a gentle smile,
+"he's looking for Captain Brush" (the absent editor).
+
+"I told him all that," said the foreman grimly, "and he said he wanted
+to see the man in charge."
+
+In proportion as the editor's heart sank his outward crest arose. "Show
+him in," he said loftily.
+
+"We KIN keep him out," suggested the foreman, lingering a moment; "me
+and him," indicating the expectant printer behind him, "is enough for
+that."
+
+"Show him up," repeated the editor firmly.
+
+The foreman withdrew; the editor seated himself and again took up
+his proof. The doubtful word "ignominious" seemed to stand out of the
+paragraph before him; it certainly WAS a strong expression! He was about
+to run his pencil through it when he heard the heavy step of his visitor
+approaching. A sudden instinct of belligerency took possession of him,
+and he wrathfully threw the pencil down.
+
+The burly form of the stranger blocked the doorway. He was dressed like
+a miner, but his build and general physiognomy were quite distinct
+from the local variety. His upper lip and chin were clean-shaven, still
+showing the blue-black roots of the beard which covered the rest of his
+face and depended in a thick fleece under his throat. He carried a small
+bundle tied up in a silk handkerchief in one hand, and a "shot-gun" in
+the other, perilously at half-cock. Entering the sanctum, he put down
+his bundle and quietly closed the door behind him. He then drew an empty
+chair towards him and dropped heavily into it with his gun on his
+knees. The editor's heart dropped almost as heavily, although he quite
+composedly held out his hand.
+
+"Shall I relieve you of your gun?"
+
+"Thank ye, lad--noa. It's moor coomfortable wi' me, and it's main
+dangersome to handle on the half-cock. That's why I didn't leave 'im on
+the horse outside!"
+
+At the sound of his voice and occasional accent a flash of intelligence
+relieved the editor's mind. He remembered that twenty miles away, in
+the illimitable vista from his windows, lay a settlement of English
+north-country miners, who, while faithfully adopting the methods,
+customs, and even slang of the Californians, retained many of their
+native peculiarities. The gun he carried on his knee, however, was
+evidently part of the Californian imitation.
+
+"Can I do anything for you?" said the editor blandly.
+
+"Ay! I've coom here to bill ma woife."
+
+"I--don't think I understand," hesitated the editor, with a smile.
+
+"I've coom here to get ye to put into your paaper a warnin', a notiss,
+that onless she returns to my house in four weeks, I'll have nowt to do
+wi' her again."
+
+"Oh!" said the editor, now perfectly reassured, "you want an
+advertisement? That's the business of the foreman; I'll call him." He
+was rising from his seat when the stranger laid a heavy hand on his
+shoulder and gently forced him down again.
+
+"Noa, lad! I don't want noa foreman nor understrappers to take this job.
+I want to talk it over wi' you. Sabe? My woife she bin up and awaa these
+six months. We had a bit of difference, that ain't here nor there, but
+she skedaddled outer my house. I want to give her fair warning, and let
+her know I ain't payin' any debts o' hers arter this notiss, and I ain't
+takin' her back arter four weeks from date."
+
+"I see," said the editor glibly. "What's your wife's name?"
+
+"Eliza Jane Dimmidge."
+
+"Good," continued the editor, scribbling on the paper before him;
+"something like this will do: 'Whereas my wife, Eliza Jane Dimmidge,
+having left my bed and board without just cause or provocation, this
+is to give notice that I shall not be responsible for any debts of her
+contracting on or after this date.'"
+
+"Ye must be a lawyer," said Mr. Dimmidge admiringly.
+
+It was an old enough form of advertisement, and the remark showed
+incontestably that Mr. Dimmidge was not a native; but the editor smiled
+patronizingly and went on: "'And I further give notice that if she does
+not return within the period of four weeks from this date, I shall take
+such proceedings for relief as the law affords.'"
+
+"Coom, lad, I didn't say THAT."
+
+"But you said you wouldn't take her back."
+
+"Ay."
+
+"And you can't prevent her without legal proceedings. She's your wife.
+But you needn't take proceedings, you know. It's only a warning."
+
+Mr. Dimmidge nodded approvingly. "That's so."
+
+"You'll want it published for four weeks, until date?" asked the editor.
+
+"Mebbe longer, lad."
+
+The editor wrote "till forbid" in the margin of the paper and smiled.
+
+"How big will it be?" said Mr. Dimmidge.
+
+The editor took up a copy of the "Clarion" and indicated about an inch
+of space. Mr. Dimmidge's face fell.
+
+"I want it bigger,--in large letters, like a play-card," he said.
+"That's no good for a warning."
+
+"You can have half a column or a whole column if you like," said the
+editor airily.
+
+"I'll take a whole one," said Mr. Dimmidge simply.
+
+The editor laughed. "Why! it would cost you a hundred dollars."
+
+"I'll take it," repeated Mr. Dimmidge.
+
+"But," said the editor gravely, "the same notice in a small space will
+serve your purpose and be quite legal."
+
+"Never you mind that, lad! It's the looks of the thing I'm arter, and
+not the expense. I'll take that column."
+
+The editor called in the foreman and showed him the copy. "Can you
+display that so as to fill a column?"
+
+The foreman grasped the situation promptly. It would be big business for
+the paper. "Yes," he said meditatively, "that bold-faced election type
+will do it."
+
+Mr. Dimmidge's face brightened. The expression "bold-faced" pleased him.
+"That's it! I told you. I want to bill her in a portion of the paper."
+
+"I might put in a cut," said the foreman suggestively; "something like
+this." He took a venerable woodcut from the case. I grieve to say it was
+one which, until the middle of the present century, was common enough in
+the newspaper offices in the Southwest. It showed the running figure of
+a negro woman carrying her personal property in a knotted handkerchief
+slung from a stick over her shoulder, and was supposed to represent "a
+fugitive slave."
+
+Mr. Dimmidge's eyes brightened. "I'll take that, too. It's a little
+dark-complected for Mrs. P., but it will do. Now roon away, lad," he
+said to the foreman, as he quietly pushed him into the outer office
+again and closed the door. Then, facing the surprised editor, he said,
+"Theer's another notiss I want ye to put in your paper; but that's
+atween US. Not a word to THEM," he indicated the banished foreman with a
+jerk of his thumb. "Sabe? I want you to put this in another part o' your
+paper, quite innocent-like, ye know." He drew from his pocket a gray
+wallet, and taking out a slip of paper read from it gravely, "'If this
+should meet the eye of R. B., look out for M. J. D. He is on your track.
+When this you see write a line to E. J. D., Elktown Post Office.' I want
+this to go in as 'Personal and Private'--sabe?--like them notisses in
+the big 'Frisco papers."
+
+"I see," said the editor, laying it aside. "It shall go in the same
+issue in another column."
+
+Apparently Mr. Dimmidge expected something more than this reply, for
+after a moment's hesitation he said with an odd smile:
+
+"Ye ain't seein' the meanin' o' that, lad?"
+
+"No," said the editor lightly; "but I suppose R. B. does, and it isn't
+intended that any one else should."
+
+"Mebbe it is, and mebbe it isn't," said Mr. Dimmidge, with a
+self-satisfied air. "I don't mind saying atween us that R. B. is the man
+as I've suspicioned as havin' something to do with my wife goin' away;
+and ye see, if he writes to E. J. D.--that's my wife's initials--at
+Elktown, I'LL get that letter and so make sure."
+
+"But suppose your wife goes there first, or sends?"
+
+"Then I'll ketch her or her messenger. Ye see?"
+
+The editor did not see fit to oppose any argument to this phenomenal
+simplicity, and Mr. Dimmidge, after settling his bill with the foreman,
+and enjoining the editor to the strictest secrecy regarding the origin
+of the "personal notice," took up his gun and departed, leaving the
+treasury of the "Clarion" unprecedentedly enriched, and the editor to
+his proofs.
+
+The paper duly appeared the next morning with the column advertisement,
+the personal notice, and the weighty editorial on the wagon road. There
+was a singular demand for the paper, the edition was speedily exhausted,
+and the editor was proportionately flattered, although he was surprised
+to receive neither praise nor criticism from his subscribers. Before
+evening, however, he learned to his astonishment that the excitement was
+caused by the column advertisement. Nobody knew Mr. Dimmidge, nor his
+domestic infelicities, and the editor and foreman, being equally in the
+dark, took refuge in a mysterious and impressive evasion of all inquiry.
+Never since the last San Francisco Vigilance Committee had the office
+been so besieged. The editor, foreman, and even the apprentice, were
+buttonholed and "treated" at the bar, but to no effect. All that could
+be learned was that it was a bona fide advertisement, for which one
+hundred dollars had been received! There were great discussions and
+conflicting theories as to whether the value of the wife, or the
+husband's anxiety to get rid of her, justified the enormous expense and
+ostentatious display. She was supposed to be an exceedingly beautiful
+woman by some, by others a perfect Sycorax; in one breath Mr. Dimmidge
+was a weak, uxorious spouse, wasting his substance on a creature who did
+not care for him, and in another a maddened, distracted, henpecked man,
+content to purchase peace and rest at any price. Certainly, never was
+advertisement more effective in its publicity, or cheaper in proportion
+to the circulation it commanded. It was copied throughout the whole
+Pacific slope; mighty San Francisco papers described its size and
+setting under the attractive headline, "How they Advertise a Wife in the
+Mountains!" It reappeared in the Eastern journals, under the title of
+"Whimsicalities of the Western Press." It was believed to have crossed
+to England as a specimen of "Transatlantic Savagery." The real editor
+of the "Clarion" awoke one morning, in San Francisco, to find his paper
+famous. Its advertising columns were eagerly sought for; he at once
+advanced the rates. People bought successive issues to gaze upon this
+monumental record of extravagance. A singular idea, which, however,
+brought further fortune to the paper, was advanced by an astute critic
+at the Eureka Saloon. "My opinion, gentlemen, is that the whole blamed
+thing is a bluff! There ain't no Mr. Dimmidge; there ain't no Mrs.
+Dimmidge; there ain't no desertion! The whole rotten thing is an
+ADVERTISEMENT o' suthin'! Ye'll find afore ye get through with it
+that that there wife won't come back until that blamed husband buys
+Somebody's Soap, or treats her to Somebody's particular Starch or Patent
+Medicine! Ye jest watch and see!" The idea was startling, and seized
+upon the mercantile mind. The principal merchant of the town, and
+purveyor to the mining settlements beyond, appeared the next morning at
+the office of the "Clarion." "Ye wouldn't mind puttin' this 'ad' in
+a column alongside o' the Dimmidge one, would ye?" The young editor
+glanced at it, and then, with a serpent-like sagacity, veiled, however,
+by the suavity of the dove, pointed out that the original advertiser
+might think it called his bona fides into question and withdraw his
+advertisement. "But if we secured you by an offer of double the amount
+per column?" urged the merchant. "That," responded the locum tenens,
+"was for the actual editor and proprietor in San Francisco to determine.
