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+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, by Harte
+#34 in our series by Bret Harte
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+Title:  The Bell-Ringer of Angel's
+CONTENTS
+THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
+JOHNNYBOY
+YOUNG ROBIN GRAY
+THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU
+A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE
+THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA
+CHU CHU
+MY FIRST BOOK
+
+Author:  Bret Harte
+
+June, 2001  [Etext #2676]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, by Harte
+*****This file should be named tbroa10.txt or tbroa10.zip******
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+
+
+THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
+
+JOHNNYBOY
+
+YOUNG ROBIN GRAY
+
+THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU
+
+A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE
+
+THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA
+
+CHU CHU
+
+MY FIRST BOOK
+
+
+
+
+THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Where the North Fork of the Stanislaus River begins to lose its
+youthful grace, vigor, and agility, and broadens more maturely into
+the plain, there is a little promontory which at certain high stages
+of water lies like a small island in the stream.  To the strongly-
+marked heroics of Sierran landscape it contrasts a singular,
+pastoral calm.  White and gray mosses from the overhanging rocks and
+feathery alders trail their filaments in its slow current, and
+between the woodland openings there are glimpses of vivid velvet
+sward, even at times when the wild oats and "wire-grasses" of the
+plains are already yellowing.  The placid river, unstained at this
+point by mining sluices or mill drift, runs clear under its
+contemplative shadows.  Originally the camping-ground of a Digger
+Chief, it passed from his tenancy with the American rifle bullet
+that terminated his career.  The pioneer who thus succeeded to its
+attractive calm gave way in turn to a well-directed shot from the
+revolver of a quartz-prospector, equally impressed with the charm
+of its restful tranquillity.  How long he might have enjoyed its
+riparian seclusion is not known.  A sudden rise of the river one
+March night quietly removed him, together with the overhanging post
+oak beneath which he was profoundly but unconsciously meditating.
+The demijohn of whiskey was picked up further down.  But no other
+suggestion of these successive evictions was ever visible in the
+reposeful serenity of the spot.
+
+It was later occupied, and a cabin built upon the spot, by one
+Alexander McGee, better known as "the Bell-ringer of Angel's."
+This euphonious title, which might have suggested a consistently
+peaceful occupation, however, referred to his accuracy of aim at
+a mechanical target, where the piercing of the bull's eye was
+celebrated by the stroke of a bell.  It is probable that this
+singular proficiency kept his investment of that gentle seclusion
+unchallenged.  At all events it was uninvaded.  He shared it only
+with the birds.  Perhaps some suggestion of nest building may have
+been in his mind, for one pleasant spring morning he brought hither
+a wife.  It was his OWN; and in this way he may be said to have
+introduced that morality which is supposed to be the accompaniment
+and reflection of pastoral life.  Mrs. McGee's red petticoat was
+sometimes seen through the trees--a cheerful bit of color.  Mrs.
+McGee's red cheeks, plump little figure, beribboned hat and brown,
+still-girlish braids were often seen at sunset on the river bank,
+in company with her husband, who seemed to be pleased with the
+discreet and distant admiration that followed them.  Strolling
+under the bland shadows of the cotton-woods, by the fading gold of
+the river, he doubtless felt that peace which the mere world cannot
+give, and which fades not away before the clear, accurate eye of
+the perfect marksman.
+
+Their nearest neighbors were the two brothers Wayne, who took up a
+claim, and built themselves a cabin on the river bank near the
+promontory.  Quiet, simple men, suspected somewhat of psalm-
+singing, and undue retirement on Sundays, they attracted but little
+attention.  But when, through some original conception or
+painstaking deliberation, they turned the current of the river so
+as to restrict the overflow between the promontory and the river
+bank, disclosing an auriferous "bar" of inconceivable richness, and
+establishing their theory that it was really the former channel of
+the river, choked and diverted though ages of alluvial drift, they
+may be said to have changed, also, the fortunes of the little
+settlement.  Popular feeling and the new prosperity which dawned
+upon the miners recognized the two brothers by giving the name of
+Wayne's Bar to the infant settlement and its post-office.  The
+peaceful promontory, although made easier of access, still
+preserved its calm seclusion, and pretty Mrs. McGee could
+contemplate through the leaves of her bower the work going on at
+its base, herself unseen.  Nevertheless, this Arcadian retreat was
+being slowly and surely invested; more than that, the character of
+its surroundings was altered, and the complexion of the river had
+changed.  The Wayne engines on the point above had turned the drift
+and debris into the current that now thickened and ran yellow
+around the wooded shore.  The fringes of this Eden were already
+tainted with the color of gold.
+
+It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
+sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself
+to the desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim
+along the shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in
+compensation for restricting the approach to the promontory--and
+thus participated in the fortunes of the Bar.  Mrs. McGee amused
+herself by watching from her eyrie, with a presumably childish
+interest, the operations of the red-shirted brothers on the Bar;
+her husband, however, always accompanying her when she crossed the
+Bar to the bank.  Some two or three other women--wives of miners--
+had joined the camp, but it was evident that McGee was as little
+inclined to intrust his wife to their companionship as to that of
+their husbands.  An opinion obtained that McGee, being an old
+resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's, was inclined
+to be aristocratic and exclusive.
+
+Meantime, the two brothers who had founded the fortunes of the Bar
+were accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of
+reserve.  Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners,
+and were as efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as
+the reputation of Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife.  Madison
+Wayne, the elder, was tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech
+and slow in deduction; his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline,
+but smaller and of a more delicate and perhaps a more impressible
+nature.  It was believed by some that it was within the range of
+possibility that Arthur would yet be seen "taking his cocktail like
+a white man," or "dropping his scads" at draw poker.  At present,
+however, they seemed content to spend their evenings in their own
+cabin, and their Sundays at a grim Presbyterian tabernacle in the
+next town, to which they walked ten miles, where, it was currently
+believed, "hell fire was ladled out free," and "infants damned for
+nothing."  When they did not go to meeting it was also believed
+that the minister came to them, until it was ascertained that the
+sound of sacred recitation overheard in their cabin was simply
+Madison Wayne reading the Bible to his younger brother.  McGee is
+said to have stopped on one of these occasions--unaccompanied by
+his wife--before their cabin, moving away afterwards with more than
+his usual placid contentment.
+
+It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at
+work alone on the Bar.  Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck
+trousers rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not
+unlike a peaceful fisherman digging stakes for his nets, as he
+labored in the ooze and gravel of the still half-reclaimed river
+bed.  He was far out on the Bar, within a stone's throw of the
+promontory.  Suddenly his quick ear caught an unfamiliar cry and
+splash.  Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs. McGee's red petticoat in
+the water under the singularly agitated boughs of an overhanging
+tree.  Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his heavy boots,
+and sprang into the stream.  A few strokes brought him to Mrs.
+McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained Mrs.
+McGee, who was still clinging to a branch of the tree.  Grasping
+her waist with one hand and the branch with the other, he obtained
+a foothold on the bank, and dragged her ashore.  A moment later
+they both stood erect and dripping at the foot of the tree.
+
+"Well?" said the lady.
+
+Wayne glanced around their seclusion with his habitual caution,
+slightly knit his brows perplexedly, and said: "You fell in?"
+
+"I didn't do nothin' of the sort.  I JUMPED in."
+
+Wayne again looked around him, as if expecting her companion, and
+squeezed the water out of his thick hair.  "Jumped in?" he repeated
+slowly.  "What for?"
+
+"To make you come over here, Mad Wayne," she said, with a quick
+laugh, putting her arms akimbo.
+
+They stood looking at each other, dripping like two river gods.
+Like them, also, Wayne had apparently ignored the fact that his
+trousers were rolled up above his bare knees, and Mrs. McGee that
+her red petticoat clung closely to her rather pretty figure.  But
+he quickly recovered himself.  "You had better go in and change
+your clothes," he said, with grave concern.  "You'll take cold."
+
+She only shook herself disdainfully.  "I'm all right," she said;
+"but YOU, Mad Wayne, what do you mean by not speaking to me--not
+knowing me?  You can't say that I've changed like that."  She
+passed her hand down her long dripping braids as if to press the
+water from them, and yet with a half-coquettish suggestion in the
+act.
+
+Something struggled up into the man's face which was not there
+before.  There was a new light in his grave eyes.  "You look the
+same," he said slowly; "but you are married--you have a husband."
+
+"You think that changes a girl?" she said, with a laugh "That's
+where all you men slip up!  You're afraid of his rifle--THAT'S the
+change that bothers you, Mad."
+
+"You know I care little for carnal weapons," he said quietly.  She
+DID know it; but it is the privilege of the sex to invent its facts
+and then to graciously abandon them as if they were only arguments.
+"Then why do you keep off from me?  Why do you look the other way
+when I pass?" she said quickly.
+
+"Because you are married," he said slowly.
+
+She again shook the water from her like a Newfoundland dog.
+"That's it.  You're mad because I got married.  You're mad because
+I wouldn't marry you and your church over on the cross roads, and
+sing hymns with you and become SISTER Wayne.  You wanted me to give
+up dancing and buggy ridin' Sundays--and you're just mad because I
+didn't.  Yes, mad--just mean, baby mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all
+your CHRISTIAN resignation!  That's what's the matter with you."
+Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her small spitefulness,
+which was still so general and superficial that she seemed to shake
+it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that disclosed her
+neat ankles.
+
+"You preferred McGee to me," he said grimly.  "I didn't blame you."
+
+"Who said I PREFERRED him?" she retorted quickly.  "Much you know!"
+Then, with swift feminine abandonment of her position, she added,
+with a little laugh, "It's all the same whether you're guarded with
+a rifle or a Church Presbytery, only"--
+
+"Only what?" said Madison earnestly.
+
+"There's men who'd risk being SHOT for a girl, that couldn't stand
+psalm-singin' palaver."
+
+The quick expression of pain that passed over his hard, dark face
+seemed only to heighten her pretty mischievousness.  But he simply
+glanced again around the solitude, passed his hand over his wet
+sleeve, and said, "I must go now; your husband wouldn't like me
+being here."
+
+"He's workin' in the claim,--the claim YOU gave him," said Mrs.
+McGee, with cheerful malice.  "Wonder what he'd say if he knew it
+was given to him by the man who used to spark his wife only two
+years ago?  How does that suit your Christian conscience, Mad?"
+
+"I should have told him, had I not believed that everything was
+over between us, or that it was possible that you and me should
+ever meet again," he returned, in a tone so measured that the girl
+seemed to hear the ring of the conventicle in it.
+
+"Should you, BROTHER Wayne?" she said, imitating him.  "Well, let
+me tell you that you are the one man on the Bar that Sandy has
+taken a fancy to."
+
+Madison's sallow cheek colored a little, but he did not speak.
+
+"Well!" continued Mrs. McGee impatiently.  "I don't believe he'd
+object to your comin' here to see me--if you cared."
+
+"But I wouldn't care to come, unless he first knew that I had been
+once engaged to you," said Madison gravely.
+
+"Perhaps he might not think as much of that as you do," retorted
+the woman pertly.  "Every one isn't as straitlaced as you, and
+every girl has had one or two engagements.  But do as you like--
+stay at home if you want to, and sing psalms and read the
+Scriptures to that younger brother of yours!  All the same, I'm
+thinkin' he'd rather be out with the boys."
+
+"My brother is God-fearing and conscientious," said Madison
+quickly.  "You do not know him.  You have never seen him."
+
+"No," said Mrs. McGee shortly.  She then gave a little shiver (that
+was, however, half simulated) in her wet garments, and added: "ONE
+saint was enough for me; I couldn't stand the whole church, Mad."
+
+"You are catching cold," he said quickly, his whole face
+brightening with a sudden tenderness that seemed to transfigure the
+dark features.  "I am keeping you here when you should be changing
+your clothes.  Go, I beg you, at once."
+
+She stood still provokingly, with an affectation of wiping her arms
+and shoulders and sopping her wet dress with clusters of moss.
+
+"Go, please do--Safie, please!"
+
+"Ah!"--she drew a quick, triumphant breath.  "Then you'll come
+again to see me, Mad?"
+
+"Yes," he said slowly, and even more gravely than before.
+
+"But you must let me show you the way out--round under those trees--
+where no one can see you come."  She held out her hand.
+
+"I'll go the way I came," he said quietly, swinging himself
+silently from the nearest bough into the stream.  And before she
+could utter a protest he was striking out as silently, hand over
+hand, across the current.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+A week later Madison Wayne was seated alone in his cabin.  His
+supper table had just been cleared by his Chinese coolie, as it was
+getting late, and the setting sun, which for half an hour had been
+persistently making a vivid beacon of his windows for the benefit
+of wayfarers along the river bank, had at last sunk behind the
+cottonwoods.  His head was resting on his hand; the book he had
+been reading when the light faded was lying open on the table
+before him.  In this attitude he became aware of a hesitating step
+on the gravel outside his open door.  He had been so absorbed that
+the approach of any figure along the only highway--the river bank--
+had escaped his observation.  Looking up, he discovered that Mr.
+Alexander McGee was standing in the doorway, his hand resting
+lightly on the jamb.  A sudden color suffused Wayne's cheek; his
+hand reached for his book, which he drew towards him hurriedly, yet
+half automatically, as he might have grasped some defensive weapon.
+
+The Bell-ringer of Angel's noticed the act, but not the blush, and
+nodded approvingly.  "Don't let me disturb ye.  I was only
+meanderin' by and reckoned I'd say 'How do?' in passin'."  He
+leaned gently back against the door-post, to do which comfortably
+he was first obliged to shift the revolver on his hip.  The sight
+of the weapon brought a slight contraction to the brows of Wayne,
+but he gravely said: "Won't you come in?"
+
+"It ain't your prayin' time?" said McGee politely.
+
+"No."
+
+"Nor you ain't gettin' up lessons outer the Book?" he continued
+thoughtfully.
+
+"No."
+
+"Cos it don't seem, so to speak, you see, the square thing to be
+botherin' a man when he might be doin' suthin' else, don't you see?
+You understand what I mean?"
+
+It was his known peculiarity that he always seemed to be suffering
+from an inability to lucid expression, and the fear of being
+misunderstood in regard to the most patent or equally the most
+unimportant details of his speech.  All of which, however, was in
+very remarkable contrast to his perfectly clear and penetrating
+eyes.
+
+Wayne gravely assured him that he was not interrupting him in any
+way.
+
+"I often thought--that is, I had an idea, you understand what I
+mean--of stoppin' in passing.  You and me, you see, are sorter
+alike; we don't seem to jibe in with the gin'ral gait o' the camp.
+You understand what I mean?  We ain't in the game, eh?  You see
+what I'm after?"
+
+Madison Wayne glanced half mechanically at McGee's revolver.
+McGee's clear eyes at once took in the glance.
+
+"That's it!  You understand?  You with them books of yours, and me
+with my shootin' iron--we're sort o' different from the rest, and
+ought to be kinder like partners.  You understand what I mean?  We
+keep this camp in check.  We hold a full hand, and don't stand no
+bluffing."
+
+"If you mean there is some effect in Christian example and the life
+of a God-fearing man"--began Madison gravely.
+
+"That's it!  God-fearin' or revolver-fearin', it amounts to the same
+when you come down to the hard pan and bed-rock," interrupted
+McGee.  "I ain't expectin' you to think much of my style, but I go
+a heap on yours, even if I can't play your game.  And I sez to my
+wife, 'Safie'--her that trots around with me sometimes--I sez,
+'Safie, I oughter know that man, and shall.  And I WANT YOU to know
+him.'  Hol' on," he added quickly, as Madison rose with a flushed
+face and a perturbed gesture.  "Ye don't understand!  I see wot's
+in your mind--don't you see?  When I married my wife and brought
+her down here, knowin' this yer camp, I sez: 'No flirtin', no
+foolin', no philanderin' here, my dear!  You're young and don't
+know the ways o' men.  The first man I see you talking with, I
+shoot.  You needn't fear, my dear, for accidents.  I kin shoot all
+round you, under your arm, across your shoulders, over your head
+and between your fingers, my dear, and never start skin or fringe
+or ruffle.  But I don't miss HIM.  You sorter understand what I
+mean,' sez I,'so don't!'  Ye noticed how my wife is respected, Mr.
+Wayne?  Queen Victoria sittin' on her throne ain't in it with my
+Safie.  But when I see YOU not herdin' with that cattle, never
+liftin' your eyes to me or Safie as we pass, never hangin' round
+the saloons and jokin', nor winkin', nor slingin' muddy stories
+about women, but prayin' and readin' Scripter stories, here along
+with your brother, I sez to myself, I sez, 'Sandy, ye kin take off
+your revolver and hang up your shot gun when HE'S around.  For
+'twixt HIM and your wife ain't no revolver, but the fear of God and
+hell and damnation and the world to come!'  You understand what I
+mean, don't ye?  Ye sorter follow my lead, eh?  Ye can see what I'm
+shootin' round, don't ye?  So I want you to come up neighborly
+like, and drop in to see my wife."
+
+Madison Wayne's face became set and hard again, but he advanced
+towards McGee with the book against his breast, and his finger
+between the leaves.  "I already know your wife, Mr. McGee!  I saw
+her before YOU ever met her.  I was engaged to her; I loved her,
+and--as far as man may love the wife of another and keep the
+commands of this book--I love her still!"
+
+To his surprise, McGee, whose calm eyes had never dimmed or
+blenched, after regarding him curiously, took the volume from him,
+laid it on the table, opened it, turned its leaves critically, said
+earnestly, "That's the law here, is it?" and then held out his
+hand.
+
+"Shake!"
+
+Madison Wayne hesitated--and then grasped his hand.
+
+"Ef I had known this," continued McGee, "I reckon I wouldn't have
+been so hard on Safie and so partikler.  She's better than I took
+her for--havin' had you for a beau!  You understand what I mean.
+You follow me--don't ye?  I allus kinder wondered why she took me,
+but sens you've told me that YOU used to spark her, in your God-
+fearin' way, I reckon it kinder prepared her for ME.  You understand?
+Now you come up, won't ye?"
+
+"I will call some evening with my brother," said Wayne embarrassedly.
+
+"With which?" demanded McGee.
+
+"My brother Arthur.  We usually spend the evenings together."
+
+McGee paused, leaned against the doorpost, and, fixing his clear
+eyes on Wayne, said: "Ef it's all the same to you, I'd rather you
+did not bring him.  You understand what I mean?  You follow me; no
+other man but you and me.  I ain't sayin' anything agin' your
+brother, but you see how it is, don't you?  Just me and you."
+
+"Very well, I will come," said Wayne gloomily.  But as McGee backed
+out of the door, he followed him, hesitatingly.  Then, with an
+effort he seemed to recover himself, and said almost harshly: "I
+ought to tell you another thing--that I have seen and spoken to
+Mrs. McGee since she came to the Bar.  She fell into the water last
+week, and I swam out and dragged her ashore.  We talked and spoke
+of the past."
+
+"She fell in," echoed McGee.
+
+Wayne hesitated; then a murky blush came into his face as he slowly
+repeated, "She FELL in."
+
+McGee's eyes only brightened.  "I have been too hard on her.  She
+might have drowned ef you hadn't took risks.  You see?  You
+understand what I mean?  And she never let out anything about it--
+and never boasted o' YOU helpin' her out.  All right--you'll come
+along and see her agin'."  He turned and walked cheerfully away.
+
+Wayne re-entered the cabin.  He sat for a long time by the window
+until the stars came out above the river, and another star, with
+which he had been long familiar, took its place apparently in the
+heart of the wooded crest of the little promontory.  Then the
+fringing woods on the opposite shore became a dark level line
+across the landscape, and the color seemed to fade out of the moist
+shining gravel before his cabin.  Presently the silhouette of his
+dark face disappeared from the window, and Mr. McGee might have
+been gratified to know that he had slipped to his knees before the
+chair whereon he had been sitting, and that his head was bowed
+before it on his clasped hands.  In a little while he rose again,
+and, dragging a battened old portmanteau from the corner, took out
+a number of letters tied up in a package, with which, from time to
+time, he slowly fed the flame that flickered on his hearth.  In
+this way the windows of the cabin at times sprang into light,
+making a somewhat confusing beacon for the somewhat confused Arthur
+Wayne, who was returning from a visit to Angel's, and who had
+fallen into that slightly morose and irritated state which follows
+excessive hilarity, and is also apt to indicate moral misgivings.
+
+But the last letter was burnt and the cabin quite dark when he
+entered.  His brother was sitting by the slowly dying fire, and he
+trusted that in that uncertain light any observation of his
+expression or manner--of which he himself was uneasily conscious--
+would pass unheeded.
+
+"You are late," said Madison gravely.
+
+At which his brother rashly assumed the aggressive.  He was no
+later than the others, and if the Rogers boys were good enough to
+walk with him for company he couldn't run ahead of them just
+because his brother was waiting!  He didn't want any supper, he had
+something at the Cross Roads with the others.  Yes! WHISKEY, if he
+wanted to know.  People couldn't keep coffee and temperance drinks
+just to please him and his brother, and he wasn't goin' to insult
+the others by standing aloof.  Anyhow, he had never taken the
+pledge, and as long as he hadn't he couldn't see why he should
+refuse a single glass.  As it was, everybody said he was a milksop,
+and a tender-foot, and he was just sick of it.
