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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of a Mine, 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: The Story of a Mine
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 21, 2006 [EBook #2661]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF A MINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson and An Anonymous Volunteer
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A MINE
+
+
+By Bret Har
+
+
+
+UDO BRACHVOGEL, Esq.,
+
+Whose clever translations of my writings have helped to introduce me
+to the favor of his countrymen, both here and in Germany, this little
+volume is heartily dedicated.
+
+BRET HARTE.
+
+New York, December, 1877.
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF A MINE
+
+
+
+
+PART--I.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WHO SOUGHT IT
+
+
+It was a steep trail leading over the Monterey Coast Range. Concho was
+very tired, Concho was very dusty, Concho was very much disgusted.
+To Concho's mind there was but one relief for these insurmountable
+difficulties, and that lay in a leathern bottle slung over the machillas
+of his saddle. Concho raised the bottle to his lips, took a long
+draught, made a wry face, and ejaculated:
+
+"Carajo!"
+
+It appeared that the bottle did not contain aguardiente, but had lately
+been filled in a tavern near Tres Pinos by an Irishman who sold had
+American whisky under that pleasing Castilian title. Nevertheless Concho
+had already nearly emptied the bottle, and it fell back against the
+saddle as yellow and flaccid as his own cheeks. Thus reinforced Concho
+turned to look at the valley behind him, from which he had climbed since
+noon. It was a sterile waste bordered here and there by arable fringes
+and valdas of meadow land, but in the main, dusty, dry, and forbidding.
+His eye rested for a moment on a low white cloud line on the eastern
+horizon, but so mocking and unsubstantial that it seemed to come and go
+as he gazed. Concho struck his forehead and winked his hot eyelids. Was
+it the Sierras or the cursed American whisky?
+
+Again he recommenced the ascent. At times the half-worn, half-visible
+trail became utterly lost in the bare black outcrop of the ridge, but
+his sagacious mule soon found it again, until, stepping upon a loose
+boulder, she slipped and fell. In vain Concho tried to lift her from
+out the ruin of camp kettles, prospecting pans, and picks; she
+remained quietly recumbent, occasionally raising her head as if to
+contemplatively glance over the arid plain below. Then he had recourse
+to useless blows. Then he essayed profanity of a secular kind, such as
+"Assassin," "Thief," "Beast with a pig's head," "Food for the Bull's
+Horns," but with no effect.
+
+Then he had recourse to the curse ecclesiastic:
+
+"Ah, Judas Iscariot! is it thus, renegade and traitor, thou leavest
+me, thy master, a league from camp and supper waiting? Stealer of the
+Sacrament, get up!"
+
+Still no effect. Concho began to feel uneasy; never before had a mule of
+pious lineage failed to respond to this kind of exhortation. He made one
+more desperate attempt:
+
+"Ah, defiler of the altar! lie not there! Look!" he threw his hand into
+the air, extending the fingers suddenly. "Behold, fiend! I exorcise
+thee! Ha! tremblest! Look but a little now,--see! Apostate!
+I--I--excommunicate thee,--Mula!"
+
+"What are you kicking up such a devil of row down there for?" said a
+gruff voice from the rocks above.
+
+Concho shuddered. Could it be that the devil was really going to fly
+away with his mule? He dared not look up.
+
+"Come now," continued the voice, "you just let up on that mule, you
+d----d old Greaser. Don't you see she's slipped her shoulder?"
+
+Alarmed as Concho was at the information, he could not help feeling to a
+certain extent relieved. She was lamed, but had not lost her standing as
+a good Catholic.
+
+He ventured to lift his eyes. A stranger--an Americano from his dress
+and accent--was descending the rocks toward him. He was a slight-built
+man with a dark, smooth face, that would have been quite commonplace and
+inexpressive but for his left eye, in which all that was villainous in
+him apparently centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and
+expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye
+shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and
+had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the
+upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned
+him loose to prey upon a credulous world.
+
+"What are you doing here?" said the stranger after he had assisted
+Concho in bringing the mule to her feet, and a helpless halt.
+
+"Prospecting, Senor."
+
+The stranger turned his respectable right eye toward Concho, while his
+left looked unutterable scorn and wickedness over the landscape.
+
+"Prospecting, what for?"
+
+"Gold and silver, Senor,--yet for silver most."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Of us there are four."
+
+The stranger looked around.
+
+"In camp,--a league beyond," explained the Mexican.
+
+"Found anything?"
+
+"Of this--much." Concho took from his saddle bags a lump of greyish iron
+ore, studded here and there with star points of pyrites. The stranger
+said nothing, but his eye looked a diabolical suggestion.
+
+"You are lucky, friend Greaser."
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"It IS silver."
+
+"How know you this?"
+
+"It is my business. I'm a metallurgist."
+
+"And you can say what shall be silver and what is not."
+
+"Yes,--see here!" The stranger took from his saddle bags a little
+leather case containing some half dozen phials. One, enwrapped in
+dark-blue paper, he held up to Concho.
+
+"This contains a preparation of silver."
+
+Concho's eyes sparkled, but he looked doubtingly at the stranger.
+
+"Get me some water in your pan."
+
+Concho emptied his water bottle in his prospecting pan and handed it to
+the stranger. He dipped a dried blade of grass in the bottle and then
+let a drop fall from its tip in the water. The water remained unchanged.
+
+"Now throw a little salt in the water," said the stranger.
+
+Concho did so. Instantly a white film appeared on the surface, and
+presently the whole mass assumed a milky hue.
+
+Concho crossed himself hastily, "Mother of God, it is magic!"
+
+"It is chloride of silver, you darned fool."
+
+Not content with this cheap experiment, the stranger then took Concho's
+breath away by reddening some litmus paper with the nitrate, and then
+completely knocked over the simple Mexican by restoring its color by
+dipping it in the salt water.
+
+"You shall try me this," said Concho, offering his iron ore to the
+stranger;--"you shall use the silver and the salt."
+
+"Not so fast my friend," answered the stranger; "in the first place
+this ore must be melted, and then a chip taken and put in shape like
+this,--and that is worth something, my Greaser cherub. No, sir, a man
+don't spend all his youth at Freiburg and Heidelburg to throw away his
+science gratuitously on the first Greaser he meets."
+
+"It will cost--eh--how much?" said the Mexican eagerly.
+
+"Well, I should say it would take about a hundred dollars and expenses
+to--to--find silver in that ore. But once you've got it there--you're
+all right for tons of it."
+
+"You shall have it," said the now excited Mexican. "You shall have it of
+us,--the four! You shall come to our camp and shall melt it,--and show
+the silver, and--enough! Come!" and in his feverishness he clutched the
+hand of his companion as if to lead him forth at once.
+
+"What are you going to do with your mule?" said the stranger.
+
+"True, Holy Mother,--what, indeed?"
+
+"Look yer," said the stranger, with a grim smile, "she won't stray far,
+I'll be bound. I've an extra pack mule above here; you can ride on her,
+and lead me into camp, and to-morrow come back for your beast."
+
+Poor honest Concho's heart sickened at the prospect of leaving behind
+the tired servant he had objurgated so strongly a moment before, but
+the love of gold was uppermost. "I will come back to thee, little
+one, to-morrow, a rich man. Meanwhile, wait thou here, patient
+one,--Adios!--thou smallest of mules,--Adios!"
+
+And, seizing the stranger's hand, he clambered up the rocky ledge until
+they reached the summit. Then the stranger turned and gave one sweep of
+his malevolent eye over the valley.
+
+Wherefore, in after years, when their story was related, with the
+devotion of true Catholic pioneers, they named the mountain "La Canada
+de la Visitacion del Diablo," "The Gulch of the Visitation of the
+Devil," the same being now the boundary lines of one of the famous
+Mexican land grants.
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+WHO FOUND IT
+
+
+Concho was so impatient to reach the camp and deliver his good news to
+his companions that more than once the stranger was obliged to command
+him to slacken his pace. "Is it not enough, you infernal Greaser, that
+you lame your own mule, but you must try your hand on mine? Or am I to
+put Jinny down among the expenses?" he added with a grin and a slight
+lifting of his baleful eyelid.
+
+When they had ridden a mile along the ridge, they began to descend again
+toward the valley. Vegetation now sparingly bordered the trail, clumps
+of chemisal, an occasional manzanita bush, and one or two dwarfed
+"buckeyes" rooted their way between the interstices of the black-gray
+rock. Now and then, in crossing some dry gully, worn by the overflow of
+winter torrents from above, the grayish rock gloom was relieved by dull
+red and brown masses of color, and almost every overhanging rock bore
+the mark of a miner's pick. Presently, as they rounded the curving flank
+of the mountain, from a rocky bench below them, a thin ghost-like
+stream of smoke seemed to be steadily drawn by invisible hands into
+the invisible ether. "It is the camp," said Concho, gleefully; "I
+will myself forward to prepare them for the stranger," and before his
+companion could detain him, he had disappeared at a sharp canter around
+the curve of the trail.
+
+Left to himself, the stranger took a more leisurely pace, which left him
+ample time for reflection. Scamp as he was, there was something in the
+simple credulity of poor Concho that made him uneasy. Not that his moral
+consciousness was touched, but he feared that Concho's companions might,
+knowing Concho's simplicity, instantly suspect him of trading upon it.
+He rode on in a deep study. Was he reviewing his past life? A vagabond
+by birth and education, a swindler by profession, an outcast by
+reputation, without absolutely turning his back upon respectability, he
+had trembled on the perilous edge of criminality ever since his boyhood.
+He did not scruple to cheat these Mexicans,--they were a degraded
+race,--and for a moment he felt almost an accredited agent of
+progress and civilization. We never really understand the meaning of
+enlightenment until we begin to use it aggressively.
+
+A few paces further on four figures appeared in the now gathering
+darkness of the trail. The stranger quickly recognized the beaming smile
+of Concho, foremost of the party. A quick glance at the faces of the
+others satisfied him that while they lacked Concho's good humor, they
+certainly did not surpass him in intellect. "Pedro" was a stout vaquero.
+"Manuel" was a slim half-breed and ex-convert of the Mission of San
+Carmel, and "Miguel" a recent butcher of Monterey. Under the benign
+influences of Concho that suspicion with which the ignorant regard
+strangers died away, and the whole party escorted the stranger--who had
+given his name as Mr. Joseph Wiles--to their camp-fire. So anxious were
+they to begin their experiments that even the instincts of hospitality
+were forgotten, and it was not until Mr. Wiles--now known as "Don
+Jose"--sharply reminded them that he wanted some "grub," that they came
+to their senses. When the frugal meal of tortillas, frijoles, salt pork,
+and chocolate was over, an oven was built of the dark-red rock brought
+from the ledge before them, and an earthenware jar, glazed by some
+peculiar local process, tightly fitted over it, and packed with clay and
+sods. A fire was speedily built of pine boughs continually brought from
+a wooded ravine below, and in a few moments the furnace was in full
+blast. Mr. Wiles did not participate in these active preparations,
+except to give occasional directions between his teeth, which were
+contemplatively fixed over a clay pipe as he lay comfortably on his
+back on the ground. Whatever enjoyment the rascal may have had in their
+useless labors he did not show it, but it was observed that his left
+eye often followed the broad figure of the ex-vaquero, Pedro, and often
+dwelt on that worthy's beetling brows and half-savage face. Meeting that
+baleful glance once, Pedro growled out an oath, but could not resist a
+hideous fascination that caused him again and again to seek it.
+
+The scene was weird enough without Wiles's eye to add to its wild
+picturesqueness. The mountain towered above,--a heavy Rembrandtish
+mass of black shadow,--sharply cut here and there against a sky so
+inconceivably remote that the world-sick soul must have despaired of
+ever reaching so far, or of climbing its steel-blue walls. The stars
+were large, keen, and brilliant, but cold and steadfast. They did not
+dance nor twinkle in their adamantine setting. The furnace fire painted
+the faces of the men an Indian red, glanced on brightly colored blanket
+and serape, but was eventually caught and absorbed in the waiting
+shadows of the black mountain, scarcely twenty feet from the furnace
+door. The low, half-sung, half-whispered foreign speech of the group,
+the roaring of the furnace, and the quick, sharp yelp of a coyote on
+the plain below were the only sounds that broke the awful silence of the
+hills.
+
+It was almost dawn when it was announced that the ore had fused. And it
+was high time, for the pot was slowly sinking into the fast-crumbling
+oven. Concho uttered a jubilant "God and Liberty," but Don Jose Wiles
+bade him be silent and bring stakes to support the pot. Then Don Jose
+bent over the seething mass. It was for a moment only. But in that
+moment this accomplished metallurgist, Mr. Joseph Wiles, had quietly
+dropped a silver half dollar into the pot!
+
+Then he charged them to keep up the fires and went to sleep--all but one
+eye.
+
+Dawn came with dull beacon fires on the near hill tops, and, far in the
+East, roses over the Sierran snow. Birds twittering in the alder fringes
+a mile below, and the creaking of wagon wheels,--the wagon itself a
+mere cloud of dust in the distant road,--were heard distinctly. Then
+the melting pot was solemnly broken by Don Jose, and the glowing
+incandescent mass turned into the road to cool.
+
+And then the metallurgist chipped a small fragment from the mass and
+pounded it, and chipped another smaller piece and pounded that, and then
+subjected it to acid, and then treated it to a salt bath which became
+at once milky,--and at last produced a white something,--mirabile
+dictu!--two cents' worth of silver!
+
+Concho shouted with joy; the rest gazed at each other doubtingly and
+distrustfully; companions in poverty, they began to diverge and suspect
+each other in prosperity. Wiles's left eye glanced ironically from the
+one to the other.
+
+"Here is the hundred dollars, Don Jose," said Pedro, handing the gold to
+Wiles with a decidedly brusque intimation that the services and presence
+of a stranger were no longer required.
+
+Wiles took the money with a gracious smile and a wink that sent Pedro's
+heart into his boots, and was turning away, when a cry from Manuel
+stopped him. "The pot,--the pot,--it has leaked! look! behold! see!"
+
+He had been cleaning away the crumbled fragments of the furnace to get
+ready for breakfast, and had disclosed a shining pool of QUICKSILVER!
+
+Wiles started, cast a rapid glance around the group, saw in a flash that
+the metal was unknown to them,--and then said quietly:
+
+"It is not silver."
+
+"Pardon, Senor, it is, and still molten." Wiles stooped and ran his
+fingers through the shining metal.
+
+"Mother of God,--what is it then?--magic?"
+
+"No, only base metal." But here, Concho, emboldened by Wiles's
+experiment, attempted to seize a handful of the glistening mass, that
+instantly broke through his fingers in a thousand tiny spherules, and
+even sent a few globules up his shirt sleeves, until he danced around in
+mingled fear and childish pleasure.
+
+"And it is not worth the taking?" queried Pedro of Wiles.
+
+Wiles's right eye and bland face were turned toward the speaker, but
+his malevolent left was glancing at the dull red-brown rock on the hill
+side.
+
+"No!"--and turning abruptly away, he proceeded to saddle his mule.
+
+Manuel, Miguel, and Pedro, left to themselves, began talking earnestly
+together, while Concho, now mindful of his crippled mule, made his way
+back to the trail where he had left her. But she was no longer there.
+Constant to her master through beatings and bullyings, she could not
+stand incivility and inattention. There are certain qualities of the sex
+that belong to all animated nature.
+
+Inconsolable, footsore, and remorseful, Concho returned to the camp
+and furnace, three miles across the rocky ridge. But what was his
+astonishment on arriving to find the place deserted of man, mule,
+and camp equipage. Concho called aloud. Only the echoing rocks grimly
+answered him. Was it a trick? Concho tried to laugh. Ah--yes--a good
+one,--a joke,--no--no--they HAD deserted him. And then poor Concho bowed
+his head to the ground, and falling on his face, cried as if his honest
+heart would break.
+
+The tempest passed in a moment; it was not Concho's nature to suffer
+long nor brood over an injury. As he raised his head again his eye
+caught the shimmer of the quicksilver,--that pool of merry antic metal
+that had so delighted him an hour before. In a few moments Concho was
+again disporting with it; chasing it here and there, rolling it in his
+palms and laughing with boy-like glee at its elusive freaks and fancies.
+"Ah, sprightly one,--skipjack,--there thou goest,--come here. This
+way,--now I have thee, little one,--come, muchacha,--come and kiss me,"
+until he had quite forgotten the defection of his companions. And even
+when he shouldered his sorry pack, he was fain to carry his playmate
+away with him in his empty leathern flask.
+
+And yet I fancy the sun looked kindly on him as he strode cheerily down
+the black mountain side, and his step was none the less free nor light
+that he carried with him neither the brilliant prospects nor the crime
+of his late comrades.
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+WHO CLAIMED IT
+
+
+The fog had already closed in on Monterey, and was now rolling, a white,
+billowy sea above, that soon shut out the blue breakers below. Once
+or twice in descending the mountain Concho had overhung the cliff and
+looked down upon the curving horse-shoe of a bay below him,--distant yet
+many miles. Earlier in the afternoon he had seen the gilt cross on the
+white-faced Mission flare in the sunlight, but now all was gone. By
+the time he reached the highway of the town it was quite dark, and he
+plunged into the first fonda at the wayside, and endeavored to forget
+his woes and his weariness in aguardiente. But Concho's head ached, and
+his back ached, and he was so generally distressed that he bethought him
+of a medico,--an American doctor,--lately come into the town, who had
+once treated Concho and his mule with apparently the same medicine, and
+after the same heroic fashion. Concho reasoned, not illogically, that if
+he were to be physicked at all he ought to get the worth of his
+money. The grotesque extravagance of life, of fruit and vegetables,
+in California was inconsistent with infinitesimal doses. In Concho's
+previous illness the doctor had given him a dozen 4 grain quinine
+powders.
+
+The following day the grateful Mexican walked into the Doctor's
+office--cured. The Doctor was gratified until, on examination, it
+appeared that to save trouble, and because his memory was poor, Concho
+had taken all the powders in one dose. The Doctor shrugged his shoulders
+and--altered his practice.
+
+"Well," said Dr. Guild, as Concho sank down exhaustedly in one of the
+Doctor's two chairs, "what now? Have you been sleeping again in the tule
+marshes, or are you upset with commissary whisky? Come, have it out."
+
+But Concho declared that the devil was in his stomach, that Judas
+Iscariot had possessed himself of his spine, that imps were in his
+forehead, and that his feet had been scourged by Pontius Pilate.
+
+"That means 'blue mass,'" said the Doctor. And gave it to him,--a bolus
+as large as a musket ball, and as heavy.
+
+Concho took it on the spot, and turned to go.
+
+"I have no money, Senor Medico."
+
+"Never mind. It's only a dollar, the price of the medicine."
+
+Concho looked guilty at having gulped down so much cash. Then he said
+timidly:
+
+"I have no money, but I have got here what is fine and jolly. It is
+yours." And he handed over the contents of the precious tin can he had
+brought with him.
+
+The Doctor took it, looked at the shivering volatile mass and said, "Why
+this is quicksilver!"
+
+Concho laughed, "Yes, very quick silver, so!" and he snapped his fingers
+to show its sprightliness.
+
+The Doctor's face grew earnest; "Where did you get this, Concho?" he
+finally asked.
+
+"It ran from the pot in the mountains beyond."
+
+The Doctor looked incredulous. Then Concho related the whole story.
+
+"Could you find that spot again?"
+
+"Madre de Dios, yes,--I have a mule there; may the devil fly away with
+her!"
+
+"And you say your comrades saw this?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"And you say they afterwards left you,--deserted you?"
+
+"They did, ingrates!"
+
+The Doctor arose and shut his office door. "Hark ye, Concho," he said,
+"that bit of medicine I gave you just now was worth a dollar, it was
+worth a dollar because the material of which it was composed was made
+from the stuff you have in that can,--quicksilver or mercury. It is one
+of the most valuable of metals, especially in a gold-mining country.
+My good fellow, if you know where to find enough of it, your fortune is
+made."
+
+Concho rose to his feet.
+
+"Tell me, was the rock you built your furnace of red?"
+
+"Si, Senor."
+
+"And brown?"
+
+"Si, Senor."
+
+"And crumbled under the heat?"
+
+"As to nothing."
+
+"And did you see much of this red rock?"
+
+"The mountain mother is in travail with it."
+
+"Are you sure that your comrades have not taken possession of the
+mountain mother?"
+
+"As how?"
+
+"By claiming its discovery under the mining laws, or by pre-emption?"
+
+"They shall not."
+
+"But how will you, single-handed, fight the four; for I doubt not your
+scientific friend has a hand in it?"
+
+"I will fight."
+
+"Yes, my Concho, but suppose I take the fight off your hands. Now,
+here's a proposition: I will get half a dozen Americanos to go in with
+you. You will have to get money to work the mine,--you will need funds.
+You shall share half with them. They will take the risk, raise the
+money, and protect you."
+
+"I see," said Concho, nodding his head and winking his eyes rapidly.
+"Bueno!"
+
+"I will return in ten minutes," said the Doctor, taking his hat.
+
+He was as good as his word. In ten minutes he returned with six original
+locaters, a board of directors, a president, secretary, and a deed of
+incorporation of the 'Blue Mass Quicksilver Mining Co.' This latter
+was a delicate compliment to the Doctor, who was popular. The President
+added to these necessary articles a revolver.
+
+"Take it," he said, handing over the weapon to Concho. "Take it; my
+horse is outside; take that, ride like h--l and hang on to the claim
+until we come!"
+
+In another moment Concho was in the saddle. Then the mining director
+lapsed into the physician.
+
+"I hardly know," said Dr. Guild, doubtfully, "if in your present
+condition you ought to travel. You have just taken a powerful medicine,"
+and the Doctor looked hypocritically concerned.
+
+"Ah,--the devil!" laughed Concho, "what is the quicksilver that is IN
+to that which is OUT? Hoopa, la Mula!" and, with a clatter of hoofs and
+jingle of spurs, was presently lost in the darkness.
+
+"You were none too soon, gentlemen," said the American Alcalde, as
+he drew up before the Doctor's door. "Another company has just been
+incorporated for the same location, I reckon."
+
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Three Mexicans,--Pedro, Manuel, and Miguel, headed by that d----d
+cock-eyed Sydney Duck, Wiles."
+
+"Are they here?"
+
+"Manuel and Miguel, only. The others are over at Tres Pinos lally-gaging
+Roscommon and trying to rope him in to pay off their whisky bills at his
+grocery."
+
+"If that's so we needn't start before sunrise, for they're sure to get
+roaring drunk."
+
+And this legitimate successor of the grave Mexican Alcaldes, having thus
+delivered his impartial opinion, rode away.
+
+Meanwhile, Concho the redoubtable, Concho the fortunate, spared neither
+riata nor spur. The way was dark, the trail obscure and at times
+even dangerous, and Concho, familiar as he was with these mountain
+fastnesses, often regretted his sure-footed Francisquita. "Care not,
+O Concho," he would say to himself, "'tis but a little while, only a
+little while, and thou shalt have another Francisquita to bless thee.
+Eh, skipjack, there was a fine music to thy dancing. A dollar for an
+ounce,--'tis as good as silver, and merrier." Yet for all his good
+spirits he kept a sharp lookout at certain bends of the mountain trail;
+not for assassins or brigands, for Concho was physically courageous, but
+for the Evil One, who, in various forms, was said to lurk in the Santa
+Cruz Range, to the great discomfort of all true Catholics. He recalled
+the incident of Ignacio, a muleteer of the Franciscan Friars, who,
+stopping at the Angelus to repeat the Credo, saw Luzbel plainly in the
+likeness of a monstrous grizzly bear, mocking him by sitting on his
+haunches and lifting his paws, clasped together, as if in prayer.
+Nevertheless, with one hand grasping his reins and his rosary, and the
+other clutching his whisky flask and revolver, he fared on so rapidly
+that he reached the summit as the earlier streaks of dawn were outlining
+the far-off Sierran peaks. Tethering his horse on a strip of tableland,
+he descended cautiously afoot until he reached the bench, the wall of
+red rock and the crumbled and dismantled furnace. It was as he had left
+it that morning; there was no trace of recent human visitation. Revolver
+in hand, Concho examined every cave, gully, and recess, peered behind
+trees, penetrated copses of buckeye and manzanita, and listened. There
+was no sound but the faint soughing of the wind over the pines below
+him. For a while he paced backward and forward with a vague sense of
+being a sentinel, but his mercurial nature soon rebelled against this
+monotony, and soon the fatigues of the day began to tell upon him.
+Recourse to his whisky flask only made him the drowsier, until at last
+he was fain to lie down and roll himself up tightly in his blanket. The
+next moment he was sound asleep.