+He would telegraph." He did so. The response was, "Put it in." Whereupon
+in the next issue, side by side with Mr. Dimmidge's protracted warning,
+appeared a column with the announcement, in large letters, "WE HAVEN'T
+LOST ANY WIFE, but WE are prepared to furnish the following goods at
+a lower rate than any other advertiser in the county," followed by the
+usual price list of the merchant's wares. There was an unprecedented
+demand for that issue. The reputation of the "Clarion," both as a shrewd
+advertising medium and a comic paper, was established at once. For a few
+days the editor waited with some apprehension for a remonstrance from
+the absent Dimmidge, but none came. Whether Mr. Dimmidge recognized that
+this new advertisement gave extra publicity to his own, or that he was
+already on the track of the fugitive, the editor did not know. The
+few curious citizens who had, early in the excitement, penetrated
+the settlement of the English miners twenty miles away in search of
+information, found that Mr. Dimmidge had gone away, and that Mrs.
+Dimmidge had NEVER resided there with him!
+
+Six weeks passed. The limit of Mr. Dimmidge's advertisement had been
+reached, and, as it was not renewed, it had passed out of the pages
+of the "Clarion," and with it the merchant's advertisement in the next
+column. The excitement had subsided, although its influence was still
+felt in the circulation of the paper and its advertising popularity. The
+temporary editor was also nearing the limit of his incumbency, but had
+so far participated in the good fortune of the "Clarion" as to receive
+an offer from one of the San Francisco dailies.
+
+It was a warm night, and he was alone in his sanctum. The rest of the
+building was dark and deserted, and his solitary light, flashing out
+through the open window, fell upon the nearer pines and was lost in the
+dark, indefinable slope below. He had reached the sanctum by the
+rear, and a door which he also left open to enjoy the freshness of
+the aromatic air. Nor did it in the least mar his privacy. Rather the
+solitude of the great woods without seemed to enter through that
+door and encompassed him with its protecting loneliness. There was
+occasionally a faint "peep" in the scant eaves, or a "pat-pat," ending
+in a frightened scurry across the roof, or the slow flap of a heavy
+wing in the darkness below. These gentle disturbances did not, however,
+interrupt his work on "The True Functions of the County Newspaper," the
+editorial on which he was engaged.
+
+Presently a more distinct rustling against the straggling blackberry
+bushes beside the door attracted his attention. It was followed by a
+light tapping against the side of the house. The editor started and
+turned quickly towards the open door. Two outside steps led to the
+ground. Standing upon the lower one was a woman. The upper part of her
+figure, illuminated by the light from the door, was thrown into greater
+relief by the dark background of the pines. Her face was unknown to
+him, but it was a pleasant one, marked by a certain good-humored
+determination.
+
+"May I come in?" she said confidently.
+
+"Certainly," said the editor. "I am working here alone because it is
+so quiet." He thought he would precipitate some explanation from her by
+excusing himself.
+
+"That's the reason why I came," she said, with a quiet smile.
+
+She came up the next step and entered the room. She was plainly but
+neatly dressed, and now that her figure was revealed he saw that she was
+wearing a linsey-woolsey riding-skirt, and carried a serviceable rawhide
+whip in her cotton-gauntleted hand. She took the chair he offered her
+and sat down sideways on it, her whip hand now also holding up her
+skirt, and permitting a hem of clean white petticoat and a smart,
+well-shaped boot to be seen.
+
+"I don't remember to have had the pleasure of seeing you in Calaveras
+before," said the editor tentatively.
+
+"No. I never was here before," she said composedly, "but you've heard
+enough of me, I reckon. I'm Mrs. Dimmidge." She threw one hand over
+the back of the chair, and with the other tapped her riding-whip on the
+floor.
+
+The editor started. Mrs. Dimmidge! Then she was not a myth. An absurd
+similarity between her attitude with the whip and her husband's entrance
+with his gun six weeks before forced itself upon him and made her an
+invincible presence.
+
+"Then you have returned to your husband?" he said hesitatingly.
+
+"Not much!" she returned, with a slight curl of her lip.
+
+"But you read his advertisement?"
+
+"I saw that column of fool nonsense he put in your paper--ef that's
+what you mean," she said with decision, "but I didn't come here to see
+HIM--but YOU."
+
+The editor looked at her with a forced smile, but a vague misgiving. He
+was alone at night in a deserted part of the settlement, with a plump,
+self-possessed woman who had a contralto voice, a horsewhip, and--he
+could not help feeling--an evident grievance.
+
+"To see me?" he repeated, with a faint attempt at gallantry. "You are
+paying me a great compliment, but really"--
+
+"When I tell you I've come three thousand miles from Kansas straight
+here without stopping, ye kin reckon it's so," she replied firmly.
+
+"Three thousand miles!" echoed the editor wonderingly.
+
+"Yes. Three thousand miles from my own folks' home in Kansas, where six
+years ago I married Mr. Dimmidge,--a British furriner as could scarcely
+make himself understood in any Christian language! Well, he got round
+me and dad, allowin' he was a reg'lar out-and-out profeshnal miner,--had
+lived in mines ever since he was a boy; and so, not knowin' what kind o'
+mines, and dad just bilin' over with the gold fever, we were married and
+kem across the plains to Californy. He was a good enough man to look at,
+but it warn't three months before I discovered that he allowed a wife
+was no better nor a nigger slave, and he the master. That made me open
+my eyes; but then, as he didn't drink, and didn't gamble, and didn't
+swear, and was a good provider and laid by money, why I shifted along
+with him as best I could. We drifted down the first year to Sonora, at
+Red Dog, where there wasn't another woman. Well, I did the nigger slave
+business,--never stirring out o' the settlement, never seein' a town
+or a crowd o' decent people,--and he did the lord and master! We played
+that game for two years, and I got tired. But when at last he allowed
+he'd go up to Elktown Hill, where there was a passel o' his countrymen
+at work, with never a sign o' any other folks, and leave me alone at Red
+Dog until he fixed up a place for me at Elktown Hill,--I kicked! I gave
+him fair warning! I did as other nigger slaves did,--I ran away!"
+
+A recollection of the wretched woodcut which Mr. Dimmidge had selected
+to personify his wife flashed upon the editor with a new meaning.
+Yet perhaps she had not seen it, and had only read a copy of the
+advertisement. What could she want? The "Calaveras Clarion," although a
+"Palladium" and a "Sentinel upon the Heights of Freedom" in reference to
+wagon roads, was not a redresser of domestic wrongs,--except through its
+advertising columns! Her next words intensified that suggestion.
+
+"I've come here to put an advertisement in your paper."
+
+The editor heaved a sigh of relief, as once before. "Certainly," he said
+briskly. "But that's another department of the paper, and the printers
+have gone home. Come to-morrow morning early."
+
+"To-morrow morning I shall be miles away," she said decisively,
+"and what I want done has got to be done NOW! I don't want to see no
+printers; I don't want ANYBODY to know I've been here but you. That's
+why I kem here at night, and rode all the way from Sawyer's Station,
+and wouldn't take the stage-coach. And when we've settled about the
+advertisement, I'm going to mount my horse, out thar in the bushes, and
+scoot outer the settlement."
+
+"Very good," said the editor resignedly. "Of course I can deliver your
+instructions to the foreman. And now--let me see--I suppose you wish to
+intimate in a personal notice to your husband that you've returned."
+
+"Nothin' o' the kind!" said Mrs. Dimmidge coolly. "I want to placard him
+as he did me. I've got it all written out here. Sabe?"
+
+She took from her pocket a folded paper, and spreading it out on the
+editor's desk, with a certain pride of authorship read as follows:--
+
+"Whereas my husband, Micah J. Dimmidge, having given out that I have
+left his bed and board,--the same being a bunk in a log cabin and pork
+and molasses three times a day,--and having advertised that he'd pay
+no debts of MY contractin',--which, as thar ain't any, might be easier
+collected than debts of his own contractin',--this is to certify that
+unless he returns from Elktown Hill to his only home in Sonora in one
+week from date, payin' the cost of this advertisement, I'll know the
+reason why.--Eliza Jane Dimmidge."
+
+"Thar," she added, drawing a long breath, "put that in a column of the
+'Clarion,' same size as the last, and let it work, and that's all I want
+of you."
+
+"A column?" repeated the editor. "Do you know the cost is very
+expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?"
+
+"I reckon I kin pay the same as Mr. Dimmidge did for HIS," said the lady
+complacently. "I didn't see your paper myself, but the paper as copied
+it--one of them big New York dailies--said that it took up a whole
+column."
+
+The editor breathed more freely; she had not seen the infamous woodcut
+which her husband had selected. At the same moment he was struck with a
+sense of retribution, justice, and compensation.
+
+"Would you," he asked hesitatingly,--"would you like it illustrated--by
+a cut?"
+
+"With which?"
+
+"Wait a moment; I'll show you."
+
+He went into the dark composing-room, lit a candle, and rummaging in a
+drawer sacred to weather-beaten, old-fashioned electrotyped advertising
+symbols of various trades, finally selected one and brought it to Mrs.
+Dimmidge. It represented a bare and exceedingly stalwart arm wielding a
+large hammer.
+
+"Your husband being a miner,--a quartz miner,--would that do?" he asked.
+(It had been previously used to advertise a blacksmith, a gold-beater,
+and a stone-mason.)
+
+The lady examined it critically.
+
+"It does look a little like Micah's arm," she said meditatively.
+"Well--you kin put it in."
+
+The editor was so well pleased with his success that he must needs make
+another suggestion. "I suppose," he said ingenuously, "that you don't
+want to answer the 'Personal'?"
+
+"'Personal'?" she repeated quickly, "what's that? I ain't seen no
+'Personal.'" The editor saw his blunder. She, of course, had never seen
+Mr. Dimmidge's artful "Personal;" THAT the big dailies naturally had not
+noticed nor copied. But it was too late to withdraw now. He brought
+out a file of the "Clarion," and snipping out the paragraph with his
+scissors, laid it before the lady.
+
+She stared at it with wrinkled brows and a darkening face.
+
+"And THIS was in the same paper?--put in by Mr. Dimmidge?" she asked
+breathlessly.
+
+The editor, somewhat alarmed, stammered "Yes." But the next moment he
+was reassured. The wrinkles disappeared, a dozen dimples broke out where
+they had been, and the determined, matter-of-fact Mrs. Dimmidge burst
+into a fit of rosy merriment. Again and again she laughed, shaking
+the building, startling the sedate, melancholy woods beyond, until the
+editor himself laughed in sheer vacant sympathy.
+
+"Lordy!" she said at last, gasping, and wiping the laughter from her wet
+eyes. "I never thought of THAT."
+
+"No," explained the editor smilingly; "of course you didn't. Don't you
+see, the papers that copied the big advertisement never saw that little
+paragraph, or if they did, they never connected the two together."
+
+"Oh, it ain't that," said Mrs. Dimmidge, trying to regain her composure
+and holding her sides. "It's that blessed DEAR old dunderhead of a
+Dimmidge I'm thinking of. That gets me. I see it all now. Only, sakes
+alive! I never thought THAT of him. Oh, it's just too much!" and she
+again relapsed behind her handkerchief.
+
+"Then I suppose you don't want to reply to it," said the editor.