+
+Madison rose and lit a candle and held it up before his brother's
+face.  It was a handsome, youthful face that looked into his,
+flushed with the excitement of novel experiences and perhaps a
+more material stimulation.  The little silken moustache was
+ostentatiously curled, the brown curls were redolent of bear's
+grease.  Yet there was a certain boyish timidity and nervousness in
+the defiance of his blue eyes that momentarily touched the elder
+brother.
+
+"I've been too hand with him," he said to himself, half consciously
+recalling what McGee had said of Safie.  He put the candle down,
+laid his hand gently on Arthur's shoulder, and said, with a certain
+cautious tenderness, "Come, Arty, sit down and tell me all about
+it."
+
+Whereupon the mercurial Arthur, not only relieved of his nervousness
+but of his previous ethical doubts and remorse, became gay and
+voluble.  He had finished his purchases at Angel's, and the
+storekeeper had introduced him to Colonel Starbottle, of Kentucky,
+as one of "the Waynes who had made Wayne's Bar famous."  Colonel
+Starbottle had said in his pompous fashion--yet he was not such a
+bad fellow, after all--that the Waynes ought to be represented in
+the Councils of the State, and that he, Starbottle, would be proud
+to nominate Madison for the next Legislature and run him, too.  "And
+you know, really, Mad, if you mixed a little more with folks, and
+they weren't--well, sorter AFRAID of you--you could do it.  Why, I've
+made a heap o' friends over there, just by goin' round a little, and
+one of old Selvedge's girls--the storekeeper, you know--said from
+what she'd heard of us, she always thought I was about fifty, and
+turned up the whites of my eyes instead of the ends of my moustache!
+She's mighty smart!  Then the Postmaster has got his wife and three
+daughters out from the States, and they've asked me to come over to
+their church festival next week.  It isn't our church, of course,
+but I suppose it's all right."
+
+This and much more with the volubility of relieved feelings.  When
+he stopped, out of breath, Madison said, "I have had a visitor
+since you left--Mr. McGee."
+
+"And his wife?" asked Arthur quickly.  Madison flushed slightly.
+"No; but he asked me to go and see her."
+
+"That's HER doin', then," returned Arthur, with a laugh.  "She's
+always lookin' round the corners of her eyes at me when she passes.
+Why, John Rogers was joking me about her only yesterday, and said
+McGee would blow a hole through me some of these days if I didn't
+look out!  Of course," he added, affectedly curling his moustache,
+"that's nonsense!  But you know how they talk, and she's too pretty
+for that fellow McGee."
+
+"She has found a careful helpmeet in her husband," said Madison
+sternly, "and it's neither seemly nor Christian in you, Arthur, to
+repeat the idle, profane gossip of the Bar.  I knew her before her
+marriage, and if she was not a professing Christian, she was, and
+is, a pure, good woman!  Let us have no more of this."
+
+Whether impressed by the tone of his brother's voice, or only
+affected by his own mercurial nature, Arthur changed the subject to
+further voluble reminiscences of his trip to Angel's.  Yet he did
+not seem embarrassed nor disconcerted when his brother, in the midst
+of his speech, placed the candle and the Bible on the table, with
+two chairs before it.  He listened to Madison's monotonous reading
+of the evening exercise with equally monotonous respect. Then they
+both arose, without looking at each other, but with equally set
+and stolid faces, and knelt down before their respective chairs,
+clasping the back with both hands, and occasionally drawing the
+hard, wooden frames against their breasts convulsively, as if it
+were a penitential act.  It was the elder brother who that night
+prayed aloud.  It was his voice that rose higher by degrees above
+the low roof and encompassing walls, the level river camp lights
+that trembled through the window, the dark belt of riverside trees,
+and the light on the promontory's crest--up to the tranquil,
+passionless stars themselves.
+
+With those confidences to his Maker this chronicle does not lie--
+obtrusive and ostentatious though they were in tone and attitude.
+Enough that they were a general arraignment of humanity, the Bar,
+himself, and his brother, and indeed much that the same Maker had
+created and permitted.  That through this hopeless denunciation
+still lingered some human feeling and tenderness might have been
+shown by the fact that at its close his hands trembled and his face
+was bedewed by tears.  And his brother was so deeply affected that
+he resolved hereafter to avoid all evening prayers.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+It was a week later that Madison Wayne and Mr. McGee were seen, to
+the astonishment of the Bar, leisurely walking together in the
+direction of the promontory.  Here they disappeared, entering a
+damp fringe of willows and laurels that seemed to mark its limits,
+and gradually ascending some thickly-wooded trail, until they
+reached its crest, which, to Madison's surprise, was cleared and
+open, and showed an acre or two of rude cultivation.  Here, too,
+stood the McGees' conjugal home--a small, four-roomed house, but so
+peculiar and foreign in aspect that it at once challenged even
+Madison's abstracted attention.  It was a tiny Swiss chalet, built
+in sections, and originally packed in cases, one of the early
+importations from Europe to California after the gold discovery,
+when the country was supposed to be a woodless wilderness.  Mr.
+McGee explained, with his usual laborious care, how he had bought
+it at Marysville, not only for its picturesqueness, but because in
+its unsuggestive packing-cases it offered no indication to the
+curious miners, and could be put up by himself and a single
+uncommunicative Chinaman, without any one else being aware of its
+existence.  There was, indeed, something quaint in this fragment of
+Old World handicraft, with its smooth-jointed paneling, in two
+colors, its little lozenge fretwork, its lapped roof, overhanging
+eaves, and miniature gallery.  Inartistic as Madison was--like most
+men of rigidly rectangular mind and principle--and accustomed to
+the bleak and economic sufficiency of the Californian miner's
+cabin, he was touched strangely by its novel grace and freshness.
+It reminded him of HER; he had a new respect for this rough, sinful
+man who had thus idealized his wife in her dwelling.  Already a few
+Madeira vines and a Cherokee rose clambered up the gallery.  And
+here Mrs. McGee was sitting.
+
+In the face that she turned upon the two men Madison could see that
+she was not expecting them, and even in the slight curiosity with
+which she glanced at her husband, that evidently he had said
+nothing of his previous visit or invitation.  And this conviction
+became certainty at Mr. McGee's first words.
+
+"I've brought you an ole friend, Safie.  He used to spark ye once
+at Angel's afore my time--he told me so; he picked ye outer the
+water here--he told me that, too.  Ye mind that I said afore that
+he was the only man I wanted ter know; I reckon now it seems the
+square thing that he should be the one man YOU wanted ter know,
+too.  You understand what I mean--you follow me, don't you?"
+
+Whether or not Mrs. McGee DID follow him, she exhibited neither
+concern, solicitude, nor the least embarrassment.  An experienced
+lover might have augured ill from this total absence of self-
+consciousness.  But Madison was not an experienced lover.  He
+accepted her amused smile as a recognition of his feelings,
+trembled at the touch of her cool hands, as if it had been a warm
+pressure, and scarcely dared to meet her maliciously laughing eyes.
+When he had followed Mr. McGee to the little gallery, the previous
+occupation of Mrs. McGee when they arrived was explained.  From
+that slight elevation there was a perfect view over the whole
+landscape and river below; the Bar stretched out as a map at her
+feet; in that clear, transparent air she could see every movement
+and gesture of Wayne's brother, all unconscious of that surveillance,
+at work on the Bar.  For an instant Madison's sallow cheek reddened,
+he knew not why; a remorseful feeling that he ought to be there with
+Arthur came over him.  Mrs. McGee's voice seemed to answer his
+thought.  "You can see everything that's going on down there without
+being seen yourself.  It's good fun for me sometimes.  The other day
+I saw that young Carpenter hanging round Mrs. Rogers's cabin in the
+bush when old Rogers was away.  And I saw her creep out and join
+him, never thinking any one could see her!"
+
+She laughed, seeking Madison's averted eyes, yet scarcely noticing
+his suddenly contracted brows.  Mr. McGee alone responded.
+
+"That's why," he said, explanatorily, to Madison, "I don't allow to
+have my Safie go round with those women.  Not as I ever see
+anything o' that sort goin' on, or keer to look, but on gin'ral
+principles.  You understand what I mean."
+
+"That's your brother over there, isn't it?" said Mrs. McGee,
+turning to Madison and calmly ignoring her husband's explanation,
+as she indicated the distant Arthur.  "Why didn't you bring him
+along with you?"
+
+Madison hesitated, and looked at McGee.  "He wasn't asked," said
+that gentleman cheerfully.  "One's company, two's none!  You don't
+know him, my dear; and this yer ain't a gin'ral invitation to the
+Bar.  You follow me?"
+
+To this Mrs. McGee made no comment, but proceeded to show Madison
+over the little cottage.  Yet in a narrow passage she managed to
+touch his hand, lingered to let her husband precede them from one
+room to another, and once or twice looked meaningly into his eyes
+over McGee's shoulder.  Disconcerted and embarrassed, he tried to
+utter a few commonplaces, but so constrainedly that even McGee
+presently noticed it.  And the result was still more embarrassing.
+
+"Look yer," he said, suddenly turning to them both.  "I reckon as
+how you two wanter talk over old times, and I'll just meander over
+to the claim, and do a spell o' work.  Don't mind ME.  And if HE"--
+indicating Madison with his finger--"gets on ter religion, don't
+you mind him.  It won't hurt you, Safie,--no more nor my revolver,--
+but it's pow'ful persuadin', and you understand me?  You follow
+me?  Well, so long!"
+
+He turned away quickly, and was presently lost among the trees.
+For an instant the embarrassed Madison thought of following him;
+but he was confronted by Mrs. McGee's wicked eyes and smiling face
+between him and the door.  Composing herself, however, with a
+simulation of perfect gravity she pointed to a chair.
+
+"Sit down, Brother Wayne.  If you're going to convert me, it may
+take some time, you know, and you might as well make yourself
+comfortable.  As for me, I'll take the anxious bench."  She laughed
+with a certain girlishness, which he well remembered, and leaped to
+a sitting posture on the table with her hands on her knees,
+swinging her smart shoes backwards and forwards below it.
+
+Madison looked at her in hopeless silence, with a pale, disturbed
+face and shining eyes.
+
+"Or, if you want to talk as we used to talk, Mad, when we sat on
+the front steps at Angel's and pa and ma went inside to give us a
+show, ye can hop up alongside o' me."  She made a feint of
+gathering her skirts beside her.
+
+"Safie!" broke out the unfortunate man, in a tone that seemed to
+increase in formal solemnity with his manifest agitation, "this is
+impossible.  The laws of God that have joined you and this man"--
+
+"Oh, it's the prayer-meeting, is it?" said Safie, settling her
+skirts again, with affected resignation.  "Go on."
+
+"Listen, Safie," said Madison, turning despairingly towards her.
+"Let us for His sake, let us for the sake of our dear blessed past,
+talk together earnestly and prayerfully.  Let us take this time to
+root out of our feeble hearts all yearnings that are not prompted
+by Him--yearnings that your union with this man makes impossible
+and sinful.  Let us for the sake of the past take counsel of each
+other, even as brother and sister."
+
+"Sister McGee!" she interrupted mockingly.  "It wasn't as brother
+and sister you made love to me at Angel's."
+
+"No! I loved you then, and would have made you my wife."
+
+"And you don't love me any more," she said, audaciously darting a
+wicked look into his eyes, "only because I didn't marry you?  And
+you think that Christian?"
+
+"You know I love you as I have loved you always," he said
+passionately.
+
+"Hush!" she said mockingly; "suppose he should hear you."
+
+"He knows it!" said Madison bitterly.  "I told him all!"
+
+She stared at him fixedly.
+
+"You have--told--him--that--you STILL love me?" she repeated
+slowly.
+
+"Yes, or I wouldn't be here now.  It was due to him--to my own
+conscience."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"He insisted upon my coming, and, as God is my Judge and witness--
+he seemed satisfied and content."
+
+She drew her pretty lips together with a long whistle, and then
+leaped from the table.  Her face was hard and her eyes were bright
+as she went to the window and looked out.  He followed her timidly.
+
+"Don't touch me," she said, sharply striking away his proffered
+hand.  He turned with a flushed cheek and walked slowly towards the
+door.  Her laugh stopped him.
+
+"Come! I reckon that squeezin' hands ain't no part of your contract
+with Sandy?" she said, glancing down at her own.  "Well, so you're
+goin'?"
+
+"I only wished to talk seriously and prayerfully with you for a few
+moments, Safie, and then--to see you no more."
+
+"And how would that suit him," she said dryly, "if he wants your
+company here?  Then, just because you can't convert me and bring me
+to your ways of thinkin' in one visit, I suppose you think it is
+Christian-like to run away like this!  Or do you suppose that, if
+you turn tail now, he won't believe that your Christian strength
+and Christian resignation is all humbug?"
+
+Madison dropped into the chair, put his elbows on the table, and
+buried his face in his hands.  She came a little nearer, and laid
+her hand lightly on his arm.  He made a movement as if to take it,
+but she withdrew it impatiently.
+
+"Come," she said brusquely; "now you're in for it you must play the
+game out.  He trusts you; if he sees you can't trust yourself,
+he'll shoot you on sight.  That don't frighten you?  Well, perhaps
+this will then!  He'll SAY your religion is a sham and you a
+hypocrite--and everybody will believe him.  How do you like that,
+Brother Wayne?  How will that help the Church?  Come!  You're a
+pair of cranks together; but he's got the whip-hand of you this
+time.  All you can do is to keep up to his idea of you.  Put a bold
+face on it, and come here as often as you can--the oftener the
+better; the sooner you'll both get sick of each other--and of ME.
+That's what you're both after, ain't it?  Well! I can tell you now,
+you needn't either of you be the least afraid of me."
+
+She walked away to the window again, not angrily, but smoothing
+down the folds of her bright print dress as if she were wiping her
+hands of her husband and his guest.  Something like a very material
+and man-like sense of shame struggled up through his crust of
+religion.  He stammered, "You don't understand me, Safie."
+
+"Then talk of something I do understand," she said pertly.  "Tell
+me some news of Angel's.  Your brother was over there the other
+day.  He made himself quite popular with the young ladies--so I
+hear from Mrs. Selvedge.  You can tell me as we walk along the bank
+towards Sandy's claim.  It's just as well that you should move on
+now, as it's your FIRST call, and next time you can stop longer."
+She went to the corner of the room, removed her smart slippers, and
+put on a pair of walking-shoes, tying them, with her foot on a
+chair, in a quiet disregard of her visitor's presence; took a brown
+holland sunbonnet from the wall, clapped it over her browner hair
+and hanging braids, and tied it under her chin with apparently no
+sense of coquetry in the act--becoming though it was--and without
+glancing at him.  Alas for Madison's ethics!  The torment of her
+worldly speech and youthful contempt was nothing to this tacit
+ignoring of the manhood of her lover--this silent acceptance of him
+as something even lower than her husband.  He followed her with a
+burning cheek and a curious revolting of his whole nature that it
+is to be feared were scarcely Christian.  The willows opened to let
+them pass and closed behind them.
+
+An hour later Mrs. McGee returned to her leafy bower alone.  She
+took off her sunbonnet, hung it on its nail on the wall, shook down
+her braids, took off her shoes, stained with the mud of her
+husband's claim, and put on her slippers.  Then she ascended to her
+eyrie in the little gallery, and gazed smilingly across the sunlit
+Bar.  The two gaunt shadows of her husband and lover, linked like
+twins, were slowly passing along the river bank on their way to the
+eclipsing obscurity of the cottonwoods.  Below her--almost at her
+very feet--the unconscious Arthur Wayne was pushing his work on the
+river bed, far out to the promontory.  The sunlight fell upon his
+vivid scarlet shirt, his bared throat, and head clustering with
+perspiring curls.  The same sunlight fell upon Mrs. McGee's brown
+head too, and apparently put a wicked fancy inside it.  She ran to
+her bedroom, and returned with a mirror from its wall, and, after
+some trials in getting the right angle, sent a searching reflection
+upon the spot where Arthur was at work.
+
+For an instant a diamond flash played around him.  Then he lifted
+his head and turned it curiously towards the crest above him.  But
+the next moment he clapped his hands over his dazzled but now
+smiling eyes, as Mrs. McGee, secure in her leafy obscurity, fell
+back and laughed to herself, like a very schoolgirl.
+
+It was three weeks later, and Madison Wayne was again sitting alone
+in his cabin.  This solitude had become of more frequent occurrence
+lately, since Arthur had revolted and openly absented himself from
+his religious devotions for lighter diversions of the Bar.  Keenly
+as Madison felt his defection, he was too much preoccupied with
+other things to lay much stress upon it, and the sting of Arthur's
+relapse to worldliness and folly lay in his own consciousness that
+it was partly his fault.  He could not chide his brother when he
+felt that his own heart was absorbed in his neighbor's wife, and
+although he had rigidly adhered to his own crude ideas of self-
+effacement and loyalty to McGee, he had been again and again a
+visitor at his house.  It was true that Mrs. McGee had made this
+easier by tacitly accepting his conditions of their acquaintanceship,
+by seeming more natural, by exhibiting a gayety, and at times even a
+certain gentleness and thoughtfulness of conduct that delighted her
+husband and astonished her lover.  Whether this wonderful change had
+really been effected by the latter's gloomy theology and still more
+hopeless ethics, he could not say.  She certainly showed no
+disposition to imitate their formalities, nor seemed to be impressed
+by them on the rare occasions when he now offered them.  Yet she
+appeared to link the two men together--even physically--as on these
+occasions when, taking an arm of each, she walked affectionately
+between them along the river bank promenade, to the great marveling
+and admiration of the Bar.  It was said, however, that Mr. Jack
+Hamlin, a gambler, at that moment professionally visiting Wayne's
+Bar, and a great connoisseur of feminine charms and weaknesses, had
+glanced at them under his handsome lashes, and asked a single
+question, evidently so amusing to the younger members of the Bar
+that Madison Wayne knit his brow and Arthur Wayne blushed.  Mr.
+Hamlin took no heed of the elder brother's frown, but paid some
+slight attention to the color of the younger brother, and even more
+to a slightly coquettish glance from the pretty Mrs. McGee.  Whether
+or not--as has been ingeniously alleged by some moralists--the light
+and trifling of either sex are prone to recognize each other by some
+mysterious instinct, is not a necessary consideration of this
+chronicle; enough that the fact is recorded.
+
+And yet Madison Wayne should have been satisfied with his work!
+His sacrifice was accepted; his happy issue from a dangerous
+situation, and his happy triumph over a more dangerous temptation,
+was complete and perfect, and even achieved according to his own
+gloomy theories of redemption and regeneration.  Yet he was not
+happy.  The human heart is at times strangely unappeasable.  And as
+he sat that evening in the gathering shadows, the Book which should
+have yielded him balm and comfort lay unopened in his lap.
+
+A step upon the gravel outside had become too familiar to startle
+him.  It was Mr. McGee lounging into the cabin like a gaunt shadow.
+It must be admitted that the friendship of these strangely
+contrasted men, however sincere and sympathetic, was not cheerful.
+A belief in the thorough wickedness of humanity, kept under only
+through fear of extreme penalty and punishment, material and
+spiritual, was not conducive to light and amusing conversation.
+Their talk was mainly a gloomy chronicle of life at the Bar, which
+was in itself half an indictment.  To-night, Mr. McGee spoke of the
+advent of Mr. Jack Hamlin, and together they deplored the diversion
+of the hard-earned gains and valuable time of the Bar through
+the efforts of that ingenious gentleman.  "Not," added McGee
+cautiously, "but what he can shoot straight enough, and I've heard
+tell that he don't LIE.  That mout and it moutn't be good for your
+brother who goes around with him considerable, there's different
+ways of lookin' at that; you understand what I mean?  You follow
+me?"  For all that, the conversation seemed to languish this
+evening, partly through some abstraction on the part of Wayne and
+partly some hesitation in McGee, who appeared to have a greater
+fear than usual of not expressing himself plainly.  It was quite
+dark in the cabin when at last, detaching himself from his usual
+lounging place, the door-post, he walked to the window and leaned,
+more shadowy than ever, over Wayne's chair.  "I want to tell you
+suthin'," he said slowly, "that I don't want you to misunderstand--
+you follow me? and that ain't no ways carpin' or criticisin' nor
+reflectin' on YOU--you understand what I mean?  Ever sens you and
+me had that talk here about you and Safie, and ever sens I got the
+hang of your ways and your style o' thinkin', I've been as sure of
+you and her as if I'd been myself trottin' round with you and a
+revolver.  And I'm as sure of you now--you sabe what I mean? you
+understand?  You've done me and her a heap o' good; she's almost
+another woman sens you took hold of her, and ef you ever want me to
+stand up and 'testify,' as you call it, in church, Sandy McGee is
+ready.  What I'm tryin' to say to ye is this.  Tho' I understand
+you and your work and your ways--there's other folks ez moutn't--
+you follow?  You understand what I mean?  And it's just that I'm
+coming to.  Now las' night, when you and Safie was meanderin' along
+the lower path by the water, and I kem across you"--
+
+"But," interrupted Madison quickly, "you're mistaken.  I wasn't"--
+
+"Hol' on," said McGee, quietly; "I know you got out o' the way
+without you seein' me or me you, because you didn't know it was me,
+don't you see? don't you follow? and that's just it!  It mout have
+bin some one from the Bar as seed you instead o' ME.  See?  That's
+why you lit out before I could recognize you, and that's why poor
+Safie was so mighty flustered at first and was for runnin' away
+until she kem to herself agin.  When, of course, she laughed, and
+agreed you must have mistook me."