+
+His horse neighed twice from the summit, but Concho heard him not. Then
+the brush crackled on the ledge above him, a small fragment of rock
+rolled near his feet, but he stirred not. And then two black figures
+were outlined on the crags beyond.
+
+"St-t-t!" whispered a voice. "There is one lying beside the furnace."
+The speech was Spanish, but the voice was Wiles's.
+
+The other figure crept cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked
+over. "It is Concho, the imbecile," said Pedro, contemptuously.
+
+"But if he should not be alone, or if he should waken?"
+
+"I will watch and wait. Go you and affix the notification."
+
+Wiles disappeared. Pedro began to creep down the face of the rocky
+ledge, supporting himself by chemisal and brush-wood.
+
+The next moment Pedro stood beside the unconscious man. Then he looked
+cautiously around. The figure of his companion was lost in the shadow
+of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his
+whereabouts. Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper's head,
+and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full
+upon Concho's upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the
+blanket-pinioned limbs of his victim. There was a momentary upheaval,
+a spasm, and a struggle; but the tightly-rolled blanket clung to the
+unfortunate man like cerements.
+
+There was no noise, no outcry, no sound of struggle. There was nothing
+to be seen but the peaceful, prostrate figures of the two men darkly
+outlined on the ledge. They might have been sleeping in each other's
+arms. In the black silence the stealthy tread of Wiles in the brush
+above was distinctly audible.
+
+Gradually the struggles grew fainter. Then a whisper from the crags:
+
+"I can't see you. What are you doing?"
+
+"Watching!"
+
+"Sleeps he?"
+
+"He sleeps!"
+
+"Soundly?"
+
+"Soundly."
+
+"After the manner of the dead?"
+
+"After the fashion of the dead!"
+
+The last tremor had ceased. Pedro rose as Wiles descended.
+
+"All is ready," said Wiles; "you are a witness of my placing the
+notifications?"
+
+"I am a witness."
+
+"But of this one?" pointing to Concho. "Shall we leave him here?"
+
+"A drunken imbecile,--why not?"
+
+Wiles turned his left eye on the speaker. They chanced to be standing
+nearly in the same attitude they had stood the preceding night. Pedro
+uttered a cry and an imprecation, "Carramba! Take your devil's eye from
+me! What see you? Eh,--what?"
+
+"Nothing, good Pedro," said Wiles, turning his bland right cheek to
+Pedro. The infuriated and half-frightened ex-vaquero returned the long
+knife he had half-drawn from its sheath, and growled surlily: "Go on
+then! But keep thou on that side, and I will on this." And so, side by
+side, listening, watching, distrustful of all things, but mainly of each
+other, they stole back and up into those shadows from which they might
+like evil spirits have been poetically evoked.
+
+A half hour passed, in which the east brightened, flashed, and again
+melted into gold. And then the sun came up haughtily, and a fog that
+had stolen across the summit in the night arose and fled up the mountain
+side, tearing its white robes in its guilty haste, and leaving them
+fluttering from tree and crag and scar. A thousand tiny blades, nestling
+in the crevices of rocks, nurtured in storms and rocked by the trade
+winds, stretched their wan and feeble arms toward Him; but Concho
+the strong, Concho the brave, Concho the light-hearted spake not nor
+stirred.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+WHO TOOK IT
+
+
+There was persistent neighing on the summit. Concho's horse wanted his
+breakfast.
+
+This protestation reached the ears of a party ascending the mountain
+from its western face. To one of the party it was familiar.
+
+"Why, blank it all, that's Chiquita. That d----d Mexican's lying drunk
+somewhere," said the President of the B. M. Co.
+
+"I don't like the look of this at all," said Dr. Guild, as they rode up
+beside the indignant animal. "If it had been an American, it might have
+been carelessness, but no Mexican ever forgets his beast. Drive ahead,
+boys; we may be too late."
+
+In half an hour they came in sight of the ledge below, the crumbled
+furnace, and the motionless figure of Concho, wrapped in a blanket,
+lying prone in the sunlight.
+
+"I told you so,--drunk!" said the President.
+
+The Doctor looked grave, but did not speak. They dismounted and picketed
+their horses. Then crept on all fours to the ledge above the furnace.
+There was a cry from Secretary Gibbs, "Look yer. Some fellar has been
+jumping us, boys. See these notices."
+
+There were two notices on canvas affixed to the rock, claiming the
+ground, and signed by Pedro, Manuel, Miguel, Wiles, and Roscommon.
+
+"This was done, Doctor, while your trustworthy Greaser locater,--d--n
+him,--lay there drunk. What's to be done now?"
+
+But the Doctor was making his way to the unfortunate cause of their
+defeat, lying there quite mute to their reproaches. The others followed
+him.
+
+The Doctor knelt beside Concho, unrolled him, placed his hand upon his
+wrist, his ear over his heart, and then said:
+
+"Dead."
+
+"Of course. He got medicine of you last night. This comes of your d----d
+heroic practice."
+
+But the Doctor was too much occupied to heed the speaker's raillery. He
+had peered into Concho's protuberant eye, opened his mouth, and gazed at
+the swollen tongue, and then suddenly rose to his feet.
+
+"Tear down those notices, boys, but keep them. Put up your own. Don't
+be alarmed, you will not be interfered with, for here is murder added to
+robbery."
+
+"Murder?"
+
+"Yes," said the Doctor, excitedly, "I'll take my oath on any inquest
+that this man was strangled to death. He was surprised while asleep.
+Look here." He pointed to the revolver still in Concho's stiffening
+hand, which the murdered man had instantly cocked, but could not use in
+the struggle.
+
+"That's so," said the President, "no man goes to sleep with a cocked
+revolver. What's to be done?"
+
+"Everything," said the Doctor. "This deed was committed within the last
+two hours; the body is still warm. The murderer did not come our way,
+or we should have met him on the trail. He is, if anywhere, between here
+and Tres Pinos."
+
+"Gentlemen," said the President, with a slight preparatory and half
+judicial cough, "two of you will stay here and stick! The others will
+follow me to Tres Pinos. The law has been outraged. You understand the
+Court!"
+
+By some odd influence the little group of half-cynical, half-trifling,
+and wholly reckless men had become suddenly sober, earnest citizens.
+They said, "Go on," nodded their heads, and betook themselves to their
+horses.
+
+"Had we not better wait for the inquest and swear out a warrant?" said
+the Secretary, cautiously.
+
+"How many men have we?"
+
+"Five!"
+
+"Then," said the President, summing up the Revised Statutes of the State
+of California in one strong sentence; "then we don't want no d----d
+warrant."
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+WHO HAD A LIEN ON IT
+
+
+It was high noon at Tres Pinos. The three pines from which it gained its
+name, in the dusty road and hot air, seemed to smoke from their balsamic
+spires. There was a glare from the road, a glare from the sky, a glare
+from the rocks, a glare from the white canvas roofs of the few shanties
+and cabins which made up the village. There was even a glare from the
+unpainted red-wood boards of Roscommon's grocery and tavern, and a
+tendency of the warping floor of the veranda to curl up beneath the
+feet of the intruder. A few mules, near the watering trough, had shrunk
+within the scant shadow of the corral.
+
+The grocery business of Mr. Roscommon, although adequate and sufficient
+for the village, was not exhausting nor overtaxing to the proprietor;
+the refilling of the pork and flour barrel of the average miner was the
+work of a brief hour on Saturday nights, but the daily replenishment of
+the average miner with whisky was arduous and incessant. Roscommon spent
+more time behind his bar than his grocer's counter. Add to this the fact
+that a long shed-like extension or wing bore the legend, "Cosmopolitan
+Hotel, Board or Lodging by the Day or Week. M. Roscommon," and you
+got an idea of the variety of the proprietor's functions. The "hotel,"
+however, was more directly under the charge of Mrs. Roscommon, a lady of
+thirty years, strong, truculent, and good-hearted.
+
+Mr. Roscommon had early adopted the theory that most of his customers
+were insane, and were to be alternately bullied or placated, as the case
+might be. Nothing that occurred, no extravagance of speech nor act,
+ever ruffled his equilibrium, which was as dogged and stubborn as it was
+outwardly calm. When not serving liquor, or in the interval while it was
+being drank, he was always wiping his counter with an exceedingly dirty
+towel,--or indeed anything that came handy. Miners, noticing this
+purely perfunctory habit, occasionally supplied him slily with articles
+inconsistent with their service,--fragments of their shirts and
+underclothing, flour sacking, tow, and once with a flannel petticoat
+of his wife's, stolen from the line in the back-yard. Roscommon would
+continue his wiping without looking up, but yet conscious of the
+presence of each customer. "And it's not another dhrop ye'll git, Jack
+Brown, until ye've wiped out the black score that stands agin ye."
+"And it's there ye are, darlint, and it's here's the bottle that's been
+lukin' for ye sins Saturday." "And fwhot hev you done with the last
+I sent ye, ye divil of a McCorkle, and here's me back that's bruk
+entoirely wid dipping intil the pork barl to giv ye the best sides, and
+ye spending yur last cint on a tare into Gilroy. Whist! and if it's
+fer foighting ye are, boys, there's an illigant bit of sod beyant the
+corral, and it may be meself'll come out with a shtick and be sociable."
+
+On this particular day, however, Mr. Roscommon was not in his usual
+spirits, and when the clatter of horses' hoofs before the door announced
+the approach of strangers, he absolutely ceased wiping his counter and
+looked up as Dr. Guild, the President, and Secretary of the new Company
+strode into the shop.
+
+"We are looking," said the President, "for a man by the name of Wiles,
+and three Mexicans known as Pedro, Manuel, and Miguel."
+
+"Ye are?"
+
+"We are!"
+
+"Faix, and I hope ye'll foind 'em. And if ye'll git from 'em the score
+I've got agin 'em, darlint, I'll add a blessing to it."
+
+There was a laugh at this from the bystanders, who, somehow, resented
+the intrusion of these strangers.
+
+"I fear you will find it no laughing matter, gentlemen," said Dr. Guild,
+a little stiffly, "when I tell you that a murder has been committed, and
+the men I am seeking within an hour of that murder put up that notice
+signed by their names," and Dr. Guild displayed the paper.
+
+There was a breathless silence among the crowd as they eagerly pressed
+around the Doctor. Only Roscommon kept on wiping his counter.
+
+"You will observe, gentlemen, that the name of Roscommon also appears on
+this paper as one of the original beaters."
+
+"And sure, darlint," said Roscommon, without looking up, "if ye've no
+better ividince agin them boys then you have forninst me, it's home ye'd
+bether be riding to wanst. For it's meself as hasn't sturred fut out of
+the store the day and noight,--more betoken as the boys I've sarved kin
+testify."
+
+"That's so, Ross, right," chorused the crowd, "We've been running the
+old man all night."
+
+"Then how comes your name on this paper?"
+
+"O murdher! will ye listen to him, boys? As if every felly that owed
+me a whisky bill didn't come to me and say, 'Ah, Misther Roscommon,' or
+'Moike,' as the case moight be, sure it's an illigant sthrike I've made
+this day, and it's meself that has put down your name as an original
+locater, and yer fortune's made, Mr. Roscommon, and will yer fill me
+up another quart for the good luck betune you and me. Ah, but ask Jack
+Brown over yar if it isn't sick that I am of his original locations."
+
+The laugh that followed this speech, and its practical application,
+convinced the party that they had blundered, that they could obtain no
+clue to the real culprits here, and that any attempt by threats would
+meet violent opposition. Nevertheless the Doctor was persistent:
+
+"When did you see these men last?"
+
+"When did I see them, is it? Bedad, what with sarvin up the liquor and
+keeping me counters dry and swate, I never see them at all."
+
+"That's so, Ross," chorused the crowd again, to whom the whole
+proceeding was delightfully farcical.
+
+"Then I can tell you, gentlemen," said the Doctor, stiffly, "that they
+were in Monterey last night, that they did not return on that trail this
+morning, and that they must have passed here at daybreak."
+
+With these words, which the Doctor regretted as soon as delivered, the
+party rode away.
+
+Mr. Roscommon resumed his service and counter wiping. But late that
+night, when the bar was closed and the last loiterer was summarily
+ejected, Mr. Roscommon, in the conjugal privacy of his chamber, produced
+a legal-looking paper. "Read it, Maggie, darlint, for it's meself never
+had the larning nor the parts."
+
+Mistress Roscommon took the paper:
+
+"Shure, it's law papers, making over some property to yis. O Moike! ye
+havn't been spekilating!"
+
+"Whist! and fwhotz that durty gray paper wid the sales and flourishes?"
+
+"Faix, it bothers me intoirely. Shure it oin't in English."
+
+"Whist! Maggie, it's a Spanish grant!"
+
+"A Spanish grant? O Moike, and what did ye giv for it?"
+
+Mr. Roscommon laid his finger beside his nose and said softly,
+"Whishky!"
+
+
+
+
+PART II.--IN THE COURTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HOW A GRANT WAS GOT FOR IT
+
+
+While the Blue Mass Company, with more zeal than discretion, were
+actively pursuing Pedro and Wiles over the road to Tres Pinos, Senors
+Miguel and Manuel were comfortably seated in a fonda at Monterey,
+smoking cigarritos and discussing their late discovery. But they were
+in no better mood than their late companions, and it appeared from their
+conversation that in an evil moment they had sold out their interest
+in the alleged silver mine to Wiles and Pedro for a few hundred
+dollars,--succumbing to what they were assured would be an active
+opposition on the part of the Americanos. The astute reader will easily
+understand that the accomplished Mr. Wiles did not inform them of its
+value as a quicksilver mine, although he was obliged to impart his
+secret to Pedro as a necessary accomplice and reckless coadjutor. That
+Pedro felt no qualms of conscience in thus betraying his two comrades
+may be inferred from his recent direct and sincere treatment of Concho,
+and that he would, if occasion offered or policy made it expedient, as
+calmly obliterate Mr. Wiles, that gentleman himself never for a moment
+doubted.
+
+"If we had waited but a little he would have given more,--this
+cock-eye!" regretted Manuel querulously.
+
+"Not a peso," said Miguel, firmly.
+
+"And why, my Miguel? Thou knowest we could have worked the mine
+ourselves."
+
+"Good, and lost even that labor. Look you, little brother. Show to me
+now the Mexican that has ever made a real of a mine in California. How
+many, eh? None! Not a one. Who owns the Mexican's mine, eh? Americanos!
+Who takes the money from the Mexican's mine? Americanos! Thou
+rememberest Briones, who spent a gold mine to make a silver one? Who
+has the lands and house of Briones? Americanos! Who has the cattle of
+Briones? Americanos! Who has the mine of Briones? Americanos! Who has
+the silver Briones never found? Americanos! Always the same! Forever!
+Ah! carramba!"
+
+Then the Evil One evidently took it into his head and horns to worry and
+toss these men--comparatively innocent as they were--still further, for
+a purpose. For presently to them appeared one Victor Garcia, whilom a
+clerk of the Ayuntamiento, who rallied them over aguardiente, and told
+them the story of the quicksilver discovery, and the two mining claims
+taken out that night by Concho and Wiles. Whereat Manuel exploded with
+profanity and burnt blue with sulphurous malediction; but Miguel, the
+recent ecclesiastic, sat livid and thoughtful.
+
+Finally came a pause in Manuel's bombardment, and something like this
+conversation took place between the cooler actors:
+
+Miguel (thoughtfully). "When was it thou didst petition for lands in the
+valley, friend Victor?"
+
+Victor (amazedly). "Never! It is a sterile waste. Am I a fool?"
+
+Miguel (softly). "Thou didst. Of thy Governor, Micheltorena. I have seen
+the application."
+
+Victor (beginning to appreciate a rodential odor). "Si! I had forgotten.
+Art thou sure it was in the valley?"
+
+Miguel (persuasively). "In the valley and up the falda."*
+
+     * Falda, or valda, i. e., that part of the skirt of a
+     woman's robe that breaks upon the ground, and is also
+     applied to the final slope of a hill, from the angle that it
+     makes upon the level plain.
+
+Victor (with decision). "Certainly. Of a verity,--the falda likewise."
+
+Miguel (eying Victor). "And yet thou hadst not the grant. Painful is
+it that it should have been burned with the destruction of the other
+archives, by the Americanos at Monterey."
+
+Victor (cautiously feeling his way). "Possiblemente."
+
+Miguel. "It might be wise to look into it."
+
+Victor (bluntly). "As why?"
+
+Miguel. "For our good and thine, friend Victor. We bring thee a
+discovery; thou bringest us thy skill, thy experience, thy government
+knowledge,--thy Custom House paper."*
+
+     * Grants, applications, and official notifications, under
+     the Spanish Government, were drawn on a stamped paper known
+     as custom House paper.
+
+Manuel (breaking in drunkenly). "But for what? We are Mexicans. Are we
+not fated? We shall lose. Who shall keep the Americanos off?"
+
+Miguel. "We shall take ONE American in! Ha! seest thou? This American
+comrade shall bribe his courts, his corregidores. After a little he
+shall supply the men who invent the machine of steam, the mill, the
+furnace, eh?"
+
+Victor. "But who is he,--not to steal?"
+
+Miguel. "He is that man of Ireland, a good Catholic, at Tres Pinos."
+
+Victor and Manuel (omnes). "Roscommon?"
+
+Miguel. "Of the same. We shall give him a share for the provisions, for
+the tools, for the aguardiente. It is of the Irish that the Americanos
+have great fear. It is of them that the votes are made,--that the
+President is chosen. It is of him that they make the Alcalde in San
+Francisco. And we are of the Church like him."
+
+They said "Bueno" altogether, and for the moment appeared to be upheld
+by a religious enthusiasm,--a joint confession of faith that meant
+death, destruction, and possibly forgery, as against the men who thought
+otherwise.
+
+This spiritual harmony did away with all practical consideration and
+doubt. "I have a little niece," said Victor, "whose work with the pen
+is marvellous. If one says to her, 'Carmen, copy me this, or the other
+one,'--even if it be copper-plate,--look you it is done, and you cannot
+know of which is the original. Madre de Dios! the other day she makes me
+a rubric* of the Governor, Pio Pico, the same, identical. Thou knowest
+her, Miguel. She asked concerning thee yesterday."
+
+     * The Spanish "rubric" is the complicated flourish attached
+     to a signature, and is as individual and characteristic as
+     the handwriting.
+
+With the embarrassment of an underbred man, Miguel tried to appear
+unconcerned, but failed dismally. Indeed, I fear that the black eyes of
+Carmen had already done their perfect and accepted work, and had partly
+induced the application for Victor's aid. He, however, dissembled so far
+as to ask:
+
+"But will she not know?"
+
+"She is a child."
+
+"But will she not talk?"
+
+"Not if I say nay, and if thou--eh, Miguel?"
+
+This bit of flattery (which, by the way, was a lie, for Victor's niece
+did not incline favorably to Miguel), had its effect. They shook hands
+over the table. "But," said Miguel, "what is to be done must be done
+now." "At the moment," said Victor, "and thou shalt see it done. Eh?
+Does it content thee? then come!"
+
+Miguel nodded to Manuel. "We will return in an hour; wait thou here."
+
+They filed out into the dark, irregular street. Fate led them to pass
+the office of Dr. Guild at the moment that Concho mounted his horse.
+The shadows concealed them from their rival, but they overheard the last
+injunctions of the President to the unlucky Concho.
+
+"Thou hearest?" said Miguel, clutching his companion's arm.
+
+"Yes," said Victor. "But let him ride, my friend; in one hour we shall
+have that that shall arrive YEARS before him," and with a complacent
+chuckle they passed unseen and unheard until, abruptly turning a corner,
+they stopped before a low adobe house.
+
+It had once been a somewhat pretentious dwelling, but had evidently
+followed the fortunes of its late owner, Don Juan Briones, who had
+offered it as a last sop to the three-headed Cerberus that guarded the
+El Refugio Plutonean treasures, and who had swallowed it in a single
+gulp. It was in very bad case. The furrows of its red-tiled roof looked
+as if they were the results of age and decrepitude. Its best room had a
+musty smell; there was the dampness of deliquescence in its slow decay,
+but the Spanish Californians were sensible architects, and its massive
+walls and partitions defied the earthquake thrill, and all the year
+round kept an even temperature within.
+
+Victor led Miguel through a low anteroom into a plainly-furnished
+chamber, where Carmen sat painting.
+
+Now Mistress Carmen was a bit of a painter, in a pretty little way, with
+all the vague longings of an artist, but without, I fear, the artist's
+steadfast soul. She recognized beauty and form as a child might, without
+understanding their meaning, and somehow failed to make them even
+interpret her woman's moods, which surely were nature's too. So she
+painted everything with this innocent lust of the eye,--flowers, birds,
+insects, landscapes, and figures,--with a joyous fidelity, but no
+particular poetry. The bird never sang to her but one song, the flowers
+or trees spake but one language, and her skies never brightened except
+in color. She came out strong on the Catholic saints, and would toss
+you up a cleanly-shaven Aloysius, sweetly destitute of expression, or
+a dropsical, lethargic Madonna that you couldn't have told from an old
+master, so bad it was. Her faculty of faithful reproduction even showed
+itself in fanciful lettering,--and latterly in the imitation of fabrics
+and signatures. Indeed, with her eye for beauty of form, she had always
+excelled in penmanship at the Convent,--an accomplishment which the good
+sisters held in great repute.
+
+In person she was petite, with a still unformed girlish figure, perhaps
+a little too flat across the back, and with possibly a too great
+tendency to a boyish stride in walking. Her brow, covered by blue-black
+hair, was low and frank and honest; her eyes, a very dark hazel, were
+not particularly large, but rather heavily freighted in their melancholy
+lids with sleeping passion; her nose was of that unimportant character
+which no man remembers; her mouth was small and straight; her teeth,
+white and regular. The whole expression of her face was piquancy that
+might be subdued by tenderness or made malevolent by anger. At present
+it was a salad in which the oil and vinegar were deftly combined.
+The astute feminine reader will of course understand that this is the
+ordinary superficial masculine criticism, and at once make up her mind
+both as to the character of the young lady and the competency of the
+critic. I only know that I rather liked her. And her functions are
+somewhat important in this veracious history.
+
+She looked up, started to her feet, leveled her black brows at the
+intruder, but, at a sign from her uncle, showed her white teeth and
+spake.
+
+It was only a sentence, and a rather common-place one at that; but if
+she could have put her voice upon her canvas, she might have retrieved
+the Garcia fortunes. For it was so musical, so tender, so sympathizing,
+so melodious, so replete with the graciousness of womanhood, that she
+seemed to have invented the language. And yet that sentence was only
+an exaggerated form of the 'How d'ye do,' whined out, doled out, lisped
+out, or shot out from the pretty mouths of my fair countrywomen.
+
+Miguel admired the paintings. He was struck particularly with a crayon
+drawing of a mule. "Mother of God, it is the mule itself! observe how it
+will not go." Then the crafty Victor broke in with, "But it is nothing
+to her writing; look, you shall tell to me which is the handwriting
+of Pio Pico;" and, from a drawer in the secretary, he drew forth two
+signatures. One was affixed to a yellowish paper, the other drawn on
+plain white foolscap. Of course Miguel took the more modern one
+with lover-like gallantry. "It is this is genuine!" Victor laughed
+triumphantly; Carmen echoed the laugh melodiously in child-like glee,
+and added, with a slight toss of her piquant head, "It is mine!" The
+best of the sex will not refuse a just and overdue compliment from
+even the man they dislike. It's the principle they're after, not the
+sentiment.
+
+But Victor was not satisfied with this proof of his niece's skill. "Say
+to her," he demanded of Miguel, "what name thou likest, and it shall be
+done before thee here." Miguel was not so much in love but he perceived
+the drift of Victor's suggestion, and remarked that the rubric of
+Governor Micheltorena was exceedingly complicated and difficult. "She
+shall do it!" responded Victor, with decision.
+
+From a file of old departmental papers the Governor's signature and that
+involved rubric, which must have cost his late Excellency many youthful
+days of anxiety, was produced and laid before Carmen.
+
+Carmen took her pen in her hand, looked at the brownish-looking
+document, and then at the virgin whiteness of the foolscap before her.
+"But," she said, pouting prettily, "I should have to first paint this
+white paper brown. And it will absorb the ink more quickly than that.
+When I painted the San Antonio of the Mission San Gabriel for Father
+Acolti, I had to put the decay in with my oils and brushes before the
+good Padre would accept it."
+
+The two scamps looked at each other. It was their supreme moment. "I
+think I have," said Victor, with assumed carelessness, "I think I have
+some of the old Custom-House paper." He produced from the secretary a
+sheet of brown paper with a stamp. "Try it on that."