+
+Her laughter instantly ceased. "Don't I?" she said, wiping her face into
+its previous complacent determination. "Well, young man, I reckon that's
+just what I WANT to do! Now, wait a moment; let's see what he said,"
+she went on, taking up and reperusing the "Personal" paragraph. "Well,
+then," she went on, after a moment's silent composition with moving
+lips, "you just put these lines in."
+
+The editor took up his pencil.
+
+"To Mr. J. D. Dimmidge.--Hope you're still on R. B.'s tracks. Keep
+there!--E. J. D."
+
+The editor wrote down the line, and then, remembering Mr. Dimmidge's
+voluntary explanation of HIS "Personal," waited with some confidence for
+a like frankness from Mrs. Dimmidge. But he was mistaken.
+
+"You think that he--R. B.--or Mr. Dimmidge--will understand this?" he at
+last asked tentatively. "Is it enough?"
+
+"Quite enough," said Mrs. Dimmidge emphatically. She took a roll of
+greenbacks from her pocket, selected a hundred-dollar bill and then a
+five, and laid them before the editor. "Young man," she said, with a
+certain demure gravity, "you've done me a heap o' good. I never spent
+money with more satisfaction than this. I never thought much o' the
+'power o' the Press,' as you call it, afore. But this has been a right
+comfortable visit, and I'm glad I ketched you alone. But you understand
+one thing: this yer visit, and WHO I am, is betwixt you and me only."
+
+"Of course I must say that the advertisement was AUTHORIZED," returned
+the editor. "I'm only the temporary editor. The proprietor is away."
+
+"So much the better," said the lady complacently. "You just say you
+found it on your desk with the money; but don't you give me away."
+
+"I can promise you that the secret of your personal visit is safe with
+me," said the young man, with a bow, as Mrs. Dimmidge rose. "Let me see
+you to your horse," he added. "It's quite dark in the woods."
+
+"I can see well enough alone, and it's just as well you shouldn't know
+HOW I kem or HOW I went away. Enough for you to know that I'll be miles
+away before that paper comes out. So stay where you are."
+
+She pressed his hand frankly and firmly, gathered up her riding-skirt,
+slipped backwards to the door, and the next moment rustled away into the
+darkness.
+
+Early the next morning the editor handed Mrs. Dimmidge's advertisement,
+and the woodcut he had selected, to his foreman. He was purposely brief
+in his directions, so as to avoid inquiry, and retired to his sanctum.
+In the space of a few moments the foreman entered with a slight
+embarrassment of manner.
+
+"You'll excuse my speaking to you, sir," he said, with a singular
+mixture of humility and cunning. "It's no business of mine, I know; but
+I thought I ought to tell you that this yer kind o' thing won't pay any
+more,--it's about played out!"
+
+"I don't think I understand you," said the editor loftily, but with
+an inward misgiving. "You don't mean to say that a regular, actual
+advertisement"--
+
+"Of course, I know all that," said the foreman, with a peculiar smile;
+"and I'm ready to back you up in it, and so's the boy; but it won't
+pay."
+
+"It HAS paid a hundred and five dollars," said the editor, taking the
+notes from his pocket; "so I'd advise you to simply attend to your duty
+and set it up."
+
+A look of surprise, followed, however, by a kind of pitying smile,
+passed over the foreman's face. "Of course, sir, THAT'S all right, and
+you know your own business; but if you think that the new advertisement
+will pay this time as the other one did, and whoop up another column
+from an advertiser, I'm afraid you'll slip up. It's a little 'off color'
+now,--not 'up to date,'--if it ain't a regular 'back number,' as you'll
+see."
+
+"Meantime I'll dispense with your advice," said the editor curtly, "and
+I think you had better let our subscribers and advertisers do the same,
+or the 'Clarion' might also be obliged to dispense with your SERVICES."
+
+"I ain't no blab," said the foreman, in an aggrieved manner, "and I
+don't intend to give the show away even if it don't PAY. But I thought
+I'd tell you, because I know the folks round here better than you do."
+
+He was right. No sooner had the advertisement appeared than the editor
+found that everybody believed it to be a sheer invention of his own to
+"once more boom" the "Clarion." If they had doubted MR. Dimmidge, they
+utterly rejected MRS. Dimmidge as an advertiser! It was a stale joke
+that nobody would follow up; and on the heels of this came a letter from
+the editor-in-chief.
+
+
+MY DEAR BOY,--You meant well, I know, but the second Dimmidge "ad" was
+a mistake. Still, it was a big bluff of yours to show the money, and I
+send you back your hundred dollars, hoping you won't "do it again."
+Of course you'll have to keep the advertisement in the paper for two
+issues, just as if it were a real thing, and it's lucky that there's
+just now no pressure in our columns. You might have told a better story
+than that hogwash about your finding the "ad" and a hundred dollars
+lying loose on your desk one morning. It was rather thin, and I don't
+wonder the foreman kicked.
+
+
+The young editor was in despair. At first he thought of writing to Mrs.
+Dimmidge at the Elktown Post-Office, asking her to relieve him of his
+vow of secrecy; but his pride forbade. There was a humorous concern, not
+without a touch of pity, in the faces of his contributors as he passed;
+a few affected to believe in the new advertisement, and asked him vague,
+perfunctory questions about it. His position was trying, and he was not
+sorry when the term of his engagement expired the next week, and he left
+Calaveras to take his new position on the San Francisco paper.
+
+He was standing in the saloon of the Sacramento boat when he felt a
+sudden heavy pressure on his shoulder, and looking round sharply, beheld
+not only the black-bearded face of Mr. Dimmidge, lit up by a smile, but
+beside it the beaming, buxom face of Mrs. Dimmidge, overflowing with
+good-humor. Still a little sore from his past experience, he was about
+to address them abruptly, when he was utterly vanquished by the hearty
+pressure of their hands and the unmistakable look of gratitude in their
+eyes.
+
+"I was just saying to 'Lizy Jane," began Mr. Dimmidge breathlessly,
+"if I could only meet that young man o' the 'Clarion' what brought us
+together again"--
+
+"You'd be willin' to pay four times the amount we both paid him,"
+interpolated the laughing Mrs. Dimmidge.
+
+"But I didn't bring you together," burst out the dazed young man, "and
+I'd like to know, in the name of Heaven, what brought you together now?"
+
+"Don't you see, lad," said the imperturbable Mr. Dimmidge, "'Lizy Jane
+and myself had qua'lled, and we just unpacked our fool nonsense in your
+paper and let the hull world know it! And we both felt kinder skeert and
+shamed like, and it looked such small hogwash, and of so little account,
+for all the talk it made, that we kinder felt lonely as two separated
+fools that really ought to share their foolishness together."
+
+"And that ain't all," said Mrs. Dimmidge, with a sly glance at her
+spouse, "for I found out from that 'Personal' you showed me that this
+particular old fool was actooally jealous!--JEALOUS!"
+
+"And then?" said the editor impatiently.
+
+"And then I KNEW he loved me all the time."
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET OF SOBRIENTE'S WELL
+
+
+Even to the eye of the most inexperienced traveler there was no doubt
+that Buena Vista was a "played-out" mining camp. There, seamed and
+scarred by hydraulic engines, was the old hillside, over whose denuded
+surface the grass had begun to spring again in fitful patches; there
+were the abandoned heaps of tailings already blackened by sun and rain,
+and worn into mounds like ruins of masonry; there were the waterless
+ditches, like giant graves, and the pools of slumgullion, now dried into
+shining, glazed cement. There were two or three wooden "stores," from
+which the windows and doors had been taken and conveyed to the newer
+settlement of Wynyard's Gulch. Four or five buildings that still were
+inhabited--the blacksmith's shop, the post-office, a pioneer's
+cabin, and the old hotel and stage-office--only accented the general
+desolation. The latter building had a remoteness of prosperity far
+beyond the others, having been a wayside Spanish-American posada, with
+adobe walls of two feet in thickness, that shamed the later shells of
+half-inch plank, which were slowly warping and cracking like dried pods
+in the oven-like heat.
+
+The proprietor of this building, Colonel Swinger, had been looked
+upon by the community as a person quite as remote, old-fashioned, and
+inconsistent with present progress as the house itself. He was an old
+Virginian, who had emigrated from his decaying plantation on the James
+River only to find the slaves, which he had brought with him, freed men
+when they touched Californian soil; to be driven by Northern progress
+and "smartness" out of the larger cities into the mountains, to fix
+himself at last, with the hopeless fatuity of his race, upon an already
+impoverished settlement; to sink his scant capital in hopeless shafts
+and ledges, and finally to take over the decaying hostelry of Buena
+Vista, with its desultory custom and few, lingering, impecunious guests.
+Here, too, his old Virginian ideas of hospitality were against his
+financial success; he could not dun nor turn from his door those
+unfortunate prospectors whom the ebbing fortunes of Buena Vista had left
+stranded by his side.
+
+Colonel Swinger was sitting in a wicker-work rocking-chair on the
+veranda of his hotel--sipping a mint julep which he held in his hand,
+while he gazed into the dusty distance. Nothing could have convinced him
+that he was not performing a serious part of his duty as hotel-keeper
+in this attitude, even though there were no travelers expected, and the
+road at this hour of the day was deserted. On a bench at his side Larry
+Hawkins stretched his lazy length,--one foot dropped on the veranda,
+and one arm occasionally groping under the bench for his own tumbler
+of refreshment. Apart from this community of occupation, there was
+apparently no interchange of sentiment between the pair. The silence
+had continued for some moments, when the colonel put down his glass and
+gazed earnestly into the distance.
+
+"Seein' anything?" remarked the man on the bench, who had sleepily
+regarded him.
+
+"No," said the colonel, "that is--it's only Dick Ruggles crossin' the
+road."
+
+"Thought you looked a little startled, ez if you'd seen that ar
+wanderin' stranger."
+
+"When I see that wandering stranger, sah," said the colonel decisively,
+"I won't be sittin' long in this yer chyar. I'll let him know in about
+ten seconds that I don't harbor any vagrants prowlin' about like poor
+whites or free niggers on my propahty, sah!"
+
+"All the same, I kinder wish ye did see him, for you'd be settled in
+YOUR mind and I'd be easier in MINE, ef you found out what he was doin'
+round yer, or ye had to admit that it wasn't no LIVIN' man."
+
+"What do you mean?" said the colonel, testily facing around in his
+chair.
+
+His companion also altered his attitude by dropping his other foot
+to the floor, sitting up, and leaning lazily forward with his hands
+clasped.
+
+"Look yer, colonel. When you took this place, I felt I didn't have no
+call to tell ye all I know about it, nor to pizen yer mind by any darned
+fool yarns I mout hev heard. Ye know it was one o' them old Spanish
+haciendas?"
+
+"I know," said the colonel loftily, "that it was held by a grant from
+Charles the Fifth of Spain, just as my propahty on the James River was
+given to my people by King James of England, sah!"
+
+"That ez as may be," returned his companion, in lazy indifference;
+"though I reckon that Charles the Fifth of Spain and King James of
+England ain't got much to do with what I'm goin' to tell ye. Ye see, I
+was here long afore YOUR time, or any of the boys that hev now cleared
+out; and at that time the hacienda belonged to a man named Juan
+Sobriente. He was that kind o' fool that he took no stock in mining.