+
+"But," gasped Madison quickly, "I WASN'T THERE AT ALL LAST NIGHT."
+
+"What?"
+
+The two men had risen simultaneously and were facing each other.
+McGee, with a good-natured, half-critical expression, laid his hand
+on Wayne's shoulder and slightly turned him towards the window,
+that he might see his face.  It seemed to him white and dazed.
+
+"You--wasn't there--last night?" he repeated, with a slow
+tolerance.
+
+Scarcely a moment elapsed, but the agony of an hour may have
+thrilled through Wayne's consciousness before he spoke.  Then all
+the blood of his body rushed to his face with his first lie as he
+stammered, "No!  Yes!  Of course.  I have made a mistake--it WAS I."
+
+"I see--you thought I was riled?" said McGee quietly.
+
+"No; I was thinking it was NIGHT BEFORE LAST!  Of course it was
+last night.  I must be getting silly."  He essayed a laugh--rare at
+any time with him--and so forced now that it affected McGee more
+than his embarrassment.  He looked at Wayne thoughtfully, and then
+said slowly: "I reckon I did come upon you a little too sudden last
+night, but, you see, I was thinkin' of suthin' else and disremembered
+you might be there.  But I wasn't mad--no! no! and I only spoke
+about it now that you might be more keerful before folks.  You
+follow me?  You understand what I mean?"
+
+He turned and walked to the door, when he halted.  "You follow me,
+don't you?  It ain't no cussedness o' mine, or want o' trustin',
+don't you see?  Mebbe I oughtened have spoken.  I oughter
+remembered that times this sort o' thing must be rather rough on
+you and her.  You follow me?  You understand what I mean?  Good-
+night."
+
+He walked slowly down the path towards the river.  Had Madison
+Wayne been watching him, he would have noticed that his head was
+bent and his step less free.  But Madison Wayne was at that moment
+sitting rigidly in his chair, nursing, with all the gloomy
+concentration of a monastic nature, a single terrible suspicion.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Howbeit the sun shone cheerfully over the Bar the next morning and
+the next; the breath of life and activity was in the air; the
+settlement never had been more prosperous, and the yield from the
+opened placers on the drained river-bed that week was enormous.
+The Brothers Wayne were said to be "rolling in gold."  It was
+thought to be consistent with Madison Wayne's nature that there was
+no trace of good fortune in his face or manner--rather that he had
+become more nervous, restless, and gloomy.  This was attributed to
+the joylessness of avarice as contrasted with the spendthrift
+gayety of the more liberal Arthur, and he was feared and RESPECTED
+as a miser.  His long, solitary walks around the promontory, his
+incessant watchfulness, his reticence when questioned, were all
+recognized as the indications of a man whose soul was absorbed in
+money-getting.  The reverence they failed to yield to his religious
+isolation they were willing to freely accord to his financial
+abstraction.  But Mr. McGee was not so deceived.  Overtaking him
+one day under the fringe of willows, he characteristically chided
+him with absenting himself from Mrs. McGee and her house since
+their last interview.
+
+"I reckon you did not harbor malice in your Christianity," he said;
+"but it looks mighty like ez if ye was throwing off on Safie and me
+on account of what I said."
+
+In vain Madison gloomily and almost sternly protested.
+
+McGee looked him all over with his clear measuring eye, and for
+some minutes was singularly silent.  At last he said slowly: "I've
+been thinkin' suthin' o' goin' down to 'Frisco, and I'd be a heap
+easier in my mind ef you'd promise to look arter Safie now and
+then."
+
+"You surely are not going to leave her here ALONE?" said Wayne
+roughly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+For an instant Wayne hesitated.  Then he burst out.  "For a hundred
+reasons!  If she ever wanted your protection, before, she surely
+does now.  Do you suppose the Bar is any less heathen or more
+regenerated than it was when you thought it necessary to guard her
+with your revolver?  Man!  It is a hundred times worse than then!
+The new claims have filled it with spying adventurers--with wolves
+like Hamlin and his friends--idolaters who would set up Baal and
+Ashteroth here--and fill your tents with the curses of Sodom!"
+
+Perhaps it was owing to the Scriptural phrasing, perhaps it was
+from some unusual authority of the man's manner, but a look of
+approving relief and admiration came into McGee's clear eyes.
+
+"And YOU'RE just the man to tackle 'em," he said, clapping his hand
+on Wayne's shoulder.  "That's your gait--keep it up!  But," he
+added, in a lower voice, "me and my revolver are played out."
+There was a strangeness in the tone that arrested Wayne's
+attention.  "Yes," continued McGee, stroking his beard slowly, "men
+like me has their day, and revolvers has theirs; the world turns
+round and the Bar fills up, and this yer river changes its course--
+and it's all in the day's work.  You understand what I mean--you
+follow me?  And if anything should happen to me--not that it's like
+to; but it's in the way o' men--I want you to look arter Safie.  It
+ain't every woman ez has two men, ez like and unlike, to guard her.
+You follow me--you understand what I mean, don't you?"  With these
+words he parted somewhat abruptly from Wayne, turning into the
+steep path to the promontory crest and leaving his companion lost
+in gloomy abstraction.  The next day Alexander McGee had departed
+on a business trip to San Francisco.
+
+In his present frame of mind, with his new responsibility and the
+carrying out of a plan which he had vaguely conceived might remove
+the terrible idea that had taken possession of him, Madison Wayne
+was even relieved when his brother also announced his intention of
+going to Angel's for a few days.
+
+For since his memorable interview with McGee he had been convinced
+that Safie had been clandestinely visited by some one.  Whether it
+was the thoughtless and momentary indiscretion of a willful woman,
+or the sequel to some deliberately planned intrigue, did not
+concern him so much as the falsity of his own position, and the
+conniving lie by which he had saved her and her lover.  That at
+this crucial moment he had failed to "testify" to guilt and
+wickedness; that he firmly believed--such is the inordinate vanity
+of the religious zealot--that he had denied Him in his effort to
+shield HER; and that he had broken faith with the husband who had
+entrusted to him the custody of his wife's honor, seemed to him
+more terrible than her faithlessness.  In his first horror he had
+dreaded to see her, lest her very confession--he knew her reckless
+frankness towards himself--should reveal to him the extent of his
+complicity.  But since then, and during her husband's absence, he
+had convinced himself that it was his duty to wrestle and strive
+with her weak spirit, to implore her to reveal her new intrigue to
+her husband, and then he would help her to sue for his forgiveness.
+It was a part of the inconsistency of his religious convictions; in
+his human passion he was perfectly unselfish, and had already
+forgiven her the offense against himself.  He would see her at
+once!
+
+But it happened to be a quiet, intense night, with the tremulous
+opulence of a full moon that threw quivering shafts of light like
+summer lightning over the blue river, and laid a wonderful carpet
+of intricate lace along the path that wound through the willows to
+the crest.  There was the dry, stimulating dust and spice of heated
+pines from below; the languorous odors of syringa; the faint,
+feminine smell of southernwood, and the infinite mystery of
+silence.  This silence was at times softly broken with the tender
+inarticulate whisper of falling leaves, broken sighs from the tree-
+tops, and the languid stretching of wakened and unclasping boughs.
+Madison Wayne had not, alas! taken into account this subtle
+conspiracy of Night and Nature, and as he climbed higher, his steps
+began to falter with new and strange sensations.  The rigidity of
+purpose which had guided the hard religious convictions that always
+sustained him, began to relax.  A tender sympathy stole over him; a
+loving mercy to himself as well as others stole into his heart.  He
+thought of HER as she had nestled at his side, hand in hand, upon
+the moonlit veranda of her father's house, before his hard
+convictions had chilled and affrighted her.  He thought of her
+fresh simplicity, and what had seemed to him her wonderful girlish
+beauty, and lo! in a quick turn of the path he stood breathless and
+tremulous before the house.  The moonbeams lay tenderly upon the
+peaceful eaves; the long blossoms of the Madeira vine seemed
+sleeping also.  The pink flush of the Cherokee rose in the unreal
+light had become chastely white.
+
+But he was evidently too late for an interview.  The windows were
+blank in the white light; only one--her bedroom--showed a light
+behind the lowered muslin blind.  Her draped shadow once or twice
+passed across it.  He was turning away with soft steps and even
+bated breath when suddenly he stopped.  The exaggerated but
+unmistakable shadow of a man stood beside her on the blind.
+
+With a fierce leap as of a maniac, he was at the door, pounding,
+rattling, and uttering hoarse and furious outcries.  Even through
+his fury he heard quickened footsteps--her light, reckless, half-
+hysterical laugh--a bound upon the staircase--the hurried unbolting
+and opening of distant doors, as the lighter one with which he
+was struggling at last yielded to his blind rage, and threw him
+crashing into the sitting-room.  The back door was wide open.  He
+could hear the rustling and crackling of twigs and branches in
+different directions down the hillside, where the fugitives had
+separated as they escaped.  And yet he stood there for an instant,
+dazed and wondering, "What next?"
+
+His eyes fell upon McGee's rifle standing upright in the corner.
+It was a clean, beautiful, precise weapon, even to the unprofessional
+eye, its long, laminated hexagonal barrel taking a tenderer blue in
+the moonlight.  He snatched it up.  It was capped and loaded.
+Without a pause he dashed down the hill.
+
+Only one thought was in his mind now--the crudest, simplest duty.
+He was there in McGee's place; he should do what McGee would do.
+God had abandoned him, but McGee's rifle remained.
+
+In a few minutes' downward plunging he had reached the river bank.
+The tranquil silver surface quivered and glittered before him.  He
+saw what he knew he would see, the black target of a man's head
+above it, making for the Bar.  He took deliberate aim and fired.
+There was no echo to that sharp detonation; a distant dog barked,
+there was a slight whisper in the trees beside him, that was all!
+But the head of the man was no longer visible, and the liquid
+silver filmed over again, without a speck or stain.
+
+He shouldered the rifle, and with the automatic action of men in
+great crises returned slowly and deliberately to the house and
+carefully replaced the rifle in its old position.  He had no
+concern for the miserable woman who had fled; had she appeared
+before him at the moment, he would not have noticed her.  Yet a
+strange instinct--it seemed to him the vaguest curiosity--made him
+ascend the stairs and enter her chamber.  The candle was still
+burning on the table with that awful unconsciousness and simplicity
+of detail which makes the scene of real tragedy so terrible.
+Beside it lay a belt and leather pouch.  Madison Wayne suddenly
+dashed forward and seized it, with a wild, inarticulate cry;
+staggered, fell over the chair, rose to his feet, blindly groped
+his way down the staircase, burst into the road, and, hugging the
+pouch to his bosom, fled like a madman down the hill.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The body of Arthur Wayne was picked up two days later a dozen miles
+down the river.  Nothing could be more evident and prosaic than the
+manner in which he had met his fate.  His body was only partly
+clothed, and the money pouch and belt, which had been securely
+locked next his skin, after the fashion of all miners, was gone.
+He was known to have left the Bar with a considerable sum of money;
+he was undoubtedly dogged, robbed, and murdered during his journey
+on the river bank by the desperadoes who were beginning to infest
+the vicinity.  The grief and agony of his only brother, sole
+survivor of that fraternal and religious partnership so well known
+to the camp, although shown only by a grim and speechless
+melancholy,--broken by unintelligible outbursts of religious
+raving,--was so real, that it affected even the callous camp.  But
+scarcely had it regained its feverish distraction, before it was
+thrilled by another sensation.  Alexander McGee had fallen from the
+deck of a Sacramento steamboat in the Straits of Carquinez, and his
+body had been swept out to sea.  The news had apparently been first
+to reach the ears of his devoted wife, for when the camp--at this
+lapse of the old prohibition--climbed to her bower with their rude
+consolations, the house was found locked and deserted.  The fateful
+influence of the promontory had again prevailed, the grim record of
+its seclusion was once more unbroken.
+
+For with it, too, drooped and faded the fortunes of the Bar.
+Madison Wayne sold out his claim, endowed the church at the Cross
+Roads with the proceeds, and the pulpit with his grim, hopeless,
+denunciatory presence.  The first rains brought a freshet to the
+Bar.  The river leaped the light barriers that had taken the place
+of Wayne's peaceful engines, and regained the old channel.  The
+curse that the Rev. Madison Wayne had launched on this riverside
+Sodom seemed to have been fulfilled.  But even this brought no
+satisfaction to the gloomy prophet, for it was presently known that
+he had abandoned his terror-stricken flock to take the circuit as
+revivalist preacher and camp-meeting exhorter, in the rudest and
+most lawless of gatherings.  Desperate ruffians writhed at his feet
+in impotent terror or more impotent rage; murderers and thieves
+listened to him with blanched faces and set teeth, restrained only
+by a more awful fear.  Over and over again he took his life with
+his Bible into his own hands when he rose above the excited
+multitude; he was shot at, he was rail-ridden, he was deported, but
+never silenced.  And so, sweeping over the country, carrying fear
+and frenzy with him, scouting life and mercy, and crushing alike
+the guilty and innocent, he came one Sabbath to a rocky crest of
+the Sierras--the last tattered and frayed and soiled fringe of
+civilization on the opened tract of a great highway.  And here he
+was to "testify," as was his wont.
+
+But not as he expected.  For as he stood up on a boulder above the
+thirty or forty men sitting or lying upon other rocks and boulders
+around him, on the craggy mountain shelf where they had gathered, a
+man also rose, elbowed past them, and with a hurried impulse tried
+to descend the declivity.  But a cry was suddenly heard from
+others, quick and clamoring, which called the whole assembly to its
+feet, and it was seen that the fugitive had in some blundering way
+fallen from the precipice.
+
+He was brought up cruelly maimed and mangled, his ribs crushed, and
+one lung perforated, but still breathing and conscious.  He had
+asked to see the preacher.  Death impending, and even then
+struggling with his breath, made this request imperative.  Madison
+Wayne stopped the service, and stalked grimly and inflexibly to
+where the dying man lay.  But there he started.
+
+"McGee!" he said breathlessly.
+
+"Send these men away," said McGee faintly.  "I've got suthin' to
+tell you."
+
+The men drew back without a word.  "You thought I was dead," said
+McGee, with eyes still undimmed and marvelously clear.  "I orter
+bin, but it don't need no doctor to say it ain't far off now.  I
+left the Bar to get killed; I tried to in a row, but the fellows
+were skeert to close with me, thinkin' I'd shoot.  My reputation
+was agin me, there!  You follow me?  You understand what I mean?"
+
+Kneeling beside him now and grasping both his hands, the changed
+and horror-stricken Wayne gasped, "But"--
+
+"Hold on!  I jumped off the Sacramento boat--I was goin' down the
+third time--they thought on the boat I was gone--they think so now!
+But a passin' fisherman dived for me.  I grappled him--he was clear
+grit and would have gone down with me, but I couldn't let him die
+too--havin' so to speak no cause.  You follow me--you understand
+me?  I let him save me.  But it was all the same, for when I got to
+'Frisco I read as how I was drowned.  And then I reckoned it was
+all right, and I wandered HERE, where I wasn't known--until I saw
+you."
+
+"But why should you want to die?" said Wayne, almost fiercely.
+"What right have you to die while others--double-dyed and blood-
+stained, are condemned to live, 'testify,' and suffer?"
+
+The dying man feebly waved a deprecation with his maimed hand, and
+even smiled faintly.  "I knew you'd say that.  I knew what you'd
+think about it, but it's all the same now.  I did it for you and
+Safie!  I knew I was in the way; I knew you was the man she orter
+had; I knew you was the man who had dragged her outer the mire and
+clay where I was leavin' her, as you did when she fell in the
+water.  I knew that every day I lived I was makin' YOU suffer and
+breakin' HER heart--for all she tried to be gentle and gay."
+
+"Great God in heaven!  Will you stop!" said Wayne, springing to his
+feet in agony.  A frightened look--the first that any one had ever
+seen in the clear eyes of the Bell-ringer of Angel's--passed over
+them, and he murmured tremulously: "All right--I'm stoppin'!"
+
+So, too, was his heart, for the wonderful eyes were now slowly
+glazing.  Yet he rallied once more--coming up again the third time
+as it seemed to Wayne--and his lips moved slowly.  The preacher
+threw himself despairingly on the ground beside him.
+
+"Speak, brother!  For God's sake, speak!"
+
+It was his last whisper--so faint it might have been the first of
+his freed soul.  But he only said:--
+
+"You're--followin'--me?  You--understand--what--I--mean?"
+
+
+
+JOHNNYBOY.
+
+
+The vast dining-room of the Crustacean Hotel at Greyport, U. S.,
+was empty and desolate.  It was so early in the morning that there
+was a bedroom deshabille in the tucked-up skirts and bare legs of
+the little oval breakfast-tables as they had just been left by the
+dusting servants.  The most stirring of travelers was yet abed, the
+most enterprising of first-train catchers had not yet come down;
+there was a breath of midsummer sleep still in the air; through the
+half-opened windows that seemed to be yawning, the pinkish blue
+Atlantic beyond heaved gently and slumberously, and drowsy early
+bathers crept into it as to bed.  Yet as I entered the room I saw
+that one of the little tables in the corner was in reality occupied
+by a very small and very extraordinary child.  Seated in a high
+chair, attended by a dreamily abstracted nurse on one side, an
+utterly perfunctory negro waiter on the other, and an incongruous
+assortment of disregarded viands before him, he was taking--or,
+rather, declining--his solitary breakfast.  He appeared to be a
+pale, frail, but rather pretty boy, with a singularly pathetic
+combination of infant delicacy of outline and maturity of
+expression.  His heavily fringed eyes expressed an already weary
+and discontented intelligence, and his willful, resolute little
+mouth was, I fancied, marked with lines of pain at either corner.
+He struck me as not only being physically dyspeptic, but as morally
+loathing his attendants and surroundings.
+
+My entrance did not disturb the waiter, with whom I had no
+financial relations; he simply concealed an exaggerated yawn
+professionally behind his napkin until my own servitor should
+appear.  The nurse slightly awoke from her abstraction, shoved the
+child mechanically,--as if starting up some clogged machinery,--
+said, "Eat your breakfast, Johnnyboy," and subsided into her dream.
+I think the child had at first some faint hope of me, and when my
+waiter appeared with my breakfast he betrayed some interest in my
+selection, with a view of possible later appropriation, but, as my
+repast was simple, that hope died out of his infant mind.  Then
+there was a silence, broken at last by the languid voice of the
+nurse:--
+
+"Try some milk then--nice milk."
+
+"No!  No mik!  Mik makes me sick--mik does!"
+
+In spite of the hurried infantine accent the protest was so
+emphatic, and, above all, fraught with such pent-up reproach and
+disgust, that I turned about sympathetically.  But Johnnyboy had
+already thrown down his spoon, slipped from his high chair, and was
+marching out of the room as fast as his little sandals would carry
+him, with indignation bristling in every line of the crisp bows of
+his sash.
+
+I, however, gathered from Mr. Johnson, my waiter, that the
+unfortunate child owned a fashionable father and mother, one or two
+blocks of houses in New York, and a villa at Greyport, which he
+consistently and intelligently despised.  That he had imperiously
+brought his parents here on account of his health, and had demanded
+that he should breakfast alone in the big dining-room.  That,
+however, he was not happy.  "Nuffin peahs to agree wid him, Sah,
+but he doan' cry, and he speaks his mind, Sah; he speaks his mind."
+
+Unfortunately, I did not keep Johnnyboy's secret, but related the
+scene I had witnessed to some of the lighter-hearted Crustaceans of
+either sex, with the result that his alliterative protest became a
+sort of catchword among them, and that for the next few mornings he
+had a large audience of early breakfasters, who fondly hoped for a
+repetition of his performance.  I think that Johnnyboy for the time
+enjoyed this companionship, yet without the least affectation or
+self-consciousness--so long as it was unobtrusive.  It so chanced,
+however, that the Rev. Mr. Belcher, a gentleman with bovine
+lightness of touch, and a singular misunderstanding of childhood,
+chose to presume upon his paternal functions.  Approaching the high
+chair in which Johnnyboy was dyspeptically reflecting, with a
+ponderous wink at the other guests, and a fat thumb and forefinger
+on Johnnyboy's table, he leaned over him, and with slow,
+elephantine playfulness said:--
+
+"And so, my dear young friend, I understand that 'mik makes you
+sick--mik does.'"
+
+Anything approaching to the absolute likeness of this imitation of
+Johnnyboy's accents it is impossible to conceive.  Possibly
+Johnnyboy felt it.  But he simply lifted his lovely lashes, and
+said with great distinctness:--
+
+"Mik don't--you devil!"