+
+Carmen smiled with childish delight, tried it, and produced a marvel!
+"It is as magic," said Miguel, feigning to cross himself.
+
+Victor's role was more serious. He affected to be deeply touched, took
+the paper, folded it, and placed it in his breast. "I shall make a good
+fool of Don Jose Castro," he said; "he will declare it is the Governor's
+own signature, for he was his friend; but have a care, Carmen! that you
+spoil it not by the opening of your red lips. When he is fooled, I
+will tell him of this marvel,--this niece of mine, and he shall buy her
+pictures. Eh, little one?" and he gave her the avuncular caress, i. e.,
+a pat of the hand on either cheek, and a kiss. Miguel envied him, but
+cupidity outgeneraled Cupid, and presently the conversation flagged,
+until a convenient recollection of Victor's--that himself and
+comrade were due at the Posada del Toros at 10 o'clock--gave them the
+opportunity to retire. But not without a chance shot from Carmen. "Tell
+to me," she said, half to Victor and half to Miguel, "what has chanced
+with Concho? He was ever ready to bring to me flowers from the mountain,
+and insects and birds. Thou knowest how he would sit, oh, my uncle, and
+talk to me of the rare rocks he had seen, and the bears and the evil
+spirits, and now he comes no longer, my Concho! How is this?
+Nothing evil has befallen him, surely?" and her drooping lids closed
+half-pathetically.
+
+Miguel's jealousy took fire. "He is drunk, Senorita, doubtless, and
+has forgotten not only thee but, mayhap, his mule and pack! It is his
+custom, ha! ha!"
+
+The red died out of Carmen's ripe lips, and she shut them together with
+a snap like a steel purse. The dove had suddenly changed to a hawk; the
+child-girl into an antique virago; the spirit hitherto dimly outlined
+in her face, of some shrewish Garcia ancestress, came to the fore. She
+darted a quick look at her uncle, and then, with her little hands on her
+rigid lips, strode with two steps up to Miguel.
+
+"Possibly, O Senor Miguel Dominguez Perez (a profound courtesy here), it
+is as thou sayest. Drunkard Concho may be; but, drunk or sober, he never
+turned his back on his friend--or--(the words grated a little here)--his
+enemy."
+
+Miguel would have replied, but Victor was ready. "Fool," he said,
+pinching his arm, "'tis an old friend. And--and--the application is
+still to be filled up. Are you crazy?"
+
+But on this point Miguel was not, and with the revenge of a rival added
+to his other instincts, he permitted Victor to lead him away.
+
+On their return to the fonda, they found Master Manuel too far gone with
+aguardiente, and a general animosity to the average Americano, to be
+of any service. So they worked alone, with pen, ink, and paper, in the
+stuffy, cigarrito-clouded back room of the fonda. It was midnight, two
+hours after Concho had started, that Miguel clapped spurs to his
+horse for the village of Tres Pinos, with an application to Governor
+Micheltorena for a grant to the "Rancho of the Red Rocks" comfortably
+bestowed in his pocket.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+WHO PLEAD FOR IT
+
+
+There can be little doubt the coroner's jury of Fresno would have
+returned a verdict of "death from alcoholism," as the result of their
+inquest into the cause of Concho's death, had not Dr. Guild fought nobly
+in support of the law and his own convictions. A majority of the jury
+objected to there being any inquest at all. A sincere juryman thought
+it hard that whenever a Greaser pegged out in a sneakin' kind o' way,
+American citizens should be taken from their business to find out what
+ailed him. "S'pose he was killed," said another, "thar ain't no time
+this thirty year he weren't, so to speak, just sufferin' for it, ez his
+nat'ral right ez a Mexican." The jury at last compromised by bringing
+in a verdict of homicide against certain parties unknown. Yet it was
+understood tacitly that these unknown parties were severally Wiles and
+Pedro; Manuel, Miguel, and Roscommon proving an unmistakable alibi.
+Wiles and Pedro had fled to lower California, and Manuel, Miguel, and
+Roscommon deemed it advisable, in the then excited state of the public
+mind, to withhold the forged application and claim from the courts and
+the public comment. So that for a year after the murder of Concho and
+the flight of his assassins "The Blue Mass Mining Company" remained
+in undisturbed and actual possession of the mine, and reigned in their
+stead.
+
+But the spirit of the murdered Concho would not down any more than
+that of the murdered Banquo, and so wrought, no doubt, in a quiet,
+Concho-like way, sore trouble with the "Blue Mass Company." For a great
+Capitalist and Master of Avarice came down to the mine and found it
+fair, and taking one of the Company aside, offered to lend his name and
+a certain amount of coin for a controlling interest, accompanying the
+generous offer with a suggestion that if it were not acceded to he would
+be compelled to buy up various Mexican mines and flood the market with
+quicksilver to the great detriment of the "Blue Mass Company," which
+thoughtful suggestion, offered by a man frequently alluded to as one of
+"California's great mining princes," and as one who had "done much to
+develop the resources of the State," was not to be lightly considered;
+and so, after a cautious non-consultation with the Company, and a
+commendable secrecy, the stockholder sold out. Whereat it was speedily
+spread abroad that the great Capitalist had taken hold of "Blue Mass,"
+and the stock went up, and the other stockholders rejoiced--until the
+great Capitalist found that it was necessary to put up expensive mills,
+to employ a high salaried Superintendent, in fact, to develop the mine
+by the spending of its earnings, so that the stock quoted at 112 was
+finally saddled with an assessment of $50 per share. Another assessment
+of $50 to enable the Superintendent to proceed to Russia and Spain and
+examine into the workings of the quicksilver mines there, and also a
+general commission to the gifted and scientific Pillageman to examine
+into the various component parts of quicksilver, and report if it could
+not be manufactured from ordinary sand-stone by steam or electricity,
+speedily brought the other stockholders to their senses. It was at
+this time the good fellow "Tom," the serious-minded "Dick," and the
+speculative but fortunate "Harry," brokers of the Great Capitalist,
+found it convenient to buy up, for the Great Capitalist aforesaid, the
+various other shares at great sacrifice.
+
+I fear that I have bored my readers in thus giving the tiresome details
+of that ingenuous American pastime which my countrymen dismiss in their
+epigrammatic way as the "freezing-out process." And lest any reader
+should question the ethics of the proceeding, I beg him to remember that
+one gentleman accomplished in this art was always a sincere and direct
+opponent of the late Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler.
+
+But for once the Great Master of Avarice had not taken into sufficient
+account the avarice of others, and was suddenly and virtuously shocked
+to learn that an application for a patent for certain lands, known as
+the "Red-Rock Rancho," was about to be offered before the United
+States Land Commission. This claim covered his mining property. But
+the information came quietly and secretly, as all of the Great Master's
+information was obtained, and he took the opportunity to sell out his
+clouded title and his proprietorship to the only remaining member of
+the original "Blue Mass Company," a young fellow of pith, before
+many-tongued rumor had voiced the news far and wide. The blow was a
+heavy one to the party left in possession. Saddled by the enormous debts
+and expenses of the Great Capitalist, with a credit now further injured
+by the defection of this lucky magnate, who was admired for his skill in
+anticipating a loss, and whose relinquishment of any project meant ruin
+to it, the single-handed, impoverished possessor of the mine, whose
+title was contested, and whose reputation was yet to be made,--poor
+Biggs, first secretary and only remaining officer of the "Blue Mass
+Company," looked ruefully over his books and his last transfer, and
+sighed. But I have before intimated that he was built of good stuff, and
+that he believed in his work,--which was well,--and in himself, which
+was better; and so, having faith even as a grain of mustard seed, I
+doubt not he would have been able to remove that mountain of
+quicksilver beyond the overlapping of fraudulent grants. And, again,
+Providence--having disposed of these several scamps--raised up to him
+a friend. But that friend is of sufficient importance to this veracious
+history to deserve a paragraph to himself.
+
+The Pylades of this Orestes was known of ordinary mortals as Royal
+Thatcher. His genealogy, birth, and education are, I take it, of little
+account to this chronicle, which is only concerned with his friendship
+for Biggs and the result thereof. He had known Biggs a year or two
+previously; they had shared each other's purses, bunks, cabins,
+provisions, and often friends, with that perfect freedom from obligation
+which belonged to the pioneer life. The varying tide of fortune had just
+then stranded Thatcher on a desert sand hill in San Francisco, with
+an uninsured cargo of Expectations, while to Thatcher's active but not
+curious fancy it had apparently lifted his friend's bark over the bar
+in the Monterey mountains into an open quicksilver sea. So that he was
+considerably surprised on receiving a note from Biggs to this purport:
+
+
+"DEAR ROY--Run down here and help a fellow. I've too much of a load for
+one. Maybe we can make a team and pull 'Blue Mass' out yet. BIGGSEY."
+
+
+Thatcher, sitting in his scantily furnished lodgings, doubtful of his
+next meal and in arrears for rent, heard this Macedonian cry as St.
+Paul did. He wrote a promissory and soothing note to his landlady, but
+fearing the "sweet sorrow" of personal parting, let his collapsed
+valise down from his window by a cord, and, by means of an economical
+combination of stage riding and pedestrianism, he presented himself, at
+the close of the third day, at Biggs's door. In a few moments he was in
+possession of the story; half an hour later in possession of half the
+mine, its infelix past and its doubtful future, equally with his friend.
+
+Business over, Biggs turned to look at his partner. "You've aged some
+since I saw you last," he said. "Starvation luck, I s'pose. I'd know
+your eyes, old fellow, if I saw them among ten thousand; but your lips
+are parched, and your mouth's grimmer than it used to be." Thatcher
+smiled to show that he could still do so, but did not say, as he might
+have said, that self-control, suppressed resentment, disappointment, and
+occasional hunger had done something in the way of correcting Nature's
+obvious mistakes, and shutting up a kindly mouth. He only took off his
+threadbare coat, rolled up his sleeves, and saying, "We've got lots of
+work and some fighting before us," pitched into the "affairs" of the
+"Blue Mass Company" on the instant.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+OF COUNSEL FOR IT
+
+
+Meanwhile Roscommon had waited. Then, in Garcia's name, and backed
+by him, he laid his case before the Land Commissioner, filing the
+application (with forged indorsements) to Governor Micheltorena, and
+alleging that the original grant was destroyed by fire. And why?
+
+It seemed there was a limit to Miss Carmen's imitative talent. Admirable
+as it was, it did not reach to the reproduction of that official seal,
+which would have been a necessary appendage to the Governor's grant. But
+there were letters written on stamped paper by Governor Micheltorena
+to himself, Garcia, and to Miguel, and to Manuel's father, all of
+which were duly signed by the sign manual and rubric of
+Mrs.-Governor-Micheltorena-Carmen-de-Haro. And then there was "parol"
+evidence, and plenty of it; witnesses who remembered everything about
+it,--namely, Manuel, Miguel, and the all-recollecting De Haro; here were
+details, poetical and suggestive; and Dame-Quicklyish, as when his late
+Excellency, sitting not "by a sea-coal fire," but with aguardiente and
+cigarros, had sworn to him, the ex-ecclesiastic Miguel, that he
+should grant, and had granted, Garcia's request. There were clouds of
+witnesses, conversations, letters, and records, glib and pat to the
+occasion. In brief, there was nothing wanted but the seal of his
+Excellency. The only copy of that was in the possession of a rival
+school of renaissant art and the restoration of antiques, then doing
+business before the Land Commission.
+
+And yet the claim was rejected! Having lately recommended two separate
+claimants to a patent for the same land, the Land Commission became
+cautious and conservative.
+
+Roscommon was at first astounded, then indignant, and then warlike,--he
+was for an "appale to onst!"
+
+With the reader's previous knowledge of Roscommon's disposition this
+may seem somewhat inconsistent; but there are certain natures to whom
+litigation has all the excitement of gambling, and it should be borne
+in mind that this was his first lawsuit. So that his lawyer, Mr.
+Saponaceous Wood, found him in that belligerent mood to which counsel
+are obliged to hypocritically bring all the sophistries of their
+profession.
+
+"Of course you have your right to an appeal, but calm yourself, my
+dear sir, and consider. The case was presented strongly, the evidence
+overwhelming on our side, but we happened to be fighting previous
+decisions of the Land Commission that had brought them into trouble; so
+that if Micheltorena had himself appeared in Court and testified to
+his giving you the grant, it would have made no difference,--no Spanish
+grant had a show then, nor will it have for the next six months. You
+see, my dear sir, the Government sent out one of its big Washington
+lawyers to look into this business, and he reported frauds, sir, frauds,
+in a majority of the Spanish claims. And why, sir? why? He was bought,
+sir, bought--body and soul--by the Ring!"
+
+"And fwhot's the Ring?" asked his client sharply.
+
+"The Ring is--ahem! a combination of unprincipled but wealthy persons to
+defeat the ends of justice."
+
+"And sure, fwhot's the Ring to do wid me grant as that thaving Mexican
+gave me as the collatherals for the bourd he was owin' me? Eh, mind that
+now!"
+
+"The Ring, my dear sir, is the other side. It is--ahem! always the Other
+Side."
+
+"And why the divel haven't we a Ring too? And ain't I payin' ye five
+hundred dollars,--and the divel of Ring ye have, at all, at all? Fwhot
+am I payin' ye fur, eh?"
+
+"That a judicious expenditure of money," began Mr. Wood, "outside of
+actual disbursements, may not be of infinite service to you I am not
+prepared to deny,--but--"
+
+"Look ye, Mr. Sappy Wood, it's the 'appale' I want, and the grant I'll
+have, more betoken as the old woman's har-rut and me own is set on it
+entoirely. Get me the land and I'll give ye the half of it,--and it's a
+bargain!"
+
+"But my dear sir, there are some rules in our profession,--technical
+though they may be--"
+
+"The divel fly away wid yer profession. Sure is it better nor me own?
+If I've risked me provisions and me whisky, that cost me solid goold in
+Frisco, on that thafe Garcia's claim, bedad! the loikes of ye can risk
+yer law."
+
+"Well," said Wood, with an awkward smile, "I suppose that a deed for one
+half, on the consideration of friendship, my dear sir, and a dollar in
+hand paid by me, might be reconcilable."
+
+"Now it's talkin' ye are. But who's the felly we're foighten, that's got
+the Ring?"
+
+"Ah, my dear sir, it's the United States," said the lawyer with gravity.
+
+"The States! the Government is it? And is't that ye're afeared of?
+Sure it's the Government that I fought in me own counthree, it was the
+Government that druv me to Ameriky, and is it now that I'm going back on
+me principles?"
+
+"Your political sentiments do you great credit," began Mr. Wood.
+
+"But fwhot's the Government to do wid the appale?"
+
+"The Government," said Mr. Wood significantly, "will be represented by
+the District Attorney."
+
+"And who's the spalpeen?"
+
+"It is rumored," said Mr. Wood, slowly, "that a new one is to be
+appointed. I, myself, have had some ambition that way."
+
+His client bent a pair of cunning but not over-wise grey eyes on his
+American lawyer. But he only said, "Ye have, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Wood, answering the look boldly; "and if I had the support
+of a number of your prominent countrymen, who are so powerful with ALL
+parties,--men like YOU, my dear sir,--why, I think you might in time
+become a conservative, at least more resigned to the Government."
+
+Then the lesser and the greater scamp looked at each other, and for a
+moment or two felt a warm, sympathetic, friendly emotion for each other,
+and quietly shook hands.
+
+Depend upon it there is a great deal more kindly human sympathy between
+two openly-confessed scamps than there is in that calm, respectable
+recognition that you and I, dear reader, exhibit when we happen to
+oppose each other with our respective virtues.
+
+"And ye'll get the appale?"
+
+"I will."
+
+And he DID! And by a singular coincidence got the District Attorneyship
+also. And with a deed for one half of the "Red-Rock Rancho" in his
+pocket, sent a brother lawyer in court to appear for his client, the
+United States, as against HIMSELF, Roscommon, Garcia, et al. Wild
+horses could not have torn him from this noble resolution. There is an
+indescribable delicacy in the legal profession which we literary folk
+ought to imitate.
+
+The United States lost! Which meant ruin and destruction to the "Blue
+Mass Company," who had bought from a paternal and beneficent Government
+lands which didn't belong to it. The Mexican grant, of course, antedated
+the occupation of the mine by Concho, Wiles, Pedro, et al., as well
+as by the "Blue Mass Company," and the solitary partners, Biggs and
+Thatcher. More than that, it swallowed up their improvements. It made
+Biggs and Thatcher responsible to Garcia for all the money the Grand
+Master of Avarice had made out of it. Mr. District Attorney was
+apparently distressed, but resigned. Messrs. Biggs and Thatcher were
+really distressed and combative.
+
+And then, to advance a few years in this chronicle, began real
+litigation with earnestness, vigor, courage, zeal, and belief on the
+part of Biggs and Thatcher, and technicalities, delay, equivocation, and
+a general Fabian-like policy on the part of Garcia, Roscommon, et al.
+Of all these tedious processes I note but one, which for originality and
+audacity of conception appears to me to indicate more clearly the temper
+and civilization of the epoch. A subordinate officer of the District
+Court refused to obey the mandate ordering a transcript of the record
+to be sent up to the United States Supreme Court. It is to be regretted
+that the name of this Ephesian youth, who thus fired the dome of our
+constitutional liberties, should have been otherwise so unimportant as
+to be confined to the dusty records of that doubtful court of which he
+was a doubtful servitor, and that his claim to immortality ceased with
+his double-feed service. But there still stands on record a letter by
+this young gentleman, arraigning the legal wisdom of the land, which
+is not entirely devoid of amusement or even instruction to young men
+desirous of obtaining publicity and capital. Howbeit, the Supreme
+Court was obliged to protect itself by procuring the legislation of
+his functions out of his local fingers into the larger palm of its own
+attorney.
+
+These various processes of law and equity, which, when exercised
+practically in the affairs of ordinary business, might have occupied a
+few months' time, dragged, clung, retrograded, or advanced slowly
+during a period of eight or nine years. But the strong arms of Biggs and
+Thatcher held POSSESSION, and possibly, by the same tactics employed
+on the other side, arrested or delayed ejectment, and so made and sold
+quicksilver, while their opponents were spending gold, until Biggs,
+sorely hit in the interlacings of his armor, fell in the lists, his
+cheek growing waxen and his strong arm feeble, and finding himself in
+this sore condition, and passing, as it were, made over his share in
+trust to his comrade, and died. Whereat, from that time henceforward,
+Royal Thatcher reigned in his stead.
+
+And so, having anticipated the legal record, we will go back to the
+various human interests that helped to make it up.
+
+To begin with Roscommon: To do justice to his later conduct and
+expressions, it must be remembered that when he accepted the claim for
+the "Red-Rock Rancho," yet unquestioned, from the hands of Garcia, he
+was careless, or at least unsuspicious of fraud. It was not until he had
+experienced the intoxication of litigation that he felt, somehow, that
+he was a wronged and defrauded man, but with the obstinacy of defrauded
+men, preferred to arraign some one fact or individual as the impelling
+cause of his wrong, rather than the various circumstances that led to
+it. To his simple mind it was made patent that the "Blue Mass Company"
+were making money out of a mine which he claimed, and which was not yet
+adjudged to them. Every dollar they took out was a fresh count in
+this general indictment. Every delay towards this adjustment of
+rights--although made by his own lawyer--was a personal wrong. The mere
+fact that there never was nor had been any quid pro quo for this immense
+property--that it had fallen to him for a mere song--only added zest
+to his struggle. The possibility of his losing this mere speculation
+affected him more strongly than if he had already paid down the million
+he expected to get from the mine. I don't know that I have indicated as
+plainly as I might that universal preference on the part of mankind to
+get something from nothing, and to acquire the largest return for
+the least possible expenditure, but I question my right to say that
+Roscommon was much more reprehensible than his fellows.
+
+But it told upon him as it did upon all over whom the spirit of the
+murdered Concho brooded,--upon all whom avarice alternately flattered
+and tortured. From his quiet gains in his legitimate business, from the
+little capital accumulated through industry and economy, he lavished
+thousands on this chimera of his fancy. He grew grizzled and worn over
+his self-imposed delusion; he no longer jested with his customers,
+regardless of quality or station or importance; he had cliques to
+mollify, enemies to placate, friends to reward. The grocery suffered;
+through giving food and lodgment to clouds of unimpeachable witnesses
+before the Land Commission and the District Court, "Mrs. Ros." found
+herself losing money. Even the bar failed; there was a party of
+"Blue Mass" employees who drank at the opposite fonda, and cursed the
+Roscommon claim over the liquor. The calm, mechanical indifference with
+which Roscommon had served his customers was gone. The towel was no
+longer used after its perfunctory fashion; the counter remained unwiped;
+the disks of countless glasses marked its surface, and indicated other
+preoccupation on the part of the proprietor. The keen grey eyes of the
+claimant of the "Red-Rock Rancho" were always on the lookout for friend
+or enemy.
+
+Garcia comes next. That gentleman's inborn talent for historic
+misrepresentation culminated unpleasantly through a defective memory;
+a year or two after he had sworn in his application for the "Rancho,"
+being engaged in another case, some trifling inconsistency was
+discovered in his statements, which had the effect of throwing the
+weight of evidence to the party who had paid him most, but was instantly
+detected by the weaker party. Garcia's preeminence as a witness, an
+expert and general historian began to decline. He was obliged to be
+corroborated, and this required a liberal outlay of his fee. With the
+loss of his credibility as a witness bad habits supervened. He was
+frequently drunk, he lost his position, he lost his house, and Carmen,
+removed to San Francisco, supported him with her brush.
+
+And this brings us once more to that pretty painter and innocent forger
+whose unconscious act bore such baleful fruit on the barren hill-sides
+of the "Red-Rock Rancho," and also to a later blossom of her life, that
+opened, however, in kindlier sunshine.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+WHAT THE FAIR HAD TO DO ABOUT IT
+
+
+The house that Royal Thatcher so informally quitted in his exodus to
+the promised land of Biggs was one of those oversized, under-calculated
+dwellings conceived and erected in the extravagance of the San
+Francisco builder's hopes, and occupied finally in his despair. Intended
+originally as the palace of some inchoate California Aladdin, it usually
+ended as a lodging house in which some helpless widow or hopeless
+spinster managed to combine respectability with the hard task of bread
+getting.
+
+Thatcher's landlady was one of the former class. She had unfortunately
+survived not only her husband but his property, and, living in some
+deserted chamber, had, after the fashion of the Italian nobility, let
+out the rest of the ruin. A tendency to dwell upon these facts gave
+her conversation a peculiar significance on the first of each month.
+Thatcher had noticed this with the sensitiveness of an impoverished
+gentleman. But when, a few days after her lodger's sudden disappearance,
+a note came from him containing a draft in noble excess of all arrears
+and charges, the widow's heart was lifted, and the rock smitten with the
+golden wand gushed beneficence that shone in a new gown for the widow
+and a new suit for "Johnny," her son, a new oil cloth in the hall,
+better service to the lodgers, and, let us be thankful, a kindlier
+consideration for the poor little black-eyed painter from Monterey, then
+dreadfully behind in her room rent. For, to tell the truth, the calls
+upon Miss De Haro's scant purse by her uncle had lately been frequent,
+perjury having declined in the Monterey market, through excessive
+and injudicious supply, until the line of demarcation between it and
+absolute verity was so finely drawn that Victor Garcia had remarked that
+"he might as well tell the truth at once and save his soul, since the
+devil was in the market."
+
+Mistress Plodgitt, the landlady, could not resist the desire to acquaint
+Carmen De Haro with her good fortune. "He was always a friend of yours,
+my dear,--and I know him to be a gentleman that would never let a
+poor widow suffer; and see what he says about you!" Here she produced
+Thatcher's note and read: "Tell my little neighbor that I shall come
+back soon to carry her and her sketching tools off by force, and I shall
+not let her return until she has caught the black mountains and the
+red rocks she used to talk about, and put the 'Blue Mass' mill in the
+foreground of the picture I shall order."
+
+What is this, little one? Surely, Carmen, thou needst not blush at
+this, thy first grand offer. Holy Virgin! is it of a necessity that thou
+shouldst stick the wrong end of thy brush in thy mouth, and then drop it
+in thy lap? Or was it taught thee by the good Sisters at the convent to
+stride in that boyish fashion to the side of thy elders and snatch from
+their hands the missive thou wouldst read? More of this we would know,
+O Carmen,--smallest of brunettes,--speak, little one, even in thine own
+melodious speech, that I may commend thee and thy rare discretion to my
+own fair countrywomen.
+
+Alas, neither the present chronicler nor Mistress Plodgitt got any
+further information from the prudent Carmen, and must fain speculate
+upon certain facts that were already known.