+When the boys were whoopin' up the place and finding the color
+everywhere, and there was a hundred men working down there in the gulch,
+he was either ridin' round lookin' up the wild horses he owned, or
+sittin' with two or three lazy peons and Injins that was fed and looked
+arter by the priests. Gosh! now I think of it, it was mighty like YOU
+when you first kem here with your niggers. That's curious, too, ain't
+it?"
+
+He had stopped, gazing with an odd, superstitious wonderment at the
+colonel, as if overcome by this not very remarkable coincidence.
+The colonel, overlooking or totally oblivious to its somewhat
+uncomplimentary significance, simply said, "Go on. What about him?"
+
+"Well, ez I was sayin', he warn't in it nohow, but kept on his reg'lar
+way when the boom was the biggest. Some of the boys allowed it was
+mighty oncivil for him to stand off like that, and others--when he
+refused a big pile for his hacienda and the garden, that ran right into
+the gold-bearing ledge--war for lynching him and driving him outer the
+settlement. But as he had a pretty darter or niece livin' with him,
+and, except for his partickler cussedness towards mining, was kinder
+peaceable and perlite, they thought better of it. Things went along like
+this, until one day the boys noticed--particklerly the boys that had
+slipped up on their luck--that old man Sobriente was gettin' rich,--had
+stocked a ranch over on the Divide, and had given some gold candlesticks
+to the mission church. That would have been only human nature and
+business, ef he'd had any during them flush times; but he hadn't. This
+kinder puzzled them. They tackled the peons,--his niggers,--but it was
+all 'No sabe.' They tackled another man,--a kind of half-breed Kanaka,
+who, except the priest, was the only man who came to see him, and was
+supposed to be mighty sweet on the darter or niece,--but they didn't
+even get the color outer HIM. Then the first thing we knowed was that
+old Sobriente was found dead in the well!"
+
+"In the well, sah!" said the colonel, starting up. "The well on my
+propahty?"
+
+"No," said his companion. "The old well that was afterwards shut up.
+Yours was dug by the last tenant, Jack Raintree, who allowed that he
+didn't want to 'take any Sobriente in his reg'lar whiskey and water.'
+Well, the half-breed Kanaka cleared out after the old man's death, and
+so did that darter or niece; and the church, to whom old Sobriente had
+left this house, let it to Raintree for next to nothin'."
+
+"I don't see what all that has got to do with that wandering tramp,"
+said the colonel, who was by no means pleased with this history of his
+property.
+
+"I'll tell ye. A few days after Raintree took it over, he was lookin'
+round the garden, which old Sobriente had always kept shut up agin
+strangers, and he finds a lot of dried-up 'slumgullion'* scattered all
+about the borders and beds, just as if the old man had been using it for
+fertilizing. Well, Raintree ain't no fool; he allowed the old man wasn't
+one, either; and he knew that slumgullion wasn't worth no more than mud
+for any good it would do the garden. So he put this yer together with
+Sobriente's good luck, and allowed to himself that the old coyote had
+been secretly gold-washin' all the while he seemed to be standin' off
+agin it! But where was the mine? Whar did he get the gold? That's what
+got Raintree. He hunted all over the garden, prospected every part of
+it,--ye kin see the holes yet,--but he never even got the color!"
+
+     * That is, a viscid cement-like refuse of gold-washing.
+
+He paused, and then, as the colonel made an impatient gesture, he went
+on.
+
+"Well, one night just afore you took the place, and when Raintree was
+gettin' just sick of it, he happened to be walkin' in the garden. He was
+puzzlin' his brain agin to know how old Sobriente made his pile, when
+all of a suddenst he saw suthin' a-movin' in the brush beside the house.
+He calls out, thinkin' it was one of the boys, but got no answer. Then
+he goes to the bushes, and a tall figger, all in black, starts out afore
+him. He couldn't see any face, for its head was covered with a hood, but
+he saw that it held suthin' like a big cross clasped agin its breast.
+This made him think it was one them priests, until he looks agin and
+sees that it wasn't no cross it was carryin,' but a PICKAXE! He makes
+a jump towards it, but it vanished! He traipsed over the hull
+garden,--went though ev'ry bush,--but it was clean gone. Then the hull
+thing flashed upon him with a cold shiver. The old man bein' found dead
+in the well! the goin' away of the half-breed and the girl! the findin'
+o' that slumgullion! The old man HAD made a strike in that garden, the
+half-breed had discovered his secret and murdered him, throwin' him down
+the well! It war no LIVIN' man that he had seen, but the ghost of old
+Sobriente!"
+
+The colonel emptied the remaining contents of his glass at a single
+gulp, and sat up. "It's my opinion, sah, that Raintree had that night
+more than his usual allowance of corn-juice on board; and it's only
+a wonder, sah, that he didn't see a few pink alligators and sky-blue
+snakes at the same time. But what's this got to do with that wanderin'
+tramp?"
+
+"They're all the same thing, colonel, and in my opinion that there tramp
+ain't no more alive than that figger was."
+
+"But YOU were the one that saw this tramp with your own eyes," retorted
+the colonel quickly, "and you never before allowed it was a spirit!"
+
+"Exactly! I saw it whar a minit afore nothin' had been standin', and a
+minit after nothin' stood," said Larry Hawkins, with a certain serious
+emphasis; "but I warn't goin' to say it to ANYBODY, and I warn't goin'
+to give you and the hacienda away. And ez nobody knew Raintree's story,
+I jest shut up my head. But you kin bet your life that the man I saw
+warn't no livin' man!"
+
+"We'll see, sah!" said the colonel, rising from his chair with his
+fingers in the armholes of his nankeen waistcoat, "ef he ever intrudes
+on my property again. But look yar! don't ye go sayin' anything of this
+to Polly,--you know what women are!"
+
+A faint color came into Larry's face; an animation quite different to
+the lazy deliberation of his previous monologue shone in his eyes, as
+he said, with a certain rough respect he had not shown before to his
+companion, "That's why I'm tellin' ye, so that ef SHE happened to see
+anything and got skeert, ye'd know how to reason her out of it."
+
+"'Sh!" said the colonel, with a warning gesture.
+
+A young girl had just appeared in the doorway, and now stood leaning
+against the central pillar that supported it, with one hand above her
+head, in a lazy attitude strongly suggestive of the colonel's Southern
+indolence, yet with a grace entirely her own. Indeed, it overcame the
+negligence of her creased and faded yellow cotton frock and unbuttoned
+collar, and suggested--at least to the eyes of ONE man--the curving and
+clinging of the jasmine vine against the outer column of the veranda.
+Larry Hawkins rose awkwardly to his feet.
+
+"Now what are you two men mumblin' and confidin' to each other? You look
+for all the world like two old women gossips," she said, with languid
+impertinence.
+
+It was easy to see that a privileged and recognized autocrat spoke.
+No one had ever questioned Polly Swinger's right to interrupting,
+interfering, and saucy criticisms. Secure in the hopeless or chivalrous
+admiration of the men around her, she had repaid it with a frankness
+that scorned any coquetry; with an indifference to the ordinary feminine
+effect or provocation in dress or bearing that was as natural as it was
+invincible. No one had ever known Polly to "fix up" for anybody, yet
+no one ever doubted the effect, if she had. No one had ever rebuked her
+charming petulance, or wished to.
+
+Larry gave a weak, vague laugh. Colonel Swinger as ineffectively assumed
+a mock parental severity. "When you see two gentlemen, miss, discussin'
+politics together, it ain't behavin' like a lady to interrupt. Better
+run away and tidy yourself before the stage comes."
+
+The young lady replied to the last innuendo by taking two spirals of
+soft hair, like "corn silk," from her oval cheek, wetting them with
+her lips, and tucking them behind her ears. Her father's ungentlemanly
+suggestion being thus disposed of, she returned to her first charge.
+
+"It ain't no politics; you ain't been swearing enough for THAT! Come,
+now! It's the mysterious stranger ye've been talking about!"
+
+Both men stared at her with unaffected concern.
+
+"What do YOU know about any mysterious stranger?" demanded her father.
+
+"Do you suppose you men kin keep a secret," scoffed Polly. "Why, Dick
+Ruggles told me how skeert ye all were over an entire stranger, and he
+advised me not to wander down the road after dark. I asked him if he
+thought I was a pickaninny to be frightened by bogies, and that if
+he hadn't a better excuse for wantin' 'to see me home' from the Injin
+spring, he might slide."
+
+Larry laughed again, albeit a little bitterly, for it seemed to him that
+the excuse was fully justified; but the colonel said promptly, "Dick's
+a fool, and you might have told him there were worse things to be met on
+the road than bogies. Run away now, and see that the niggers are on hand
+when the stage comes."
+
+Two hours later the stage came with a clatter of hoofs and a cloud of
+red dust, which precipitated itself and a dozen thirsty travelers
+upon the veranda before the hotel bar-room; it brought also the usual
+"express" newspapers and much talk to Colonel Swinger, who always
+received his guests in a lofty personal fashion at the door, as he might
+have done in his old Virginian home; but it brought likewise--marvelous
+to relate--an ACTUAL GUEST, who had two trunks and asked for a room! He
+was evidently a stranger to the ways of Buena Vista, and particularly
+to those of Colonel Swinger, and at first seemed inclined to resent the
+social attitude of his host, and his frank and free curiosity. When he,
+however, found that Colonel Swinger was even better satisfied to give
+an account of HIS OWN affairs, his family, pedigree, and his present
+residence, he began to betray some interest. The colonel told him
+all the news, and would no doubt have even expatiated on his ghostly
+visitant, had he not prudently concluded that his guest might decline to
+remain in a haunted inn. The stranger had spoken of staying a week; he
+had some private mining speculations to watch at Wynyard's Gulch,--the
+next settlement, but he did not care to appear openly at the "Gulch
+Hotel." He was a man of thirty, with soft, pleasing features and a
+singular litheness of movement, which, combined with a nut-brown, gypsy
+complexion, at first suggested a foreigner. But his dialect, to the
+colonel's ears, was distinctly that of New England, and to this was
+added a puritanical and sanctimonious drawl. "He looked," said the
+colonel in after years, "like a blank light mulatter, but talked like a
+blank Yankee parson." For all that, he was acceptable to his host, who
+may have felt that his reminiscences of his plantation on the James
+River were palling on Buena Vista ears, and was glad of his new auditor.
+It was an advertisement, too, of the hotel, and a promise of its future
+fortunes. "Gentlemen having propahty interests at the Gulch, sah, prefer
+to stay at Buena Vista with another man of propahty, than to trust to
+those new-fangled papah-collared, gingerbread booths for traders that
+they call 'hotels' there," he had remarked to some of "the boys." In his
+preoccupation with the new guest, he also became a little neglectful
+of his old chum and dependent, Larry Hawkins. Nor was this the only
+circumstance that filled the head of that shiftless loyal retainer
+of the colonel with bitterness and foreboding. Polly Swinger--the
+scornfully indifferent, the contemptuously inaccessible, the coldly
+capricious and petulant--was inclined to be polite to the stranger!