+
+After this, closely as it had knitted us together, Johnnyboy's
+morning presence was mysteriously withdrawn.  It was later pointed
+out to us by Mr. Belcher, upon the veranda, that, although Wealth
+had its privileges, it was held in trust for the welfare of
+Mankind, and that the children of the Rich could not too early
+learn the advantages of Self-restraint and the vanity of a mere
+gratification of the Senses.  Early and frequent morning ablutions,
+brisk morning toweling, half of a Graham biscuit in a teacup of
+milk, exercise with the dumb-bells, and a little rough-and-tumble
+play in a straw hat, check apron, and overalls would eventually
+improve that stamina necessary for his future Position, and repress
+a dangerous cerebral activity and tendency to give way to--  He
+suddenly stopped, coughed, and absolutely looked embarrassed.
+Johnnyboy, a moving cloud of white pique, silk, and embroidery, had
+just turned the corner of the veranda.  He did not speak, but as he
+passed raised his blue-veined lids to the orator.  The look of
+ineffable scorn and superiority in those beautiful eyes surpassed
+anything I had ever seen.  At the next veranda column he paused,
+and, with his baby thumbs inserted in his silk sash, again regarded
+him under his half-dropped lashes as if he were some curious
+animal, and then passed on.  But Belcher was silenced for the
+second time.
+
+I think I have said enough to show that Johnnyboy was hopelessly
+worshiped by an impressible and illogical sex.  I say HOPELESSLY,
+for he slipped equally from the proudest silken lap and the
+humblest one of calico, and carried his eyelashes and small aches
+elsewhere.  I think that a secret fear of his alarming frankness,
+and his steady rejection of the various tempting cates they offered
+him, had much to do with their passion.  "It won't hurt you, dear,"
+said Miss Circe, "and it's so awfully nice.  See!" she continued,
+putting one of the delicacies in her own pretty mouth with every
+assumption of delight.  "It's SO good!"  Johnnyboy rested his
+elbows on her knees, and watched her with a grieved and
+commiserating superiority.  "Bimeby, you'll have pains in youse
+tommick, and you'll be tookt to bed," he said sadly, "and then
+you'll--have to dit up and"--  But as it was found necessary here
+to repress further details, he escaped other temptation.
+
+Two hours later, as Miss Circe was seated in the drawing-room with
+her usual circle of enthusiastic admirers around her, Johnnyboy--
+who was issued from his room for circulation, two or three times a
+day, as a genteel advertisement of his parents--floated into the
+apartment in a new dress and a serious demeanor.  Sidling up to
+Miss Circe he laid a phial--evidently his own pet medicine--on her
+lap, said, "For youse tommikake to-night," and vanished.  Yet I
+have reason to believe that this slight evidence of unusual
+remembrance on Johnnyboy's part more than compensated for its
+publicity, and for a few days Miss Circe was quite "set up" by it.
+
+It was through some sympathy of this kind that I first gained
+Johnnyboy's good graces.  I had been presented with a small pocket
+case of homoeopathic medicines, and one day on the beach I took out
+one of the tiny phials and, dropping two or three of the still
+tinier pellets in my hand, swallowed them.  To my embarrassment,
+a small hand presently grasped my trouser-leg.  I looked down; it
+was Johnnyboy, in a new and ravishing smuggler suit, with his
+questioning eyes fixed on mine.
+
+"Howjer do dat?"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Wajer do dat for?"
+
+"That?--Oh, that's medicine.  I've got a headache."
+
+He searched the inmost depths of my soul with his wonderful eyes.
+Then, after a pause, he held out his baby palm.
+
+"You kin give Johnny some."
+
+"But you haven't got headache--have you?"
+
+"Me alluz has."
+
+"Not ALWAYS."
+
+He nodded his head rapidly.  Then added slowly, and with great
+elaboration, "Et mo'nins, et affernoons, et nights, 'nd mo'nins
+adain.  'N et becker" (i. e., breakfast).
+
+There was no doubt it was the truth.  Those eyes did not seem to be
+in the habit of lying.  After all, the medicine could not hurt him.
+His nurse was at a little distance gazing absently at the sea.  I
+sat down on a bench, and dropped a few of the pellets into his
+palm.  He ate them seriously, and then turned around and backed--
+after the well-known appealing fashion of childhood--against my
+knees.  I understood the movement--although it was unlike my idea
+of Johnnyboy.  However, I raised him to my lap--with the sensation
+of lifting a dozen lace-edged handkerchiefs, and with very little
+more effort--where he sat silently for a moment, with his sandals
+crossed pensively before him.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to go and play with those children?" I asked,
+pointing to a group of noisy sand levelers not far away.
+
+"No!"  After a pause, "You wouldn't neither."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Hediks."
+
+"But," I said, "perhaps if you went and played with them and ran up
+and down as they do, you wouldn't have headache."
+
+Johnnyboy did not answer for a moment; then there was a perceptible
+gentle movement of his small frame.  I confess I felt brutally like
+Belcher.  He was getting down.
+
+Once down he faced me, lifted his frank eyes, said, "Do way and
+play den," smoothed down his smuggler frock, and rejoined his
+nurse.
+
+But although Johnnyboy afterwards forgave my moral defection, he
+did not seem to have forgotten my practical medical ministration,
+and our brief interview had a surprising result.  From that moment
+he confounded his parents and doctors by resolutely and positively
+refusing to take any more of their pills, tonics, or drops.
+Whether from a sense of loyalty to me, or whether he was not yet
+convinced of the efficacy of homoeopathy, he did not suggest a
+substitute, declare his preferences, or even give his reasons, but
+firmly and peremptorily declined his present treatment.  And, to
+everybody's astonishment, he did not seem a bit the worse for it.
+
+Still he was not strong, and his continual aversion to childish
+sports and youthful exercise provoked the easy criticism of that
+large part of humanity who are ready to confound cause and effect,
+and such brief moments as the Sluysdaels could spare him from their
+fashionable duties were made miserable to them by gratuitous
+suggestions and plans for their child's improvement.  It was
+noticeable, however, that few of them were ever offered to
+Johnnyboy personally.  He had a singularly direct way of dealing
+with them, and a precision of statement that was embarrassing.
+
+One afternoon, Jack Bracy drove up to the veranda of the Crustacean
+with a smart buggy and spirited thoroughbred for Miss Circe's
+especial driving, and his own saddle-horse on which he was to
+accompany her.  Jack had dismounted, a groom held his saddle-horse
+until the young lady should appear, and he himself stood at the
+head of the thoroughbred.  As Johnnyboy, leaning against the
+railing, was regarding the turnout with ill-concealed disdain,
+Jack, in the pride of his triumph over his rivals, good-humoredly
+offered to put him in the buggy, and allow him to take the reins.
+Johnnyboy did not reply.
+
+"Come along!" continued Jack, "it will do you a heap of good!  It's
+better than lazing there like a girl!  Rouse up, old man!"
+
+"Me don't like that geegee," said Johnnyboy calmly.  "He's a silly
+fool."
+
+"You're afraid," said Jack.
+
+Johnnyboy lifted his proud lashes, and toddled to the steps.  Jack
+received him in his arms, swung him into the seat, and placed the
+slim yellow reins in his baby hands.
+
+"Now you feel like a man, and not like a girl!" said Jack.  "Eh,
+what?  Oh, I beg your pardon."
+
+For Miss Circe had appeared--had absolutely been obliged to wait a
+whole half-minute unobserved--and now stood there a dazzling but
+pouting apparition.  In eagerly turning to receive her, Jack's foot
+slipped on the step, and he fell.  The thoroughbred started, gave a
+sickening plunge forward, and was off!  But so, too, was Jack, the
+next moment, on his own horse, and before Miss Circe's screams had
+died away.
+
+For two blocks on Ocean Avenue, passersby that afternoon saw a
+strange vision.  A galloping horse careering before a light buggy,
+in which a small child, seated upright, was grasping the tightened
+reins.  But so erect and composed was the little face and figure--
+albeit as white as its own frock--that for an instant they did not
+grasp its awful significance.  Those further along, however, read
+the whole awful story in the drawn face and blazing eyes of Jack
+Bracy as he, at last, swung into the Avenue.  For Jack had the
+brains as well as the nerve of your true hero, and, knowing the
+dangerous stimulus of a stern chase to a frightened horse, had kept
+a side road until it branched into the Avenue.  So furious had been
+his pace, and so correct his calculation, that he ranged alongside
+of the runaway even as it passed, grasped the reins, and, in half a
+block, pulled up on even wheels.
+
+"I never saw such pluck in a mite like that," he whispered
+afterwards to his anxious auditory.  "He never dropped those
+ribbons, by G--, until I got alongside, and then he just hopped
+down and said, as short and cool as you please, 'Dank you!'"
+
+"Me didn't," uttered a small voice reproachfully.
+
+"Didn't you, dear!  What DID you say then, darling?" exclaimed a
+sympathizing chorus.
+
+"Me said: 'Damn you!'  Me don't like silly fool geegees.  Silly
+fool geegees make me sick--silly fool geegees do!"
+
+Nevertheless, in spite of this incident, the attempts at Johnnyboy's
+physical reformation still went on.  More than that, it was argued
+by some complacent casuists that the pluck displayed by the child
+was the actual result of this somewhat heroic method of taking
+exercise, and NOT an inherent manliness distinct from his physical
+tastes.  So he was made to run when he didn't want to--to dance when
+he frankly loathed his partners--to play at games that he despised.
+His books and pictures were taken away; he was hurried past
+hoardings and theatrical posters that engaged his fancy; the public
+was warned against telling him fairy tales, except those constructed
+on strictly hygienic principles.  His fastidious cleanliness was
+rebuked, and his best frocks taken away--albeit at a terrible
+sacrifice of his parents' vanity--to suit the theories of his
+critics.  How long this might have continued is not known--for the
+theory and practice were suddenly arrested by another sensation.
+
+One morning a children's picnic party was given on a rocky point
+only accessible at certain states of the tide, whither they were
+taken in a small boat under the charge of a few hotel servants,
+and, possibly as part of his heroic treatment, Johnnyboy, who was
+included in the party, was not allowed to be attended by his
+regular nurse.
+
+Whether this circumstance added to his general disgust of the whole
+affair, and his unwillingness to go, I cannot say, but it is to be
+regretted, since the omission deprived Johnnyboy of any impartial
+witness to what subsequently occurred.  That he was somewhat
+roughly handled by several of the larger children appeared to be
+beyond doubt, although there was conflicting evidence as to the
+sequel.  Enough that at noon screams were heard in the direction of
+certain detached rocks on the point, and the whole party proceeding
+thither found three of the larger boys on the rocks, alone and cut
+off by the tide, having been left there, as they alleged, by
+Johnnyboy, WHO HAD RUN AWAY WITH THE BOAT.  They subsequently
+admitted that THEY had first taken the boat and brought Johnnyboy
+with them, "just to frighten him," but they adhered to the rest.
+And certainly Johnnyboy and the boat were nowhere to be found.  The
+shore was communicated with, the alarm was given, the telegraph,
+up and down the coast trilled with excitement, other boats were
+manned--consternation prevailed.
+
+But that afternoon the captain of the "Saucy Jane," mackerel
+fisher, lying off the point, perceived a derelict "Whitehall" boat
+drifting lazily towards the Gulf Stream.  On boarding it he was
+chagrined to find the expected flotsam already in the possession of
+a very small child, who received him with a scornful reticence as
+regarded himself and his intentions, and some objurgation of a
+person or persons unknown.  It was Johnnyboy.  But whether he had
+attempted the destruction of the three other boys by "marooning"
+them upon the rocks--as their parents firmly believed--or whether
+he had himself withdrawn from their company simply because he did
+not like them, was never known.  Any further attempt to improve
+his education by the roughing gregarious process was, however,
+abandoned.  The very critics who had counseled it now clamored for
+restraint and perfect isolation.  It was ably pointed out by the
+Rev. Mr. Belcher that the autocratic habits begotten by wealth and
+pampering should be restricted, and all intercourse with their
+possessor promptly withheld.
+
+But the season presently passed with much of this and other
+criticism, and the Sluysdaels passed too, carrying Johnnyboy and
+his small aches and long eyelashes beyond these Crustacean voices,
+where it was to be hoped there was peace.  I did not hear of him
+again for five years, and then, oddly enough, from the lips of Mr.
+Belcher on the deck of a transatlantic steamer, as he was being
+wafted to Europe for his recreation by the prayers and purses of a
+grateful and enduring flock.  "Master John Jacob Astor Sluysdael,"
+said Mr. Belcher, speaking slowly, with great precision of
+retrospect, "was taken from his private governess--I may say by my
+advice--and sent to an admirable school in New York, fashioned upon
+the English system of Eton and Harrow, and conducted by English
+masters from Oxford and Cambridge.  Here--I may also say at my
+suggestion--he was subjected to the wholesome discipline equally of
+his schoolmates and his masters; in fact, sir, as you are probably
+aware, the most perfect democracy that we have yet known, in which
+the mere accidents of wealth, position, luxury, effeminacy,
+physical degeneration, and over-civilized stimulation, are not
+recognized.  He was put into compulsory cricket, football, and
+rounders.  As an undersized boy he was subjected to that ingenious
+preparation for future mastership by the pupillary state of
+servitude known, I think, as 'fagging.'  His physical inertia was
+stimulated and quickened, and his intellectual precocity repressed,
+from time to time, by the exuberant playfulness of his fellow-
+students, which occasionally took the form of forced ablutions and
+corporal discomfort, and was called, I am told, 'hazing.'  It is
+but fair to state that our young friend had some singular mental
+endowments, which, however, were promptly checked to repress the
+vanity and presumption that would follow."  The Rev. Mr. Belcher
+paused, closed his eyes resignedly, and added, "Of course, you know
+the rest."
+
+"Indeed, I do not," I said anxiously.
+
+"A most deplorable affair--indeed, a most shocking incident!
+It was hushed up, I believe, on account of the position of his
+parents."  He glanced furtively around, and in a lower and more
+impressive voice said, "I am not myself a believer in heredity, and
+I am not personally aware that there was a MURDERER among the
+Sluysdael ancestry, but it seems that this monstrous child, in some
+clandestine way, possessed himself of a huge bowie-knife, sir, and
+on one of those occasions actually rushed furiously at the larger
+boys--his innocent play-fellows--and absolutely forced them to flee
+in fear of their lives.  More than that, sir, a LOADED REVOLVER was
+found in his desk, and he boldly and shamelessly avowed his
+intention to eviscerate, or--to use his own revolting language--'to
+cut the heart out' of the first one who again 'laid a finger on
+him.'"  He paused again, and, joining his two hands together with
+the fingers pointing to the deck, breathed hard and said, "His
+instantaneous withdrawal from the school was a matter of public
+necessity.  He was afterwards taken, in the charge of a private
+tutor, to Europe, where, I trust, we shall NOT meet."
+
+I could not resist saying cheerfully that, at least, Johnnyboy had
+for a short time made it lively for the big boys.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Belcher rose slowly, but painfully, said with a deeply
+grieved expression, "I don't think that I entirely follow you," and
+moved gently away.
+
+The changes of youth are apt to be more bewildering than those of
+age, and a decade scarcely perceptible in an old civilization often
+means utter revolution to the new.  It did not seem strange to me,
+therefore, on meeting Jack Bracy twelve years after, to find that
+he had forgotten Miss Circe, or that SHE had married, and was
+living unhappily with a middle-aged adventurer by the name of
+Jason, who was reputed to have had domestic relations elsewhere.
+But although subjugated and exorcised, she at least was
+reminiscent.  To my inquiries about the Sluysdaels, she answered
+with a slight return of her old vivacity:--
+
+"Ah, yes, dear fellow, he was one of my greatest admirers."
+
+"He was about four years old when you knew him, wasn't he?"
+suggested Jason meanly.  "Yes, they usually WERE young, but so kind
+of you to recollect them.  Young Sluysdael," he continued, turning
+to me, "is--but of course you know that disgraceful story."
+
+I felt that I could stand this no longer.  "Yes," I said
+indignantly, "I know all about the school, and I don't call his
+conduct disgraceful either."
+
+Jason stared.  "I don't know what you mean about the school," he
+returned.  "I am speaking of his stepfather."
+
+"His STEPFATHER!"
+
+"Yes; his father, Van Buren Sluysdael, died, you know--a year after
+they left Greyport.  The widow was left all the money in trust for
+Johnny, except about twenty-five hundred a year which he was in
+receipt of as a separate income, even as a boy.  Well, a glib-
+tongued parson, a fellow by the name of Belcher, got round the
+widow--she was a desperate fool--and, by Jove! made her marry him.
+He made ducks and drakes of not only her money, but Johnny's too,
+and had to skip to Spain to avoid the trustees.  And Johnny--for
+the Sluysdaels are all fools or lunatics--made over his whole
+separate income to that wretched, fashionable fool of a mother,
+and went into a stockbroker's office as a clerk."
+
+"And walks to business before eight every morning, and they say
+even takes down the shutters and sweeps out," broke in Circe
+impulsively.  "Works like a slave all day, wears out his old
+clothes, has given up his clubs and amusements, and shuns society."
+
+"But how about his health?" I asked.  "Is he better and stronger?"
+
+"I don't know," said Circe, "but he LOOKS as beautiful as Endymion."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+At his bank, in Wall Street, Bracy that afternoon confirmed all
+that Jason had told me of young Sluysdael.  "But his temper?" I
+asked.  "You remember his temper--surely."
+
+"He's as sweet as a lamb, never quarrels, never whines, never
+alludes to his lost fortune, and is never put out.  For a
+youngster, he's the most popular man in the street.  Shall we nip
+round and see him?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"Come.  It isn't far."
+
+A few steps down the crowded street we dived into a den of plate-
+glass windows, of scraps of paper, of rattling, ticking machines,
+more voluble and excited than the careworn, abstracted men who
+leaned over them.  But "Johnnyboy"--I started at the familiar name
+again--was not there.  He was at luncheon.
+
+"Let us join him," I said, as we gained the street again and turned
+mechanically into Delmonico's.
+
+"Not there," said Bracy with a laugh.  "You forget!  That's not
+Johnnyboy's gait just now.  Come here."  He was descending a few
+steps that led to a humble cake-shop.  As we entered I noticed a
+young fellow standing before the plain wooden counter with a cake
+of gingerbread in one hand and a glass of milk in the other.  His
+profile was before me; I at once recognized the long lashes.  But
+the happy, boyish, careless laugh that greeted Bracy, as he
+presented me, was a revelation.
+
+Yet he was pleased to remember me.  And then--it may have been
+embarrassment that led me to such tactlessness, but as I glanced at
+him and the glass of milk he was holding, I could not help
+reminding him of the first words I had ever heard him utter.
+
+He tossed off the glass, colored slightly, as I thought, and said
+with a light laugh:--
+
+"I suppose I have changed a good deal since then, sir."
+
+I looked at his demure and resolute mouth, and wondered if he had.
+
+
+
+YOUNG ROBIN GRAY.
+
+
+The good American barque Skyscraper was swinging at her moorings in
+the Clyde, off Bannock, ready for sea.  But that good American
+barque--although owned in Baltimore--had not a plank of American
+timber in her hulk, nor a native American in her crew, and even her
+nautical "goodness" had been called into serious question by divers
+of that crew during her voyage, and answered more or less
+inconclusively with belaying-pins, marlin-spikes, and ropes' ends
+at the hands of an Irish-American captain and a Dutch and Danish
+mate.  So much so, that the mysterious powers of the American
+consul at St. Kentigern had been evoked to punish mutiny on the
+one hand, and battery and starvation on the other; both equally
+attested by manifestly false witness and subornation on each side.
+In the exercise of his functions the consul had opened and shut
+some jail doors, and otherwise effected the usual sullen and
+deceitful compromise, and his flag was now flying, on a final
+visit, from the stern sheets of a smart boat alongside.  It was
+with a feeling of relief at the end of the interview that he at
+last lifted his head above an atmosphere of perjury and bilge-water
+and came on deck.  The sun and wind were ruffling and glinting on
+the broadening river beyond the "measured mile"; a few gulls were
+wavering and dipping near the lee scuppers, and the sound of
+Sabbath bells, mellowed by a distance that secured immunity of
+conscience, came peacefully to his ear.
+
+"Now that job's over ye'll be takin' a partin' dhrink," suggested
+the captain.
+
+The consul thought not.  Certain incidents of "the job" were fresh
+in his memory, and he proposed to limit himself to his strict duty.
+
+"You have some passengers, I see," he said, pointing to a group of
+two men and a young girl, who had apparently just come aboard.
+
+"Only wan; an engineer going out to Rio.  Them's just his friends
+seein' him off, I'm thinkin'," returned the captain, surveying them
+somewhat contemptuously.