+
+Mistress Carmen's little room was opposite to Thatcher's, and once or
+twice, the doors being open, Thatcher had a glimpse across the passage
+of a black-haired and a sturdy, boyish little figure in a great blue
+apron, perched on a stool before an easel, and on the other hand, Carmen
+had often been conscious of the fumes of a tobacco pipe penetrating her
+cloistered seclusion, and had seen across the passage, vaguely enveloped
+in the same nicotine cloud, an American Olympian, in a rocking chair,
+with his feet on the mantel shelf. They had once or twice met on the
+staircase, on which occasion Thatcher had greeted her with a word or two
+of respectful yet half-humorous courtesy,--a courtesy which never really
+offends a true woman, although it often piques her self-aplomb by the
+slight assumption of superiority in the humorist. A woman is quick to
+recognize the fact that the great and more dangerous passions are always
+SERIOUS, and may be excused if in self-respect she is often induced to
+try if there be not somewhere under the skin of this laughing Mercutio
+the flesh and blood of a Romeo. Thatcher was by nature a defender and
+protector; weakness, and weakness alone, stirred the depths of his
+tenderness,--often, I fear, only through its half-humorous aspects,--and
+on this plane he was pleased to place women and children. I mention this
+fact for the benefit of the more youthful members of my species, and am
+satisfied that an unconditional surrender and the complete laying down
+at the feet of Beauty of all strong masculinity is a cheap Gallicism
+that is untranslatable to most women worthy the winning. For a woman
+MUST always look up to the man she truly loves,--even if she has to go
+down on her knees to do it.
+
+Only the masculine reader will infer from this that Carmen was in love
+with Thatcher; the more critical and analytical feminine eye will
+see nothing herein that might not have happened consistently with
+friendship. For Thatcher was no sentimentalist; he had hardly paid a
+compliment to the girl,--even in the unspoken but most delicate form
+of attention. There were days when his room door was closed; there were
+days succeeding these blanks when he met her as frankly and naturally as
+if he had seen her yesterday. Indeed, on those days following his flight
+the simple-minded Carmen, being aware--heaven knows how--that he had not
+opened his door during that period, and fearing sickness, sudden death,
+or perhaps suicide, by her appeals to the landlady, assisted unwittingly
+in discovering his flight and defection. As she was for a few moments
+as indignant as Mrs. Plodgitt, it is evident that she had but little
+sympathy with the delinquent. And besides, hitherto she had known only
+Concho, her earliest friend, and was true to his memory, as against all
+Americanos, whom she firmly believed to be his murderers.
+
+So she dismissed the offer and the man from her mind, and went back
+to her painting,--a fancy portrait of the good Padre Junipero Serra,
+a great missionary, who, haply for the integrity of his bones and
+character, died some hundred years before the Americans took possession
+of California. The picture was fair but unsaleable, and she began to
+think seriously of sign painting, which was then much more popular and
+marketable. An unfinished head of San Juan de Bautista, artificially
+framed in clouds, she disposed of to a prominent druggist for $50, where
+it did good service as exhibiting the effect of four bottles of "Jones's
+Freckle Eradicator," and in a pleasant and unobtrusive way revived the
+memory of the saint. Still, she felt weary and was growing despondent,
+and had a longing for the good Sisters and the blameless lethargy of
+conventual life, and then--
+
+He came!
+
+But not as the Prince should come, on a white charger, to carry away
+this cruelly-abused and enchanted damsel. He was sunburned, he was
+bearded like "the pard"; he was a little careless as to his dress, and
+pre-occupied in his ways. But his mouth and eyes were the same; and when
+he repeated in his old frank, half-mischievous way the invitation of his
+letter, poor little Carmen could only hesitate and blush.
+
+A thought struck him and sent the color to his face. Your gentleman
+born is always as modest as a woman. He ran down stairs, and seizing the
+widowed Plodgitt, said hastily:
+
+"You're just killing yourself here. Take a change. Come down to Monterey
+for a day or two with me, and bring miss De Haro with you for company."
+
+The old lady recognized the situation. Thatcher was now a man of vast
+possibilities. In all maternal daughters of Eve there is the slightest
+bit of the chaperone and match-maker. It is the last way of reviving the
+past.
+
+She consented, and Carmen De Haro could not well refuse.
+
+The ladies found the "Blue Mass" mills very much as Thatcher had
+previously delivered it to them, "a trifle rough and mannish." But he
+made over to them the one tenement reserved for himself, and slept with
+his men, or more likely under the trees. At first Mrs. Plodgitt missed
+gas and running water, and these several conveniences of civilization,
+among which I fear may be mentioned sheets and pillow cases; but the
+balsam of the mountain air soothed her neuralgia and her temper. As for
+Carmen, she rioted in the unlimited license of her absolute freedom from
+conventional restraint and the indulgence of her child-like impulses.
+She scoured the ledges far and wide alone; she dipped into dark copses,
+and scrambled over sterile patches of chemisal, and came back laden with
+the spoil of buckeye blossoms, manzanita berries and laurel. But
+she would not make a sketch of the "Blue Mass Company's" mills on a
+Mercator's projection--something that could be afterwards lithographed
+or chromoed, with the mills turning out tons of quicksilver through the
+energies of a happy and picturesque assemblage of miners--even to please
+her padrone, Don Royal Thatcher. On the contrary, she made a study of
+the ruins of the crumbled and decayed red-rock furnace, with the black
+mountain above it, and the light of a dying camp fire shining upon it,
+and the dull-red excavations in the ledge. But even this did not satisfy
+her until she had made some alterations; and when she finally brought
+her finished study to Don Royal, she looked at him a little defiantly.
+Thatcher admired honestly, and then criticised a little humorously and
+dishonestly. "But couldn't you, for a consideration, put up a sign-board
+on that rock with the inscription, 'Road to the Blue Mass Company's new
+mills to the right,' and combine business with art? That's the fault of
+you geniuses. But what's this blanketed figure doing here, lying before
+the furnace? You never saw one of my miners there,--and a Mexican, too,
+by his serape." "That," quoth Mistress Carmen, coolly, "was put in
+to fill up the foreground,--I wanted something there to balance
+the picture." "But," continued Thatcher, dropping into unconscious
+admiration again, "it's drawn to the life. Tell me, Miss De Haro, before
+I ask the aid and counsel of Mrs. Plodgitt, who is my hated rival, and
+your lay figure and model?" "Oh," said Carmen, with a little sigh, "It's
+only poor Coucho." "And where is Concho?" (a little impatiently.) "He's
+dead, Don Royal." "Dead?" "Of a verity,--very dead,--murdered by your
+countrymen." "I see,--and you know him?" "He was my friend."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Truly."
+
+"But" (wickedly), "isn't this a rather ghastly advertisement--outside of
+an illustrated newspaper--of my property?"
+
+"Ghastly, Don Royal. Look you, he sleeps."
+
+"Ay" (in Spanish), "as the dead."
+
+Carmen (crossing herself hastily), "After the fashion of the dead."
+
+They were both feeling uncomfortable. Carmen was shivering. But, being
+a woman, and tactful, she recovered her head first. "It is a study for
+myself, Don Royal; I shall make you another."
+
+And she slipped away, as she thought, out of the subject and his
+presence.
+
+But she was mistaken; in the evening he renewed the conversation. Carmen
+began to fence, not from cowardice or deceit, as the masculine reader
+would readily infer, but from some wonderful feminine instinct that told
+her to be cautious. But he got from her the fact, to him before unknown,
+that she was the niece of his main antagonist, and, being a gentleman,
+so redoubled his attentions and his courtesy that Mrs. Plodgitt made up
+her mind that it was a foregone conclusion, and seriously reflected as
+to what she should wear on the momentous occasion. But that night poor
+Carmen cried herself to sleep, resolving that she would hereafter cast
+aside her wicked uncle for this good-hearted Americano, yet never once
+connected her innocent penmanship with the deadly feud between them.
+Women--the best of them--are strong as to collateral facts, swift
+of deduction, but vague as children are to the exact statement or
+recognition of premises. It is hardly necessary to say that Carmen
+had never thought of connecting any act of hers with the claims of her
+uncle, and the circumstance of the signature she had totally forgotten.
+
+The masculine reader will now understand Carmen's confusion and blushes,
+and believe himself an ass to have thought them a confession of original
+affection. The feminine reader will, by this time, become satisfied that
+the deceitful minx's sole idea was to gain the affections of Thatcher.
+And really I don't know who is right.
+
+Nevertheless she painted a sketch of Thatcher,--which now adorns the
+Company's office in San Francisco,--in which the property is laid out in
+pleasing geometrical lines, and the rosy promise of the future instinct
+in every touch of the brush. Then, having earned her "wage," as she
+believed, she became somewhat cold and shy to Thatcher. Whereat that
+gentleman redoubled his attentions, seeing only in her presence a
+certain meprise, which concerned her more than himself. The niece of
+his enemy meant nothing more to him than an interesting girl,--to
+be protected always,--to be feared, never. But even suspicion may be
+insidiously placed in noble minds.
+
+Mistress Plodgitt, thus early estopped of matchmaking, of course put the
+blame on her own sex, and went over to the stronger side--the man's.
+
+"It's a great pity gals should be so curious," she said, sotto voce, to
+Thatcher, when Carmen was in one of her sullen moods. "Yet I s'pose
+it's in her blood. Them Spaniards is always revengeful,--like the
+Eyetalians."
+
+Thatcher honestly looked his surprise.
+
+"Why, don't you see, she's thinking how all these lands might have been
+her uncle's but for you. And instead of trying to be sweet and--" here
+she stopped to cough.
+
+"Good God!" said Thatcher in great concern, "I never thought of that."
+He stopped for a moment, and then added with decision, "I can't believe
+it; it isn't like her."
+
+Mrs. P. was piqued. She walked away, delivering, however, this Parthian
+arrow: "Well, I hope 'TAINT NOTHING WORSE."
+
+Thatcher chuckled, then felt uneasy. When he next met Carmen, she found
+his grey eyes fixed on hers with a curious, half-inquisitorial look she
+had never noticed before. This only added fuel to the fire. Forgetting
+their relations of host and guest, she was absolutely rude. Thatcher was
+quiet but watchful; got the Plodgitt to bed early, and, under cover of
+showing a moonlight view of the "Lost Chance Mill," decoyed Carmen out
+of ear-shot, as far as the dismantled furnace.
+
+"What is the matter, Miss De Haro; have I offended you?"
+
+Miss Carmen was not aware that anything was the matter. If Don Royal
+preferred old friends, whose loyalty of course he knew, and who were
+above speaking ill against a gentleman in his adversity--(oh, Carmen!
+fie!) if he preferred THEIR company to LATER FRIENDS--why--(the
+masculine reader will observe this tremendous climax and tremble)--why
+she didn't know why HE should blame HER.
+
+They turned and faced each other. The conditions for a perfect
+misunderstanding could not have been better arranged between two people.
+Thatcher was a masculine reasoner, Carmen a feminine feeler,--if I may
+be pardoned the expression. Thatcher wanted to get at certain facts, and
+argue therefrom. Carmen wanted to get at certain feelings, and then fit
+the facts to THEM.
+
+"But I am NOT blaming you, Miss Carmen," he said gravely. "It WAS stupid
+in me to confront you here with the property claimed by your uncle and
+occupied by me, but it was a mistake,--no!" he added hastily, "it was
+not a mistake. You knew it, and I didn't. You overlooked it before you
+came, and I was too glad to overlook it after you were here."
+
+"Of course," said Carmen pettishly, "I am the only one to be blamed.
+It's like you MEN!" (Mem. She was just fifteen, and uttered this awful
+'resume' of experience just as if it hadn't been taught to her in her
+cradle.)
+
+Feminine generalities always stagger a man. Thatcher said nothing.
+Carmen became more enraged.
+
+"Why did you want to take Uncle Victor's property, then?" she asked
+triumphantly.
+
+"I don't know that it is your uncle's property."
+
+"You--don't--know? Have you seen the application with Governor
+Micheltorena's indorsement? Have you heard the witnesses?" she said
+passionately.
+
+"Signatures may be forged and witnesses lie," said Thatcher quietly.
+
+"What is it you call 'forged'?"
+
+Thatcher instantly recalled the fact that the Spanish language held no
+synonym for "forgery." The act was apparently an invention of el Diablo
+Americano. So he said, with a slight smile in his kindly eyes:
+
+"Anybody wicked enough and dexterous enough can imitate another's
+handwriting. When this is used to benefit fraud, we call it 'forgery.' I
+beg your pardon,--Miss De Haro, Miss Carmen,--what is the matter?"
+
+She had suddenly lapsed against a tree, quite helpless, nerveless, and
+with staring eyes fixed on his. As yet an embryo woman, inexperienced
+and ignorant, the sex's instinct was potential; she had in one plunge
+fathomed all that his reason had been years groping for.
+
+Thatcher saw only that she was pained, that she was helpless: that was
+enough. "It is possible that your uncle may have been deceived,"
+he began; "many honest men have been fooled by clever but deceitful
+tricksters, men and women--"
+
+"Stop! Madre de Dios! WILL YOU STOP?"
+
+Thatcher for an instant recoiled from the flashing eyes and white face
+of the little figure that had, with menacing and clenched baby fingers,
+strode to his side. He stopped. "Where is this application,--this
+forgery?" she asked. "Show it to me!"
+
+Thatcher felt relieved, and smiled the superior smile of our sex over
+feminine ignorance. "You could hardly expect me to be trusted with your
+uncle's vouchers. His papers of course are in the hands of his counsel."
+
+"And when can I leave this place?" she asked passionately.
+
+"If you consult my wishes you will stay, if only long enough to forgive
+me. But if I have offended you unknowingly, and you are implacable--"
+
+"I can go to-morrow at sunrise if I like?"
+
+"As you will," returned Thatcher gravely.
+
+"Gracias, Senor."
+
+They walked slowly back to the house, Thatcher with a masculine sense
+of being unreasonably afflicted, Carmen with a woman's instinct of being
+hopelessly crushed. No word was spoken until they reached the door. Then
+Carmen suddenly, in her old, impulsive way, and in a childlike treble,
+sang out merrily, "Good night, O Don Royal, and pleasant dreams. Hasta
+manana."
+
+Thatcher stood dumb and astounded at this capricious girl. She saw his
+mystification instantly. "It is for the old Cat!" she whispered, jerking
+her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the sleeping Mrs. P.
+"Good night,--go!"
+
+He went to give orders for a peon to attend the ladies and their
+equipage the next day. He awoke to find Miss De Haro gone, with her
+escort, towards Monterey. And without the Plodgitt.
+
+He could not conceal his surprise from the latter lady. She, left
+alone,--a not altogether unavailable victim to the wiles of our
+sex,--was embarrassed. But not so much that she could not say to
+Thatcher: "I told you so,--gone to her uncle. . . . To tell him ALL!"
+
+"All. D--n it, WHAT can she tell him?" roared Thatcher, stung out of his
+self-control.
+
+"Nothing, I hope, that she should not," said Mrs. P., and chastely
+retired.
+
+She was right. Miss Carmen posted to Monterey, running her horse nearly
+off its legs to do it, and then sent back her beast and escort, saying
+she would rejoin Mrs. Plodgitt by steamer at San Francisco. Then she
+went boldly to the law office of Saponaceous Wood, District Attorney and
+whilom solicitor of her uncle.
+
+With the majority of masculine Monterey Miss Carmen was known and
+respectfully admired, despite the infelix reputation of her kinsman. Mr.
+Wood was glad to see her, and awkwardly gallant. Miss Carmen was cool
+and business-like; she had come from her uncle to "regard" the papers in
+the "Red-Rock Rancho" case. They were instantly produced. Carmen turned
+to the application for the grant. Her cheek paled slightly. With her
+clear memory and wonderful fidelity of perception she could not be
+mistaken. THE SIGNATURE OF MICHELTORENA WAS IN HER OWN HANDWRITING!
+
+Yet she looked up to the lawyer with a smile: "May I take these papers
+for an hour to my uncle?"
+
+Even an older and better man than the District Attorney could not have
+resisted those drooping lids and that gentle voice.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"I will return them in an hour."
+
+She was as good as her word, and within the hour dropped the papers and
+a little courtesy to her uncle's legal advocate, and that night took the
+steamer to San Francisco.
+
+The next morning Victor Garcia, a little the worse for the previous
+night's dissipation, reeled into Wood's office. "I have fears for my
+niece Carmen. She is with the enemy," he said thickly. "Look you at
+this."
+
+It was an anonymous letter (in Mrs. Plodgitt's own awkward fist)
+advising him of the fact that his niece was bought by the enemy, and
+cautioning him against her.
+
+"Impossible," said the lawyer; "it was only last week she sent thee
+$50."
+
+Victor blushed, even through his ensanguined cheeks, and made an
+impatient gesture with his hand.
+
+"Besides," added the lawyer coolly, "she has been here to examine the
+papers at thy request, and returned them of yesterday."
+
+Victor gasped: "And-you-you-gave them to her?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+"All? Even the application and the signature?"
+
+"Certainly,--you sent her."
+
+"Sent her? The devil's own daughter?" shrieked Garcia. "No! A hundred
+million times, no! Quick, before it is too late. Give to me the papers."
+
+Mr. Wood reproduced the file. Garcia ran over it with trembling fingers
+until at last he clutched the fateful document. Not content with opening
+it and glancing at its text and signature, he took it to the window.
+
+"It is the same," he muttered with a sigh of relief.
+
+"Of course it is," said Mr. Wood sharply. "The papers are all there.
+You're a fool, Victor Garcia!"
+
+And so he was. And, for the matter of that, so was Mr. Saponaceous Wood,
+of counsel.
+
+Meanwhile Miss De Haro returned to San Francisco and resumed her work. A
+day or two later she was joined by her landlady. Mrs. P. had too large a
+nature to permit an anonymous letter, written by her own hand, to stand
+between her and her demeanor to her little lodger. So she coddled her
+and flattered her and depicted in slightly exaggerated colors the grief
+of Don Royal at her sudden departure. All of which Miss Carmen received
+in a demure, kitten-like way, but still kept quietly at her work. In
+due time Don Royal's order was completed; still she had leisure and
+inclination enough to add certain touches to her ghastly sketch of the
+crumbling furnace.
+
+Nevertheless, as Don Royal did not return, through excess of business,
+Mrs. Plodgitt turned an honest penny by letting his room, temporarily,
+to two quiet Mexicans, who, but for a beastly habit of cigarrito smoking
+which tainted the whole house, were fair enough lodgers. If they failed
+in making the acquaintance of their fair countrywoman, Miss De Haro, it
+was through the lady's pre-occupation in her own work, and not through
+their ostentatious endeavors.
+
+"Miss De Haro is peculiar," explained the politic Mrs. Plodgitt to
+her guests; "she makes no acquaintances, which I consider bad for her
+business. If it had not been for me, she would not have known Royal
+Thatcher, the great quicksilver miner,--and had his order for a picture
+of his mine!"
+
+The two foreign gentlemen exchanged glances. One said, "Ah, God! this is
+bad," and the other, "It is not possible;" and then, when the landlady's
+back was turned, introduced themselves with a skeleton key into the then
+vacant bedroom and studio of their fair countrywoman, who was absent
+sketching. "Thou observest," said Mr. Pedro, refugee, to Miguel,
+ex-ecclesiastic, "that this Americano is all-powerful, and that this
+Victor, drunkard as he is, is right in his suspicions."
+
+"Of a verity, yes," replied Miguel, "thou dost remember it was Jovita
+Castro who, for her Americano lover, betrayed the Sobriente claim. It
+is only with us, my Pedro, that the Mexican spirit, the real God and
+Liberty, yet lives!"
+
+They shook hands nobly and with sentimental fervor, and then went to
+work, i. e., the rummaging over the trunks, drawers, and portmanteaus of
+the poor little painter, Carmen de Haro, and even ripped up the mattress
+of her virginal cot. But they found not what they sought.
+
+"What is that yonder on the easel, covered with a cloth?" said Miguel:
+"it is a trick of these artists to put their valuables together."
+
+Pedro strode to the easel and tore away the muslin curtain that veiled
+it; then uttered a shriek that appalled his comrade and brought him to
+his side.
+
+"In the name of God," said Miguel hastily, "are you trying to alarm the
+house?"
+
+The ex-vaquero was trembling like a child. "Look," he said hoarsely,
+"look, do you see? It is the hand of God," and fainted on the floor!
+
+Miguel looked. It was Carmen's partly-finished sketch of the deserted
+furnace. The figure of Concho, thrown out strongly by the camp fire,
+occupied the left foreground. But to balance her picture she had
+evidently been obliged to introduce another,--the face and figure of
+Pedro, on all fours, creeping towards the sleeping man.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.--IN CONGRESS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+WHO LOBBIED FOR IT
+
+
+It was a midsummer's day in Washington. Even at early morning, while the
+sun was yet level with the faces of pedestrians in its broad, shadeless
+avenues, it was insufferably hot. Later the avenues themselves shone
+like the diverging rays of another sun,--the Capitol,--a thing to be
+feared by the naked eye. Later yet it grew hotter, and then a mist arose
+from the Potomac, and blotted out the blazing arch above, and presently
+piled up along the horizon delusive thunder clouds, that spent their
+strength and substance elsewhere, and left it hotter than before.
+Towards evening the sun came out invigorated, having cleared the
+heavenly brow of perspiration, but leaving its fever unabated.
+
+The city was deserted. The few who remained apparently buried themselves
+from the garish light of day in some dim, cloistered recess of shop,
+hotel, or restaurant; and the perspiring stranger, dazed by the outer
+glare, who broke in upon their quiet, sequestered repose, confronted
+collarless and coatless specters of the past, with fans in their hands,
+who, after dreamily going through some perfunctory business, immediately
+retired to sleep after the stranger had gone. Congressmen and Senators
+had long since returned to their several constituencies with the various
+information that the country was going to ruin, or that the outlook
+never was more hopeful and cheering, as the tastes of their constituency
+indicated. A few Cabinet officers still lingered, having by this time
+become convinced that they could do nothing their own way, or indeed
+in any way but the old way, and getting gloomily resigned to their
+situation. A body of learned, cultivated men, representing the highest
+legal tribunal in the land, still lingered in a vague idea of earning
+the scant salary bestowed upon them by the economical founders of the
+Government, and listened patiently to the arguments of counsel, whose
+fees for advocacy of claims before them would have paid the life income
+of half the bench. There was Mr. Attorney-General and his assistants
+still protecting the Government's millions from rapacious hands,
+and drawing the yearly public pittance that their wealthier private
+antagonists would have scarce given as a retainer to their junior
+counsel. The little standing army of departmental employes,--the
+helpless victims of the most senseless and idiotic form of discipline
+the world has known,--a discipline so made up of caprice, expediency,
+cowardice, and tyranny that its reform meant revolution, not to be
+tolerated by legislators and lawgivers, or a despotism in which half
+a dozen accidentally-chosen men interpreted their prejudices or
+preferences as being that Reform. Administration after administration
+and Party after Party had persisted in their desperate attempts to fit
+the youthful colonial garments, made by our Fathers after a by-gone
+fashion, over the expanded limits and generous outline of a matured
+nation. There were patches here and there; there were grievous rents
+and holes here and there; there were ludicrous and painful exposures of
+growing limbs everywhere; and the Party in Power and the Party out of
+Power could do nothing but mend and patch, and revamp and cleanse and
+scour, and occasionally, in the wildness of despair, suggest even the
+cutting off the rebellious limbs that persisted in growing beyond the
+swaddling clothes of its infancy.
+
+It was a capital of Contradictions and Inconsistencies. At one end of
+the Avenue sat the responsible High Keeper of the military honor, valor,
+and war-like prestige of a great nation, without the power to pay his
+own troops their legal dues until some selfish quarrel between Party
+and Party was settled. Hard by sat another Secretary, whose established
+functions seemed to be the misrepresentation of the nation abroad by
+the least characteristic of its classes, the politicians,--and only then
+when they had been defeated as politicians, and when their constituents
+had declared them no longer worthy to be even THEIR representatives.