+
+The fact was that Polly, after the fashion of her sex, took it into
+her pretty head, against all consistency and logic, suddenly to make
+an exception to her general attitude towards mankind in favor of one
+individual. The reason-seeking masculine reader will rashly conclude
+that this individual was the CAUSE as well as the object; but I am
+satisfied that every fair reader of these pages will instinctively know
+better. Miss Polly had simply selected the new guest, Mr. Starbuck, to
+show OTHERS, particularly Larry Hawkins, what she COULD do if she were
+inclined to be civil. For two days she "fixed up" her distracting hair
+at him so that its silken floss encircled her head like a nimbus; she
+tucked her oval chin into a white fichu instead of a buttonless collar;
+she appeared at dinner in a newly starched yellow frock! She talked
+to him with "company manners;" said she would "admire to go to San
+Francisco," and asked if he knew her old friends the Fauquier girls
+from "Faginia." The colonel was somewhat disturbed; he was glad that his
+daughter had become less negligent of her personal appearance; he could
+not but see, with the others, how it enhanced her graces; but he was,
+with the others, not entirely satisfied with her reasons. And he could
+not help observing--what was more or less patent to ALL--that Starbuck
+was far from being equally responsive to her attentions, and at times
+was indifferent and almost uncivil. Nobody seemed to be satisfied with
+Polly's transformation but herself.
+
+But eventually she was obliged to assert herself. The third evening
+after Starbuck's arrival she was going over to the cabin of Aunt Chloe,
+who not only did the washing for Buena Vista, but assisted Polly in
+dressmaking. It was not far, and the night was moonlit. As she crossed
+the garden she saw Starbuck moving in the manzanita bushes beyond; a
+mischievous light came into her eyes; she had not EXPECTED to meet him,
+but she had seen him go out, and there were always POSSIBILITIES. To her
+surprise, however, he merely lifted his hat as she passed, and
+turned abruptly in another direction. This was more than the little
+heart-breaker of Buena Vista was accustomed to!
+
+"Oh, Mr. Starbuck!" she called, in her laziest voice.
+
+He turned almost impatiently.
+
+"Since you're so civil and pressing, I thought I'd tell you I was just
+runnin' over to Aunt Chloe's," she said dryly.
+
+"I should think it was hardly the proper thing for a young lady to do
+at this time of night," he said superciliously. "But you know best,--you
+know the people here."
+
+Polly's cheeks and eyes flamed. "Yes, I reckon I do," she said crisply;
+"it's only a STRANGER here would think of being rude. Good-night, Mr.
+Starbuck!"
+
+She tripped away after this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her
+triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her
+departure! And for the first time she now thought that she had seen
+something in his face that she did not like! But her lazy independence
+reasserted itself soon, and half an hour later, when she had left Aunt
+Chloe's cabin, she had regained her self-esteem. Yet, to avoid meeting
+him again, she took a longer route home, across the dried ditch and over
+the bluff, scarred by hydraulics, and so fell, presently, upon the old
+garden at the point where it adjoined the abandoned diggings. She was
+quite sure she had escaped a meeting with Starbuck, and was gliding
+along under the shadow of the pear-trees, when she suddenly stopped. An
+indescribable terror overcame her as she stared at a spot in the garden,
+perfectly illuminated by the moonlight not fifty yards from where she
+stood. For she saw on its surface a human head--a man's head!--seemingly
+on the level of the ground, staring in her direction. A hysterical laugh
+sprang from her lips, and she caught at the branches above her or
+she would have fallen! Yet in that moment the head had vanished! The
+moonlight revealed the empty garden,--the ground she had gazed at,--but
+nothing more!
+
+She had never been superstitious. As a child she had heard the negroes
+talk of "the hants,"--that is, "the HAUNTS" or spirits,--but had
+believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,--the
+daughter of their master! She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the
+illusions of Larry, and had shared her father's contemptuous disbelief
+of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would
+have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making
+her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for
+help. And with it came the sudden conviction that HE had seen this awful
+vision, too. This would account for his impatience of her presence and
+his rudeness. She felt faint and giddy. Yet after the first shock had
+passed, her old independence and pride came to her relief. She would go
+to the spot and examine it. If it were some trick or illusion, she would
+show her superiority and have the laugh on Starbuck. She set her white
+teeth, clenched her little hands, and started out into the moonlight.
+But alas! for women's weakness. The next moment she uttered a scream and
+almost fell into the arms of Mr. Starbuck, who had stepped out of the
+shadows beside her.
+
+"So you see you HAVE been frightened," he said, with a strange, forced
+laugh; "but I warned you about going out alone!"
+
+Even in her fright she could not help seeing that he, too, seemed pale
+and agitated, at which she recovered her tongue and her self-possession.
+
+"Anybody would be frightened by being dogged about under the trees," she
+said pertly.
+
+"But you called out before you saw me," he said bluntly, "as if
+something had frightened you. That was WHY I came towards you."
+
+She knew it was the truth; but as she would not confess to her vision,
+she fibbed outrageously.
+
+"Frightened," she said, with pale but lofty indignation. "What was there
+to frighten me? I'm not a baby, to think I see a bogie in the dark!"
+This was said in the faint hope that HE had seen something too. If it
+had been Larry or her father who had met her, she would have confessed
+everything.
+
+"You had better go in," he said curtly. "I will see you safe inside the
+house."
+
+She demurred at this, but as she could not persist in her first bold
+intention of examining the locality of the vision without admitting its
+existence, she permitted him to walk with her to the house, and then at
+once fled to her own room. Larry and her father noticed their entrance
+together and their agitated manner, and were uneasy. Yet the colonel's
+paternal pride and Larry's lover's respect kept the two men from
+communicating their thoughts to each other.
+
+"The confounded pup has been tryin' to be familiar, and Polly's set him
+down," thought Larry, with glowing satisfaction.
+
+"He's been trying some of his sanctimonious Yankee abolition talk on
+Polly, and she shocked him!" thought the colonel exultingly.
+
+But poor Polly had other things to think of in the silence of her room.
+Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but
+Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too
+high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence.
+She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and
+speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't
+tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed that she had
+seen a ghost, no doubt the ghost of the murdered Sobriente, according
+to Larry's story. WHY he should appear with only his head above ground
+puzzled her, although it suggested the Catholic idea of purgatory, and
+he was a Catholic! Perhaps he would have risen entirely but for that
+stupid Starbuck's presence; perhaps he had a message for HER alone. The
+idea pleased Polly, albeit it was a "fearful joy" and attended with some
+cold shivering. Naturally, as a gentleman, he would appear to HER--the
+daughter of a gentleman--the successor to his house--rather than to
+a Yankee stranger. What was she to do? For once her calm nerves were
+strangely thrilled; she could not think of undressing and going to
+bed, and two o'clock surprised her, still meditating, and occasionally
+peeping from her window upon the moonlit but vacant garden. If she saw
+him again, would she dare to go down alone? Suddenly she started to
+her feet with a beating heart! There was the unmistakable sound of a
+stealthy footstep in the passage, coming towards her room. Was it he? In
+spite of her high resolves she felt that if the door opened she should
+scream! She held her breath--the footsteps came nearer--were before her
+door--and PASSED!
+
+Then it was that the blood rushed back to her cheek with a flush of
+indignation. Her room was at the end of the passage; there was nothing
+beyond but a private staircase, long disused, except by herself, as a
+short cut through the old patio to the garden. No one else knew of
+it, and no one else had the right of access to it! This insolent human
+intrusion--as she was satisfied it was now--overcame her fear, and
+she glided to the door. Opening it softly, she could hear the stealthy
+footsteps descending. She darted back, threw a shawl over her head and
+shoulders, and taking the small Derringer pistol which it had always
+been part of her ostentatious independence to place at her bed-head,
+she as stealthily followed the intruder. But the footsteps had died
+away before she reached the patio, and she saw only the small deserted,
+grass-grown courtyard, half hidden in shadows, in whose centre stood the
+fateful and long sealed-up well! A shudder came over her at again being
+brought into contact with the cause of her frightful vision, but as her
+eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw something more real and
+appalling! The well was no longer sealed! Fragments of bricks and boards
+lay around it! One end of a rope, coiled around it like a huge snake,
+descended its foul depths; and as she gazed with staring eyes, the
+head and shoulders of a man emerged slowly from it! But it was NOT the
+ghostly apparition of last evening, and her terror changed to scorn and
+indignation as she recognized the face of Starbuck!
+
+Their eyes met; an oath broke from his lips. He made a movement to
+spring from the well, but as the girl started back, the pistol held
+in her hand was discharged aimlessly in the air, and the report echoed
+throughout the courtyard. With a curse Starbuck drew back, instantly
+disappeared in the well, and Polly fell fainting on the steps. When she
+came to, her father and Larry were at her side. They had been alarmed
+at the report, and had rushed quickly to the patio, but not in time to
+prevent the escape of Starbuck and his accomplice. By the time she had
+recovered her consciousness, they had learned the full extent of that
+extraordinary revelation which she had so innocently precipitated.
+Sobriente's well had really concealed a rich gold ledge,--actually
+tunneled and galleried by him secretly in the past,--and its only other
+outlet was an opening in the garden hidden by a stone which turned on a
+swivel. Its existence had been unknown to Sobriente's successor, but
+was known to the Kanaka who had worked with Sobriente, who fled with
+his daughter after the murder, but who no doubt was afraid to return
+and work the mine. He had imparted the secret to Starbuck, another
+half-breed, son of a Yankee missionary and Hawaiian wife, who had
+evidently conceived this plan of seeking Buena Vista with an accomplice,
+and secretly removing such gold as was still accessible. The accomplice,
+afterwards identified by Larry as the wandering tramp, failed to
+discover the secret entrance FROM the garden, and Starbuck was
+consequently obliged to attempt it from the hotel--for which purpose
+he had introduced himself as a boarder--by opening the disused well
+secretly at night. These facts were obtained from papers found in the
+otherwise valueless trunks, weighted with stones for ballast, which
+Starbuck had brought to the hotel to take away his stolen treasure in,
+but which he was obliged to leave in his hurried flight. The attempt
+would have doubtless succeeded but for Polly's courageous and timely
+interference!
+
+And now that they had told her ALL, they only wanted to know what had
+first excited HER suspicions, and driven her to seek the well as the
+object of Starbuck's machinations? THEY had noticed her manner when she
+entered the house that night, and Starbuck's evident annoyance. Had she
+taxed him with her suspicions, and so discovered a clue?
+
+It was a terrible temptation to Polly to pose as a more perfect heroine,
+and one may not blame her if she did not rise entirely superior to it.
+Her previous belief, that the head of the accomplice at the opening of
+the garden was that of a GHOST, she now felt was certainly in the way,
+as was also her conduct to Starbuck, whom she believed to be equally
+frightened, and whom she never once suspected! So she said, with a
+certain lofty simplicity, that there were SOME THINGS which she really
+did not care to talk about, and Larry and her father left her that night
+with the firm conviction that the rascal Starbuck had tried to tempt her
+to fly with him and his riches, and had been crushingly foiled. Polly
+never denied this, and once, in later days, when admiringly taxed with
+it by Larry, she admitted with dove-like simplicity that she MAY have
+been too foolishly polite to her father's guest for the sake of her
+father's hotel.