+
+The consul was a little disturbed.  He wondered if the passenger
+knew anything of the quality and reputation of the ship to which he
+was entrusting his fortunes.  But he was only a PASSENGER, and the
+consul's functions--like those of the aloft-sitting cherub of
+nautical song--were restricted exclusively to looking after "Poor
+Jack."  However, he asked a few further questions, eliciting the
+fact that the stranger had already visited the ship with letters
+from the eminently respectable consignees at St. Kentigern, and
+contented himself with lingering near them.  The young girl was
+accompanied by her father, a respectably rigid-looking middle-class
+tradesman, who, however, seemed to be more interested in the
+novelty of his surroundings than in the movements of his daughter
+and their departing friend.  So it chanced that the consul
+re-entered the cabin--ostensibly in search of a missing glove, but
+really with the intention of seeing how the passenger was bestowed--
+just behind them.  But to his great embarrassment he at once
+perceived that, owing to the obscurity of the apartment, they had
+not noticed him, and before he could withdraw, the man had passed
+his arm around the young girl's half stiffened, yet half yielding
+figure.
+
+"Only one, Ailsa," he pleaded in a slow, serious voice, pathetic
+from the very absence of any youthful passion in it; "just one now.
+It'll be gey lang before we meet again.  Ye'll not refuse me now."
+
+The young girl's lips seemed to murmur some protest that, however,
+was lost in the beginning of a long and silent kiss.
+
+The consul slipped out softly.  His smile had died away.  That
+unlooked-for touch of human weakness seemed to purify the stuffy
+and evil-reeking cabin, and the recollection of its brutal past to
+drop with a deck-load of iniquity behind him to the bottom of the
+Clyde.  It is to be feared that in his unofficial moments he was
+inclined to be sentimental, and it seemed to him that the good ship
+Skyscraper henceforward carried an innocent freight not mentioned
+in her manifest, and that a gentle, ever-smiling figure, not
+entered on her books, had invisibly taken a place at her wheel.
+
+But he was recalled to himself by a slight altercation on deck.
+The young girl and the passenger had just returned from the cabin.
+The consul, after a discreetly careless pause, had lifted his eyes
+to the young girl's face, and saw that it was singularly pretty in
+color and outline, but perfectly self-composed and serenely
+unconscious.  And he was a little troubled to observe that the
+passenger was a middle-aged man, whose hard features were already
+considerably worn with trial and experience.
+
+Both he and the girl were listening with sympathizing but cautious
+interest to her father's contention with the boatman who had
+brought them from shore, and who was now inclined to demand an
+extra fee for returning with them.  The boatman alleged that he had
+been detained beyond "kirk time," and that this imperiling of his
+salvation could only be compensated by another shilling.  To the
+consul's surprise, this extraordinary argument was recognized by
+the father, who, however, contented himself by simply contending
+that it had not been stipulated in the bargain.  The issue was,
+therefore, limited, and the discussion progressed slowly and
+deliberately, with a certain calm dignity and argumentative
+satisfaction on both sides that exalted the subject, though it
+irritated the captain.
+
+"If ye accept the premisses that I've just laid down, that it's a
+contract"---began the boatman.
+
+"Dry up! and haul off," said the captain.
+
+"One moment," interposed the consul, with a rapid glance at the
+slight trouble in the young girl's face.  Turning to the father, he
+went on: "Will you allow me to offer you and your daughter a seat
+in my boat?"
+
+It was an unlooked-for and tempting proposal.  The boatman was
+lazily lying on his oars, secure in self-righteousness and the
+conscious possession of the only available boat to shore; on the
+other hand, the smart gig of the consul, with its four oars, was
+not only a providential escape from a difficulty, but even to some
+extent a quasi-official endorsement of his contention.  Yet he
+hesitated.
+
+"It'll be costin' ye no more?" he said interrogatively, glancing at
+the consul's boat crew, "or ye'll be askin' me a fair proportion."
+
+"It will be the gentleman's own boat," said the girl, with a
+certain shy assurance, "and he'll be paying his boatmen by the
+day."
+
+The consul hastened to explain that their passage would involve no
+additional expense to anybody, and added, tactfully, that he was
+glad to enable them to oppose extortion.
+
+"Ay, but it's a preencipel," said the father proudly, "and I'm
+pleased, sir, to see ye recognize it."
+
+He proceeded to help his daughter into the boat without any further
+leave-taking of the passenger, to the consul's great surprise, and
+with only a parting nod from the young girl.  It was as if this
+momentous incident were a sufficient reason for the absence of any
+further trivial sentiment.
+
+Unfortunately the father chose to add an exordium for the benefit
+of the astonished boatsman still lying on his oars.
+
+"Let this be a lesson to ye, ma frien', when ye're ower sure!
+Ye'll ne'er say a herrin' is dry until it be reestit an' reekit."
+
+"Ay," said the boatman, with a lazy, significant glance at the
+consul, "it wull be a lesson to me not to trust to a lassie's
+GANGIN' jo, when thair's anither yin comin'."
+
+"Give way," said the consul sharply.
+
+Yet his was the only irritated face in the boat as the men bent
+over their oars.  The young girl and her father looked placidly at
+the receding ship, and waved their hands to the grave, resigned
+face over the taffrail.  The consul examined them more attentively.
+The father's face showed intelligence and a certain probity in its
+otherwise commonplace features.  The young girl had more distinction,
+with, perhaps, more delicacy of outline than of texture.  Her hair
+was dark, with a burnished copper tint at its roots, and eyes that
+had the same burnished metallic lustre in their brown pupils.  Both
+sat respectfully erect, as if anxious to record the fact that the
+boat was not their own to take their ease in; and both were silently
+reserved, answering briefly to the consul's remarks as if to
+indicate the formality of their presence there.  But a distant
+railway whistle startled them into emotion.
+
+"We've lost the train, father!" said the young girl.
+
+The consul followed the direction of her anxious eyes; the train
+was just quitting the station at Bannock.
+
+"If ye had not lingered below with Jamie, we'd have been away in
+time, ay, and in our own boat," said the father, with marked
+severity.
+
+The consul glanced quickly at the girl.  But her face betrayed no
+consciousness, except of their present disappointment.
+
+"There's an excursion boat coming round the Point," he said,
+pointing to the black smoke trail of a steamer at the entrance of a
+loch, "and it will be returning to St. Kentigern shortly.  If you
+like, we'll pull over and put you aboard."
+
+"Eh! but it's the Sabbath-breaker!" said the old man harshly.
+
+The consul suddenly remembered that that was the name which the
+righteous St. Kentigerners had given to the solitary bold, bad
+pleasure-boat that defied their Sabbatical observances.
+
+"Perhaps you won't find very pleasant company on board," said the
+consul smiling; "but, then, you're not seeking THAT.  And as you
+would be only using the boat to get back to your home, and not for
+Sunday recreation, I don't think your conscience should trouble
+you."
+
+"Ay, that's a fine argument, Mr. Consul, but I'm thinkin' it's none
+the less sopheestry for a' that," said the father grimly.  "No; if
+ye'll just land us yonder at Bannock pier, we'll be ay thankin' ye
+the same."
+
+"But what will you do there?  There's no other train to-day."
+
+"Ay, we'll walk on a bit."
+
+The consul was silent.  After a pause the young girl lifted her
+clear eyes, and with a half pathetic, half childish politeness,
+said: "We'll be doing very well--my father and me.  You're far too
+kind."
+
+Nothing further was said as they began to thread their way between
+a few large ships and an ocean steamer at anchor, from whose decks
+a few Sunday-clothed mariners gazed down admiringly on the smart
+gig and the pretty girl in a Tam o' Shanter in its stern sheets.
+But here a new idea struck the consul.  A cable's length ahead lay
+a yacht, owned by an American friend, and at her stern a steam
+launch swung to its painter.  Without intimating his intention to
+his passengers he steered for it.  "Bow!--way enough," he called
+out as the boat glided under the yacht's counter, and, grasping the
+companion-ladder ropes, he leaped aboard.  In a few hurried words
+he explained the situation to Mr. Robert Gray, her owner, and
+suggested that he should send the belated passengers to St.
+Kentigern by the launch.  Gray assented with the easy good-nature
+of youth, wealth, and indolence, and lounged from his cabin to the
+side.  The consul followed.  Looking down upon the boat he could
+not help observing that his fair young passenger, sitting in her
+demure stillness at her father's side, made a very pretty picture.
+It was possible that "Bob Gray" had made the same observation, for
+he presently swung himself over the gangway into the gig, hat in
+hand.  The launch could easily take them; in fact, he added
+unblushingly, it was even then getting up steam to go to St.
+Kentigern.  Would they kindly come on board until it was ready?  At
+an added word or two of explanation from the consul, the father
+accepted, preserving the same formal pride and stiffness, and the
+transfer was made.  The consul, looking back as his gig swept round
+again towards Bannock pier, received their parting salutations, and
+the first smile he had seen on the face of his grave little
+passenger.  He thought it very sweet and sad.
+
+He did not return to the Consulate at St. Kentigern until the next
+day.  But he was somewhat surprised to find Mr. Robert Gray
+awaiting him, and upon some business which the young millionaire
+could have easily deputed to his captain or steward.  As he still
+lingered, the consul pleasantly referred to his generosity on the
+previous day, and hoped the passengers had given him no trouble.
+
+"No," said Gray with a slight simulation of carelessness.  "In fact
+I came up with them myself.  I had nothing to do; it was Sunday,
+you know."
+
+The consul lifted his eyebrows slightly.
+
+"Yes, I saw them home," continued Gray lightly.  "In one of those
+by-streets not far from here; neat-looking house outside; inside,
+corkscrew stone staircase like a lighthouse; fourth floor, no lift,
+but SHE circled up like a swallow!  Flat--sitting-room, two
+bedrooms, and a kitchen--mighty snug and shipshape and pretty as a
+pink.  They OWN it too--fancy OWNING part of a house!  Seems to be
+a way they have here in St. Kentigern."  He paused and then added:
+"Stayed there to a kind of high tea!"
+
+"Indeed," said the consul.
+
+"Why not?  The old man wanted to return my 'hospitality' and square
+the account!  He wasn't going to lie under any obligation to a
+stranger, and, by Jove! he made it a special point of honor!  A
+Spanish grandee couldn't have been more punctilious.  And with an
+accent, Jerusalem! like a northeaster off the Banks!  But the feed
+was in good taste, and he only a mathematical instrument maker, on
+about twelve hundred dollars a year!"
+
+"You seem to know all about him," said the consul smilingly.
+
+"Not so much as he does about me," returned Gray, with a half
+perplexed face; "for he saw enough to admonish me about my
+extravagance, and even to intimate that that rascal Saunderson, my
+steward, was imposing on me.  SHE took me to task, too, for not
+laying the yacht up on Sunday that the men could go 'to kirk,' and
+for swearing at a bargeman who ran across our bows.  It's their
+perfect simplicity and sincerity in all this that gets me!  You'd
+have thought that the old man was my guardian, and the daughter my
+aunt."  After a pause he uttered a reminiscent laugh.  "She thought
+we ate and drank too much on the yacht, and wondered what we could
+find to do all day.  All this, you know, in the gentlest, caressing
+sort of voice, as if she was really concerned, like one's own
+sister.  Well, not exactly like mine"--he interrupted himself
+grimly--"but, hang it all, you know what I mean.  You know that our
+girls over there haven't got THAT trick of voice.  Too much self-
+assertion, I reckon; things made too easy for them by us men.
+Habit of race, I dare say."  He laughed a little.  "Why, I mislaid
+my glove when I was coming away, and it was as good as a play to
+hear her commiserating and sympathizing, and hunting for it as if
+it were a lost baby."
+
+"But you've seen Scotch girls before this," said the consul.
+"There were Lady Glairn's daughters, whom you took on a cruise."
+
+"Yes, but the swell Scotch all imitate the English, as everybody
+else does, for the matter of that, our girls included; and they're
+all alike.  Society makes 'em fit in together like tongued and
+grooved planks that will take any amount of holy-stoning and
+polish.  It's like dropping into a dead calm, with every rope and
+spar that you know already reflected back from the smooth water
+upon you.  It's mighty pretty, but it isn't getting on, you know."
+After a pause he added: "I asked them to take a little holiday
+cruise with me."
+
+"And they declined," interrupted the consul.
+
+Gray glanced at him quickly.
+
+"Well, yes; that's all right enough.  They don't know me, you see,
+but they do know you; and the fact is, I was thinking that as
+you're our consul here, don't you see, and sort of responsible for
+me, you might say that it was all right, you know.  Quite the
+customary thing with us over there.  And you might say, generally,
+who I am."
+
+"I see," said the consul deliberately.  "Tell them you're Bob Gray,
+with more money and time than you know what to do with; that you
+have a fine taste for yachting and shooting and racing, and amusing
+yourself generally; that you find that THEY amuse you, and you
+would like your luxury and your dollars to stand as an equivalent
+to their independence and originality; that, being a good
+republican yourself, and recognizing no distinction of class,
+you don't care what this may mean to them, who are brought up
+differently; that after their cruise with you you don't care what
+life, what friends, or what jealousies they return to; that you
+know no ties, no responsibilities beyond the present, and that you
+are not a marrying man."
+
+"Look here, I say, aren't you making a little too much of this?"
+said Gray stiffly.
+
+The consul laughed.  "I should be glad to know that I am."
+
+Gray rose.  "We'll be dropping down the river to-morrow," he said,
+with a return of his usual lightness, "and I reckon I'll be
+toddling down to the wharf.  Good-bye, if I don't see you again."
+
+He passed out.  As the consul glanced from the window he observed,
+however, that Mr. Gray was "toddling" in quite another direction
+than the wharf.  For an instant he half regretted that he had not
+suggested, in some discreet way, the conclusion he had arrived at
+after witnessing the girl's parting with the middle-aged passenger
+the day before.  But he reflected that this was something he had
+only accidentally overseen, and was the girl's own secret.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+When the summer had so waxed in its fullness that the smoke of
+factory chimneys drifted high, permitting glimpses of fairly blue
+sky; when the grass in St. Kentigern's proudest park took on a less
+sober green in the comfortable sun, and even in the thickest shade
+there was no chilliness, the good St. Kentigerners recognized that
+the season had arrived to go "down the river," and that it was
+time for them to betake themselves, with rugs, mackintoshes, and
+umbrellas, to the breezy lochs and misty hillsides for which the
+neighborhood of St. Kentigern is justly famous.  So when it came to
+pass that the blinds were down in the highest places, and the most
+exclusive pavements of St. Kentigern were echoless and desolate,
+the consul heroically tore himself from the weak delight of basking
+in the sunshine, and followed the others.
+
+He soon found himself settled at the furthest end of a long narrow
+loch, made longer and narrower by the steep hillside of rock and
+heather which flanked its chilly surface on either side, and whose
+inequalities were lost in the firs and larches that filled ravine
+and chasm.  The fragrant road which ran sinuously through their
+shadowy depths was invisible from the loch; no protuberance broke
+the seemingly sheer declivity; the even sky-line was indented in
+two places--one where it was cracked into a fanciful resemblance to
+a human profile, the other where it was curved like a bowl.  Need
+it be said that one was distinctly recognized as the silhouette of
+a prehistoric giant, and that the other was his drinking-cup; need
+it be added that neither lent the slightest human suggestion to the
+solitude?  A toy-like pier extending into the loch, midway from the
+barren shore, only heightened the desolation.  And when the little
+steamboat that occasionally entered the loch took away a solitary
+passenger from the pier-head, the simplest parting was invested
+with a dreary loneliness that might have brought tears to the most
+hardened eye.
+
+Still, when the shadow of either hillside was not reaching across
+the loch, the meridian sun, chancing upon this coy mirror, made the
+most of it.  Then it was that, seen from above, it flashed like a
+falchion lying between the hills; then its reflected glory,
+striking up, transfigured the two acclivities, tipped the cold
+heather with fire, gladdened the funereal pines, and warmed the
+ascetic rocks.  And it was in one of those rare, passionate
+intervals that the consul, riding along the wooded track and
+turning his eyes from their splendors, came upon a little house.
+
+It had once been a sturdy cottage, with a grim endurance and
+inflexibility which even some later and lighter additions had
+softened rather than changed.  On either side of the door, against
+the bleak whitewashed wall, two tall fuchsias relieved the rigid
+blankness with a show of color.  The windows were prettily draped
+with curtains caught up with gay ribbons.  In a stony pound-like
+enclosure there was some attempt at floral cultivation, but all
+quite recent.  So, too, were a wicker garden seat, a bright
+Japanese umbrella, and a tropical hammock suspended between two
+arctic-looking bushes, which the rude and rigid forefathers of the
+hamlet would have probably resented.
+
+He had just passed the house when a charming figure slipped across
+the road before him.  To his surprise it was the young girl he had
+met a few months before on the Skyscraper.  But the Tam o' Shanter
+was replaced by a little straw hat; and a light dress, summery in
+color and texture, but more in keeping with her rustic surroundings,
+seemed as grateful and rare as the sunshine.  Without knowing why,
+he had an impression that it was of her own making--a gentle
+plagiarism of the style of her more fortunate sisters, but with
+a demure restraint all her own.  As she recognized him a faint
+color came to her cheek, partly from surprise, partly from some
+association.  To his delighted greeting she responded by informing
+him that her father had taken the cottage he had just passed, where
+they were spending a three weeks' vacation from his business.  It
+was not so far from St. Kentigern but that he could run up for a day
+to look after the shop.  Did the consul not think it was wise?
+
+Quite ready to assent to any sagacity in those clear brown eyes,
+the consul thought it was.  But was it not, like wisdom, sometimes
+lonely?
+
+Ah! no.  There was the loch and the hills and the heather; there
+were her flowers; did he not think they were growing well? and at
+the head of the loch there was the old tomb of the McHulishes, and
+some of the coffins were still to be seen.
+
+Perhaps emboldened by the consul's smile, she added, with a more
+serious precision which was, however, lost in the sympathizing
+caress of her voice, "And would you not be getting off and coming
+in and resting a wee bit before you go further?  It would be so
+good of you, and father would think it so kind.  And he will be
+there now, if you're looking."
+
+The consul looked.  The old man was standing in the doorway of the
+cottage, as respectably uncompromising as ever, with the slight
+concession to his rural surroundings of wearing a Tam o' Shanter
+and easy slippers.  The consul dismounted and entered.  The
+interior was simply, but tastefully furnished.  It struck him that
+the Scotch prudence and economy, which practically excluded display
+and meretricious glitter, had reached the simplicity of the truest
+art and the most refined wealth.  He felt he could understand
+Gray's enthusiasm, and by an odd association of ideas he found
+himself thinking of the resigned face of the lonely passenger on
+the Skyscraper.
+
+"Have you heard any news of your friend who went to Rio?" he asked
+pleasantly, but without addressing himself particularly to either.
+
+There was a perceptible pause; doubtless of deference to her father
+on the part of the young girl, and of the usual native conscientious
+caution on the part of the father, but neither betrayed any
+embarrassment or emotion.  "No; he would not be writing yet," she at
+length said simply, "he would be waiting until he was settled to his
+business.  Jamie would be waiting until he could say how he was
+doing, father?" she appealed interrogatively to the old man.
+
+"Ay, James Gow would not fash himself to write compliments and
+gossip till he knew his position and work," corroborated the old
+man.  "He'll not be going two thousand miles to send us what we can
+read in the 'St. Kentigern Herald.'  But," he added, suddenly, with
+a recall of cautiousness, "perhaps YOU will be hearing of the ship?"
+
+"The consul will not be remembering what he hears of all the
+ships," interposed the young girl, with the same gentle affectation
+of superior worldly knowledge which had before amused him.  "We'll
+be wearying him, father," and the subject dropped.
+
+The consul, glancing around the room again, but always returning to
+the sweet and patient seriousness of the young girl's face and the
+grave decorum of her father, would have liked to ask another
+question, but it was presently anticipated; for when he had
+exhausted the current topics, in which both father and daughter
+displayed a quiet sagacity, and he had gathered a sufficient
+knowledge of their character to seem to justify Gray's enthusiasm,
+and was rising to take his leave, the young girl said timidly:--
+
+"Would ye not let Bessie take your horse to the grass field over
+yonder, and yourself stay with us to dinner?  It would be most
+kind, and you would meet a great friend of yours who will be here."
+
+"Mr. Gray?" suggested the consul audaciously.  Yet he was greatly
+surprised when the young girl said quietly, "Ay."
+
+"He'll be coming in the loch with his yacht," said the old man.
+"It's not so expensive lying here as at Bannock, I'm thinking; and
+the men cannot gang ashore for drink.  Eh, but it's an awful waste
+o' pounds, shillings, and pence, keeping these gowks in idleness
+with no feeshin' nor carrying of passengers."
+
+"Ay, but it's better Mr. Gray should pay them for being decent and
+well-behaved on board his ship, than that they should be out of
+work and rioting in taverns and lodging-houses.  And you yourself,
+father, remember the herrin' fishers that come ashore at Ardie, and
+the deck hands of the excursion boat, and the language they'll be
+using."
+
+"Have you had a cruise in the yacht?" asked the consul quickly.
+
+"Ay," said the father, "we have been up and down the loch, and
+around the far point, but not for boardin' or lodgin' the night,
+nor otherwise conteenuing or parteecipating.  I have explained to
+Mr. Gray that we must return to our own home and our own porridge
+at evening, and he has agreed, and even come with us.  He's a
+decent enough lad, and not above instructin', but extraordinar'
+extravagant."