+This National Absurdity was only equaled by another, wherein an
+ex-Politician was for four years expected to uphold the honor of a flag
+of a great nation over an ocean he had never tempted, with a discipline
+the rudiments of which he could scarcely acquire before he was removed,
+or his term of office expired, receiving his orders from a superior
+officer as ignorant of his special duties as himself, and subjected to
+the revision of a Congress cognizant of him only as a politician. At the
+farther end of the Avenue was another department so vast in its extent
+and so varied in its functions that few of the really great practical
+workers of the land would have accepted its responsibility for ten times
+its salary, but which the most perfect constitution in the world handed
+over to men who were obliged to make it a stepping stone to future
+preferment. There was another department, more suggestive of its
+financial functions from the occasional extravagances or economies
+exhibited in its payrolls,--successive Congresses having taken other
+matters out of its hands,--presided over by an official who bore the
+title and responsibility of the Custodian and Disburser of the Nation's
+Purse, and received a salary that a bank-President would have
+sniffed at. For it was part of this Constitutional Inconsistency and
+Administrative Absurdity that in the matter of honor, justice, fidelity
+to trust, and even business integrity, the official was always expected
+to be the superior of the Government he represented. Yet the crowning
+Inconsistency was that, from time to time, it was submitted to the
+sovereign people to declare if these various Inconsistencies were not
+really the perfect expression of the most perfect Government the
+world had known. And it is to be recorded that the unanimous voices of
+Representative, Orator, and Unfettered Poetry were that it was!
+
+Even the public press lent itself to the Great Inconsistency. It was
+as clear as crystal to the journal on one side of the Avenue that the
+country was going to the dogs unless the SPIRIT of the Fathers once more
+reanimated the public; it was equally clear to the journal on the other
+side of the Avenue that only a rigid adherence to the LETTER of the
+Fathers would save the nation from decline. It was obvious to the
+first-named journal that the "letter" meant Government patronage to
+the other journal; it was patent to that journal that the "shekels" of
+Senator X really animated the spirit of the Fathers. Yet all agreed
+it was a great and good and perfect government,--subject only to the
+predatory incursions of a Hydra-headed monster known as a "Ring." The
+Ring's origin was wrapped in secrecy, its fecundity was alarming; but
+although its rapacity was preternatural, its digestion was perfect
+and easy. It circumvolved all affairs in an atmosphere of mystery;
+it clouded all things with the dust and ashes of distrust. All
+disappointment of place, of avarice, of incompetency or ambition, was
+clearly attributable to it. It even permeated private and social life;
+there were Rings in our kitchen and household service; in our public
+schools, that kept the active intelligences of our children passive;
+there were Rings of engaging, handsome, dissolute young fellows, who
+kept us moral but unengaging seniors from the favors of the fair; there
+were subtle, conspiring Rings among our creditors, which sent us into
+bankruptcy and restricted our credit. In fact it would not be hazardous
+to say that all that was calamitous in public and private experience
+was clearly traceable to that combination of power in a minority over
+weakness in a majority--known as a Ring.
+
+Haply there was a body of demigods, as yet uninvoked, who should
+speedily settle all that. When Smith of Minnesota, Robinson of Vermont,
+and Jones of Georgia returned to Congress from these rural seclusions
+so potent with information and so freed from local prejudices, it was
+understood, vaguely, that great things would be done. This was always
+understood. There never was a time in the history of American politics
+when, to use the expression of the journals before alluded to, "the
+present session of Congress" did not "bid fair to be the most momentous
+in our history," and did not, as far as the facts go, leave a vast
+amount of unfinished important business lying hopelessly upon its
+desks, having "bolted" the rest as rashly and with as little regard to
+digestion or assimilation as the American traveller has for his railway
+refreshment.
+
+In this capital, on this languid midsummer day, in an upper room of one
+of its second-rate hotels, the Honorable Pratt C. Gashwiler sat at
+his writing-table. There are certain large, fleshy men with whom the
+omission of even a necktie or collar has all the effect of an indecent
+exposure. The Hon. Mr. Gashwiler, in his trousers and shirt, was a sight
+to be avoided by the modest eye. There were such palpable suggestions of
+vast extents of unctuous flesh in the slight glimpse offered by his open
+throat that his dishabille should have been as private as his business.
+Nevertheless, when there was a knock at his door he unhesitatingly said,
+"Come in!"--pushing away a goblet crowned with a certain aromatic herb
+with his right hand, while he drew towards him with his left a few proof
+slips of his forthcoming speech. The Gashwiler brow became, as it were,
+intelligently abstracted.
+
+The intruder regarded Gashwiler with a glance of familiar recognition
+from his right eye, while his left took in a rapid survey of the papers
+on the table, and gleamed sardonically.
+
+"You are at work, I see," he said apologetically.
+
+"Yes," replied the Congressman, with an air of perfunctory
+weariness,--"one of my speeches. Those d----d printers make such a mess
+of it; I suppose I don't write a very fine hand."
+
+If the gifted Gashwiler had added that he did not write a very
+intelligent hand, or a very grammatical hand, and that his spelling was
+faulty, he would have been truthful, although the copy and proof before
+him might not have borne him out. The near fact was that the speech
+was composed and written by one Expectant Dobbs, a poor retainer of
+Gashwiler, and the honorable member's labor as a proof-reader was
+confined to the introduction of such words as "anarchy," "oligarchy,"
+"satrap," "palladium," and "Argus-eyed" in the proof, with little
+relevancy as to position or place, and no perceptible effect as to
+argument.
+
+The stranger saw all this with his wicked left eye, but continued to
+beam mildly with his right. Removing the coat and waistcoat of Gashwiler
+from a chair, he drew it towards the table, pushing aside a portly,
+loud-ticking watch,--the very image of Gashwiler,--that lay beside him,
+and, resting his elbows on the proofs, said:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Have you anything new?" asked the parliamentary Gashwiler.
+
+"Much! a woman!" replied the stranger.
+
+The astute Gashwiler, waiting further information, concluded to receive
+this fact gaily and gallantly. "A woman?--my dear Mr. Wiles,--of course!
+The dear creatures," he continued, with a fat, offensive chuckle,
+"somehow are always making their charming presence felt. Ha! ha! A man,
+sir, in public life becomes accustomed to that sort of thing, and
+knows when he must be agreeable,--agreeable, sir, but firm! I've had my
+experience, sir,--my OWN experience,"--and the Congressman leaned back
+in his chair, not unlike a robust St. Anthony who had withstood one
+temptation to thrive on another.
+
+"Yes," said Wiles impatiently, "but d--n it, she's on the OTHER SIDE."
+
+"The other side!" repeated Gashwiler vacantly.
+
+"Yes, she's a niece of Garcia's. A little she devil."
+
+"But Garcia's on our side," rejoined Gashwiler.
+
+"Yes, but she is bought by the Ring."
+
+"A woman!" sneered Mr. Gashwiler; "what can she do with men who won't be
+made fools of? Is she so handsome?"
+
+"I never saw any great beauty in her," said Wiles shortly, "although
+they say that she's rather caught that d----d Thatcher, in spite of
+his coldness. At any rate, she is his protegee. But she isn't the sort
+you're thinking of, Gashwiler. They say she knows, or pretends to know,
+something about the grant. She may have got hold of some of her uncle's
+papers. Those Greasers were always d----d fools; and, if he did anything
+foolish, like as not he bungled or didn't cover up his tracks. And with
+his knowledge and facilities too! Why, if I'd--" but here Mr.
+Wiles stopped to sigh over the inequalities of fortune that wasted
+opportunities on the less skillful scamp.
+
+Mr. Gashwiler became dignified. "She can do nothing with us," he said
+potentially.
+
+Wiles turned his wicked eye on him. "Manuel and Miguel, who sold out to
+our man, are afraid of her. They were our witnesses. I verily believe
+they'd take back everything if she got after them. And as for Pedro, he
+thinks she holds the power of life and death over him."
+
+"Pedro! life and death,--what's all this?" said the astonished
+Gashwiler.
+
+Wiles saw his blunder, but saw also that he had gone too far to stop.
+"Pedro," he said, "was strongly suspected of having murdered Concho, one
+of the original locators."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler turned white as a sheet, and then flushed again into an
+apoplectic glow. "Do you dare to say," he began as soon as he could
+find his tongue and his legs, for in the exercise of his congressional
+functions these extreme members supported each other,--"do you mean to
+say," he stammered in rising rage, "that you have dared to deceive
+an American lawgiver into legislating upon a measure connected with a
+capital offense? Do I understand you to say, sir, that murder stands
+upon the record--stands upon the record, sir,--of this cause to which,
+as a representative of Remus, I have lent my official aid? Do you mean
+to say that you have deceived my constituency, whose sacred trust
+I hold, in inveigling me to hiding a crime from the Argus eyes of
+justice?" And Mr. Gashwiler looked towards the bell-pull as if about
+to summon a servant to witness this outrage against the established
+judiciary.
+
+"The murder, if it WAS a murder, took place before Garcia entered upon
+this claim, or had a footing in this court," returned Wiles blandly,
+"and is no part of the record."
+
+"You are sure it is not spread upon the record?"
+
+"I am. You can judge for yourself."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler walked to the window, returned to the table, finished his
+liquor in a single gulp, and then, with a slight resumption of dignity,
+said:
+
+"That alters the case."
+
+Wiles glanced with his left eye at the Congressman. The right placidly
+looked out of the window. Presently he said quietly, "I've brought you
+the certificates of stock; do you wish them made out in your own name?"
+
+Mr. Gashwiler tried hard to look as if he were trying to recall the
+meaning of Wiles's words. "Oh!--ah!--umph!--let me see,--oh, yes, the
+certificates,--certainly! Of course you will make them out in the name
+of my secretary, Mr. Expectant Dobbs. They will perhaps repay him for
+the extra clerical labor required in the prosecution of your claim. He
+is a worthy young man. Although not a public officer, yet he is so near
+to me that perhaps I am wrong in permitting him to accept a fee for
+private interests. An American representative cannot be too cautious,
+Mr. Wiles. Perhaps you had better have also a blank transfer. The stock
+is, I understand, yet in the future. Mr. Dobbs, though talented and
+praiseworthy, is poor; he may wish to realize. If some--ahem! some
+FRIEND--better circumstanced should choose to advance the cash to him
+and run the risk,--why, it would only be an act of kindness."
+
+"You are proverbially generous, Mr. Gashwiler," said Wiles, opening
+and shutting his left eye like a dark lantern on the benevolent
+representative.
+
+"Youth, when faithful and painstaking, should be encouraged," replied
+Mr. Gashwiler. "I lately had occasion to point this out in a few remarks
+I had to make before the Sabbath school reunion at Remus. Thank you, I
+will see that they are--ahem!--conveyed to him. I shall give them to him
+with my own hand," he concluded, falling back in his chair, as if
+the better to contemplate the perspective of his own generosity and
+condescension. Mr. Wiles took his hat and turned to go. Before he
+reached the door Mr. Gashwiler returned to the social level with a
+chuckle:
+
+"You say this woman, this Garcia's niece, is handsome and smart?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I can set another woman on the track that'll euchre her every time!"
+
+Mr. Wiles was too clever to appear to notice the sudden lapse in the
+Congressman's dignity, and only said, with his right eye:
+
+"Can you?"
+
+"By G-d, I WILL, or I don't know how to represent Remus."
+
+Mr. Wiles thanked him with his right eye, and looked a dagger with his
+left. "Good," he said, and added persuasively: "Does she live here?"
+
+The Congressman nodded assent. "An awfully handsome woman,--a particular
+friend of mine!" Mr. Gashwiler here looked as if he would not mind to
+have been rallied a little over his intimacy with the fair one; but
+the astute Mr. Wiles was at the same moment making up his mind, after
+interpreting the Congressman's look and manner, that he must know this
+fair incognita if he wished to sway Gashwiler. He determined to bide his
+time, and withdrew.
+
+The door was scarcely closed upon him when another knock diverted Mr.
+Gashwiler's attention from his proofs. The door opened to a young man
+with sandy hair and anxious face. He entered the room deprecatingly, as
+if conscious of the presence of a powerful being, to be supplicated and
+feared. Mr. Gashwiler did not attempt to disabuse his mind. "Busy, you
+see," he said shortly, "correcting your work!"
+
+"I hope it is acceptable?" said the young man timidly.
+
+"Well--yes--it will do," said Gashwiler; "indeed I may say it is
+satisfactory on the whole," he added with the appearance of a large
+generosity; "quite satisfactory."
+
+"You have no news, I suppose," continued the young man, with a slight
+flush, born of pride or expectation.
+
+"No, nothing as yet." Mr. Gashwiler paused as if a thought had struck
+him.
+
+"I have thought," he said, finally, "that some position--such as a
+secretaryship with me--would help you to a better appointment. Now,
+supposing that I make you my private secretary, giving you some
+important and confidential business. Eh?"
+
+Dobbs looked at his patron with a certain wistful, dog-like expectancy,
+moved himself excitedly on his chair seat in a peculiar canine-like
+anticipation of gratitude, strongly suggesting that he would have wagged
+his tail if he had one. At which Mr. Gashwiler became more impressive.
+
+"Indeed, I may say I anticipated it by certain papers I have put in
+your charge and in your name, only taking from you a transfer that might
+enable me to satisfy my conscience hereafter in recommending you as
+my--ahem!--private secretary. Perhaps, as a mere form, you might now,
+while you are here, put your name to these transfers, and, so to speak,
+begin your duties at once."
+
+The glow of pride and hope that mantled the cheek of poor Dobbs might
+have melted a harder heart than Gashwiler's. But the senatorial toga
+had invested Mr. Gashwiler with a more than Roman stoicism towards the
+feelings of others, and he only fell back in his chair in the pose of
+conscious rectitude as Dobbs hurriedly signed the paper.
+
+"I shall place them in my portman-tell," said Gashwiler, suiting the
+word to the action, "for safe keeping. I need not inform you, who are
+now, as it were, on the threshold of official life, that perfect and
+inviolable secrecy in all affairs of State"--Mr. G. here motioned toward
+his portmanteau as if it contained a treaty at least--"is most essential
+and necessary."
+
+Dobbs assented. "Then my duties will keep me with you here?" he asked
+doubtfully.
+
+"No, no," said Gashwiler hastily; then, correcting himself, he added:
+"that is--for the present--no!"
+
+Poor Dobbs's face fell. The near fact was that he had lately had notice
+to quit his present lodgings in consequence of arrears in his rent, and
+he had a hopeful reliance that his confidential occupation would carry
+bread and lodging with it. But he only asked if there were any new
+papers to make out.
+
+"Ahem! not at present; the fact is I am obliged to give so much of my
+time to callers--I have to-day been obliged to see half a dozen--that
+I must lock myself up and say 'Not at home' for the rest of the day."
+Feeling that this was an intimation that the interview was over, the
+new private secretary, a little dashed as to his near hopes, but still
+sanguine of the future, humbly took his leave.
+
+But here a certain Providence, perhaps mindful of poor Dobbs, threw into
+his simple hands--to be used or not, if he were worthy or capable of
+using it--a certain power and advantage. He had descended the staircase,
+and was passing through the lower corridor, when he was made the
+unwilling witness of a remarkable assault.
+
+It appeared that Mr. Wiles, who had quitted Gashwiler's presence as
+Dobbs was announced, had other business in the hotel, and in pursuance
+of it had knocked at room No. 90. In response to the gruff voice that
+bade him enter, Mr. Wiles opened the door, and espied the figure of
+a tall, muscular, fiery-bearded man extended on the bed, with the
+bedclothes carefully tucked under his chin, and his arms lying flat by
+his side.
+
+Mr. Wiles beamed with his right cheek, and advanced to the bed as if
+to take the hand of the stranger, who, however, neither by word or sign
+responded to his salutation.
+
+"Perhaps I'm intruding?" said Mr. Wiles blandly.
+
+"Perhaps you are," said Red Beard dryly.
+
+Mr. Wiles forced a smile on his right cheek, which he turned to the
+smiter, but permitted the left to indulge in unlimited malevolence.
+"I wanted merely to know if you have looked into that matter?" he said
+meekly.
+
+"I've looked into it and round it and across it and over it and through
+it," responded the man gravely, with his eyes fixed on Wiles.
+
+"And you have perused all the papers?" continued Mr. Wiles.
+
+"I've read every paper, every speech, every affidavit, every decision,
+every argument," said the stranger as if repeating a formula.
+
+Mr. Wiles attempted to conceal his embarrassment by an easy,
+right-handed smile, that went off sardonically on the left, and
+continued: "Then I hope, my dear sir, that, having thoroughly mastered
+the case, you are inclined to be favorable to us?"
+
+The gentleman in the bed did not reply, but apparently nestled more
+closely beneath the coverlids.
+
+"I have brought the shares I spoke of," continued Mr. Wiles,
+insinuatingly.
+
+"Hev you a friend within call?" interrupted the recumbent man gently.
+
+"I don't quite understand!" smiled Mr. Wiles. "Of course any name you
+might suggest--"
+
+"Hev you a friend, any chap that you might waltz in here at a moment's
+call?" continued the man in bed. "No? Do you know any of them waiters
+in the house? Thar's a bell over yan!" and he motioned with his eyes
+towards the wall, but did not otherwise move his body.
+
+"No," said Wiles, becoming slightly suspicious and wrathful.
+
+"Mebbe a stranger might do? I reckon thar's one passin' in the hall.
+Call him in,--he'll do!"
+
+Wiles opened the door a little impatiently, yet inquisitively, as
+Dobbs passed. The man in bed called out, "Oh, stranger!" and, as Dobbs
+stopped, said, "Come yar."
+
+Dobbs entered a little timidly, as was his habit with strangers.
+
+"I don't know who you be--nor care, I reckon," said the stranger. "This
+yer man"--pointing to Wiles--"is Wiles. I'm Josh Sibblee of Fresno,
+Member of Congress from the 4th Congressional District of Californy.
+I'm jist lying here, with a derringer into each hand,--jist lying here
+kivered up and holdin' in on'y to keep from blowin' the top o' this
+d----d skunk's head off. I kinder feel I can't hold in any longer. What
+I want to say to ye, stranger, is that this yer skunk--which his name
+is Wiles--hez bin tryin' his d--dest to get a bribe onto Josh, and Josh,
+outo respect for his constituents, is jist waitin' for some stranger to
+waltz in and stop the d--dest fight--"
+
+"But, my dear Mr. Sibblee, there must be some mistake," said Wiles
+earnestly.
+
+"Mistake? Strip me!"
+
+"No! No!" said Wiles, hurriedly, as the simple-minded Dobbs was about to
+draw down the coverlid.
+
+"Take him away," said the Hon. Mr. Sibblee, "before I disgrace my
+constituency. They said I'd be in jail afore I get through the session.
+Ef you've got any humanity, stranger, snake him out, and pow'ful quick,
+too."
+
+Dobbs, quite white and aghast, looked at Wiles and hesitated. There was
+a slight movement in the bed. Both men started for the door; and the
+next minute it closed very decidedly on the member from Fresno.
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HOW IT WAS LOBBIED FOR
+
+
+The Hon. Pratt C. Gashwiler, M.C., was of course unaware of the
+incident described in the last chapter. His secret, even if it had been
+discovered by Dobbs, was safe in that gentleman's innocent and honorable
+hands, and certainly was not of a quality that Mr. Wiles, at present,
+would have cared to expose. For, in spite of Mr. Wiles's discomfiture,
+he still had enough experience of character to know that the irate
+member from Fresno would be satisfied with his own peculiar manner of
+vindicating his own personal integrity, and would not make a public
+scandal of it. Again, Wiles was convinced that Dobbs was equally
+implicated with Gashwiler, and would be silent for his own sake. So that
+poor Dobbs, as is too often the fate of simple but weak natures, had
+full credit for duplicity by every rascal in the land.
+
+From which it may be inferred that nothing occurred to disturb the
+security of Gashwiler. When the door closed upon Mr. Wiles, he indited
+a note which, with a costly but exceedingly distasteful
+bouquet,--rearranged by his own fat fingers, and discord and incongruity
+visible in every combination of color,--he sent off by a special
+messenger. Then he proceeded to make his toilet,--an operation rarely
+graceful or picturesque in our sex, and an insult to the spectator when
+obesity is superadded. When he had put on a clean shirt, of which there
+was grossly too much, and added a white waistcoat, that seemed to accent
+his rotundity, he completed his attire with a black frock coat of the
+latest style, and surveyed himself complacently before a mirror. It is
+to be recorded that, however satisfactory the result might have been to
+Mr. Gashwiler, it was not so to the disinterested spectator. There are
+some men on whom "that deformed thief, Fashion," avenges himself by
+making their clothes appear perennially new. The gloss of the tailor's
+iron never disappears; the creases of the shelf perpetually rise in
+judgment against the wearer. Novelty was the general suggestion of Mr.
+Gashwiler's full-dress,--it was never his HABITUDE;--and "Our own
+Make," "Nobby," and the "Latest Style, only $15," was as patent on the
+legislator's broad back as if it still retained the shop-man's ticket.
+
+Thus arrayed, within an hour he complacently followed the note and his
+floral offering. The house he sought had been once the residence of
+a foreign Ambassador, who had loyally represented his government in a
+single unimportant treaty, now forgotten, and in various receptions and
+dinners, still actively remembered by occasional visits to its salon;
+now the average dreary American parlor. "Dear me," the fascinating Mr. X
+would say, "but do you know, love, in this very room I remember meeting
+the distinguished Marquis of Monte Pio;" or perhaps the fashionable
+Jones of the State Department instantly crushed the decayed friend he
+was perfunctorily visiting by saying, "'Pon my soul, YOU here;--why, the
+last time I was in this room I gossiped for an hour with the Countess
+de Castenet in that very corner." For, with the recall of the aforesaid
+Ambassador, the mansion had become a boarding-place, kept by the wife of
+a departmental clerk.
+
+Perhaps there was nothing in the history of the house more quaint and
+philosophic than the story of its present occupant. Roger Fauquier had
+been a departmental clerk for forty years. It was at once his practical
+good luck and his misfortune to have been early appointed to a position
+which required a thorough and complete knowledge of the formulas and
+routine of a department that expended millions of the public funds.
+Fauquier, on a poor salary, diminishing instead of increasing with his
+service, had seen successive administrations bud and blossom and decay,
+but had kept his position through the fact that his knowledge was a
+necessity to the successive chiefs and employes. Once it was true that
+he had been summarily removed by a new Secretary, to make room for a
+camp follower, whose exhaustive and intellectual services in a political
+campaign had made him eminently fit for anything; but the alarming
+discovery that the new clerk's knowledge of grammar and etymology
+was even worse than that of the Secretary himself, and that, through
+ignorance of detail, the business of that department was retarded to a
+damage to the Government of over half a million of dollars, led to the
+reinstatement of Mr. Fauquier--AT A LOWER SALARY. For it was felt that
+something was wrong somewhere, and as it had always been the custom of
+Congress and the administration to cut down salaries as the first step
+to reform, they made of Mr. Fauquier a moral example. A gentleman born,
+of somewhat expensive tastes, having lived up to his former salary, this
+change brought another bread-winner into the field, Mrs. Fauquier, who
+tried, more or less unsuccessfully, to turn her old Southern habits of
+hospitality to remunerative account. But as poor Fauquier could never be
+prevailed upon to present a bill to a gentleman, sir, and as some of the
+scions of the best Southern families were still waiting for, or had
+been recently dismissed from, a position, the experiment was a pecuniary
+failure. Yet the house was of excellent repute and well patronized;
+indeed, it was worth something to see old Fauquier sitting at the
+head of his own table, in something of his ancestral style, relating
+anecdotes of great men now dead and gone, interrupted only by occasional
+visits from importunate tradesmen.
+
+Prominent among what Mr. Fauquier called his "little family" was a
+black-eyed lady of great powers of fascination, and considerable local
+reputation as a flirt. Nevertheless, these social aberrations were amply
+condoned by a facile and complacent husband, who looked with a lenient
+and even admiring eye upon the little lady's amusement, and to a certain
+extent lent a tacit indorsement to her conduct. Nobody minded Hopkinson;
+in the blaze of Mrs. Hopkinson's fascinations he was completely lost
+sight of. A few married women with unduly sensitive husbands, and
+several single ladies of the best and longest standing, reflected
+severely on her conduct. The younger men of course admired her, but I
+think she got her chief support from old fogies like ourselves. For it
+is your quiet, self-conceited, complacent, philosophic, broad-waisted
+paterfamilias who, after all, is the one to whom the gay and giddy of
+the proverbially impulsive, unselfish sex owe their place in the social
+firmament. We are never inclined to be captious; we laugh at as a
+folly what our wives and daughters condemn as a fault; OUR "withers are
+unwrung," yet we still confess to the fascinations of a pretty face.
+We know, bless us, from dear experience, the exact value of one woman's
+opinion of another; we want our brilliant little friend to shine; it
+is only the moths who will burn their two-penny immature wings in the
+flame! And why should they not? Nature has been pleased to supply more
+moths than candles! Go to!--give the pretty creature--be she maid, wife,
+or widow--a show! And so, my dear sir, while mater-familias bends her
+black brows in disgust, we smile our superior little smile, and extend
+to Mistress Anonyma our gracious indorsement. And if giddiness is
+grateful, or if folly is friendly,--well, of course, we can't help that.