+
+However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a new
+discovery and working of the "old gold ledge" at Buena Vista! As the
+three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was accepted in
+the neighborhood as the result of careful examination and prospecting on
+the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner Larry Hawkins. And when
+the latter gentleman afterwards boldly proposed to Polly Swinger, she
+mischievously declared that she accepted him only that the secret might
+not go "out of the family."
+
+
+
+
+LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
+
+
+It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the eastern
+slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between the sea and the
+inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century of zigzagging mules
+were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by winter rains and dried
+by summer suns during that period; the occasional ruts of heavy,
+rude, wooden wheels--long obsolete--were still preserved and visible.
+Weather-worn boulders and ledges, lying in the unclouded glare of an
+August sky, radiated a quivering heat that was intolerable, even while
+above them the masts of gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold
+southwestern trades from the unseen ocean beyond. A red, burning dust
+lay everywhere, as if the heat were slowly and visibly precipitating
+itself.
+
+The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and the
+cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the profound
+woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered emigrant wagon
+slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was travel-stained and
+worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to have reached the last
+stage of its journey and fitness. The only occupants, a man and a girl,
+appeared to be equally jaded and exhausted, with the added querulousness
+of discontent in their sallow and badly nourished faces. Their voices,
+too, were not unlike the creaking they had been pitched to overcome, and
+there was an absence of reserve and consciousness in their speech, which
+told pathetically of an equal absence of society.
+
+"It's no user talkin'! I tell ye, ye hain't got no more sense than a
+coyote! I'm sick and tired of it, doggoned if I ain't! Ye ain't no more
+use nor a hossfly,--and jest ez hinderin'! It was along o' you that we
+lost the stock at Laramie, and ef ye'd bin at all decent and takin',
+we'd hev had kempany that helped, instead of laggin' on yere alone!"
+
+"What did ye bring me for?" retorted the girl shrilly. "I might hev
+stayed with Aunt Marty. I wasn't hankerin' to come."
+
+"Bring ye for?" repeated her father contemptuously; "I reckoned ye might
+he o' some account here, whar wimmin folks is skeerce, in the way o'
+helpin',--and mebbe gettin' yer married to some likely feller. Mighty
+much chance o' that, with yer yaller face and skin and bones."
+
+"Ye can't blame me for takin' arter you, dad," she said, with a shrill
+laugh, but no other resentment of his brutality.
+
+"Ye want somebody to take arter you--with a club," he retorted angrily.
+"Ye hear! Wot's that ye're doin' now?"
+
+She had risen and walked to the tail of the wagon. "Goin' to get out and
+walk. I'm tired o' bein' jawed at."
+
+She jumped into the road. The act was neither indignant nor vengeful;
+the frequency of such scenes had blunted their sting. She was probably
+"tired" of the quarrel, and ended it rudely. Her father, however, let
+fly a Parthian arrow.
+
+"Ye needn't think I'm goin' to wait for ye, ez I hev! Ye've got to keep
+tetch with the team, or get left. And a good riddance of bad rubbidge."
+
+In reply the girl dived into the underwood beside the trail, picked a
+wild berry or two, stripped a wand of young hazel she had broken off,
+and switching it at her side, skipped along on the outskirts of the
+wood and ambled after the wagon. Seen in the full, merciless glare of a
+Californian sky, she justified her father's description; thin and bony,
+her lank frame outstripped the body of her ragged calico dress, which
+was only kept on her shoulders by straps,--possibly her father's
+cast-off braces. A boy's soft felt hat covered her head, and shadowed
+her only notable feature, a pair of large dark eyes, looking larger for
+the hollow temples which narrowed the frame in which they were set.
+
+So long as the wagon crawled up the ascent the girl knew she could
+easily keep up with it, or even distance the tired horses. She made one
+or two incursions into the wood, returning like an animal from quest of
+food, with something in her mouth, which she was tentatively chewing,
+and once only with some inedible mandrono berries, plucked solely for
+their brilliant coloring. It was very hot and singularly close; the
+higher current of air had subsided, and, looking up, a singular haze
+seemed to have taken its place between the treetops. Suddenly she heard
+a strange, rumbling sound; an odd giddiness overtook her, and she was
+obliged to clutch at a sapling to support herself; she laughed vacantly,
+though a little frightened, and looked vaguely towards the summit of the
+road; but the wagon had already disappeared. A strange feeling of
+nausea then overcame her; she spat out the leaves she had been chewing,
+disgustedly. But the sensation as quickly passed, and she once more
+sought the trail and began slowly to follow the tracks of the wagon. The
+air blew freshly, the treetops began again to rock over her head, and
+the incident was forgotten.
+
+Presently she paused; she must have missed the trail, for the wagon
+tracks had ended abruptly before a large boulder that lay across the
+mountain trail. She dipped into the woods again; here there were other
+wagon tracks that confused her. It was like her dogged, stupid father
+to miss the trail; she felt a gleam of malicious satisfaction at his
+discomfiture. Sooner or later, he would have to retrace his steps and
+virtually come back for her! She took up a position where two rough
+wheel ruts and tracks intersected each other, one of which must be
+the missing trail. She noticed, too, the broader hoof-prints of cattle
+without the following wheel ruts, and instead of traces, the long smooth
+trails made by the dragging of logs, and knew by these tokens that she
+must be near the highway or some woodman's hut or ranch. She began to be
+thirsty, and was glad, presently, when her quick, rustic ear caught
+the tinkling of water. Yet it was not so easy to discover, and she was
+getting footsore and tired again before she found it, some distance
+away, in a gully coming from a fissure in a dislocated piece of outcrop.
+It was beautifully clear, cold, and sparkling, with a slightly sweetish
+taste, yet unlike the brackish "alkali" of the plains. It refreshed and
+soothed her greatly, so much that, reclining against a tree, but where
+she would be quite visible from the trail, her eyes closed dreamily, and
+presently she slept.
+
+When she awoke, the shafts of sunlight were striking almost level into
+her eyes. She must have slept two hours. Her father had not returned;
+she knew the passage of the wagon would have awakened her. She began to
+feel strange, but not yet alarmed; it was only the uncertainty that made
+her uneasy. Had her father really gone on by some other trail? Or had he
+really hurried on and left her, as he said he would? The thought
+brought an odd excitement to her rather than any fear. A sudden sense of
+freedom, as if some galling chain had dropped from her, sent a singular
+thrill through her frame. Yet she felt confused with her independence,
+not knowing what to do with it, and momentarily dazzled with the
+possible gift.
+
+At this moment she heard voices, and the figures of two men appeared on
+the trail.
+
+They were talking earnestly, and walking as if familiar with the spot,
+yet gazing around them as if at some novelty of the aspect.
+
+"And look there," said one; "there has been some serious disturbance of
+that outcrop," pointing in the direction of the spring; "the lower
+part has distinctly subsided." He spoke with a certain authority, and
+dominance of position, and was evidently the superior, as he was the
+elder of the two, although both were roughly dressed.
+
+"Yes, it does kinder look as if it had lost its holt, like the ledge
+yonder."
+
+"And you see I am right; the movement was from east to west," continued
+the elder man.
+
+The girl could not comprehend what they said, and even thought them
+a little silly. But she advanced towards them; at which they stopped
+short, staring at her. With feminine instinct she addressed the more
+important one:--
+
+"Ye ain't passed no wagon nor team goin' on, hev ye?"
+
+"What sort of wagon?" said the man.
+
+"Em'grant wagon, two yaller hosses. Old man--my dad--drivin'." She added
+the latter kinship as a protecting influence against strangers, in spite
+of her previous independence.
+
+The men glanced at each other.
+
+"How long ago?"
+
+The girl suddenly remembered that she had slept two hours.
+
+"Sens noon," she said hesitatingly.
+
+"Since the earthquake?"
+
+"Wot's that?"
+
+The man came impatiently towards her. "How did you come here?"
+
+"Got outer the wagon to walk. I reckon dad missed the trail, and hez got
+off somewhere where I can't find him."
+
+"What trail was he on,--where was he going?"
+
+"Sank Hozay,* I reckon. He was goin' up the grade--side o' the hill; he
+must hev turned off where there's a big rock hangin' over."
+
+     * San Jose.
+
+"Did you SEE him turn off?"
+
+"No."
+
+The second man, who was in hearing distance, had turned away, and was
+ostentatiously examining the sky and the treetops; the man who had
+spoken to her joined him, and they said something in a low voice. They
+turned again and came slowly towards her. She, from some obscure sense
+of imitation, stared at the treetops and the sky as the second man had
+done. But the first man now laid his hand kindly on her shoulder and
+said, "Sit down."
+
+Then they told her there had been an earthquake so strong that it had
+thrown down a part of the hillside, including the wagon trail. That a
+wagon team and driver, such as she had described, had been carried down
+with it, crushed to fragments, and buried under a hundred feet of rock
+in the gulch below. A party had gone down to examine, but it would be
+weeks perhaps before they found it, and she must be prepared for the
+worst. She looked at them vaguely and with tearless eyes.
+
+"Then ye reckon dad's dead?"
+
+"We fear it."
+
+"Then wot's a-goin' to become o' me?" she said simply.
+
+They glanced again at each other. "Have you no friends in California?"
+said the elder man.
+
+"Nary one."
+
+"What was your father going to do?"
+
+"Dunno. I reckon HE didn't either."
+
+"You may stay here for the present," said the elder man meditatively.
+"Can you milk?"
+
+The girl nodded. "And I suppose you know something about looking after
+stock?" he continued.
+
+The girl remembered that her father thought she didn't, but this was no
+time for criticism, and she again nodded.
+
+"Come with me," said the older man, rising. "I suppose," he added,
+glancing at her ragged frock, "everything you have is in the wagon."
+
+She nodded, adding with the same cold naivete, "It ain't much!"
+
+They walked on, the girl following; at times straying furtively on
+either side, as if meditating an escape in the woods,--which indeed
+had once or twice been vaguely in her thoughts,--but chiefly to avoid
+further questioning and not to hear what the men said to each other. For
+they were evidently speaking of her, and she could not help hearing
+the younger repeat her words, "Wot's agoin' to become o' me?" with
+considerable amusement, and the addition: "She'll take care of herself,
+you bet! I call that remark o' hers the richest thing out."
+
+"And I call the state of things that provoked it--monstrous!" said the
+elder man grimly. "You don't know the lives of these people."
+
+Presently they came to an open clearing in the forest, yet so incomplete
+that many of the felled trees, partly lopped of their boughs, still
+lay where they had fallen. There was a cabin or dwelling of unplaned,
+unpainted boards; very simple in structure, yet made in a workmanlike
+fashion, quite unlike the usual log cabin she had seen. This made her
+think that the elder man was a "towny," and not a frontiersman like the
+other.
+
+As they approached the cabin the elder man stopped, and turning to her,
+said:--
+
+"Do you know Indians?"
+
+The girl started, and then recovering herself with a quick laugh:
+"G'lang!--there ain't any Injins here!"