+
+"Ye know, father," interposed the young girl, "he talks of fitting
+up the yacht for the fishing, and taking some of his most decent
+men on shares.  He says he was very fond of fishing off the
+Massachusetts coast, in America.  It will be, I'm thinking," she
+said, suddenly turning to the consul with an almost pathetic appeal
+in her voice, "a great occupation for the rich young men over
+there."
+
+The consul, desperately struggling with a fanciful picture of Mr.
+Robert Gray as a herring fisher, thought gravely that it "might
+be."  But he thought still more gravely, though silently, of this
+singular companion ship, and was somewhat anxious to confront his
+friend with his new acquaintances.  He had not long to wait.  The
+sun was just dipping behind the hill when the yacht glided into the
+lonely loch.  A boat was put off, and in a few moments Robert Gray
+was climbing the little path from the loch.
+
+Had the consul expected any embarrassment or lover-like consciousness
+on the face of Mr. Gray at their unexpected meeting, he would have
+been disappointed.  Nor was the young man's greeting of father and
+daughter, whom he addressed as Mr. and Miss Callender, marked by any
+tenderness or hesitation.  On the contrary, a certain seriousness
+and quiet reticence, unlike Gray, which might have been borrowed
+from his new friends, characterized his speech and demeanor.  Beyond
+this freemasonry of sad repression there was no significance of look
+or word passed between these two young people.  The girl's voice
+retained its even pathos.  Gray's grave politeness was equally
+divided between her and her father.  He corroborated what Callender
+had said of his previous visits without affectation or demonstration;
+he spoke of the possibilities of his fitting up the yacht for the
+fishing season with a practical detail and economy that left the
+consul's raillery ineffective.  Even when, after dinner, the consul
+purposely walked out in the garden with the father, Gray and Ailsa
+presently followed them without lingering or undue precipitation,
+and with no change of voice or manner.  The consul was perplexed.
+Had the girl already told Gray of her lover across the sea, and was
+this singular restraint their joint acceptance of their fate; or was
+he mistaken in supposing that their relations were anything more
+than the simple friendship of patron and protegee?  Gray was rich
+enough to indulge in such a fancy, and the father and daughter were
+too proud to ever allow it to influence their own independence.
+In any event the consul's right to divulge the secret he was
+accidentally possessed of seemed more questionable than ever.  Nor
+did there appear to be any opportunity for a confidential talk with
+Gray, since it was proposed that the whole party should return to
+the yacht for supper, after which the consul should be dropped at
+the pier-head, distant only a few minutes from his hotel, and his
+horse sent to him the next day.
+
+A faint moon was shimmering along the surface of Loch Dour in icy
+little ripples when they pulled out from the shadows of the
+hillside.  By the accident of position, Gray, who was steering, sat
+beside Ailsa in the stern, while the consul and Mr. Callender were
+further forward, although within hearing.  The faces of the young
+people were turned towards each other, yet in the cold moonlight
+the consul fancied they looked as impassive and unemotional as
+statues.  The few distant, far-spaced lights that trembled on the
+fading shore, the lonely glitter of the water, the blackness of the
+pine-clad ravines seemed to be a part of this repression, until the
+vast melancholy of the lake appeared to meet and overflow them like
+an advancing tide.  Added to this, there came from time to time the
+faint sound and smell of the distant, desolate sea.
+
+The consul, struggling manfully to keep up a spasmodic discussion
+on Scotch diminutives in names, found himself mechanically saying:
+
+"And James you call Jamie?"
+
+"Ay; but ye would say, to be pure Scotch, 'Hamish,'" said Mr.
+Callender precisely.  The girl, however, had not spoken; but Gray
+turned to her with something of his old gayety.
+
+"And I suppose you would call me 'Robbie'?"
+
+"Ah, no!"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Robin."
+
+Her voice was low yet distinct, but she had thrown into the two
+syllables such infinite tenderness, that the consul was for an
+instant struck with an embarrassment akin to that he had felt in
+the cabin of the Skyscraper, and half expected the father to utter
+a shocked protest.  And to save what he thought would be an
+appalling silence, he said with a quiet laugh:--
+
+"That's the fellow who 'made the assembly shine' in the song, isn't
+it?"
+
+"That was Robin Adair," said Gray quietly; "unfortunately I would
+only be 'Robin Gray,' and that's quite another song."
+
+"AULD Robin Gray, sir, deestinctly 'auld' in the song," interrupted
+Mr. Callender with stern precision; "and I'm thinking he was not so
+very unfortunate either."
+
+The discussion of Scotch diminutives halting here, the boat sped on
+silently to the yacht.  But although Robert Gray, as host, recovered
+some of his usual lightheartedness, the consul failed to discover
+anything in his manner to indicate the lover, nor did Miss Ailsa
+after her single lapse of tender accent exhibit the least
+consciousness.  It was true that their occasional frank allusions to
+previous conversations seemed to show that their opportunities had
+not been restricted, but nothing more.  He began again to think he
+was mistaken.
+
+As he wished to return early, and yet not hasten the Callenders, he
+prevailed upon Gray to send him to the pier-head first, and not
+disturb the party.  As he stepped into the boat, something in the
+appearance of the coxswain awoke an old association in his mind.
+The man at first seemed to avoid his scrutiny, but when they were
+well away from the yacht, he said hesitatingly:--
+
+"I see you remember me, sir.  But if it's all the same to you, I've
+got a good berth here and would like to keep it."
+
+The consul had a flash of memory.  It was the boatswain of the
+Skyscraper, one of the least objectionable of the crew.  "But what
+are you doing here? you shipped for the voyage," he said sharply.
+
+"Yes, but I got away at Key West, when I knew what was coming.  I
+wasn't on her when she was abandoned."
+
+Abandoned!" repeated the consul.  "What the d---l!  Do you mean to
+say she was wrecked?"
+
+"Well, yes--you know what I mean, sir.  It was an understood thing.
+She was over-insured and scuttled in the Bahamas.  It was a put-up
+job, and I reckoned I was well out of it."
+
+"But there was a passenger!  What of him?" demanded the consul
+anxiously.
+
+"Dnnno!  But I reckon he got away.  There wasn't any of the crew
+lost that I know of.  Let's see, he was an engineer, wasn't he?  I
+reckon he had to take a hand at the pumps, and his chances with the
+rest."
+
+"Does Mr. Gray know of this?" asked the consul after a pause.
+
+The man stared.
+
+"Not from me, sir.  You see it was nothin' to him, and I didn't
+care talking much about the Skyscraper.  It was hushed up in the
+papers.  You won't go back on me, sir?"
+
+"You don't know what became of the passenger?"
+
+"No!  But he was a Scotchman, and they're bound to fall on their
+feet somehow!"
+
+
+III.
+
+
+The December fog that overhung St. Kentigern had thinned sufficiently
+to permit the passage of a few large snowflakes, soiled in their
+descent, until in color and consistency they spotted the steps of
+the Consulate and the umbrellas of the passers-by like sprinklings
+of gray mortar.  Nevertheless the consul thought the streets
+preferable to the persistent gloom of his office, and sallied out.
+Youthful mercantile St. Kentigern strode sturdily past him in the
+lightest covert coats; collegiate St. Kentigern fluttered by in the
+scantiest of red gowns, shaming the furs that defended his more
+exotic blood; and the bare red feet of a few factory girls, albeit
+their heads and shoulders were draped and hooded in thick shawls,
+filled him with a keen sense of his effeminacy.  Everything of
+earth, air, and sky, and even the faces of those he looked upon,
+seemed to be set in the hard, patient endurance of the race.
+Everywhere on that dismal day, he fancied he could see this energy
+without restlessness, this earnestness without geniality, all grimly
+set against the hard environment of circumstance and weather.
+
+The consul turned into one of the main arteries of St. Kentigern, a
+wide street that, however, began and ended inconsequently, and with
+half a dozen social phases in as many blocks.  Here the snow
+ceased, the fog thickened suddenly with the waning day, and the
+consul found himself isolated and cut off on a block which he did
+not remember, with the clatter of an invisible tramway in his ears.
+It was a block of small houses with smaller shop-fronts.  The one
+immediately before him seemed to be an optician's, but the dimly
+lighted windows also displayed the pathetic reinforcement of a few
+watches, cheap jewelry on cards, and several cairngorm brooches and
+pins set in silver.  It occurred to him that he wanted a new watch
+crystal, and that he would procure it here and inquire his way.
+Opening the door he perceived that there was no one in the shop,
+but from behind the counter another open door disclosed a neat
+sitting-room, so close to the street that it gave the casual
+customer the sensation of having intruded upon domestic privacy.
+The consul's entrance tinkled a small bell which brought a figure
+to the door.  It was Ailsa Callender.
+
+The consul was startled.  He had not seen her since he had brought
+to their cottage the news of the shipwreck with a precaution and
+delicacy that their calm self-control and patient resignation,
+however, seemed to make almost an impertinence.  But this was no
+longer the handsome shop in the chief thoroughfare with its two
+shopmen, which he previously knew as "Callender's."  And Ailsa
+here!  What misfortune had befallen them?
+
+Whatever it was, there was no shadow of it in her clear eyes and
+frank yet timid recognition of him.  Falling in with her stoical
+and reticent acceptance of it, he nevertheless gathered that the
+Callenders had lost money in some invention which James Gow had
+taken with him to Rio, but which was sunk in the ship.  With this
+revelation of a business interest in what he had believed was only
+a sentimental relation, the consul ventured to continue his
+inquiries.  Mr. Gow had escaped with his life and had reached
+Honduras, where he expected to try his fortunes anew.  It might be
+a year or two longer before there were any results.  Did the consul
+know anything of Honduras?  There was coffee there--so she and her
+father understood.  All this with little hopefulness, no irritation,
+but a divine patience in her eyes.  The consul, who found that his
+watch required extensive repairing, and had suddenly developed an
+inordinate passion for cairngorms, watched her as she opened the
+show-case with no affectation of unfamiliarity with her occupation,
+but with all her old serious concern.  Surely she would have made as
+thorough a shop-girl as she would--  His half-formulated thought
+took the shape of a question.
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Gray since his return from the Mediterranean?"
+
+Ah! one of the brooches had slipped from her fingers to the bottom
+of the case.  There was an interval or two of pathetic murmuring,
+with her fair head under the glass, before she could find it; then
+she lifted her eyes to the consul.  They were still slightly
+suffused with her sympathetic concern.  The stone, which was set in
+a thistle--the national emblem--did he not know it?--had dropped
+out.  But she could put it in.  It was pretty and not expensive.
+It was marked twelve shillings on the card, but he could have it
+for ten shillings.  No, she had not seen Mr. Gray since they had
+lost their fortune.  (It struck the consul as none the less
+pathetic that she seemed really to believe in their former
+opulence.)  They could not be seeing him there in a small shop,
+and they could not see him elsewhere.  It was far better as it was.
+Yet she paused a moment when she had wrapped up the brooch.  "You'd
+be seeing him yourself some time?" she added gently.
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Then you'll not mind saying how my father and myself are sometimes
+thinking of his goodness and kindness," she went on, in a voice
+whose tenderness seemed to increase with the formal precision of
+her speech.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"And you'll say we're not forgetting him."
+
+"I promise."
+
+As she handed him the parcel her lips softly parted in what might
+have been equally a smile or a sigh.
+
+He was able to keep his promise sooner than he had imagined.  It
+was only a few weeks later that, arriving in London, he found
+Gray's hatbox and bag in the vestibule of his club, and that
+gentleman himself in the smoking-room.  He looked tanned and older.
+
+"I only came from Southampton an hour ago, where I left the yacht.
+And," shaking the consul's hand cordially, "how's everything and
+everybody up at old St. Kentigern?"
+
+The consul thought fit to include his news of the Callenders in
+reference to that query, and with his eyes fixed on Gray dwelt at
+some length on their change of fortune.  Gray took his cigar from
+his mouth, but did not lift his eyes from the fire.  Presently he
+said, "I suppose that's why Callender declined to take the shares I
+offered him in the fishing scheme.  You know I meant it, and would
+have done it."
+
+"Perhaps he had other reasons."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Gray, facing the consul suddenly.
+
+"Look here, Gray," said the consul, "did Miss Callender or her
+father ever tell you she was engaged?"
+
+"Yes; but what's that to do with it?"
+
+"A good deal.  Engagements, you know, are sometimes forced,
+unsuitable, or unequal, and are broken by circumstances.  Callender
+is proud."
+
+Gray turned upon the consul the same look of gravity that he had
+worn on the yacht--the same look that the consul even fancied he
+had seen in Ailsa's eyes.  "That's exactly where you're mistaken in
+her," he said slowly.  "A girl like that gives her word and keeps
+it.  She waits, hopes, accepts what may come--breaks her heart, if
+you will, but not her word.  Come, let's talk of something else.
+How did he--that man Gow--lose Callender's money?"
+
+The consul did not see the Callenders again on his return, and
+perhaps did not think it necessary to report the meeting.  But one
+morning he was delighted to find an official document from New York
+upon his desk, asking him to communicate with David Callender of
+St. Kentigern, and, on proof of his identity, giving him authority
+to draw the sum of five thousand dollars damages awarded for the
+loss of certain property on the Skyscraper, at the request of James
+Gow.  Yet it was with mixed sensations that the consul sought the
+little shop of the optician with this convincing proof of Gow's
+faithfulness and the indissolubility of Ailsa's engagement.  That
+there was some sad understanding between the girl and Gray he did
+not doubt, and perhaps it was not strange that he felt a slight
+partisanship for his friend, whose nature had so strangely changed.
+Miss Ailsa was not there.  Her father explained that her health had
+required a change, and she was visiting some friends on the river.
+
+"I'm thinkin' that the atmosphere is not so pure here.  It is
+deficient in ozone.  I noticed it myself in the early morning.  No!
+it was not the confinement of the shop, for she never cared to go
+out."
+
+He received the announcement of his good fortune with unshaken calm
+and great practical consideration of detail.  He would guarantee
+his identity to the consul.  As for James Gow, it was no more than
+fair; and what he had expected of him.  As to its being an
+equivalent of his loss, he could not tell until the facts were
+before him.
+
+"Miss Ailsa," suggested the consul venturously, "will be pleased to
+hear again from her old friend, and know that he is succeeding."
+
+"I'm not so sure that ye could call it 'succeeding,'" returned the
+old man, carefully wiping the glasses of a pair of spectacles that
+he held critically to the light, "when ye consider that, saying
+nothing of the waste of valuable time, it only puts James Gow back
+where he was when he went away."
+
+"But any man who has had the pleasure of knowing Mr. and Miss
+Callender would be glad to be on that footing," said the consul,
+with polite significance.
+
+"I'm not agreeing with you there," said Mr. Callender quietly; "and
+I'm observing in ye of late a tendency to combine business wi'
+compleement.  But it was kind of ye to call; and I'll be sending ye
+the authorization."
+
+Which he did.  But the consul, passing through the locality a few
+weeks later, was somewhat concerned to find the shop closed, with
+others on the same block, behind a hoarding that indicated
+rebuilding and improvement.  Further inquiry elicited the fact that
+the small leases had been bought up by some capitalist, and that
+Mr. Callender, with the others, had benefited thereby.  But there
+was no trace nor clew to his present locality.  He and his daughter
+seemed to have again vanished with this second change in their
+fortunes.
+
+It was a late March morning when the streets were dumb with snow,
+and the air was filled with flying granulations that tinkled
+against the windows of the Consulate like fairy sleigh-bells, when
+there was the stamping of snow-clogged feet in the outer hall, and
+the door was opened to Mr. and Miss Callender.  For an instant the
+consul was startled.  The old man appeared as usual--erect, and as
+frigidly respectable as one of the icicles that fringed the window,
+but Miss Ailsa was, to his astonishment, brilliant with a new-found
+color, and sparkling with health and only half-repressed animation.
+The snow-flakes, scarcely melting on the brown head of this true
+daughter of the North, still crowned her hood; and, as she threw
+back her brown cloak and disclosed a plump little scarlet jacket
+and brown skirt, the consul could not resist her suggested likeness
+to some bright-eyed robin redbreast, to whom the inclement weather
+had given a charming audacity.  And shy and demure as she still
+was, it was evident that some change had been wrought in her other
+than that evoked by the stimulus of her native sky and air.
+
+To his eager questioning, the old man replied briefly that he had
+bought the old cottage at Loch Dour, where they were living, and
+where he had erected a small manufactory and laboratory for the
+making of his inventions, which had become profitable.  The consul
+reiterated his delight at meeting them again.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that, sir, when you know the business on which
+I come," said Mr. Callender, dropping rigidly into a chair, and
+clasping his hands over the crutch of a shepherd-like staff.  "Ye
+mind, perhaps, that ye conveyed to me, osteensibly at the request
+of James Gow, a certain sum of money, for which I gave ye a good
+and sufficient guarantee.  I thought at the time that it was a most
+feckless and unbusiness-like proceeding on the part of James, as
+it was without corroboration or advice by letter; but I took the
+money."
+
+"Do you mean to say that he made no allusion to it in his other
+letters?" interrupted the consul, glancing at Ailsa.
+
+"There were no other letters at the time," said Callender dryly.
+"But about a month afterwards we DID receive a letter from him
+enclosing a draft and a full return of the profits of the
+invention, which HE HAD SOLD IN HONDURAS.  Ye'll observe the
+deescrepancy!  I then wrote to the bank on which I had drawn as you
+authorized me, and I found that they knew nothing of any damages
+awarded, but that the sum I had drawn had been placed to my credit
+by Mr. Robert Gray."
+
+In a flash the consul recalled the one or two questions that Gray
+had asked him, and saw it all.  For an instant he felt the whole
+bitterness of Gray's misplaced generosity--its exposure and defeat.
+He glanced again hopelessly at Ailsa.  In the eye of that fresh,
+glowing, yet demure, young goddess, unhallowed as the thought might
+be, there was certainly a distinctly tremulous wink.
+
+The consul took heart.  "I believe I need not say, Mr. Callender,"
+he began with some stiffness, "that this is as great a surprise to
+me as to you.  I had no reason to believe the transaction other
+than bona fide, and acted accordingly.  If my friend, deeply
+sympathizing with your previous misfortune, has hit upon a
+delicate, but unbusiness-like way of assisting you temporarily--
+I say TEMPORARILY, because it must have been as patent to him as to
+you, that you would eventually find out his generous deceit--you
+surely can forgive him for the sake of his kind intention.  Nay,
+more; may I point out to you that you have no right to assume that
+this benefaction was intended exclusively for you; if Mr. Gray, in
+his broader sympathy with you and your daughter, has in this way
+chosen to assist and strengthen the position of a gentleman so
+closely connected with you, but still struggling with hard
+fortune"--
+
+"I'd have ye know, sir," interrupted the old man, rising to his
+feet, "that ma frien' Mr. James Gow is as independent of yours as
+he is of me and mine.  He has married, sir, a Mrs. Hernandez, the
+rich widow of a coffee-planter, and now is the owner of the whole
+estate, minus the encumbrance of three children.  And now, sir,
+you'll take this,"--he drew from his pocket an envelope.  "It's a
+draft for five thousand dollars, with the ruling rate of interest
+computed from the day I received it till this day, and ye'll give
+it to your frien' when ye see him.  And ye'll just say to him from
+me"--
+
+But Miss Ailsa, with a spirit and independence that challenged her
+father's, here suddenly fluttered between them with sparkling eyes
+and outstretched hands.
+
+"And ye'll say to him from ME that a more honorable, noble, and
+generous man, and a kinder, truer, and better friend than he,
+cannot be found anywhere!  And that the foolishest and most
+extravagant thing he ever did is better than the wisest and most
+prudent thing that anybody else ever did, could, or would do!  And
+if he was a bit overproud--it was only because those about him were
+overproud and foolish.  And you'll tell him that we're wearying for
+him!  And when you give him that daft letter from father you'll
+give him this bit line from me," she went on rapidly as she laid a
+tiny note in his hand.  "And," with wicked dancing eyes that seemed
+to snap the last bond of repression, "ye'll give him THAT too, and
+say I sent it!"
+
+There was a stir in the official apartment!  The portraits of
+Lincoln and Washington rattled uneasily in their frames; but it was
+no doubt only a discreet blast of the north wind that drowned the
+echo of a kiss.
+
+"Ailsa!" gasped the shocked Mr. Callender.
+
+"Ah! but, father, if it had not been for HIM we would not have
+known Robin."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+It was the last that the consul saw of Ailsa Callender; for the
+next summer when he called at Loch Dour she was Mrs. Gray.