+Indeed it rather proves our theory.
+
+I had intended to say something about Hopkinson; but really there is
+very little to say. He was invariably good humored. A few ladies once
+tried to show him that he really ought to feel worse than he did about
+the conduct of his wife; and it is recorded that Hopkinson, in an excess
+of good humor and kindliness, promised to do so. Indeed the good
+fellow was so accessible that it is said that young DeLancy of the Tape
+Department confided to Hopkinson his jealousy of a rival; and revealed
+the awful secret that he (DeLancy) had reason to expect more loyalty
+from his (Hopkinson's) wife. The good fellow is reported to have
+been very sympathetic, and to have promised Delaney to lend whatever
+influence he had with Mrs. Hopkinson in his favor. "You see," he said
+explanatorily to DeLancy, "she has a good deal to attend to lately, and
+I suppose has got rather careless,--that's women's ways. But if I
+can't bring her round I'll speak to Gashwiler,--I'll get him to use his
+influence with Mrs. Hop. So cheer up, my boy, HE'LL make it all right."
+
+The appearance of a bouquet on the table of Mrs. Hopkinson was no
+rare event; nevertheless, Mr. Gashwiler's was not there. Its hideous
+contrasts had offended her woman's eye,--it is observable that good
+taste survives the wreck of all the other feminine virtues,--and she had
+distributed it to make boutonnieres for other gentlemen. Yet, when he
+appeared, she said to him hastily, putting her little hand over the
+cardiac region:
+
+"I'm so glad you came. But you gave me SUCH a fright an hour ago."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler was both pleased and astounded. "What have I done, my dear
+Mrs. Hopkinson?" he began.
+
+"Oh, don't talk," she said sadly. "What have you done, indeed! Why, you
+sent me that beautiful bouquet. I could not mistake your taste in the
+arrangement of the flowers;--but my husband was here. You know his
+jealousy. I was obliged to conceal it from him. Never--promise me
+now--NEVER do it again."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler gallantly protested.
+
+"No! I am serious! I was so agitated: he must have seen me blush."
+
+Nothing but the gross flattery to this speech could have clouded its
+manifest absurdity to the Gashwiler consciousness. But Mr. Gashwiler
+had already succumbed to the girlish half-timidity with which it was
+uttered. Nevertheless, he could not help saying:
+
+"But why should he be so jealous now? Only day before yesterday I saw
+Simpson of Duluth hand you a nosegay right before him!"
+
+"Ah," returned the lady, "he was outwardly calm THEN, but you know
+nothing of the scene that occurred between us after you left."
+
+"But," gasped the practical Gashwiler, "Simpson had given your husband
+that contract,--a cool fifty thousand in his pocket!"
+
+Mrs. Hopkinson looked as dignifiedly at Gashwiler as was consistent with
+five feet three (the extra three inches being a pyramidal structure of
+straw-colored hair), a frond of faint curls, a pair of laughing blue
+eyes, and a small belted waist. Then she said, with a casting down of
+her lids:
+
+"You forget that my husband loves me." And for once the minx appeared to
+look penitent. It was becoming; but as it had been originally practiced
+in a simple white dress, relieved only with pale-blue ribbons, it was
+not entirely in keeping with be-flounced lavender and rose-colored
+trimmings. Yet the woman who hesitates between her moral expression and
+the harmony of her dress is lost. And Mrs. Hopkinson was victrix by her
+very audacity.
+
+Mr. Gashwiler was flattered. The most dissolute man likes the appearance
+of virtue. "But graces and accomplishments like yours, dear Mrs.
+Hopkinson," he said oleaginously, "belong to the whole country."
+Which, with something between a courtesy and a strut, he endeavored to
+represent. "And I shall want to avail myself of all," he added, "in the
+matter of the Castro claim. A little supper at Welcker's, a glass or two
+of champagne, and a single flash of those bright eyes, and the thing is
+done."
+
+"But," said Mrs. Hopkinson, "I've promised Josiah that I would give up
+all those frivolities, and although my conscience is clear, you know how
+people talk! Josiah hears it. Why, only last night, at a reception at
+the Patagonian Minister's, every woman in the room gossiped about me
+because I led the german with him. As if a married woman, whose
+husband was interested in the Government, could not be civil to the
+representative of a friendly power?"
+
+Mr. Gashwiler did not see how Mr. Hopkinson's late contract for
+supplying salt pork and canned provisions to the army of the United
+States should make his wife susceptible to the advances of foreign
+princes; but he prudently kept that to himself. Still, not being himself
+a diplomat, he could not help saying:
+
+"But I understood that Mr. Hopkinson did not object to your interesting
+yourself in this claim, and you know some of the stock--"
+
+The lady started, and said:
+
+"Stock! Dear Mr. Gashwiler, for Heaven's sake don't mention that hideous
+name to me. Stock, I am sick of it! Have you gentlemen no other topic
+for a lady?"
+
+She punctuated her sentence with a mischievous look at her interlocutor.
+For a second time I regret to say that Mr. Gashwiler succumbed. The
+Roman constituency at Remus, it is to be hoped, were happily ignorant of
+this last defection of their great legislator. Mr. Gashwiler instantly
+forgot his theme,--began to ply the lady with a certain bovine-like
+gallantry, which it is to be said to her credit she parried with a
+playful, terrier-like dexterity, when the servant suddenly announced,
+"Mr. Wiles."
+
+Gashwiler started. Not so Mrs. Hopkinson, who, however, prudently and
+quietly removed her own chair several inches from Gashwiler's.
+
+"Do you know Mr. Wiles?" she asked pleasantly.
+
+"No! That is, I--ah--yes, I may say I have had some business relations
+with him," responded Gashwiler rising.
+
+"Won't you stay?" she added pleadingly. "Do!"
+
+Mr. Gashwiler's prudence always got the better of his gallantry. "Not
+now," he responded in some nervousness. "Perhaps I had better go now,
+in view of what you have just said about gossip. You need not mention my
+name to this-er--this--Mr. Wiles." And with one eye on the door, and an
+awkward dash of his lips at the lady's fingers, he withdrew.
+
+There was no introductory formula to Mr. Wiles's interview. He dashed at
+once in medias res. "Gashwiler knows a woman that, he says, can help us
+against that Spanish girl who is coming here with proofs, prettiness,
+fascination, and what not! You must find her out."
+
+"Why?" asked the lady laughingly.
+
+"Because I don't trust that Gashwiler. A woman with a pretty face and an
+ounce of brains could sell him out; aye, and US with him."
+
+"Oh, say TWO ounces of brains. Mr. Wiles, Mr. Gashwiler is no fool."
+
+"Possibly, except when your sex is concerned, and it is very likely that
+the woman is his superior."
+
+"I should think so," said Mrs. Hopkinson with a mischievous look.
+
+"Ah, you know her, then?"
+
+"Not so well as I know him," said Mrs. H. quite seriously. "I wish I
+did."
+
+"Well, you'll find out if she's to be trusted! You are laughing,--it is
+a serious matter! This woman--"
+
+Mrs. Hopkinson dropped him a charming courtesy and said,
+
+"C'est moi!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A RACE FOR IT
+
+
+Royal Thatcher worked hard. That the boyish little painter who shared
+his hospitality at the "Blue Mass" mine should afterward have little
+part in his active life seemed not inconsistent with his habits. At
+present the mine was his only mistress, claiming his entire time,
+exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme
+devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss
+Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to
+supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing.
+Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet
+with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in
+California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather
+it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, to make
+it so; and people cared little for the reproduction, under their very
+noses, of that which they saw continually with their own eyes, and
+valued not. So that little Mistress Carmen was fain to divert her
+artist soul to support her plump little material body; and made
+divers excursions into the regions of ceramic art, painting on velvet,
+illuminating missals, decorating china, and the like. I have in my
+possession some wax flowers--a startling fuchsia and a bewildering
+dahlia--sold for a mere pittance by this little lady, whose pictures
+lately took the prize at a foreign exhibition, shortly after she had
+been half starved by a California public, and claimed by a California
+press as its fostered child of genius.
+
+Of these struggles and triumphs Thatcher had no knowledge; yet he was
+perhaps more startled than he would own to himself when, one December
+day, he received this despatch: "Come to Washington at once.--Carmen de
+Haro."
+
+"Carmen de Haro!" I grieve to state that such was the preoccupation of
+this man, elected by fate to be the hero of the solitary amatory episode
+of his story, that for a moment he could not recall her. When the honest
+little figure that had so manfully stood up against him, and had proved
+her sex by afterwards running away from him, came back at last to his
+memory, he was at first mystified and then self-reproachful. He had
+been, he felt vaguely, untrue to himself. He had been remiss to the
+self-confessed daughter of his enemy. Yet why should she telegraph to
+him, and what was she doing in Washington? To all these speculations
+it is to be said to his credit that he looked for no sentimental
+or romantic answer. Royal Thatcher was naturally modest and
+self-depreciating in his relations to the other sex, as indeed most men
+who are apt to be successful with women generally are, despite a vast
+degree of superannuated bosh to the contrary. To the half dozen women
+who are startled by sheer audacity into submission there are scores who
+are piqued by a self-respectful patience; and where a women has to do
+half the wooing, she generally makes a pretty sure thing of it.
+
+In his bewilderment Thatcher had overlooked a letter lying on his table.
+It was from his Washington lawyer. The concluding paragraph caught his
+eye,--"Perhaps it would be well if you came here yourself. Roscommon is
+here; and they say there is a niece of Garcia's, lately appeared, who is
+likely to get up a strong social sympathy for the old Mexican. I don't
+know that they expect to prove anything by her; but I'm told she
+is attractive and clever, and has enlisted the sympathies of the
+delegation." Thatcher laid the letter down a little indignantly. Strong
+men are quite as liable as weak women are to sudden inconsistencies on
+any question they may have in common. What right had this poor little
+bud he had cherished,--he was quite satisfied now that he had cherished
+her, and really had suffered from her absence,--what right had she to
+suddenly blossom in the sunshine of power to be, perhaps, plucked and
+worn by one of his enemies? He did not agree with his lawyer that she
+was in any way connected with his enemies: he trusted to her masculine
+loyalty that far. But here was something vaguely dangerous to the
+feminine mind,--position, flattery, power. He was almost as firmly
+satisfied now that he had been wronged and neglected as he had been
+positive a few moments before that he had been remiss in his attention.
+The irritation, although momentary, was enough to decide this strong
+man. He telegraphed to San Francisco; and, having missed the steamer,
+secured an overland passage to Washington; thought better of it, and
+partly changed his mind an hour after the ticket was purchased; but,
+manlike, having once made a practical step in a wrong direction, he
+kept on rather than admit an inconsistency to himself. Yet he was not
+entirely satisfied that his journey was a business one. The impulsive,
+weak little Mistress Carmen had prudently scored one against the strong
+man.
+
+Only a small part of the present great trans-continental railway at this
+time had been built, and was but piers at either end of a desolate and
+wild expanse as yet unbridged. When the overland traveller left the
+rail at Reno, he left, as it were, civilization with it; and, until he
+reached the Nebraska frontier, the rest of his road was only the
+old emigrant trail traversed by the coaches of the Overland Company.
+Excepting a part of "Devil's Canyon," the way was unpicturesque and
+flat; and the passage of the Rocky Mountains, far from suggesting the
+alleged poetry of that region, was only a reminder of those sterile
+distances of a level New England landscape.
+
+The journey was a dreary monotony that was scarcely enlivened by its
+discomforts, never amounting to actual accident or incident, but utterly
+destructive to all nervous tissue. Insanity often supervened. "On the
+third day out," said Hank Monk, driver, speaking casually but charitably
+of a "fare,"--"on the third day out, after axing no end of questions and
+getting no answers, he took to chewing straws that he picked outer the
+cushion, and kussin' to hisself. From that very day I knew it was
+all over with him, and I handed him over to his friends at 'Shy Ann,'
+strapped to the back seat, and ravin' and cussin' at Ben Holliday, the
+gent'manly proprietor." It is presumed that the unfortunate tourist's
+indignation was excited at the late Mr. Benjamin Holliday, then the
+proprietor of the line,--an evidence of his insanity that no one who
+knew that large-hearted, fastidious, and elegantly-cultured Californian,
+since allied to foreign nobility, will for a moment doubt.
+
+Mr. Royal Thatcher was too old and experienced a mountaineer to do aught
+but accept patiently and cynically his brother Californian's method of
+increasing his profits. As it was generally understood that any one
+who came from California by that route had some dark design, the victim
+received little sympathy. Thatcher's equable temperament and indomitable
+will stood him in good stead, and helped him cheerfully in this
+emergency. He ate his scant meals, and otherwise took care of the
+functions of his weak human nature, when and where he could, without
+grumbling, and at times earned even the praise of his driver by his
+ability to "rough it." Which "roughing it," by the way, meant the
+ability of the passengers to accept the incompetency of the Company.
+It is true there were times when he regretted that he had not taken the
+steamer; but then he reflected that he was one of a Vigilance Committee,
+sworn to hang that admirable man, the late Commodore Cornelius
+Vanderbilt, for certain practices and cruelties done upon the bodies of
+certain steerage passengers by his line, and for divers irregularities
+in their transportation. I mention this fact merely to show how so
+practical and stout a voyager as Thatcher might have confounded the
+perplexities attending the administration of a great steamship company
+with selfish greed and brutality; and that he, with other Californians,
+may not have known the fact, since recorded by the Commodore's family
+clergyman, that the great millionaire was always true to the hymns of
+his childhood.
+
+Nevertheless, Thatcher found time to be cheerful and helpful to his
+fellow passengers, and even to be so far interesting to "Yuba Bill,"
+the driver, as to have the box seat placed at his disposal. "But," said
+Thatcher, in some concern, "the box seat was purchased by that other
+gentleman in Sacramento. He paid extra for it, and his name's on your
+way-bill!" "That," said Yuba Bill, scornfully, "don't fetch me even ef
+he'd chartered the whole shebang. Look yar, do you reckon I'm goin' to
+spile my temper by setting next to a man with a game eye? And such an
+eye! Gewhillikins! Why, darn my skin, the other day when we war watering
+at Webster's, he got down and passed in front of the off-leader,--that
+yer pinto colt that's bin accustomed to injins, grizzlies, and buffalo,
+and I'm bless ef, when her eye tackled his, ef she didn't jist git up
+and rar round that I reckoned I'd hev to go down and take them blinders
+off from HER eyes and clap on HIS." "But he paid the money, and is
+entitled to his seat," persisted Thatcher. "Mebbe he is--in the office
+of the Kempeny," growled Yuba Bill; "but it's time some folks knowed
+that out in the plains I run this yer team myself."--A fact which was
+self-evident to most of the passengers. "I suppose his authority is
+as absolute on this dreary waste as a ship captain's in mid ocean,"
+exclaimed Thatcher to the baleful-eyed stranger. Mr. Wiles--whom the
+reader has recognized--assented with the public side of his face, but
+looked vengeance at Yuba Bill with the other, while Thatcher, innocent
+of the presence of one of his worst enemies, placated Bill so far as
+to restore Wiles to his rights. Wiles thanked him. "Shall I have
+the pleasure of your company far?" Wiles asked insinuatingly. "To
+Washington," replied Thatcher frankly. "Washington is a gay city during
+the session," again suggested the stranger. "I'm going on business,"
+said Thatcher bluntly.
+
+A trifling incident occurred at Pine-Tree Crossing which did not
+heighten Yuba Bill's admiration of the stranger. As Bill opened the
+double-locked box in the "boot" of the coach--sacred to Wells, Fargo &
+Co.'s Express and the Overland Company's treasures--Mr. Wiles perceived
+a small, black morocco portemanteau among the parcels. "Ah, you carry
+baggage there too?" he said sweetly. "Not often," responded Yuba Bill
+shortly. "Ah, this then contains valuables?" "It belongs to that man
+whose seat you've got," said Yuba Bill, who, for insulting purposes
+of his own, preferred to establish the fiction that Wiles was an
+interloper; "and ef he reckons, in a sorter mixed kempeny like this,
+to lock up his portmantle, I don't know who's business it is. Who?"
+continued Bill, lashing himself into a simulated rage, "who, in blank,
+is running this yer team? Hey? Mebbe you think, sittin' up thar on the
+box seat, you are. Mebbe you think you kin see round corners with that
+thar eye, and kin pull up for teams round corners, on down grades,
+a mile ahead?" But here Thatcher, who, with something of Lancelot's
+concern for Modred, had a noble pity for all infirmities, interfered so
+sternly that Yuba Bill stopped.
+
+On the fourth day they struck a blinding snow-storm, while ascending the
+dreary plateau that henceforward for six hundred miles was to be their
+roadbed. The horses, after floundering through the drift, gave out
+completely on reaching the next station, and the prospects ahead, to
+all but the experienced eye, looked doubtful. A few passengers advised
+taking to sledges, others a postponement of the journey until the
+weather changed. Yuba Bill alone was for pressing forward as they were.
+"Two miles more and we're on the high grade, whar the wind is strong
+enough to blow you through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away
+over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls. I'll jist skirmish round
+in and out o' them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can't drag one
+o' them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift." Bill had a
+California whip's contempt for a sledge. But he was warmly seconded by
+Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct
+that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another
+man's experience. "Them that wants to stop kin do so," said Bill
+authoritatively, cutting the Gordian knot; "them as wants to take a
+sledge can do so,--thar's one in the barn. Them as wants to go on with
+me and the relay will come on." Mr. Wiles selected the sledge and
+a driver, a few remained for the next stage, and Thatcher, with two
+others, decided to accompany Yuba Bill. These changes took up some
+valuable time; and the storm continuing, the stage was run under the
+shed, the passengers gathering around the station fire; and not until
+after midnight did Yuba Bill put in the relays. "I wish you a good
+journey," said Wiles, as he drove from the shed as Bill entered. Bill
+vouchsafed no reply, but, addressing himself to the driver, said curtly,
+as if giving an order for the delivery of goods, "Shove him out at
+Rawlings," and passed contemptuously around to the tail board of the
+sled, and returned to the harnessing of his relay.
+
+The moon came out and shone high as Yuba Bill once more took the reins
+in his hands. The wind, which instantly attacked them as they reached
+the level, seemed to make the driver's theory plausible, and for half a
+mile the roadbed was swept clean, and frozen hard. Further on a tongue
+of snow, extending from a boulder to the right, reached across their
+path to the height of two or three feet. But Yuba Bill dashed through a
+part of it, and by skillful maneuvering circumvented the rest. But even
+as the obstacle was passed, the coach dropped with an ominous lurch on
+one side, and the off fore wheel flew off in the darkness. Bill threw
+the horses back on their haunches; but, before their momentum could be
+checked, the near hind wheel slipped away, the vehicle rocked violently,
+plunged backwards and forwards, and stopped.
+
+Yuba Bill was on the road in an instant with his lantern. Then followed
+an outbreak of profanity which I regret, for artistic purposes, exceeds
+that generous limit which a sympathizing public has already extended to
+me in the explication of character. Let me state, therefore, that in
+a very few moments he succeeded in disparaging the characters of his
+employers, their male and female relatives, the coach builder, the
+station keeper, the road on which he travelled, and the travellers
+themselves, with occasional broad expletives addressed to himself and
+his own relatives. For the spirit of this and a more cultivated poetry
+of expression, I beg to refer the temperate reader to the 3d chapter of
+Job.
+
+The passengers knew Bill, and sat, conservative, patient, and expectant.
+As yet the cause of the catastrophe was not known. At last Thatcher's
+voice came from the box seat:
+
+"What's up, Bill?"
+
+"Not a blank lynch pin in the whole blank coach," was the answer.
+
+There was a dead silence. Yuba Bill executed a wild war dance of
+helpless rage.
+
+"Blank the blank ENCHANTED thing to blank!"
+
+(I beg here to refer the fastidious and cultivated reader to the only
+adjective I have dared transcribe of this actual oath which I once had
+the honor of hearing. He will I trust not fail to recognize the old
+classic daemon in this wild western objurgation.)
+
+"Who did it?" asked Thatcher.
+
+Yuba Bill did not reply, but dashed up again to the box, unlocked the
+"boot," and screamed out:
+
+"The man that stole your portmantle,--Wiles!"
+
+Thatcher laughed:
+
+"Don't worry about that, Bill. A 'biled' shirt, an extra collar, and a
+few papers. Nothing more."
+
+Yuba Bill slowly descended. When he reached the ground, he plucked
+Thatcher aside by his coat sleeve:
+
+"Ye don't mean to say ye had nothing in that bag ye was trying to get
+away with?"
+
+"No," said the laughing Thatcher frankly.
+
+"And that Wiles warn't one o' them detectives?"
+
+"Not to my knowledge, certainly."
+
+Yuba Bill sighed sadly, and returned to assist in the replacing of the
+coach on its wheels again.
+
+"Never mind, Bill," said one of the passengers sympathizingly, "we'll
+catch that man Wiles at Rawlings sure;" and he looked around at the
+inchoate vigilance committee, already "rounding into form" about him.
+
+"Ketch him!" returned Yuba Bill, derisively, "why we've got to go back
+to the station; and afore we're off agin he's pinted fur Clarmont on the
+relay we lose. Ketch him! H-ll's full of such ketches!"
+
+There was clearly nothing to do but to go back to the station to await
+the repairing of the coach. While this was being done Yuba Bill again
+drew Thatcher aside:
+
+"I allers suspected that chap's game eye, but I didn't somehow allow
+for anything like this. I reckoned it was only the square thing to
+look arter things gen'rally, and 'specially your traps. So, to purvent
+troubil, and keep things about ekal, ez he was goin' away, I sorter
+lifted this yer bag of hiz outer the tail board of his sleigh. I don't
+know as it is any exchange or compensation, but it may give ye a chance
+to spot him agin, or him you. It strikes me as bein' far-minded and
+squar';" and with these words he deposited at the feet of the astounded
+Thatcher the black travelling bag of Mr. Wiles.
+
+"But, Bill,--see here! I can't take this!" interrupted Thatcher hastily.
+"You can't swear that he's taken my bag,--and--and,--blank it all,--this
+won't do, you know. I've no right to this man's things, even if--"
+
+"Hold your hosses," said Bill gravely; "I ondertook to take charge
+o' your traps. I didn't--at least that d----d wall-eyed--Thar's a
+portmantle! I don't know who's it is. Take it."
+
+Half amused, half embarrassed, yet still protesting, Thatcher took the
+bag in his hands.
+
+"Ye might open it in my presence," suggested Yuba Bill gravely.
+
+Thatcher, half laughingly, did so. It was full of papers and
+semi-legal-looking documents. Thatcher's own name on one of them caught
+his eye; he opened the paper hastily and perused it. The smile faded
+from his lips.
+
+"Well," said Yuba Bill, "suppose we call it a fair exchange at present."
+
+Thatcher was still examining the papers. Suddenly this cautious,
+strong-minded man looked up into Yuba Bill's waiting face, and said
+quietly, in the despicable slang of the epoch and region:
+
+"It's a go! Suppose we do."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HOW IT BECAME FAMOUS
+
+
+Yuba Bill was right in believing that Wiles would lose no time at
+Rawlings. He left there on a fleet horse before Bill had returned with
+the broken-down coach to the last station, and distanced the telegram
+sent to detain him two hours. Leaving the stage road and its dangerous
+telegraphic stations, he pushed southward to Denver over the army
+trail, in company with a half-breed packer, crossing the Missouri before
+Thatcher had reached Julesburg. When Thatcher was at Omaha, Wiles was
+already in St. Louis; and as the Pullman car containing the hero of
+the "Blue Mass" mine rolled into Chicago, Wiles was already walking the
+streets of the national capital. Nevertheless, he had time en route
+to sink in the waters of the North Platte, with many expressions of
+disgust, the little black portmanteau belonging to Thatcher, containing
+his dressing case, a few unimportant letters, and an extra shirt, to
+wonder why simple men did not travel with their important documents
+and valuables, and to set on foot some prudent and cautious inquiries
+regarding his own lost carpet bag and its important contents.
+
+But for these trifles he had every reason to be satisfied with the
+progress of his plans. "It's all right," said Mrs. Hopkinson merrily;
+"while you and Gashwiler have been working with your 'stock,' and
+treating the whole world as if it could be bribed, I've done more with
+that earnest, self-believing, self-deceiving, and perfectly pathetic
+Roscommon than all you fellows put together. Why, I've told his pitiful
+story, and drawn tears from the eyes of Senators and Cabinet Ministers.