+
+"Not the kind YOU mean; these are very peaceful. There's a squaw here
+whom you will"--he stopped, hesitated as he looked critically at the
+girl, and then corrected himself--"who will help you."
+
+He pushed open the cabin door and showed an interior, equally simple but
+well joined and fitted,--a marvel of neatness and finish to the frontier
+girl's eye. There were shelves and cupboards and other conveniences, yet
+with no ostentation of refinement to frighten her rustic sensibilities.
+
+Then he pushed open another door leading into a shed and called "Waya."
+A stout, undersized Indian woman, fitted with a coarse cotton gown, but
+cleaner and more presentable than the girl's one frock, appeared in the
+doorway. "This is Waya, who attends to the cooking and cleaning," he
+said; "and by the way, what is your name?"
+
+"Libby Jones."
+
+He took a small memorandum book and a "stub" of pencil from his pocket.
+"Elizabeth Jones," he said, writing it down. The girl interposed a long
+red hand.
+
+"No," she interrupted sharply, "not Elizabeth, but Libby, short for
+Lib'rty."
+
+"Liberty?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Liberty Jones, then. Well, Waya, this is Miss Jones, who will look
+after the cows and calves--and the dairy." Then glancing at her torn
+dress, he added: "You'll find some clean things in there, until I can
+send up something from San Jose. Waya will show you."
+
+Without further speech he turned away with the other man. When they were
+some distance from the cabin, the younger remarked:--
+
+"More like a boy than a girl, ain't she?"
+
+"So much the better for her work," returned the elder grimly.
+
+"I reckon! I was only thinkin' she didn't han'some much either as a boy
+or girl, eh, doctor?" he pursued.
+
+"Well! as THAT won't make much difference to the cows, calves, or the
+dairy, it needn't trouble US," returned the doctor dryly. But here a
+sudden outburst of laughter from the cabin made them both turn in that
+direction. They were in time to see Liberty Jones dancing out of the
+cabin door in a large cotton pinafore, evidently belonging to the
+squaw, who was following her with half-laughing, half-frightened
+expostulations. The two men stopped and gazed at the spectacle.
+
+"Don't seem to be takin' the old man's death very pow'fully," said the
+younger, with a laugh.
+
+"Quite as much as he deserved, I daresay," said the doctor curtly. "If
+the accident had happened to HER, he would have whined and whimpered to
+us for the sake of getting something, but have been as much relieved,
+you may be certain. SHE'S too young and too natural to be a hypocrite
+yet."
+
+Suddenly the laughter ceased and Liberty Jones's voice arose, shrill
+but masterful: "Thar, that'll do! Quit now! You jest get back to your
+scrubbin'--d'ye hear? I'm boss o' this shanty, you bet!"
+
+The doctor turned with a grim smile to his companion. "That's the only
+thing that bothered me, and I've been waiting for. She's settled it.
+She'll do. Come."
+
+They turned away briskly through the wood. At the end of half an hour's
+walk they found the team that had brought them there in waiting, and
+drove towards San Jose. It was nearly ten miles before they passed
+another habitation or trace of clearing. And by this time night had
+fallen upon the cabin they had left, and upon the newly made orphan and
+her Indian companion, alone and contented in that trackless solitude.
+
+*****
+
+Liberty Jones had been a year at the cabin. In that time she had learned
+that her employer's name was Doctor Ruysdael, that he had a lucrative
+practice in San Jose, but had also "taken up" a league or two of wild
+forest land in the Santa Cruz range, which he preserved and held after
+a fashion of his own, which gave him the reputation of being a "crank"
+among the very few neighbors his vast possessions permitted, and the
+equally few friends his singular tastes allowed him. It was believed
+that a man owning such an enormous quantity of timber land, who should
+refuse to set up a sawmill and absolutely forbid the felling of trees;
+who should decline to connect it with the highway to Santa Cruz, and
+close it against improvement and speculation, had given sufficient
+evidence of his insanity; but when to this was added the rumor that he
+himself was not only devoid of the human instinct of hunting the wild
+animals with which his domain abounded, but that he held it so sacred to
+their use as to forbid the firing of a gun within his limits, and that
+these restrictions were further preserved and "policed" by the scattered
+remnants of a band of aborigines,--known as "digger Injins,"--it was
+seriously hinted that his eccentricity had acquired a political and
+moral significance, and demanded legislative interference. But the
+doctor was a rich man, a necessity to his patients, a good marksman,
+and, it was rumored, did not include his fellow men among the animals he
+had a distaste for killing.
+
+Of all this, however, Liberty knew little and cared less. The solitude
+appealed to her sense of freedom; she did not "hanker" after a society
+she had never known. At the end of the first week, when the doctor
+communicated to her briefly, by letter, the convincing proofs of the
+death of her father and his entombment beneath the sunken cliff, she
+accepted the fact without comment or apparent emotion. Two months
+later, when her only surviving relative, "Aunt Marty," of Missouri,
+acknowledged the news--communicated by Doctor Ruysdael--with Scriptural
+quotations and the cheerful hope that it "would be a lesson to her"
+and she would "profit in her new place," she left her aunt's letter
+unanswered.
+
+She looked after the cows and calves with an interest that was almost
+possessory, patronized and played with the squaw,--yet made her feel
+her inferiority,--and moved among the peaceful aborigines with
+the domination of a white woman and a superior. She tolerated the
+half-monthly visits of "Jim Hoskins," the young companion of the doctor,
+who she learned was the doctor's factor and overseer of the property,
+who lived seven miles away on an agricultural clearing, and whose
+control of her actions was evidently limited by the doctor,--for the
+doctor's sake alone. Nor was Mr. Hoskins inclined to exceed those
+limits. He looked upon her as something abnormal,--a "crank" as
+remarkable in her way as her patron was in his, neuter of sex and vague
+of race, and he simply restricted his supervision to the bringing
+and taking of messages. She remained sole queen of the domain. A rare
+straggler from the main road, penetrating this seclusion, might have
+scarcely distinguished her from Waya, in her coarse cotton gown and
+slouched hat, except for the free stride which contrasted with her
+companion's waddle. Once, in following an estrayed calf, she had
+crossed the highway and been saluted by a passing teamster in the digger
+dialect; yet the mistake left no sting in her memory. And, like the
+digger, she shrank from that civilization which had only proved a hard
+taskmaster.
+
+The sole touch of human interest she had in her surroundings was in the
+rare visits of the doctor and his brief but sincere commendation of
+her rude and rustic work. It is possible that the strange, middle-aged,
+gray-haired, intellectual man, whose very language was at times
+mysterious and unintelligible to her, and whose suggestion of power awed
+her, might have touched some untried filial chord in her being. Although
+she felt that, save for absolute freedom, she was little more to him
+than she had been to her father, yet he had never told her she had
+"no sense," that she was "a hindrance," and he had even praised her
+performance of her duties. Eagerly as she looked for his coming, in
+his actual presence she felt a singular uneasiness of which she was not
+entirely ashamed, and if she was relieved at his departure, it none
+the less left her to a delightful memory of him, a warm sense of his
+approval, and a fierce ambition to be worthy of it, for which she would
+have sacrificed herself or the other miserable retainers about her, as a
+matter of course. She had driven Waya and the other squaws far along
+the sparse tableland pasture in search of missing stock; she herself
+had lain out all night on the rocks beside an ailing heifer. Yet, while
+satisfied to earn his praise for the performance of her duty, for some
+feminine reason she thought more frequently of a casual remark he had
+made on his last visit: "You are stronger and more healthy in this
+air," he had said, looking critically into her face. "We have got that
+abominable alkali out of your system, and wholesome food will do the
+rest." She was not sure she had quite understood him, but she remembered
+that she had felt her face grow hot when he spoke,--perhaps because she
+had not understood him.
+
+His next visit was a day or two delayed, and in her anxiety she had
+ventured as far as the highway to earnestly watch for his coming. From
+her hiding-place in the underwood she could see the team and Jim Hoskins
+already waiting for him. Presently she saw him drive up to the trail
+in a carryall with a party of ladies and gentlemen. He alighted, bade
+"Good-by" to the party, and the team turned to retrace its course. But
+in that single moment she had been struck and bewildered by what
+seemed to her the dazzlingly beautiful apparel of the women, and their
+prettiness. She felt a sudden consciousness of her own coarse, shapeless
+calico gown, her straggling hair, and her felt hat, and a revulsion
+of feeling seized her. She crept like a wounded animal out of the
+underwood, and then ran swiftly and almost fiercely back towards the
+cabin. She ran so fast that for a time she almost kept pace with the
+doctor and Hoskins in the wagon on the distant trail. Then she dived
+into the underwood again, and making a short cut through the
+forest, came at the end of two hours within hailing distance of the
+cabin,--footsore and exhausted, in spite of the strange excitement that
+had driven her back. Here she thought she heard voices--his voice
+among the rest--calling her, but the same singular revulsion of feeling
+hurried her vaguely on again, even while she experienced a foolish
+savage delight in not answering the summons. In this erratic wandering
+she came upon the spring she had found on her first entrance in the
+forest a year ago, and drank feverishly a second time at its trickling
+source. She could see that since her first visit it had worn a great
+hollow below the tree roots and now formed a shining, placid pool. As
+she stooped to look at it, she suddenly observed that it reflected her
+whole figure as in a cruel mirror,--her slouched hat and loosened
+hair, her coarse and shapeless gown, her hollow cheeks and dry yellow
+skin,--in all their hopeless, uncompromising details. She uttered a
+quick, angry, half-reproachful cry, and turned again to fly. But she had
+not gone far before she came upon the hurrying figures and anxious faces
+of the doctor and Hoskins. She stopped, trembling and irresolute.
+
+"Ah," said the doctor, in a tone of frank relief. "Here you are! I was
+getting worried about you. Waya said you had been gone since morning!"
+He stopped and looked at her attentively. "Is anything the matter?"
+
+His evident concern sent a warm glow over her chilly frame, and yet the
+strange sensation remained. "No--no!" she stammered.
+
+Doctor Ruysdael turned to Hoskins. "Go back and tell Waya I've found
+her."
+
+Libby felt that the doctor only wanted to get rid of his companion, and
+became awed again.
+
+"Has anybody been bothering you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Have the diggers frightened you?"
+
+"No"--with a gesture of contempt.
+
+"Have you and Waya quarreled?"
+
+"Nary"--with a faint, tremulous smile.
+
+He still stared at her, and then dropped his blue eyes musingly. "Are
+you lonely here? Would you rather go to San Jose?"
+
+Like a flash the figures of the two smartly dressed women started up
+before her again, with every detail of their fresh and wholesome finery
+as cruelly distinct as had been her own shapeless ugliness in the mirror
+of the spring. "No! NO!" she broke out vehemently and passionately.
+"Never!"
+
+He smiled gently. "Look here! I'll send you up some books. You
+read--don't you?" She nodded quickly. "Some magazines and papers. Odd I
+never thought of it before," he added half musingly. "Come along to the
+cabin. And," he stopped again and said decisively, "the next time you
+want anything, don't wait for me to come, but write."