+
+
+
+THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+On the fifteenth of August, 1854, what seemed to be the entire
+population of Wynyard's Bar was collected upon a little bluff which
+overlooked the rude wagon road that was the only approach to the
+settlement.  In general appearance the men differed but little from
+ordinary miners, although the foreign element, shown in certain
+Spanish peculiarities of dress and color, predominated, and some of
+the men were further distinguished by the delicacy of education and
+sedentary pursuits.  Yet Wynyard's Bar was a city of refuge,
+comprised among its inhabitants a number who were "wanted" by the
+State authorities, and its actual attitude at that moment was one
+of open rebellion against the legal power, and of particular
+resistance to the apprehension by warrant of one of its prominent
+members.  This gentleman, Major Overstone, then astride of a gray
+mustang, and directing the movements of the crowd, had, a few days
+before, killed the sheriff of Siskyou county, who had attempted to
+arrest him for the double offense of misappropriating certain
+corporate funds of the State and the shooting of the editor who had
+imprudently exposed him.  The lesser crime of homicide might have
+been overlooked by the authorities, but its repetition upon the
+body of their own over-zealous and misguided official could not
+pass unchallenged if they expected to arrest Overstone for the more
+serious offense against property.  So it was known that a new
+sheriff had been appointed and was coming to Wynyard's Bar with an
+armed posse.  But it was also understood that this invasion would
+be resisted by the Bar to its last man.
+
+All eyes were turned upon a fringe of laurel and butternut that
+encroached upon the road half a mile away, where it seemed that
+such of the inhabitants who were missing from the bluff were hidden
+to give warning or retard the approach of the posse.  A gray haze,
+slowly rising between the fringe and the distant hillside, was
+recognized as the dust of a cavalcade passing along the invisible
+highway.  In the hush of expectancy that followed, the irregular
+clatter of hoofs, the sharp crack of a rifle, and a sudden halt
+were faintly audible.  The men, scattered in groups on the bluff,
+exchanged a smile of grim satisfaction.
+
+Not so their leader!  A quick start and an oath attracted attention
+to him.  To their surprise he was looking in another direction, but
+as they looked too they saw and understood the cause.  A file of
+horsemen, hitherto undetected, were slowly passing along the little
+ridge on their right.  Their compact accoutrements and the yellow
+braid on their blue jackets, distinctly seen at that distance,
+showed them to be a detachment of United States cavalry.
+
+Before the assemblage could realize this new invasion, a nearer
+clatter of hoofs was heard along the high road, and one of the
+ambuscading party dashed up from the fringe of woods below.  His
+face was flushed, but triumphant.
+
+"A reg'lar skunk--by the living hokey!" he panted, pointing to the
+faint haze that was again slowly rising above the invisible road.
+"They backed down as soon as they saw our hand, and got a hole
+through their new sheriff's hat.  But what are you lookin' at?
+What's up?"
+
+The leader impatiently pointed with a darkening face to the distant
+file.
+
+"Reg'lars, by gum!" ejaculated the other.  "But Uncle Sam ain't in
+this game.  Wot right have THEY"--
+
+"Dry up!" said the leader.
+
+The detachment was now moving at right angles with the camp, but
+suddenly halted, almost doubling upon itself in some evident
+commotion.  A dismounted figure was seen momentarily flying down
+the hillside dodging from bush to bush until lost in the underbrush.
+A dozen shots were fired over its head, and then the whole
+detachment wheeled and came clattering down the trail in the
+direction of the camp.  A single riderless horse, evidently that
+of the fugitive, followed.
+
+"Spread yourselves along the ridge, every man of you, and cover
+them as they enter the gulch!" shouted the leader.  "But not a shot
+until I give the word.  Scatter!"
+
+The assemblage dispersed like a startled village of prairie dogs,
+squatting behind every available bush and rock along the line of
+bluff.  The leader alone trotted quietly to the head of the gulch.
+
+The nine cavalrymen came smartly up in twos, a young officer
+leading.  The single figure of Major Overstone opposed them with a
+command to halt.  Looking up, the young officer drew rein, said a
+word to his file leader, and the four files closed in a compact
+square motionless on the road.  The young officer's unsworded hand
+hung quietly at his thigh, the men's unslung carbines rested easily
+on their saddles.  Yet at that moment every man of them knew that
+they were covered by a hundred rifles and shot guns leveled from
+every bush, and that they were caught helplessly in a trap.
+
+"Since when," said Major Overstone with an affectation of tone and
+manner different from that in which he had addressed his previous
+companions, "have the Ninth United States Cavalry helped to serve a
+State court's pettifogging process?"
+
+"We are hunting a deserter--a half-breed agent--who has just
+escaped us," returned the officer.  His voice was boyish--so, too,
+was his figure in its slim, cadet-like smartness of belted tunic--
+but very quiet and level, although his face was still flushed with
+the shock and shame of his surprise.
+
+The relaxation of relief went through the wrought and waiting camp.
+The soldiers were not seeking THEM.  Ready as these desperate men
+had been to do their leader's bidding, they were well aware that a
+momentary victory over the troopers would not pass unpunished, and
+meant the ultimate dispersion of the camp.  And quiet as these
+innocent invaders seemed to be they would no doubt sell their lives
+dearly.  The embattled desperadoes glanced anxiously at their
+leader; the soldiers, on the contrary, looked straight before them.
+
+"Process or no process," said Major Overstone with a sneer, "you've
+come to the last place to recover your deserter.  We don't give up
+men in Wynyard's Bar.  And they didn't teach you at the Academy,
+sir, to stop to take prisoners when you were outflanked and
+outnumbered."
+
+"Bedad!  They didn't teach YOU, Captain Overstone, to engage a
+battery at Cerro Gordo with a half company, but you did it; more
+shame to you now, sorr, commandin' the thayves and ruffians you
+do."
+
+"Silence!" said the young officer.
+
+The sleeve of the sergeant who had spoken--with the chevrons of
+long service upon it--went up to a salute, and dropped again over
+his carbine as he stared stolidly before him.  But his shot had
+told.  A flush of mingled pride and shame passed over Overstone's
+face.
+
+"Oh! it's YOU, Murphy," he said with an affected laugh, "and you
+haven't improved with your stripes."
+
+The young officer turned his head slightly.
+
+"Attention!"
+
+"One moment more," said Overstone coming forward.  "I have told you
+that we don't give up any man who seeks our protection.  But," he
+added with a half-careless, half-contemptuous wave of his hand, and
+a significant glance at his followers, "we don't prevent you from
+seeking him.  The road is clear; the camp is before you."
+
+The young officer continued without looking at him.  "Forward--in
+two files--open order.  Ma-arch!"
+
+The little troop moved forward, passed Major Overstone at the head
+of the gully, and spread out on the hillside.  The assembled camp,
+still armed, lounging out of ambush here and there, ironically made
+way for them to pass.  A few moments of this farcical quest, and a
+glance at the impenetrably wooded heights around, apparently
+satisfied the young officer, and he turned his files again into the
+gully.  Major Overstone was still lingering there.
+
+"I hope you are satisfied," he said grimly.  He then paused, and in
+a changed and more hesitating voice added: "I am an older soldier
+than you, sir, but I am always glad to make the acquaintance of
+West Point."  He paused and held out his hand.
+
+West Point, still red and rigid, glanced at him with bright clear
+eyes under light lashes and the peak of a smartly cocked cap,
+looked coolly at the proffered hand, raised his own to a stiff
+salute, said, "Good afternoon, sir," and rode away.
+
+Major Overstone wheeled angrily, but in doing so came sharply upon
+his coadjutor--the leader of the ambushed party.
+
+"Well, Dawson," he said impatiently.  "Who was it?"
+
+"Only one of them d----d half-breed Injin agents.  He's just over
+there in the brush with Simpson, lying low till the soldiers clear
+out."
+
+"Did you talk to him?"
+
+"Not much!" returned Dawson scornfully.  "He ain't my style."
+
+"Fetch him up to my cabin; he may be of some use to us."
+
+Dawson looked skeptical.  "I reckon he ain't no more gain here than
+he was over there," he said, and turned away.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The cabin of Major Overstone differed outwardly but little from
+those of his companions.  It was the usual structure of logs, laid
+lengthwise, and rudely plastered at each point of contact with
+adobe, the material from which the chimney, which entirely occupied
+one gable, was built.  It was pierced with two windows and a door,
+roofed with smaller logs, and thatched with long half cylinders of
+spruce bark.  But the interior gave certain indications of the
+distinction as well as the peculiar experiences of its occupant.
+In place of the usual bunk or berth built against the wall stood a
+small folding camp bedstead, and upon a rude deal table that held a
+tin wash-basin and pail lay two ivory-handled brushes, combs, and
+other elegant toilet articles, evidently the contents of the
+major's dressing-bag.  A handsome leather trunk occupied one
+corner, with a richly caparisoned silver-mounted Mexican saddle,
+a mahogany case of dueling pistols, a leather hat-box, locked and
+strapped, and a gorgeous gold and quartz handled ebony "presentation"
+walking stick.  There was a certain dramatic suggestion in this
+revelation of the sudden and hurried transition from a life of
+ostentatious luxury to one of hidden toil and privation, and a
+further significance in the slow and gradual distribution and
+degradation of these elegant souvenirs.  A pair of silver boot-hooks
+had been used for raking the hearth and lifting the coffee kettle;
+the ivory of the brushes was stained with coffee; the cut-glass
+bottles had lost their stoppers, and had been utilized for vinegar
+and salt; a silver-framed hand mirror hung against the blackened
+wall.  For the major's occupancy was the sequel of a hurried flight
+from his luxurious hotel at Sacramento--a transfer that he believed
+was only temporary until the affair blew over, and he could return
+in safety to brow-beat his accusers, as was his wont.  But this had
+not been so easy as he had imagined; his prosecutors were bitter,
+and his enforced seclusion had been prolonged week by week until the
+fracas which ended in the shooting of the sheriff had apparently
+closed the door upon his return to civilization forever.  Only here
+was his life and person secure.  For Wynyard's Bar had quickly
+succumbed to the domination of his reckless courage, and the
+eminence of his double crime had made him respected among
+spendthrifts, gamblers, and gentlemen whose performances had never
+risen above a stage-coach robbery or a single assassination.  Even
+criticism of his faded luxuries had been delicately withheld.
+
+He was leaning over his open trunk--which the camp popularly
+supposed to contain State bonds and securities of fabulous amount--
+and had taken some letters from it, when a figure darkened the
+doorway.  He looked up, laying his papers carelessly aside.  WITHIN
+Wynyard's Bar property was sacred.
+
+It was the late fugitive.  Although some hours had already elapsed
+since his arrival in camp, and he had presumably refreshed himself
+inwardly, his outward appearance was still disheveled and dusty.
+Brier and milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers.  What
+could be seen of the skin of his face and hands under its stains
+and begriming was of a dull yellow.  His light eyes had all the
+brightness without the restlessness of the mongrel race.  They
+leisurely took in the whole cabin, the still open trunk before the
+major, and then rested deliberately on the major himself.
+
+"Well," said Major Overstone abruptly, "what brought you here?"
+
+"Same as brought you, I reckon," responded the man almost as
+abruptly.
+
+The major knew something of the half-breed temper, and neither the
+retort nor its tone affected him.
+
+"You didn't come here just because you deserted," said the major
+coolly.  "You've been up to something else."
+
+"I have," said the man with equal coolness.
+
+"I thought so.  Now, you understand you can't try anything of that
+kind HERE.  If you do, up you go on the first tree.  That's Rule 1."
+
+"I see you ain't pertickler about waiting for the sheriff here, you
+fellers."
+
+The major glanced at him quickly.  He seemed to be quite unconscious
+of any irony in his remark, and continued grimly, "And what's
+Rule 2?"
+
+"I reckon you needn't trouble yourself beyond No. 1," returned the
+major with dry significance.  Nevertheless, he opened a rude
+cupboard in the corner and brought out a rich silver-mounted cut-
+glass drinking-flask, which he handed to the stranger.
+
+"I say," said the half-breed, admiringly, "yours?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Certainly NOW, but BEFORE, eh?"
+
+Rule No. 2 may have indicated that references to the past held no
+dishonor.  The major, although accustomed to these pleasantries,
+laughed a little harshly.
+
+"Mine always," he said.  "But you don't drink?"
+
+The half-breed's face darkened under its grime.
+
+"Wot you're givin' us?  I've been filled chock up by Simpson over
+thar.  I reckon I know when I've got a load on."
+
+"Were you ever in Sacramento?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When?"
+
+"Last week."
+
+"Did you hear anything about me?"
+
+The half-breed glanced through his tangled hair at the major in
+some wonder, not only at the question, but at the almost childish
+eagerness with which it was asked.
+
+"I didn't hear much of anything else," he answered grimly.
+
+"And--what did they SAY?"
+
+"Said you'd got to be TOOK anyhow!  They allowed the new sheriff
+would do it too."
+
+The major laughed.  "Well, you heard HOW the new sheriff did it--
+skunked away with his whole posse before one-eighth of my men!  You
+saw how the rest of this camp held up your nine troopers, and that
+sap-headed cub of a lieutenant--didn't you?  You wouldn't have been
+standing here if you hadn't.  No; there isn't the civil process nor
+the civil power in all California that can take me out of this
+camp."
+
+But neither his previous curiosity nor present bravado seemed to
+impress the ragged stranger with much favor.  He glanced sulkily
+around the cabin and began to shuffle towards the door.
+
+"Stop!  Where are you going to?  Sit down.  I want to talk to you."
+
+The fugitive hesitated for a moment, and then dropped ungraciously
+on the edge of a camp-stool near the door.  The major looked at
+him.
+
+"I may have to remind you that I run this camp, and the boys
+hereabouts do pretty much as I say.  What's your name?"
+
+"Tom."
+
+"Tom?  Well, look here, Tom!  D--n it all!  Can't you see that when
+a man is stuck here alone, as I am, he wants to know what's going
+on outside, and hear a little fresh talk?"
+
+The singular weakness of this blended command and appeal apparently
+struck the fugitive curiously.  He fixed his lowering eyes on the
+major as if in gloomy doubt if he were really the reckless
+desperado he had been represented.  That this man--twice an
+assassin and the ruler of outlaws as reckless as himself--should
+approach him in this half-confidential way evidently puzzled him.
+
+"Wot you wanter know?" he asked gruffly.
+
+"Well, what's my party saying or doing about me?" said the major
+impatiently.  "What's the 'Express' saying about me?"
+
+"I reckon they're throwing off on you all round; they allow you
+never represented the party, but worked for yourself," said the man
+shortly.
+
+Here the major lashed out.  A set of traitors and hirelings!  He
+had bought and paid for them all!  He had sunk two thousand dollars
+in the "Express" and saved the editor from being horsewhipped and
+jailed for libel!  Half the cursed bonds that they were making such
+a blanked fuss about were handled by these hypocrites--blank them!
+They were a low-lived crew of thieves and deserters!  It is
+presumed that the major had forgotten himself in this infelicitous
+selection of epithets, but the stranger's face only relaxed into a
+grim smile.  More than that, the major had apparently forgotten his
+desire to hear his guest talk, for he himself at once launched into
+an elaborate exposition of his own affairs and a specious and
+equally elaborate defense and justification of himself and
+denunciation of his accusers.  For nearly half an hour he reviewed
+step by step and detail by detail the charges against him--with
+plausible explanation and sophistical argument, but always with a
+singular prolixity and reiteration that spoke of incessant self-
+consciousness and self-abstraction.  Of that dashing self-
+sufficiency which had dazzled his friends and awed his enemies
+there was no trace!  At last, even the set smile of the degraded
+recipient of these confidences darkened with a dull, bewildered
+disgust.  Then, to his relief, a step was heard without.  The
+major's manner instantly changed.
+
+"Well?" he demanded impatiently, as Dawson entered.
+
+"I came to know what you want done with HIM," said Dawson,
+indicating the fugitive with a contemptuous finger.
+
+"Take him to your cabin!"
+
+"My cabin! HIM?" ejaculated Dawson, turning sharply on his chief.
+
+The major's light eyes contracted and his thin lips became a
+straight line.  "I don't think you understand me, Dawson, and
+another time you'd better wait until I'm done.  I want you to
+take him to your cabin--and then CLEAR OUT OF IT YOURSELF.  You
+understand?  I want him NEAR ME AND ALONE!"
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Dawson was not astonished the next morning to see Major Overstone
+and the half-breed walking together down the gully road, for he had
+already come to the conclusion that the major was planning some
+extraordinary reprisals against the invaders, that would ensure the
+perpetual security of the camp.  That he should use so insignificant
+and unimportant a tool now appeared to him to be quite natural,
+particularly as the service was probably one in which the man would
+be sacrificed.  "The major," he suggested to his companions, "ain't
+going to risk a white man's skin, when he can get an Injun's hide
+handy."
+
+The reluctant hesitating step of the half-breed as they walked
+along seemed to give some color to this hypothesis.  He listened
+sullenly to the major as he pointed out the strategic position of
+the Bar.  "That wagon road is the only approach to Wynyard's, and a
+dozen men along the rocks could hold it against a hundred.  The
+trail that you came by, over the ridge, drops straight into this
+gully, and you saw what that would mean to any blanked fools who
+might try it.  Of course we could be shelled from that ridge if the
+sheriff had a howitzer, or the men who knew how to work one, but
+even then we could occupy the ridge before them."  He paused a
+moment and then added: "I used to be in the army, Tom; I saw
+service in Mexico before that cub you got away from had his first
+trousers.  I was brought up as a gentleman--blank it all--and HERE
+I am!"
+
+The man slouched on by his side, casting his surly, furtive glances
+from left to right, as if seeking to escape from these confidences.
+Nevertheless, the major kept on through the gully, until reaching
+the wagon road they crossed it, and began to ascend the opposite
+slope, half hidden by the underbrush and larches.  Here the major
+paused again and faced about.  The cabins of the settlement were
+already behind the bluff; the little stream which indicated the
+"bar"--on which some perfunctory mining was still continued--now
+and then rang out quite clearly at their feet, although the bar
+itself had disappeared.  The sounds of occupation and labor had at
+last died away in the distance.  They were quite alone.  The major
+sat down on a boulder, and pointed to another.  The man, however,
+remained sullenly standing where he was, as if to accent as
+strongly as possible the enforced companionship.  Either the
+major was too self-absorbed to notice it, or accepted it as a
+satisfactory characteristic of the half-breed's race.  He continued
+confidently:--
+
+"Now look here, Tom.  I want to leave this cursed hole, and get
+clear out of the State!  Anywhere; over the Oregon line into
+British Columbia, or to the coast, where I can get a coasting
+vessel down to Mexico.  It will cost money, but I've got it.  It
+will cost a lot of risks, but I'll take them.  I want somebody to
+help me, some one to share risks with me, and some one to share my
+luck if I succeed.  Help to put me on the other side of the border
+line, by sea or land, and I'll give you a thousand dollars down
+BEFORE WE START and a thousand dollars when I'm safe."
+
+The half-breed had changed his slouching attitude.  It seemed more
+indolent on account of the loosely hanging strap that had once held
+his haversack, which was still worn in a slovenly fashion over his
+shoulder as a kind of lazy sling for his shiftless hand.
+
+"Well, Tom, is it a go?  You can trust ME, for you'll have the
+thousand in your pocket before you start.  I can trust YOU, for
+I'll kill you quicker than lightning if you say a word of this to
+any one before I go, or play a single trick on me afterwards."
+
+Suddenly the two men were rolling over and over in the underbrush.
+The half-breed had thrown himself upon the major, bearing him down
+to the ground.  The haversack strap for an instant whirled like the
+loop of a lasso in the air, and descended over the major's
+shoulders, pinioning his arms to his side.  Then the half-breed,
+tearing open his ragged blouse, stripped off his waist-belt, and as
+dexterously slipped it over the ankles of the struggling man.
+
+It was all over in a moment.  Neither had spoken a word.  Only
+their rapid panting broke the profound silence.  Each probably knew
+that no outcry would be overheard.
+
+For the first time the half-breed sat down.  But there was no trace
+of triumph or satisfaction in his face, which wore the same
+lowering look of disgust, as he gazed upon the prostrate man.
+
+"I want to tell you first," he said, slowly wiping his face, "that
+I didn't kalkilate upon doin' this in this yer kind o' way.  I
+expected more of a stan' up fight from you--more risk in gettin'
+you out o' that hole--and a different kind of a man to tackle.  I
+never expected you to play into my hand like this--and it goes
+against me to hev to take advantage of it."
+
+"Who are you?" said the major, pantingly.
+
+"I'm the new sheriff of Siskyou!"
+
+He drew from beneath his begrimed shirt a paper wrapping, from
+which he gingerly extracted with the ends of his dirty fingers a
+clean, legal-looking folded paper.
+
+"That's my warrant!  I've kept it fresh for you.  I reckon you
+don't care to read it--you've seen it afore.  It's just the same as
+t'other sheriff had--what you shot."
+
+"Then this was a plant of yours, and that whelp's troopers?" said
+the major.
+
+"Neither him nor the sojers knows any more about it than you,"
+returned the sheriff slowly.  "I enlisted as Injin guide or scout
+ten days ago.  I deserted just as reg'lar and nat'ral like when we
+passed that ridge yesterday.  I could be took to-morrow by the
+sojers if they caught sight o' me and court-martialed--it's as
+reg'lar as THAT!  But I timed to have my posse, under a deputy,
+draw you off by an attack just as the escort reached the ridge.
+And here I am."
+
+"And you're no half-breed?"