+More than that, I've introduced him into society, put him in a dress
+coat,--such a figure!--and you know how the best folk worship everything
+that is outre as the sincere thing. I've made him a complete success.
+Why, only the other night, when Senator Misnancy and Judge Fitzdawdle
+were here, after making him tell his story,--which you know I think he
+really believes,--I sang 'There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,'
+and my husband told me afterwards it was worth at least a dozen votes."
+
+"But about this rival of yours,--this niece of Garcia's?"
+
+"Another of your blunders; you men know nothing of women. Firstly, she's
+a swarthy little brunette, with dots for eyes; and strides like a man,
+dresses like a dowdy, don't wear stays, and has no style. Then, she's a
+single woman, and alone; and, although she affects to be an artist, and
+has Bohemian ways, don't you see she can't go into society without a
+chaperon or somebody to go with her? Nonsense."
+
+"But," persisted Wiles, "she must have some power; there's Judge Mason
+and Senator Peabody, who are constantly talking about her; and Dinwiddie
+of Virginia escorted her through the Capitol the other day."
+
+Mistress Hopkinson laughed. "Mason and Peabody aspire to be thought
+literary and artistic, and Dinwiddie wanted to pique ME!"
+
+"But Thatcher is no fool--"
+
+"Is Thatcher a lady's man?" queried the lady suddenly.
+
+"Hardly, I should say," responded Wiles. "He pretends to be absorbed in
+his swindle and devoted to his mine; and I don't think that even you--"
+he stopped with a slight sneer.
+
+"There, you are misunderstanding me again, and, what is worse, you are
+misunderstanding your case. Thatcher is pleased with her because he has
+probably seen no one else. Wait till he comes to Washington and has an
+opportunity for comparison;" and she cast a frank glance at her mirror,
+where Wiles, with a sardonic bow, left her standing.
+
+Mr. Gashwiler was quite as confident of his own success with Congress.
+"We are within a few days of the end of the session. We will manage to
+have it taken up and rushed through before that fellow Thatcher knows
+what he is about."
+
+"If it could be done before he gets here," said Wiles, "it's a
+reasonably sure thing. He is delayed two days: he might have been
+delayed longer." Here Mr. Wiles sighed. If the accident had happened
+on a mountain road, and the stage had been precipitated over the abyss,
+what valuable time would have been saved, and success become a surety.
+But Mr. Wiles's functions as an advocate did not include murder; at
+least, he was doubtful if it could be taxed as costs.
+
+"We need have no fears, sir," resumed Mr. Gashwiler; "The matter is now
+in the hands of the highest tribunal of appeal in the country. It
+will meet, sir, with inflexible justice. I have already prepared some
+remarks--"
+
+"By the way," interrupted Wiles infelicitously, "where's your young
+man,--your private secretary,--Dobbs?"
+
+The Congressman for a moment looked confused. "He is not here. And I
+must correct your error in applying that term to him. I have never put
+my confidence in the hands of any one."
+
+"But you introduced him to me as your secretary?"
+
+"A mere honorary title, sir. A brevet rank. I might, it is true, have
+thought to repose such a trust in him. But I was deceived, sir, as I
+fear I am too apt to be when I permit my feelings as a man to overcome
+my duty as an American legislator. Mr. Dobbs enjoyed my patronage and
+the opportunity it gave me to introduce him into public life only to
+abuse it. He became, I fear, deeply indebted. His extravagance was
+unlimited, his ambition unbounded, but without, sir, a cash basis. I
+advanced money to him from time to time upon the little property you
+so generously extended to him for his services. But it was quickly
+dissipated. Yet, sir, such is the ingratitude of man that his family
+lately appealed to me for assistance. I felt it was necessary to
+be stern, and I refused. I would not for the sake of his family say
+anything, but I have missed, sir, books from my library. On the day
+after he left, two volumes of Patent Office reports and a Blue Book of
+Congress, purchased that day by me at a store on Pennsylvania avenue,
+were MISSING,--missing! I had difficulty, sir, great difficulty in
+keeping it from the papers!"
+
+As Mr. Wiles had heard the story already from Gashwiler's acquaintances,
+with more or less free comment on the gifted legislator's economy, he
+could not help thinking that the difficulty had been great indeed. But
+he only fixed his malevolent eye on Gashwiler and said:
+
+"So he is gone, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you've made an enemy of him? That's bad."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler tried to look dignifiedly unconcerned; but something in
+his visitor's manner made him uneasy.
+
+"I say it is bad, if you have. Listen. Before I left here, I found at a
+boardinghouse where he had boarded, and still owed a bill, a trunk which
+the landlord retained. Opening it, I found some letters and papers to
+yours, with certain memoranda of his, which I thought ought to be in
+YOUR possession. As an alleged friend of his, I redeemed the trunk by
+paying the amount of his bill, and secured the more valuable papers."
+
+Gashwiler, whose face had grown apoplectically suffused as Wiles went
+on, at last gasped: "But you got the trunk, and have the papers?"
+
+"Unfortunately, no; and that's why it's bad."
+
+"But, good God! what have you done with them?"
+
+"I've lost them somewhere on the Overland Road."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler sat for a few moments speechless, vacillating between a
+purple rage and a pallid fear. Then he said hoarsely:
+
+"They are all blank forgeries,--every one of them."
+
+"Oh, no!" said Wiles, smiling blandly on his dexter side, and enjoying
+the whole scene malevolently with his sinister eye. "YOUR papers are all
+genuine, and I won't say are not all right, but unfortunately I had in
+the same bag some memoranda of my own for the use of my client, that,
+you understand, might be put to some bad use if found by a clever man."
+
+The two rascals looked at each other. There is on the whole really very
+little "honor among thieves,"--at least great ones,--and the inferior
+rascal succumbed at the reflection of what HE might do if he were in the
+other rascal's place. "See here, Wiles," he said, relaxing his dignity
+with the perspiration that oozed from every pore, and made the collar of
+his shirt a mere limp rag. "See here, WE"--this first use of the plural
+was equivalent to a confession--"we must get them papers."
+
+"Of course," said Wiles coolly, "if we CAN, and if Thatcher doesn't get
+wind of them."
+
+"He cannot."
+
+"He was on the coach when I lost them, coming East."
+
+Mr. Gashwiler paled again. In the emergency he had recourse to the
+sideboard and a bottle, forgetting Wiles. Ten minutes before Wiles would
+have remained seated; but it is recorded that he rose, took the bottle
+from the gifted Gashwiler's fingers, helped himself FIRST, and then sat
+down.
+
+"Yes, but, my boy," said Gashwiler, now rapidly changing situations with
+the cooler Wiles; "yes, but, old fellow," he added, poking Wiles with a
+fat forefinger, "don't you see the whole thing will be up before he gets
+here?"
+
+"Yes," said Wiles gloomily, "but those lazy, easy, honest men have a
+way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all
+things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs.
+Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very
+day one of them d--n fellows turns up from San Francisco or Australia,
+having taken his own time to get here,--gets here about half an hour
+after the President had signed the patent and sent it over to the
+office, finds the right man to introduce him to the President, has a
+talk with him, makes him sign an order countermanding its issuance, and
+undoes all that has been done in six years in one hour."
+
+"Yes, but Congress is a tribunal that does not revoke its decrees,"
+said Gashwiler with a return of his old manner; "at least," he added,
+observing an incredulous shrug in the shoulder of his companion, "at
+least DURING THE SESSION."
+
+"We shall see," said Wiles, quietly taking his hat.
+
+"We shall see, sir," said the member from Remus with dignity.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WHAT CULTURE DID FOR IT
+
+
+There was at this time in the Senate of the United States an eminent and
+respected gentleman, scholarly, orderly, honorable, and radical,--the
+fit representative of a scholarly, orderly, honorable, and radical
+Commonwealth. For many years he had held his trust with conscious
+rectitude, and a slight depreciation of other forms of merit; and for
+as many years had been as regularly returned to his seat by his
+constituency with equally conscious rectitude in themselves and an equal
+skepticism regarding others. Removed by his nature beyond the reach of
+certain temptations, and by circumstances beyond even the knowledge of
+others, his social and political integrity was spotless. An orator and
+practical debater, his refined tastes kept him from personality, and the
+public recognition of the complete unselfishness of his motives and the
+magnitude of his dogmas protected him from scurrility. His principles
+had never been appealed to by a bribe; he had rarely been approached by
+an emotion.
+
+A man of polished taste in art and literature, and possessing the means
+to gratify it, his luxurious home was filled with treasures he
+had himself collected, and further enhanced by the stamp of his
+appreciation. His library had not only the elegance of adornment that
+his wealth could bring and his taste approve, but a certain refined
+negligence of habitual use, and the easy disorder of the artist's
+workshop. All this was quickly noted by a young girl who stood on its
+threshold at the close of a dull January day.
+
+The card that had been brought to the Senator bore the name of "Carmen
+de Haro"; and modestly in the right hand corner, in almost microscopic
+script, the further description of herself as "Artist." Perhaps the
+picturesqueness of the name, and its historic suggestion caught the
+scholar's taste, for when to his request, through his servant, that she
+would be kind enough to state her business, she replied as frankly that
+her business was personal to himself, he directed that she should be
+admitted. Then entrenching himself behind his library table, overlooking
+a bastion of books, and a glacis of pamphlets and papers, and throwing
+into his forehead and eyes an expression of utter disqualification for
+anything but the business before him, he calmly awaited the intruder.
+
+She came, and for an instant stood, hesitatingly, framing herself as
+a picture in the door. Mrs. Hopkinson was right,--she had "no style,"
+unless an original and half-foreign quaintness could be called so. There
+was a desperate attempt visible to combine an American shawl with the
+habits of a mantilla, and it was always slipping from one shoulder,
+that was so supple and vivacious as to betray the deficiencies of an
+education in stays. There was a cluster of black curls around her
+low forehead, fitting her so closely as to seem to be a part of the
+seal-skin cap she wore.
+
+Once, from the force of habit, she attempted to put her shawl over
+her head and talk through the folds gathered under her chin, but an
+astonished look from the Senator checked her. Nevertheless, he felt
+relieved, and rising, motioned her to a chair with a heartiness he would
+have scarcely shown to a Parisian toilleta. And when, with two or three
+quick, long steps, she reached his side, and showed, a frank, innocent,
+but strong and determined little face, feminine only in its flash of eye
+and beauty of lip and chin curves, he put down the pamphlet he had taken
+up somewhat ostentatiously, and gently begged to know her business.
+
+I think I have once before spoken of her voice,--an organ more often
+cultivated by my fair country-women for singing than for speaking,
+which, considering that much of our practical relations with the sex are
+carried on without the aid of an opera score, seems a mistaken notion of
+theirs,--and of its sweetness, gentle inflexion, and musical emphasis.
+She had the advantage of having been trained in a musical language, and
+came of a race with whom catarrhs and sore throats were rare. So that
+in a few brief phrases she sang the Senator into acquiescence as she
+imparted the plain libretto of her business,--namely, a "desire to see
+some of his rare engravings."
+
+Now the engravings in question were certain etchings of the early Great
+Apprentices of the art, and were, I am happy to believe, extremely rare.
+From my unprofessional view they were exceedingly bad,--showing the mere
+genesis of something since perfected, but dear, of course, to the
+true collector's soul. I don't believe that Carmen really admired them
+either. But the minx knew that the Senator prided himself on having
+the only "pot-hooks" of the great "A," or the first artistic efforts of
+"B,"--I leave the real names to be filled in by the connoisseur,--and
+the Senator became interested. For the last year, two or three of these
+abominations had been hanging in his study, utterly ignored by the
+casual visitor. But here was appreciation! "She was," she added, "only a
+poor young artist, unable to purchase such treasures, but equally unable
+to resist the opportunity afforded her, even at the risk of seeming
+bold, or of obtruding upon a great man's privacy," &c. &c.
+
+This flattery, which, if offered in the usual legal tender of the
+country, would have been looked upon as counterfeit, delivered here in
+a foreign accent, with a slightly tropical warmth, was accepted by the
+Senator as genuine. These children of the Sun are so impulsive! We,
+of course, feel a little pity for the person who thus transcends our
+standard of good taste and violates our conventional canon,--but they
+are always sincere. The cold New Englander saw nothing wrong in one
+or two direct and extravagant compliments, that would have insured his
+visitor's early dismissal if tendered in the clipped metallic phrases of
+the Commonwealth he represented.
+
+So that in a few moments the black, curly head of the little artist and
+the white, flowing locks of the Senator were close together bending
+over the rack that contained the engravings. It was then that Carmen,
+listening to a graphic description of the early rise of Art in the
+Netherlands, forgot herself and put her shawl around her head, holding
+its folds in her little brown hand. In this situation they were,
+at different times during the next two hours, interrupted by five
+Congressmen, three Senators, a Cabinet officer, and a Judge of the
+Supreme Bench,--each of whom was quickly but courteously dismissed.
+Popular sentiment, however, broke out in the hall.
+
+"Well, I'm blanked, but this gets me." (The speaker was a Territorial
+delegate.)
+
+"At his time o' life, too, lookin' over pictures with a gal young enough
+to be his grandchild." (This from a venerable official, since suspected
+of various erotic irregularities.)
+
+"She don't handsome any." (The honorable member from Dakota.)
+
+"This accounts for his protracted silence during the sessions." (A
+serious colleague from the Senator's own State.)
+
+"Oh, blank it all!" (Omnes.)
+
+Four went home to tell their wives. There are few things more touching
+in the matrimonial compact than the superb frankness with which each
+confides to each the various irregularities of their friends. It is
+upon these sacred confidences that the firm foundations of marriage rest
+unshaken.
+
+Of course the objects of this comment, at least ONE of them, were quite
+oblivious. "I trust," said Carmen, timidly, when they had for the fourth
+time regarded in rapt admiration an abominable something by some
+Dutch wood-chopper, "I trust I am not keeping you from your great
+friends:"--her pretty eyelids were cast down in tremulous distress:--"I
+should never forgive myself. Perhaps it is important business of the
+State?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no! THEY will come again,--it's THEIR business."
+
+The Senator meant it kindly. It was as near the perilous edge of a
+compliment as your average cultivated Boston man ever ventures, and
+Carmen picked it up, femininely, by its sentimental end. "And I suppose
+I shall not trouble you again?"
+
+"I shall always be proud to place the portfolio at your disposal.
+Command me at any time," said the Senator, with dignity.
+
+"You are kind. You are good," said Carmen, "and I--I'm but,--look
+you,--only a poor girl from California, that you know not."
+
+"Pardon me, I know your country well." And indeed he could have told her
+the exact number of bushels of wheat to the acre in her own county of
+Monterey, its voting population, its political bias. Yet of the more
+important product before him, after the manner of book-read men, he knew
+nothing.
+
+Carmen was astonished, but respectful. It transpired presently that she
+was not aware of the rapid growth of the silk worm in her own district,
+knew nothing of the Chinese question, and very little of the American
+mining laws. Upon these questions the Senator enlightened her fully.
+"Your name is historic, by the way," he said pleasantly. "There was a
+Knight of Alcantara, a 'De Haro,' one of the emigrants with Las Casas."
+
+Carmen nodded her head quickly, "Yes; my great-great-great-g-r-e-a-t
+grandfather!"
+
+The Senator stared.
+
+"Oh, yes. I am the niece of Victor Castro, who married my father's
+sister."
+
+"The Victor Castro of the 'Blue Mass' mine?" asked the Senator abruptly.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly.
+
+Had the Senator been of the Gashwiler type, he would have expressed
+himself, after the average masculine fashion, by a long-drawn whistle.
+But his only perceptible appreciation of a sudden astonishment and
+suspicion in his mind was a lowering of the social thermometer of the
+room so decided that poor Carmen looked up innocently, chilled, and drew
+her shawl closer around her shoulders.
+
+"I have something more to ask," said Carmen, hanging her head,--"it is a
+great, oh, a very great favor."
+
+The Senator had retreated behind his bastion of books again, and was
+visibly preparing for an assault. He saw it all now. He had been, in
+some vague way, deluded. He had given confidential audience to the niece
+of one of the Great Claimants before Congress. The inevitable axe had
+come to the grindstone. What might not this woman dare ask of him?
+He was the more implacable that he felt he had already been
+prepossessed--and honestly prepossessed--in her favor. He was angry with
+her for having pleased him. Under the icy polish of his manner there
+were certain Puritan callosities caused by early straight-lacing. He was
+not yet quite free from his ancestor's cheerful ethics that Nature,
+as represented by an Impulse, was as much to be restrained as Order
+represented by a Quaker.
+
+Without apparently noticing his manner, Carmen went on, with a certain
+potential freedom of style, gesture, and manner scarcely to be indicated
+in her mere words. "You know, then, I am of Spanish blood, and that,
+what was my adopted country, our motto was, 'God and Liberty.' It was
+of you, sir,--the great Emancipator,--the apostle of that Liberty,--the
+friend of the down-trodden and oppressed,--that I, as a child, first
+knew. In the histories of this great country I have read of you, I have
+learned your orations. I have longed to hear you in your own pulpit
+deliver the creed of my ancestors. To hear you, of yourself, speak, ah!
+Madre de Dios! what shall I say,--speak the oration eloquent,--to make
+the--what you call--the debate, that is what I have for so long
+hoped. Eh! Pardon,--you are thinking me foolish,--wild, eh?--a small
+child,--eh?"
+
+Becoming more and more dialectical as she went on, she said suddenly, "I
+have you of myself offended. You are mad of me as a bold, bad child? It
+is so?"
+
+The Senator, as visibly becoming limp and weak again behind his
+entrenchments, managed to say, "Oh, no!" then, "really!" and finally,
+"Tha-a-nks!"
+
+"I am here but for a day. I return to California in a day, as it were
+to-morrow. I shall never, never hear you speak in your place in the
+Capitol of this great country?"
+
+The Senator said hastily that he feared--he in fact was convinced--that
+his duty during this session was required more at his desk, in the
+committee work, than in speaking, &c., &c.
+
+"Ah," said Carmen sadly, "it is true, then, all this that I have heard.
+It is true that what they have told me,--that you have given up the
+great party,--that your voice is not longer heard in the old--what you
+call this--eh--the old ISSUES?"
+
+"If any one has told you that, Miss De Haro," responded the Senator
+sharply, "he has spoken foolishly. You have been misinformed. May I ask
+who--"
+
+"Ah!" said Carmen, "I know not! It is in the air! I am a stranger.
+Perhaps I am deceived. But it is of all. I say to them, When shall I
+hear him speak? I go day after day to the Capitol, I watch him,--the
+great Emancipator,--but it is of business, eh?--it is the claim of that
+one, it is the tax, eh? it is the impost, it is the post-office, but it
+is the great speech of human rights--never, NEVER. I say, 'How arrives
+all this?' And some say, and shake their heads, 'never again he speaks.'
+He is what you call 'played--yes, it is so, eh?--played out.' I know it
+not,--it is a word from Bos-ton, perhaps? They say he has--eh, I speak
+not the English well--the party he has shaken, 'shook,'--yes,--he has
+the party 'shaken,' eh? It is right,--it is the language of Bos-ton,
+eh?"
+
+"Permit me to say, Miss De Haro," returned the Senator, rising with some
+asperity, "that you seem to have been unfortunate in your selection of
+acquaintances, and still more so in your ideas of the derivations of the
+English tongue. The--er--the--er--expressions you have quoted are not
+common to Boston, but emanate, I believe, from the West."
+
+Carmen de Haro contritely buried everything but her black eyes in her
+shawl.
+
+"No one," he continued, more gently, sitting down again, "has the right
+to forecast from my past what I intend to do in the future, or designate
+the means I may choose to serve the principles I hold or the party I
+represent. Those are MY functions. At the same time, should occasion--or
+opportunity--for we are within a day or two of the close of the
+Session--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Carmen, sadly, "I see,--it will be some business,
+some claim, something for somebody,--ah! Madre de Dios,--you will not
+speak, and I--"
+
+"When do you think of returning?" asked the Senator, with grave
+politeness; "when are we to lose you?"
+
+"I shall stay to the last,--to the end of the Session," said Carmen.
+"And NOW I shall go." She got up and pulled her shawl viciously over her
+shoulders, with a pretty pettishness, perhaps the most feminine thing
+she had done that evening. Possibly, the most genuine.
+
+The Senator smiled affably: "You do not deserve to be disappointed in
+either case; but it is later than you imagine; let me help you on the
+shorter distance in my carriage; it is at the door."
+
+He accompanied her gravely to the carriage. As it rolled away, she
+buried her little figure in its ample cushions and chuckled to herself,
+albeit a little hysterically. When she had reached her destination, she
+found herself crying, and hastily, and somewhat angrily, dried her eyes
+as she drew up at the door of her lodgings.
+
+"How have you prospered?" asked Mr. Harlowe, of counsel for Royal
+Thatcher, as he gallantly assisted her from the carriage. "I have
+been waiting here for two hours; your interview must have been
+prolonged,--that was a good sign."
+
+"Don't ask me now," said Carmen, a little savagely, "I'm worn out and
+tired."
+
+Mr. Harlowe bowed. "I trust you will be better to-morrow, for we expect
+our friend, Mr. Thatcher."
+
+Carmen's brown cheek flushed slightly. "He should have been here before.
+Where is he? What was he doing?"
+
+"He was snowed up on the plains. He is coming as fast as steam can carry
+him; but he may be too late."
+
+Carmen did not reply.
+
+The lawyer lingered. "How did you find the great New-England Senator?"
+he asked with a slight professional levity.
+
+Carmen was tired, Carmen was worried, Carmen was a little
+self-reproachful, and she kindled easily. Consequently she said icily:
+
+"I found him A GENTLEMAN!"
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HOW IT BECAME UNFINISHED BUSINESS
+
+
+The closing of the ---- Congress was not unlike the closing of the
+several preceding Congresses. There was the same unbusiness-like,
+impractical haste; the same hurried, unjust, and utterly inadequate
+adjustment of unfinished, ill-digested business, that would not have
+been tolerated for a moment by the sovereign people in any private
+interest they controlled. There were frauds rushed through; there were
+long-suffering, righteous demands shelved; there were honest, unpaid
+debts dishonored by scant appropriations; there were closing scenes
+which only the saving sense of American humor kept from being utterly
+vile. The actors, the legislators themselves, knew it, and laughed
+at it; the commentators, the Press, knew it and laughed at it; the
+audience, the great American people, knew it and laughed at it. And
+nobody for an instant conceived that it ever, under any circumstances,
+might be otherwise.
+
+The claim of Roscommon was among the Unfinished Business. The claimant
+himself, haggard, pathetic, importunate, and obstinate, was among the
+Unfinished Business. Various Congressmen, more or less interested in
+the success of the claim, were among the Unfinished Business. The member
+from Fresno, who had changed his derringer for a speech against the
+claimant, was among the Unfinished Business. The gifted Gashwiler,
+uneasy in his soul over certain other Unfinished Business in the shape
+of his missing letters, but dropping oil and honey as he mingled with
+his brothers, was King of Misrule and Lord of the Unfinished Business.
+Pretty Mrs. Hopkinson, prudently escorted by her husband, but
+imprudently ogled by admiring Congressmen, lent the charm of her
+presence to the finishing of Unfinished Business. One or two editors,
+who had dreams of a finished financial business, arising out of
+Unfinished Business, were there also, like ancient bards, to record with
+paean or threnody the completion of Unfinished Business. Various unclean
+birds, scenting carrion in Unfinished Business, hovered in the halls or
+roosted in the Lobby.
+
+The lower house, under the tutelage of the gifted Gashwiler, drank
+deeply of Roscommon and his intoxicating claim, and passed the
+half-empty bottle to the Senate as Unfinished Business. But, alas! in
+the very rush, and storm, and tempest of the unfinishing business, an
+unlooked-for interruption arose in the person of a great Senator whose
+power none could oppose, whose right to free and extended utterance at
+all times none could gainsay. A claim for poultry, violently seized by
+the army of Sherman during his march through Georgia, from the hen-coop
+of an alleged loyal Irishman, opened a constitutional question, and with
+it the lips of the great Senator.
+
+For seven hours he spoke eloquently, earnestly, convincingly. For seven
+hours the old issues of party and policy were severally taken up and
+dismissed in the old forcible rhetoric that had early made him famous.
+Interruptions from other Senators, now forgetful of Unfinished Business,
+and wild with reanimated party zeal; interruptions from certain Senators
+mindful of Unfinished Business, and unable to pass the Roscommon bottle,
+only spurred him to fresh exertion. The tocsin sounded in the Senate
+was heard in the lower house. Highly-excited members congregated at
+the doors of the Senate, and left Unfinished Business to take care of
+itself.