+
+A few days after he left she received a package of books,--an odd
+collection of novels, magazines, and illustrated journals of the period.
+She received them eagerly as an evidence of his concern for her, but it
+is to be feared that her youthful nature found little satisfaction in
+the gratification of fancy. Many of the people she read of were strange
+to her; many of the incidents related seemed to her mere lies; some
+tales which treated of people in her own sphere she found profoundly
+uninteresting. In one of the cheaper magazines she chanced upon a
+fashion plate; she glanced eagerly through all the others for a like
+revelation until she got a dozen together, when she promptly relegated
+the remaining literature to a corner and oblivion. The text accompanying
+the plates was in a jargon not always clear, but her instinct supplied
+the rest. She dispatched by Hoskins a note to Doctor Ruysdael: "Please
+send me some brite kalikers and things for sewing. You told me to ask."
+A few days later brought the response in a good-sized parcel.
+
+Yet this did not keep her from her care of the stock nor her rambles in
+the forest; she was quick to utilize her rediscovery of the spring for
+watering the cattle; it was not so far afield as the half-dried creek in
+the canyon, and was a quiet sylvan spot. She ate her frugal midday meal
+there and drank of its waters, and, secure in her seclusion, bathed
+there and made her rude toilet when the cows were driven home. But she
+did not again look into its mirrored surface when it was tranquil!
+
+And so a month passed. But when Doctor Ruysdael was again due at the
+cabin, a letter was brought by Hoskins, with the news that he was called
+away on professional business down the coast, and could not come until
+two weeks later. In the disappointment that overcame her, she did not at
+first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression,
+which was really one of undisguised admiration. Never having seen this
+before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some
+vague "larking" or jocularity, for which she was in no mood.
+
+"Say, Libby! you're gettin' to be a right smart-lookin' gal. Seems to
+agree with ye up here," said Hoskins with an awkward laugh. "Darned ef
+ye ain't lookin' awful purty!"
+
+"G'long!" said Liberty Jones, more than ever convinced of his badinage.
+
+"Fact," said Hoskins energetically. "Why, Doc would tell ye so, too. See
+ef he don't!"
+
+At this Liberty Jones felt her face grow hot. "You jess get!" she said,
+turning away in as much embarrassment as anger. Yet he hovered near
+her with awkward attentions that pleased while it still angered her.
+He offered to go with her to look up the cows; she flatly declined, yet
+with a strange satisfaction in his evident embarrassment. This may have
+lent some animation to her face, for he drew a long breath and said:--
+
+"Don't go pertendin' ye don't know yer purty. Say, let me and you walk
+a bit and have a talk together." But Libby had another idea in her mind
+and curtly dismissed him. Then she ran swiftly to the spring, for the
+words "The Doc will tell ye so, too" were ringing in her ears. The
+doctor who came with the two beautifully dressed women! HE--would tell
+her she was pretty! She had not dared to look at herself in that crystal
+mirror since that dreadful day two months ago. She would now.
+
+It was a pretty place in the cool shade of the giant trees, and the
+hoof-marks of cattle drinking from the run beneath the pool had not
+disturbed the margin of that tranquil sylvan basin. For a moment she
+stood tremulous and uncertain, and then going up to the shining mirror,
+dropped on her knees before it with her thin red hands clasped on her
+lap. Unconsciously she had taken the attitude of prayer; perhaps there
+was something like it in her mind.
+
+And then the light glanced full on the figure that she saw there!
+
+It fell on a full oval face and throat guileless of fleck or stain,
+smooth as a child's and glowing with health; on large dark eyes, no
+longer sunk in their orbits, but filled with an eager, happy light; on
+bared arms now shapely in contour and cushioned with firm flesh; on a
+dazzling smile, the like of which had never been on the face of Liberty
+Jones before!
+
+She rose to her feet, and yet lingered as if loath to part from this
+delightful vision. Then a fear overcame her that it was some trick of
+the water, and she sped swiftly back to the house to consult the little
+mirror which hung in her sleeping-room, but which she had never glanced
+at since the momentous day of the spring. She took it shyly into the
+sunshine, and found that it corroborated the reflection of the spring.
+That night she worked until late at the calico Doctor Ruysdael had sent
+her, and went to bed happy. The next day brought her Hoskins again with
+a feeble excuse of inquiring if she had a letter for the doctor, and
+she was surprised to find that he was reinforced by a stranger from
+Hoskins's farm, who was equally awkward and vaguely admiring. But the
+appearance of the TWO men produced a singular phase in her impressions
+and experience. She was no longer indignant at Hoskins, but she found
+relief in accepting the compliments of the stranger in preference,
+and felt a delight in Hoskins's discomfiture. Waya, promoted to
+the burlesque of a chaperone, grinned with infinite delight and
+understanding.
+
+When at last the day came for the doctor's arrival, he was duly met by
+Hoskins, and as duly informed by that impressible subordinate of the
+great change in Liberty's appearance. But the doctor was far from being
+equally impressed with his factor's story, and indeed showed much more
+interest in the appearance of the stock which they met along the road.
+Once the doctor got out of the wagon to inspect a cow, and particularly
+the coat of a rough draught horse that had been turned out and put under
+Liberty's care. "His skin is like velvet," said the doctor. "The girl
+evidently understands stock, and knows how to keep them in condition."
+
+"I reckon she's beginning to understand herself, too," said Hoskins.
+"Golly! wait till ye see HER."
+
+The doctor DID see her, but with what feelings he did not as frankly
+express. She was not at the cabin when they arrived, but presently
+appeared from the direction of the spring where, for reasons of her
+own, she had evidently made her toilet. Doctor Ruysdael was astounded;
+Hoskins's praise was not exaggerated; and there was an added charm
+that Hoskins was not prepared for. She had put on a gown of her own
+making,--the secret toil of many a long night,--amateurishly fashioned
+from some cheap yellow calico the doctor had sent her, yet fitting her
+wonderfully, and showing every curve of her graceful figure. Unaccented
+by a corset,--an article she had never known,--even the lines of the
+stiff, unyielding calico had a fashion that was nymph-like and suited
+her unfettered limbs. Doctor Ruysdael was profoundly moved. Though a
+philosopher, he was practical. He found himself suddenly confronted not
+only by a beautiful girl, but a problem! It was impossible to keep
+the existence of this woodland nymph from the knowledge of his
+distant neighbors; it was equally impossible for him to assume the
+responsibility of keeping a goddess like this in her present position.
+He had noticed her previous improvement, but had never dreamed that pure
+and wholesome living could in two months work such a miracle. And he
+was to a certain degree responsible, HE had created her,--a beautiful
+Frankenstein, whose lustrous, appealing eyes were even now menacing his
+security and position.
+
+Perhaps she saw trouble and perplexity in the face where she had
+expected admiration and pleasure, for a slight chill went over her as
+he quickly praised the appearance of the stock and spoke of her own
+improvement. But when they were alone, he turned to her abruptly.
+
+"You said you had no wish to go to San Jose?"
+
+"No." Yet she was conscious that her greatest objection had been
+removed, and she colored faintly.
+
+"Listen to me," he said dryly. "You deserve a better position than
+this,--a better home and surroundings than you have here. You are older,
+too,--a woman almost,--and you must look ahead."
+
+A look of mingled fright, reproach, and appeal came into her eloquent
+face. "Yer wantin' to send me away?" she stammered.
+
+"No," he said frankly. "It is you who are GROWING away. This is no
+longer the place for you."
+
+"But I want to stay. I don't wanter go. I am--I WAS happy here."
+
+"But I'm thinking of giving up this place. It takes up too much of my
+time. You must be provided"--
+
+"YOU are going away?" she said passionately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Take me with you. I'll go anywhere!--to San Jose---wherever you go.
+Don't turn me off as dad did, for I'll foller you as I never followed
+dad. I'll go with you--or I'll die!"
+
+There was neither fear nor shame in her words; it was the outspoken
+instinct of the animal he had been rearing; he was convinced and
+appalled by it.
+
+"I am returning to San Jose at once," he said gravely. "You shall go
+with me--FOR THE PRESENT! Get yourself ready!"
+
+He took her to San Jose, and temporarily to the house of a patient,--a
+widow lady,--while he tried, alone, to grapple with the problem that now
+confronted him. But that problem became more complicated at the end of
+the third day, by Liberty Jones falling suddenly and alarmingly ill.
+The symptoms were so grave that the doctor, in his anxiety, called in
+a brother physician in consultation. When the examination was over, the
+two men withdrew and stared at each other.
+
+"Of course there is no doubt that the symptoms all point to slow
+arsenical poisoning," said the consulting doctor.
+
+"Yes," said Ruysdael quickly, "yet it is utterly inexplicable, both as
+to motive and opportunity."
+
+"Humph!" said the other grimly, "young ladies take arsenic in minute
+doses to improve the complexion and promote tissue, forgetting that the
+effects are cumulative when they stop suddenly. Your young friend has
+'sworn off' too quickly."
+
+"But it is impossible," said Doctor Ruysdael impatiently. "She is a mere
+child--a country girl--ignorant of such habits."
+
+"Humph! the peasants in the Tyrol try it on themselves after noticing
+the effect on the coats of cattle."
+
+Doctor Ruysdael started. A recollection of the sleek draught horse
+flashed upon him. He rose and hastily re-entered the patient's room. In
+a few moments he returned. "Do you think I could remove her at once to
+the mountains?" he said gravely.
+
+"Yes, with care and a return to graduated doses of the same poison; you
+know it's the only remedy just now," answered the other.
+
+By noon the next day the doctor and his patient had returned to the
+cabin, but Ruysdael himself carried the helpless Liberty Jones to the
+spring and deposited her gently beside it. "You may drink now," he said
+gravely.
+
+The girl did so eagerly, apparently imbibing new strength from the
+sparkling water. The doctor meanwhile coolly filled a phial from the
+same source, and made a hasty test of the contents by the aid of some
+other phials from his case. The result seemed to satisfy him. Then he
+said gravely:
+
+"And THIS is the spring you had discovered?"
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"And you and the cattle have daily used it?"
+
+She nodded again wonderingly. Then she caught his hand appealingly.
+
+"You won't send me away?"
+
+He smiled oddly as he glanced from the waters of the hill to the
+brimming eyes. "No."
+
+"No-r," tremulously, "go away--yourself?"
+
+The doctor looked this time only into her eyes. There was a tremendous
+idea in his own, which seemed in some way to have solved that dreadful
+problem.
+
+"No! We will stay here TOGETHER."
+
+*****
+
+Six months later there was a paragraph in the San Francisco press: "The
+wonderful Arsenical Spring in the Santa Cruz Mountain, known as 'Liberty
+Spring,' discovered by Doctor Ruysdael, has proved such a remarkable
+success that we understand the temporary huts for patients are to be
+shortly replaced by a magnificent Spa Hotel worthy of the spot, and the
+eligible villa sites it has brought into the market. It will be a source
+of pleasure to all to know that the beautiful nymph--a worthy successor
+to the far-famed 'Elise' of the German 'Brunnen'--who has administered
+the waters to so many grateful patients will still be in attendance,
+although it is rumored that she is shortly to become the wife of the
+distinguished discoverer."
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