+
+Left to itself for seven hours, Unfinished Business gnashed its false
+teeth and tore its wig in impotent fury in corridor and hall. For seven
+hours the gifted Gashwiler had continued the manufacture of oil
+and honey, whose sweetness, however, was slowly palling upon the
+congressional lip; for seven hours Roscommon and friends beat with
+impatient feet the lobby, and shook fists, more or less discolored, at
+the distinguished Senator. For seven hours the one or two editors were
+obliged to sit and calmly compliment the great speech which that night
+flashed over the wires of a continent with the old electric thrill. And,
+worse than all, they were obliged to record with it the closing of the
+---- Congress, with more than the usual amount of Unfinished Business.
+
+A little group of friends surrounded the great Senator with hymns of
+praise and congratulations. Old adversaries saluted him courteously as
+they passed by with the respect of strong men. A little woman with a
+shawl drawn over her shoulders, and held with one small brown hand,
+approached him timidly:
+
+"I speak not the English well," she said gently, "but I have read much.
+I have read in the plays of your Shakspeare. I would like to say to
+you the words of Rosalind to Orlando when he did fight: 'Sir you have
+wrestled well, and have overthrown more than your enemies.'" And with
+these words she was gone.
+
+Yet not so quickly but that pretty Mrs. Hopkinson, coming,--as Victrix
+always comes to Victor, to thank the great Senator, albeit the faces of
+her escorts were shrouded in gloom,--saw the shawled figure disappear.
+
+"There," she said, pinching Wiles mischievously, "there! that's the
+woman you were afraid of. Look at her. Look at that dress. Ah, Heavens!
+look at that shawl. Didn't I tell you she had no style?"
+
+"Who is she?" said Wiles sullenly.
+
+"Carmen de Haro, of course," said the lady vivaciously. "What are you
+hurrying away so for? You're absolutely pulling me along."
+
+Mr. Wiles had just caught sight of the travel-worn face of Royal
+Thatcher among the crowd that thronged the stair-case. Thatcher appeared
+pale and distrait: Mr. Harlowe, his counsel, at his side, rallied him.
+
+"No one would think you had just got a new lease of your property, and
+escaped a great swindle. What's the matter with you? Miss De Haro
+passed us just now. It was she who spoke to the Senator. Why did you not
+recognize her?"
+
+"I was thinking," said Thatcher gloomily.
+
+"Well, you take things coolly! And certainly you are not very
+demonstrative towards the woman who saved you to-day. For, as sure as
+you live, it was she who drew that speech out of the Senator."
+
+Thatcher did not reply, but moved away. He HAD noticed Carmen de Haro,
+and was about to greet her with mingled pleasure and embarrassment.
+But he had heard her compliment to the Senator, and this strong,
+preoccupied, automatic man, who only ten days before had no thought
+beyond his property, was now thinking more of that compliment to another
+than of his success; and was beginning to hate the Senator who had saved
+him, the lawyer who stood beside him, and even the little figure that
+had tripped down the steps unconscious of him.
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+AND WHO FORGOT IT
+
+
+It was somewhat inconsistent with Royal Thatcher's embarrassment and
+sensitiveness that he should, on leaving the Capitol, order a carriage
+and drive directly to the lodgings of Miss De Haro. That on finding she
+was not at home, he should become again sulky and suspicious, and even
+be ashamed of the honest impulse that led him there, was, I suppose,
+manlike and natural. He felt that he had done all the courtesy required;
+he had promptly answered her dispatch with his presence. If she chose
+to be absent at such a moment, HE had at least done HIS duty. In short,
+there was scarcely any absurdity of the imagination which this once
+practical man did not permit himself to indulge in, yet always with a
+certain consciousness that he was allowing his feelings to run away with
+him,--a fact that did not tend to make him better humored, and rather
+inclined him to place the responsibility of the elopement on somebody
+else. If Miss De Haro had been home, &c. &c., and not going into
+ecstasies over speeches, &c. &c., and had attended to her business, i.
+e., being exactly what he had supposed her to be,--all this would not
+have happened.
+
+I am aware that this will not heighten the reader's respect for my hero.
+But I fancy that the imperceptible progress of a sincere passion in the
+matured strong man is apt to be marked with even more than the usual
+haste and absurdity of callous youth.
+
+The fever that runs riot in the veins of the robust is apt to pass your
+ailing weakling by. Possibly there may be some immunity in inoculation.
+It is Lothario who is always self-possessed and does and says the
+right thing, while poor honest Coelebs becomes ridiculous with genuine
+emotion.
+
+He rejoined his lawyer in no very gracious mood. The chambers occupied
+by Mr. Harlowe were in the basement of a private dwelling once occupied
+and made historic by an Honorable Somebody, who, however, was remembered
+only by the landlord and the last tenant. There were various shelves
+in the walls divided into compartments, sarcastically known as "pigeon
+holes," in which the dove of peace had never rested, but which still
+perpetuated, in their legends, the feuds and animosities of suitors now
+but common dust together. There was a portrait, apparently of a cherub,
+which on nearer inspection turned out to be a famous English Lord
+Chancellor in his flowing wig.
+
+There were books with dreary, unenlivening titles,--egotistic always,
+as recording Smith's opinions on this, and Jones's commentaries on
+that. There was a hand bill tacked on the wall, which at first offered
+hilarious suggestions of a circus or a steamboat excursion, but which
+turned out only to be a sheriff's sale. There were several oddly-shaped
+packages in newspaper wrappings, mysterious and awful in dark corners,
+that might have contained forgotten law papers or the previous week's
+washing of the eminent counsel. There were one or two newspapers, which
+at first offered entertaining prospects to the waiting client, but
+always proved to be a law record or a Supreme Court decision. There was
+the bust of a late distinguished jurist, which apparently had never been
+dusted since he himself became dust, and had already grown a perceptibly
+dusty moustache on his severely-judicial upper lip. It was a cheerless
+place in the sunshine of day; at night, when it ought, by every
+suggestion of its dusty past, to have been left to the vengeful ghosts,
+the greater part of whose hopes and passions were recorded and gathered
+there; when in the dark the dead hands of forgotten men were stretched
+from their dusty graves to fumble once more for their old title deeds;
+at night, when it was lit up by flaring gaslight, the hollow mockery
+of this dissipation was so apparent that people in the streets, looking
+through the illuminated windows, felt as if the privacy of a family
+vault had been intruded upon by body-snatchers.
+
+Royal Thatcher glanced around the room, took in all its dreary
+suggestions in a half-weary, half-indifferent sort of way, and dropped
+into the lawyer's own revolving chair as that gentleman entered from the
+adjacent room.
+
+"Well, you got back soon, I see," said Harlowe briskly.
+
+"Yes," said his client, without looking up, and with this notable
+distinction between himself and all other previous clients, that he
+seemed absolutely less interested than the lawyer. "Yes, I'm here; and,
+upon my soul, I don't exactly know why."
+
+"You told me of certain papers you had discovered," said the lawyer
+suggestively.
+
+"Oh, yes," returned Thatcher with a slight yawn. "I've got here
+some papers somewhere;"--he began to feel in his coat pocket
+languidly;--"but, by the way, this is a rather dreary and God-forsaken
+sort of place! Let's go up to Welker's, and you can look at them over a
+bottle of champagne."
+
+"After I've looked at them, I've something to show you, myself," said
+Harlowe; "and as for the champagne, we'll have that in the other room,
+by and by. At present I want to have my head clear, and yours too,--if
+you'll oblige me by becoming sufficiently interested in your own affairs
+to talk to me about them."
+
+Thatcher was gazing abstractedly at the fire. He started. "I dare say,"
+he began, "I'm not very interesting; yet it's possible that my affairs
+have taken up a little too much of my time. However,--" he stopped, took
+from his pocket an envelope, and threw it on the desk,--"there are
+some papers. I don't know what value they may be; that is for you
+to determine. I don't know that I've any legal right to their
+possession,--that is for you to say, too. They came to me in a queer
+way. On the overland journey here I lost my bag, containing my few traps
+and some letters and papers 'of no value,' as the advertisements say,
+'to any but the owner.' Well, the bag was lost, but the stage driver
+declares that it was stolen by a fellow-passenger,--a man by the name of
+Giles, or Stiles, or Piles--"
+
+"Wiles," said Harlowe earnestly.
+
+"Yes," continued Thatcher, suppressing a yawn; "yes, I guess you're
+right,--Wiles. Well, the stage driver, finally believing this, goes
+to work and quietly and unostentatiously steals--I say, have you got a
+cigar?"
+
+"I'll get you one."
+
+Harlowe disappeared in the adjoining room. Thatcher dragged Harlowe's
+heavy, revolving desk chair, which never before had been removed
+from its sacred position, to the fire, and began to poke the coals
+abstractedly.
+
+Harlowe reappeared with cigars and matches. Thatcher lit one
+mechanically, and said, between the pulls:
+
+"Do you--ever--talk--to yourself?"
+
+"No!--why?"
+
+"I thought I heard your voice just now in the other room. Anyhow, this
+is an awful spooky place. If I stayed here alone half an hour, I'd fancy
+that the Lord Chancellor up there would step down in his robes, out of
+his frame, to keep me company."
+
+"Nonsense! When I'm busy, I often sit here and write until after
+midnight. It's so quiet!"
+
+"D--mnably so!"
+
+"Well, to go back to the papers. Somebody stole your bag, or you lost
+it. YOU stole--"
+
+"The driver stole," suggested Thatcher, so languidly that it could
+hardly be called an interruption.
+
+"Well, we'll say the driver stole, and passed over to you as his
+accomplice, confederate, or receiver, certain papers belonging--"
+
+"See here, Harlowe, I don't feel like joking in a ghostly law office
+after midnight. Here are your facts. Yuba Bill, the driver, stole a bag
+from this passenger, Wiles, or Smiles, and handed it to me to insure the
+return of my own. I found in it some papers concerning my case. There
+they are. Do with them what you like."
+
+Thatcher turned his eyes again abstractedly to the fire.
+
+Harlowe took out the first paper:
+
+"A-w, this seems to be a telegram. Yes, eh? 'Come to Washington at
+once.--Carmen de Haro.'"
+
+Thatcher started, blushed like a girl, and hurriedly reached for the
+paper.
+
+"Nonsense. That's a mistake. A dispatch I mislaid in the envelope."
+
+"I see," said the lawyer dryly.
+
+"I thought I had torn it up," continued Thatcher, after an awkward
+pause. I regret to say that here that usually truthful man elaborated a
+fiction. He had consulted it a dozen times a day on the journey, and it
+was quite worn in its enfoldings. Harlowe's quick eye had noticed this,
+but he speedily became interested and absorbed in the other papers.
+Thatcher lapsed into contemplation of the fire.
+
+"Well," said Harlowe, finally turning to his client, "here's enough
+to unseat Gashwiler, or close his mouth. As to the rest, it's good
+reading--but I needn't tell you--no LEGAL evidence. But it's proof
+enough to stop them from ever trying it again,--when the existence of
+this record is made known. Bribery is a hard thing to fix on a man; the
+only witness is naturally particeps criminis;--but it would not be easy
+for them to explain away this rascal's record. One or two things I don't
+understand: What's this opposite the Hon. X's name, 'Took the medicine
+nicely, and feels better?' and here, just in the margin, after Y's,
+'Must be labored with?'"
+
+"I suppose our California slang borrows largely from the medical and
+spiritual profession," returned Thatcher. "But isn't it odd that a man
+should keep a conscientious record of his own villainy?"
+
+Harlowe, a little abashed at his want of knowledge of American metaphor,
+now felt himself at home. "Well, no. It's not unusual. In one of
+those books yonder there is the record of a case where a man, who had
+committed a series of nameless atrocities, extending over a period of
+years, absolutely kept a memorandum of them in his pocket diary. It was
+produced in Court. Why, my dear fellow, one half our business arises
+from the fact that men and women are in the habit of keeping letters
+and documents that they might--I don't say, you know, that they OUGHT,
+that's a question of sentiment or ethics--but that they MIGHT destroy."
+
+Thatcher half-mechanically took the telegram of poor Carmen and threw it
+in the fire. Harlowe noticed the act and smiled.
+
+"I'll venture to say, however, that there's nothing in the bag that YOU
+lost that need give you a moment's uneasiness. It's only your rascal or
+fool who carries with him that which makes him his own detective."
+
+"I had a friend," continued Harlowe, "a clever fellow enough, but who
+was so foolish as to seriously complicate himself with a woman. He was
+himself the soul of honor, and at the beginning of their correspondence
+he proposed that they should each return the other's letters with their
+answer. They did so for years, but it cost him ten thousand dollars and
+no end of trouble after all."
+
+"Why?" asked Thatcher simply.
+
+"Because he was such an egotistical ass as TO KEEP THE LETTER PROPOSING
+IT, which she had duly returned, among his papers as a sentimental
+record. Of course somebody eventually found it."
+
+"Good night," said Thatcher, rising abruptly. "If I stayed here much
+longer I should begin to disbelieve my own mother."
+
+"I have known of such hereditary traits," returned Harlowe with a laugh.
+"But come, you must not go without the champagne." He led the way to the
+adjacent room, which proved to be only the ante-chamber of another, on
+the threshold of which Thatcher stopped with genuine surprise. It was an
+elegantly furnished library.
+
+"Sybarite! Why was I never here before?"
+
+"Because you came as a client; to-night you are my guest. All who enter
+here leave their business, with their hats, in the hall. Look; there
+isn't a law book on those shelves; that table never was defaced by a
+title deed or parchment. You look puzzled? Well, it was a whim of
+mine to put my residence and my work-shop under the same roof, yet so
+distinct that they would never interfere with each other. You know the
+house above is let out to lodgers. I occupy the first floor with my
+mother and sister, and this is my parlor. I do my work in that severe
+room that fronts the street: here is where I play. A man must have
+something else in life than mere business. I find it less harmful and
+expensive to have my pleasure here."
+
+Thatcher had sunk moodily in the embracing arms of an easy chair. He was
+thinking deeply; he was fond of books too, and, like all men who have
+fared hard and led wandering lives, he knew the value of cultivated
+repose. Like all men who have been obliged to sleep under blankets
+and in the open air, he appreciated the luxuries of linen sheets and
+a frescoed roof. It is, by the way, only your sick city clerk or your
+dyspeptic clergyman who fancy that they have found in the bad bread,
+fried steaks, and frowzy flannels of mountain picknicking the true art
+of living. And it is a somewhat notable fact that your true mountaineer
+or your gentleman who has been obliged to honestly "rough it," does not,
+as a general thing, write books about its advantages, or implore their
+fellow mortals to come and share their solitude and their discomforts.
+
+Thoroughly appreciating the taste and comfort of Harlowe's library, yet
+half-envious of its owner, and half-suspicious that his own earnest
+life for the past few years might have been different, Thatcher suddenly
+started from his seat and walked towards a parlor easel, whereon stood
+a picture. It was Carmen de Haro's first sketch of the furnace and the
+mine.
+
+"I see you are taken with that picture," said Harlowe, pausing with the
+champagne bottle in his hand. "You show your good taste. It's been much
+admired. Observe how splendidly that firelight plays over the sleeping
+face of that figure, yet brings out by very contrast its almost
+death-like repose. Those rocks are powerfully handled; what a suggestion
+of mystery in those shadows! You know the painter?"
+
+Thatcher murmured, "Miss De Haro," with a new and rather odd
+self-consciousness in speaking her name.
+
+"Yes. And you know the story of the picture of course?"
+
+Thatcher thought he didn't. Well, no; in fact, he did not remember.
+
+"Why, this recumbent figure was an old Spanish lover of hers, whom she
+believed to have been murdered there. It's a ghastly fancy, isn't it?"
+
+Two things annoyed Thatcher: first the epithet "lover," as applied to
+Concho by another man; second, that the picture belonged to him: and
+what the d---l did she mean by--
+
+"Yes," he broke out finally, "but how did YOU get it?"
+
+"Oh, I bought it of her. I've been a sort of patron of her ever since
+I found out how she stood towards us. As she was quite alone here in
+Washington, my mother and sister have taken her up, and have been doing
+the social thing."
+
+"How long since?" asked Thatcher.
+
+"Oh, not long. The day she telegraphed you, she came here to know what
+she could do for us, and when I said nothing could be done except to
+keep Congress off, why, she went and DID IT. For SHE, and she alone, got
+that speech out of the Senator. But," he added, a little mischievously,
+"you seem to know very little about her?"
+
+"No!--I--that is--I've been very busy lately," returned Thatcher,
+staring at the picture. "Does she come here often?"
+
+"Yes, lately, quite often; she was here this evening with mother; was
+here, I think, when you came."
+
+Thatcher looked intently at Harlowe. But that gentleman's face betrayed
+no confusion. Thatcher refilled his glass a little awkwardly, tossed off
+the liquor at a draught, and rose to his feet.
+
+"Come, old fellow, you're not going now. I shan't permit it," said
+Harlowe, laying his hand kindly on his client's shoulder. "You're out of
+sorts! Stay here with me to-night. Our accommodations are not large,
+but are elastic. I can bestow you comfortably until morning. Wait here a
+moment while I give the necessary orders."
+
+Thatcher was not sorry to be left alone. In the last half hour he had
+become convinced that his love for Carmen de Haro had been in some way
+most dreadfully abused. While HE was hard at work in California, she was
+being introduced in Washington society by parties with eligible brothers
+who bought her paintings. It is a relief to the truly jealous mind to
+indulge in plurals. Thatcher liked to think that she was already beset
+by hundreds of brothers.
+
+He still kept staring at the picture. By and by it faded away in part,
+and a very vivid recollection of the misty, midnight, moonlit walk he
+had once taken with her came back, and refilled the canvas with its
+magic. He saw the ruined furnace; the dark, overhanging masses of rock,
+the trembling intricacies of foliage, and, above all, the flash of dark
+eyes under a mantilla at his shoulder. What a fool he had been! Had he
+not really been as senseless and stupid as this very Concho, lying
+here like a log? And she had loved that man. What a fool she must have
+thought him that evening! What a snob she must think him now!
+
+He was startled by a slight rustling in the passage, that ceased almost
+as he turned. Thatcher looked towards the door of the outer office, as
+if half expecting that the Lord Chancellor, like the commander in Don
+Juan, might have accepted his thoughtless invitation. He listened again;
+everything was still. He was conscious of feeling ill at ease and a
+trifle nervous. What a long time Harlowe took to make his preparations.
+He would look out in the hall. To do this it was necessary to turn up
+the gas. He did so, and in his confusion turned it out!
+
+Where were the matches? He remembered that there was a bronze something
+on the table that, in the irony of modern decorative taste, might hold
+ashes or matches, or anything of an unpicturesque character. He knocked
+something over, evidently the ink,--something else,--this time a
+champagne glass. Becoming reckless, and now groping at random in the
+ruins, he overturned the bronze Mercury on the center table, and then
+sat down hopelessly in his chair. And then a pair of velvet fingers slid
+into his, with the matches, and this audible, musical statement:
+
+"It is a match you are seeking? Here is of them."
+
+Thatcher flushed, embarrassed, nervous,--feeling the ridiculousness of
+saying, "Thank you" to a dark somebody,--struck the match, beheld by its
+brief, uncertain glimmer Carmen de Haro beside him, burned his fingers,
+coughed, dropped the match, and was cast again into outer darkness.
+
+"Let me try!"
+
+Carmen struck a match, jumped briskly on the chair, lit the gas, jumped
+lightly down again, and said: "You do like to sit in the dark,--eh? So
+am I--sometimes--alone."
+
+"Miss De Haro," said Thatcher, with sudden, honest earnestness,
+advancing with outstretched hands, "believe me I am sincerely delighted,
+overjoyed, again to meet--"
+
+She had, however, quickly retreated as he approached, ensconcing herself
+behind the high back of a large antique chair, on the cushion of which
+she knelt. I regret to add also that she slapped his outstretched
+fingers a little sharply with her inevitable black fan as he still
+advanced.
+
+"We are not in California. It is Washington. It is after midnight. I am
+a poor girl, and I have to lose--what you call--'a character.' You shall
+sit over there,"--she pointed to the sofa,--"and I shall sit here;" she
+rested her boyish head on the top of the chair; "and we shall talk, for
+I have to speak to you, Don Royal."
+
+Thatcher took the seat indicated, contritely, humbly, submissively.
+Carmen's little heart was touched. But she still went on over the back
+of the chair.
+
+"Don Royal," she said, emphasizing each word at him with her fan,
+"before I saw you,--ever knew of you,--I was a child. Yes, I was but
+a child! I was a bold, bad child;--and I was what you call
+a--a--'forgaire'!"
+
+"A what?" asked Thatcher, hesitating between a smile and a sigh.
+
+"A forgaire!" continued Carmen demurely. "I did of myself write the
+names of ozzer peoples;" when Carmen was excited she lost the control of
+the English tongue; "I did write just to please myself;--it was my onkle
+that did make of it money;--you understand, eh? Shall you not speak?
+Must I again hit you?"
+
+"Go on," said Thatcher laughing.
+
+"I did find out, when I came to you at the mine, that I had forged
+against you the name of Micheltorena. I to the lawyer went, and found
+that it was so--of a verity--so! so! all the time. Look at me not now,
+Don Royal;--it is a 'forgaire' you stare at."
+
+"Carmen!"
+
+"Hoosh! Shall I have to hit you again? I did overlook all the papers. I
+found the application: it was written by me. There."
+
+She tossed over the back of her chair an envelope to Thatcher. He opened
+it.
+
+"I see," he said gently, "you repossessed yourself of it!"
+
+"What is that--'r-r-r-e--possess'?"
+
+"Why!"--Thatcher hesitated--"you got possession of this paper,--this
+innocent forgery,--again."
+
+"Oh! You think me a thief as well as a 'forgaire.' Go away! Get up. Get
+out."
+
+"My dear girl--"
+
+"Look at the paper! Will you? Oh, you silly!"
+
+Thatcher looked at the paper. In paper, handwriting, age, and stamp it
+was identical with the formal, clerical application of Garcia for the
+grant. The indorsement of Micheltorena was unquestionably genuine. BUT
+THE APPLICATION WAS MADE FOR ROYAL THATCHER. And his own signature was
+imitated to the life.
+
+"I had but one letter of yours wiz your name," said Carmen
+apologetically; "and it was the best poor me could do."
+
+"Why, you blessed little goose and angel," said Thatcher, with the bold,
+mixed metaphor of amatory genius, "don't you see--"
+
+"Ah, you don't like it,--it is not good?"
+
+"My darling!"
+
+"Hoosh! There is also an 'old cat' up stairs. And now I have here a
+character. WILL you sit down? Is it of a necessity that up and down you
+should walk and awaken the whole house? There!"--she had given him a
+vicious dab with her fan as he passed. He sat down.
+
+"And you have not seen me nor written to me for a year?"
+
+"Carmen!"
+
+"Sit down, you bold, bad boy. Don't you see it is of business that you
+and I talk down here; and it is of business that ozzer people up stairs
+are thinking. Eh?"
+
+"D--n business! See here, Carmen, my darling, tell me"--I regret to say
+he had by this time got hold of the back of Carmen's chair--"tell me, my
+own little girl,--about--about that Senator. You remember what you said
+to him?"
+
+"Oh, the old man? Oh, THAT was business. And you say of business,
+'d--n.'"
+
+"Carmen!"
+
+"Don Royal!"
+
+*****
+
+Although Miss Carmen had recourse to her fan frequently during this
+interview, the air must have been chilly, for a moment later, on his way
+down stairs, poor Harlowe, a sufferer from bronchitis, was attacked with
+a violent fit of coughing, which troubled him all the way down.
+
+"Well," he said, as he entered the room, "I see you have found Mr.
+Thatcher, and shown those papers. I trust you have, for you've certainly
+had time enough. I am sent by mother to dismiss you all to bed."
+
+Carmen still in the arm chair, covered with her mantilla, did not speak.
+
+"I suppose you are by this time lawyer enough to know," continued
+Harlowe, "that Miss De Haro's papers, though ingenious, are not legally
+available, unless--"
+
+"I chose to make her a witness. Harlowe! you're a good fellow! I don't
+mind saying to you that these are papers I prefer that my WIFE should
+not use. We'll leave it for the present--Unfinished Business."
+
+
+They did. But one evening our hero brought Mrs. Royal Thatcher a paper
+containing a touching and beautiful tribute to the dead Senator.
+
+"There, Carmen, love, read that. Don't you feel a little ashamed of
+your--your--your lobbying--"
+
+"No," said Carmen promptly. "It was business,--and if all lobbying
+business was as honest,--well?--"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of a Mine, by Bret Harte
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