+
+"There's nothin' Injin about me that water won't wash off.  I
+kalkilated you wouldn't suspect anything so insignificant as an
+INJIN, when I fixed myself up.  You saw Dawson didn't hanker after
+me much.  But I didn't reckon on YOUR tumbling to me so quick.
+That's what gets me!  You must hev been pretty low down for kempany
+when you took a man like me inter your confidence.  I don't see it
+yet."
+
+He looked inquiringly at his captive--with the same wondering
+surliness.  Nor could he understand another thing which was
+evident.  After the first shock of resistance the major had
+exhibited none of the indignation of a betrayed man, but actually
+seemed to accept the situation with a calmness that his captor
+lacked.  His voice was quite unemotional as he said:
+
+"And how are you going to get me away from here?"
+
+"That's MY look out, and needn't trouble you, major; but, seein' as
+how confidential you've been to me, I don't mind tellin' you.  Last
+night that posse of mine that you 'skunked,' you know, halted at
+the cross roads till them sojers went by.  They has only to SEE
+THEM to know that I had got away.  They'll hang round the cross
+roads till they see my signal on top of the ridge, and then they'll
+make another show against that pass.  Your men will have their
+hands full, I reckon, without huntin' for YOU, or noticin' the
+three men o' mine that will come along this ridge where the sojers
+come yesterday--to help me get you down in the same way.  You see,
+major, your little trap in that gully ain't in this fight--WE'RE
+THE OTHER SIDE OF IT.  I ain't much of a sojer, but I reckon I've
+got you there!  And it's all owing to YOU.  I ain't," he added
+gloomily, "takin' much pride in it MYSELF."
+
+"I shouldn't think you would," said the major, "and look here!
+I'll double that offer I made you just now.  Set me down just as I
+am on the deck of some coasting vessel, and I'll pay you four
+thousand dollars.  You may have all the glory of having captured
+me, HERE, and of making your word good before your posse.  But you
+can arrange afterwards on the way to let me give you the slip
+somewhere near Sacramento."
+
+The sheriff's face actually brightened.  "Thanks for that, major.
+I was gettin' a little sick of my share in this job, but, by God,
+you've put some sand in me.  Well, then! there ain't gold enough in
+all Californy to make me let you go.  You hear me; so drop that.
+I've TOOK you, and TOOK ye'll remain until I land you in Sacramento
+jail.  I don't want to kill you, though your life's forfeit a dozen
+times over, and I reckon you don't care for it either way, but if
+you try any tricks on me I may have to MAIM ye to make you come
+along comf'able and easy.  I ain't hankerin' arter THAT either, but
+come you shall!"
+
+"Give your signal and have an end of this," said the major curtly.
+
+The sheriff looked at him again curiously.  "I never had my hands
+in another man's pockets before, major, but I reckon I'll have to
+take your derringers from yours."  He slipped his hand into the
+major's waistcoat and secured the weapons.  "I'll have to trouble
+you for your sash, too," he said, unwinding the knitted silken
+girdle from the captive's waist.  "You won't want it, for you ain't
+walking, and it'll come in handy to me just now."
+
+He bent over, and, passing it across the major's breast with more
+gentleness and solicitude than he had yet shown, secured him in an
+easy sitting posture against the tree.  Then, after carefully
+trying the knots and straps that held his prisoner, he turned and
+lightly bounded up the hill.
+
+He was absent scarcely ten minutes, yet when he returned the
+major's eyes were half closed.  But not his lips.  "If you expect
+to hold me until your posse comes you had better take me to some
+less exposed position," he said dryly.  "There's a man just crossed
+the gully, coming into the brush below in the wood."
+
+"None of your tricks, major!"
+
+"Look for yourself."
+
+The sheriff glanced quickly below him.  A man with an axe on his
+shoulder could be seen plainly making his way through the
+underbrush not a hundred yards away.  The sheriff instantly clapped
+his hand upon his captive's mouth, but at a look from his eyes took
+it away again.
+
+"I see," he said grimly, "you don't want to lure that man within
+reach of my revolver by calling to him."
+
+"I could have called him while you were away," returned the major
+quietly.
+
+The sheriff with a darkened face loosened the sash that bound his
+prisoner to the tree, and then, lifting him in his arms, began to
+ascend the hill cautiously, dipping into the heavier shadows.  But
+the ascent was difficult, the load a heavy one, and the sheriff was
+agile rather than muscular.  After a few minutes' climbing he was
+forced to pause and rest his burden at the foot of a tree.  But the
+valley and the man in the underbrush were no longer in view.
+
+"Come," said the major quietly, "unstrap my ankles and I'll WALK
+up.  We'll never get there at this rate."
+
+The sheriff paused, wiped his grimy face with his grimier blouse,
+and stood looking at his prisoner.  Then he said slowly:--
+
+"Look yer!  Wot's your little game?  Blessed if I kin follow suit."
+
+For the first time the major burst into a rage.  "Blast it all!
+Don't you see that if I'm discovered HERE, in this way, there's not
+a man on the Bar who would believe that I walked into your trap,
+not a man, by God, who wouldn't think it was a trick of yours and
+mine together?"
+
+"Or," interrupted the sheriff slowly, fixing his eyes on his
+prisoner, "not a man who would ever trust Major Overstone for a
+leader again?"
+
+"Perhaps," said the major, unmovedly again, "I don't think EITHER
+OF US would ever get a chance of being trusted again by any one."
+
+The sheriff still kept his eyes fixed on his prisoner, his gloomy
+face growing darker under its grime.  "THAT ain't the reason,
+major.  Life and death don't mean much more to you than they do to
+me in this yer game.  I know that you'd kill me quicker nor
+lightning if you got the chance; YOU know that I'm takin' you to
+the gallows."
+
+"The reason is that I want to leave Wynyard's Bar," said the major
+coolly; "and even this way out of it will suit me."
+
+The sheriff took his revolver from his pocket and deliberately
+cocked it.  Then, leaning down, he unbuckled the strap from the
+major's ankles.  A wild hope that his incomprehensible captive
+might seize that moment to develop his real intent--that he might
+fly, fight, or in some way act up to his reckless reputation--
+sustained him for a moment, but in the next proved futile.  The
+major only said, "Thank you, Tom," and stretched his cramped legs.
+
+"Get up and go on," said the sheriff roughly.
+
+The major began to slowly ascend the hill, the sheriff close on his
+heels, alert, tingling, and watchful of every movement.  For a few
+moments this strain upon his faculties seemed to invigorate him,
+and his gloom relaxed, but presently it became too evident that the
+prisoner's pinioned arms made it impossible for him to balance or
+help himself on that steep trail, and once or twice he stumbled and
+reeled dangerously to one side.  With an oath the sheriff caught
+him, and tore from his arms the only remaining bonds that fettered
+him.  "There!" he said savagely; "go on; we're equal!"
+
+Without replying, the major continued his ascent; it became steeper
+as they neared the crest, and at last they were both obliged to
+drag themselves up by clutching the vines and underbrush.  Suddenly
+the major stopped with a listening gesture.  A strange roaring--as
+of wind or water--was distinctly audible.
+
+"How did you signal?" asked the major abruptly.
+
+"Made a smoke," said the sheriff as abruptly.
+
+"I thought so--well! you've set the woods on fire."
+
+They both plunged upwards again, now quite abreast, vying with each
+other to reach the summit as if with the one thought only.  Already
+the sting and smart of acrid fumes were in their eyes and nostrils;
+when they at last stood on level ground again, it was hidden by a
+thin film of grayish blue haze that seemed to be creeping along it.
+But above was the clear sky, seen through the interlacing boughs,
+and to their surprise--they who had just come from the breathless,
+stagnant hillside--a fierce wind was blowing!  But the roaring was
+louder than before.
+
+"Unless your three men are already here, your game is up," said the
+major calmly.  "The wind blows dead along the ridge where they
+should come, and they can't get through the smoke and fire."
+
+It was indeed true!  In the scarce twenty minutes that had elapsed
+since the sheriff's return the dry and brittle underbrush for half
+a mile on either side had been converted into a sheet of flame,
+which at times rose to a furnace blast through the tall chimney-
+like conductors of tree shafts, from whose shriveled sides bark was
+crackling, and lighted dead limbs falling in all directions.  The
+whole valley, the gully, the Bar, the very hillside they had just
+left, were blotted out by a creeping, stifling smoke-fog that
+scarcely rose breast high, but was beaten down or cut off cleanly
+by the violent wind that swept the higher level of the forest.  At
+times this gale became a sirocco in temperature, concentrating its
+heat in withering blasts which they could not face, or focusing its
+intensity upon some mass of foliage that seemed to shrink at its
+touch and open a scathed and quivering aisle to its approach.  The
+enormous skeleton of a dead and rotten redwood, not a hundred yards
+to their right, broke suddenly like a gigantic firework into sparks
+and flame.
+
+The sheriff had grasped the full meaning of their situation.  In
+spite of his first error--the very carelessness of familiarity--his
+knowledge of woodcraft was greater than his companion's, and he saw
+their danger.  "Come," he said quickly, "we must make for an
+opening or we shall be caught."
+
+The major smiled in misapprehension.
+
+"Who could catch us here?"
+
+The sheriff pointed to the blazing tree.
+
+"THAT," he said.  "In five minutes IT will have a posse that will
+wipe us both out."
+
+He caught the major by the arm and rushed him into the smoke,
+apparently in the direction of the greatest mass of flame.  The
+heat was suffocating, but it struck the major that the more they
+approached the actual scene of conflagration the heat and smoke
+became less, until he saw that the fire was retreating before them
+and the following wind.  In a few moments their haven of safety--
+the expanse already burnt over--came in sight.  Here and there,
+seen dimly through the drifting smoke, the scattered embers that
+still strewed the forest floor glowed in weird nebulous spots like
+will-o'-the-wisps.  For an instant the major hesitated; the sheriff
+cast a significant glance behind them.
+
+"Go on; it's our only chance," he said imperatively.
+
+They darted on, skimming the blackened or smouldering surface,
+which at times struck out sparks and flame from their heavier
+footprints as they passed.  Their boots crackled and scorched
+beneath them; their shreds of clothing were on fire; their
+breathing became more difficult, until, providentially, they fell
+upon an abrupt, fissure-like depression of the soil, which the fire
+had leaped, and into which they blindly plunged and rolled
+together.  A moment of relief and coolness followed, as they crept
+along the fissure, filled with damp and rotting leaves.
+
+"Why not stay here?" said the exhausted prisoner.
+
+"And be roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch,"
+returned the sheriff grimly.  "No."  Even as he spoke, a dropping
+rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered
+redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the
+upper wind.  A vague and indefinable terror was in the air.  The
+conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction.  The
+incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere.  They scrambled
+out of the hollow, and again dashed desperately forward.
+
+Beaten, bruised, blackened, and smoke-grimed--looking less human
+than the animals who had long since deserted the crest--they at
+last limped into a "wind opening" in the woods that the fire had
+skirted.  The major sank exhaustedly to the ground; the sheriff
+threw himself beside him.  Their strange relations to each other
+seemed to have been forgotten; they looked and acted as if they no
+longer thought of anything beyond the present.  And when the
+sheriff finally arose and, disappearing for several minutes,
+brought his hat full of water for his prisoner from a distant
+spring that they had passed in their flight, he found him where he
+had left him--unchanged and unmoved.
+
+He took the water gratefully, and after a pause fixed his eyes
+earnestly upon his captor.  "I want you to do a favor to me," he
+said slowly.  "I'm not going to offer you a bribe to do it either,
+nor ask you anything that isn't in a line with your duty.  I think
+I understand you now, if I didn't before.  Do you know Briggs's
+restaurant in Sacramento?"
+
+The sheriff nodded.
+
+"Well! over the restaurant are my private rooms, the finest in
+Sacramento.  Nobody knows it but Briggs, and he has never told.
+They've been locked ever since I left; I've got the key still in my
+pocket.  Now when we get to Sacramento, instead of taking me
+straight to jail, I want you to hold me THERE as your prisoner for
+a day and a night.  I don't want to get away; you can take what
+precautions you like--surround the house with policemen, and sleep
+yourself in the ante-room.  I don't want to destroy any papers or
+evidence; you can go through the rooms and examine everything
+before and after; I only want to stay there a day and a night; I
+want to be in my old rooms, have my meals from the restaurant as I
+used to, and sleep in my own bed once more.  I want to live for one
+day like a gentleman, as I used to live before I came here.  That's
+all!  It isn't much, Tom.  You can do it and say you require to do
+it to get evidence against me, or that you want to search the rooms."
+
+The expression of wonder which had come into the sheriff's face at
+the beginning of this speech deepened into his old look of surly
+dissatisfaction.  "And that's all ye want?" he said gloomily.  "Ye
+don't want no friends--no lawyer?  For I tell you, straight out,
+major, there ain't no hope for ye, when the law once gets hold of
+ye in Sacramento."
+
+"That's all.  Will you do it?"
+
+The sheriff's face grew still darker.  After a pause he said: "I
+don't say 'no,' and I don't say 'yes.'  But," he added grimly, "it
+strikes me we'd better wait till we get clear o' these woods afore
+you think o' your Sacramento lodgings."
+
+The major did not reply.  The day had worn on, but the fire, now
+completely encircling them, opposed any passage in or out of that
+fateful barrier.  The smoke of the burning underbrush hung low
+around them in a bank equally impenetrable to vision.  They were as
+alone as shipwrecked sailors on an island, girded by a horizon of
+clouds.
+
+"I'm going to try to sleep," said the major; "if your men come you
+can waken me."
+
+"And if YOUR men come?" said the sheriff dryly.
+
+"Shoot me."
+
+He lay down, closed his eyes, and to the sheriff's astonishment
+presently fell asleep.  The sheriff, with his chin in his grimy
+hands, sat and watched him as the day slowly darkened around them
+and the distant fires came out in more lurid intensity.  The face
+of the captive and outlawed murderer was singularly peaceful; that
+of the captor and man of duty was haggard, wild, and perplexed.
+
+But even this changed soon.  The sleeping man stirred restlessly
+and uneasily; his face began to work, his lips to move.  "Tom," he
+gasped suddenly, "Tom!"
+
+The sheriff bent over him eagerly.  The sleeping man's eyes were
+still closed; beads of sweat stood upon his forehead.  He was
+dreaming.
+
+"Tom," he whispered, "take me out of this place--take me out from
+these dogs and pimps and beggars!  Listen, Tom!--they're Sydney
+ducks, ticket-of-leave men, short card sharps, and sneak thieves!
+There isn't a gentleman among 'em!  There isn't one I don't loathe
+and hate--and would grind under my heel, elsewhere.  I'm a
+gentleman, Tom--yes, by God--an officer and a gentleman!  I've
+served my country in the 9th Cavalry.  That cub of West Point knows
+it and despises me, seeing me here in such company.  That sergeant
+knows it--I recommended him for his first stripes for all he taunts
+me,--d--n him!"
+
+"Come, wake up!" said the sheriff harshly.
+
+The prisoner did not heed him; the sheriff shook him roughly, so
+roughly that the major's waistcoat and shirt dragged open,
+disclosing his fine silk undershirt, delicately worked and
+embroidered with golden thread.  At the sight of this abased and
+faded magnificence the sheriff's hand was stayed; his eye wandered
+over the sleeping form before him.  Yes, the hair was dyed too;
+near the roots it was quite white and grizzled; the pomatum was
+coming off the pointed moustache and imperial; the face in the
+light was very haggard; the lines from the angles of the nostril
+and mouth were like deep, half-healed gashes.  The major was,
+without doubt, prematurely worn and played out.
+
+The sheriff's persistent eyes, however, seemed to effect what his
+ruder hand could not.  The sleeping man stirred, awoke to full
+consciousness, and sat up.
+
+"Are they here?  I'm ready," he said calmly.
+
+"No," said the sheriff deliberately; "I only woke ye to say that
+I've been thinkin' over what ye asked me, and if we get to
+Sacramento all right, why, I'll do it and give ye that day and
+night at your old lodgings."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+The major reached out his hand; the sheriff hesitated, and then
+extended his own.  The hands of the two men clasped for the first,
+and it would seem, the last time.
+
+For the "cub of West Point" was, like most cubs, irritable when
+thwarted.  And having been balked of his prey, the deserter, and
+possibly chaffed by his comrades for his profitless invasion of
+Wynyard's Bar, he had persuaded his commanding officer to give him
+permission to effect a recapture.  Thus it came about that at dawn,
+filing along the ridge, on the outskirts of the fire, his heart was
+gladdened by the sight of the half-breed--with his hanging
+haversack belt and tattered army tunic--evidently still a fugitive,
+not a hundred yards away on the other side of the belt of fire,
+running down the hill with another ragged figure at his side.  The
+command to "halt" was enforced by a single rifle shot over the
+fugitives' heads--but they still kept on their flight.  Then the
+boy-officer snatched a carbine from one of his men, a volley rang
+out from the little troop--the shots of the privates mercifully
+high, those of the officer and sergeant leveled with wounded pride
+and full of deliberate purpose.  The half-breed fell; so did his
+companion, and, rolling over together, both lay still.
+
+But between the hunters and their fallen quarry reared a cheval de
+frise of flame and fallen timber impossible to cross.  The young
+officer hesitated, shrugged his shoulders, wheeled his men about,
+and left the fire to correct any irregularity in his action.
+
+It did not, however, change contemporaneous history, for a week
+later, when Wynyard's Bar discovered Major Overstone lying beside
+the man now recognized by them as the disguised sheriff of Siskyou,
+they rejoiced at this unfailing evidence of their lost leader's
+unequaled prowess.  That he had again killed a sheriff and fought a
+whole posse, yielding only with his life, was never once doubted,
+and kept his memory green in Sierran chronicles long after
+Wynyard's Bar had itself become a memory.
+
+
+
+A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE.
+
+
+The American consul at St. Kentigern stepped gloomily from the
+train at Whistlecrankie station.  For the last twenty minutes his
+spirits had been slowly sinking before the drifting procession past
+the carriage windows of dull gray and brown hills--mammiform in
+shape, but so cold and sterile in expression that the swathes of
+yellow mist which lay in their hollows, like soiled guipure, seemed
+a gratuitous affectation of modesty.  And when the train moved
+away, mingling its escaping steam with the slower mists of the
+mountain, he found himself alone on the platform--the only
+passenger and apparently the sole occupant of the station.  He was
+gazing disconsolately at his trunk, which had taken upon itself a
+human loneliness in the emptiness of the place, when a railway
+porter stepped out of the solitary signal-box, where he had
+evidently been performing a double function, and lounged with
+exasperating deliberation towards him.  He was a hard-featured man,
+with a thin fringe of yellow-gray whiskers that met under his chin
+like dirty strings to tie his cap on with.
+
+"Ye'll be goin' to Glenbogie House, I'm thinkin'?" he said moodily.
+
+The consul said that he was.
+
+"I kenned it.  Ye'll no be gettin' any machine to tak' ye there.
+They'll be sending a carriage for ye--if ye're EXPECTED."  He
+glanced half doubtfully at the consul as if he was not quite so
+sure of it.
+
+But the consul believed he WAS expected, and felt relieved at the
+certain prospect of a conveyance.  The porter meanwhile surveyed
+him moodily.
+
+"Ye'll be seein' Mistress MacSpadden there!"
+
+The consul was surprised into a little over-consciousness.  Mrs.
+MacSpadden was a vivacious acquaintance at St. Kentigern, whom he
+certainly--and not without some satisfaction--expected to meet at
+Glenbogie House.  He raised his eyes inquiringly to the porter's.
+
+"Ye'll no be rememberin' me.  I had a machine in St. Kentigern and
+drove ye to MacSpadden's ferry often.  Far, far too often!  She's a
+strange flagrantitious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm
+thinkin', and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there."
+
+It was a besetting weakness of the consul's that his sense of the
+ludicrous was too often reached before his more serious
+perceptions.  The absurd combination of the bleak, inhospitable
+desolation before him, and the sepulchral complacency of his self-
+elected monitor, quite upset his gravity.
+
+"Ay, ye'll be laughin' THE NOO," returned the porter with gloomy
+significance.
+
+The consul wiped his eyes.  "Still," he said demurely, "I trust you
+won't object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the
+carriage when it comes, and let the morality of this transaction
+devolve entirely upon me.  Unless," he continued, even more
+gravely, as a spick and span brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds,
+dashed out of the mist up to the platform, "unless you prefer to
+state the case to those two gentlemen"--pointing to the smart
+coachman and footman on the box--"and take THEIR opinion as to the
+propriety of my proceeding any further.  It seems to me that their
+consciences ought to be consulted as well as yours.  I'm only a
+stranger here, and am willing to do anything to conform to the
+local custom."
+
+"It's a saxpence ye'll be payin' anyway," said the porter, grimly
+shouldering the trunk, "but I'll be no takin' any other mon's
+opinion on matters of my am dooty and conscience."
+
+"Ah," said the consul gravely, "then you'll perhaps be allowing ME
+the same privilege."
+
+The porter's face relaxed, and a gleam of approval--purely
+intellectual, however,--came into his eyes.
+
+"Ye were always a smooth deevel wi' your tongue, Mr. Consul," he
+said, shouldering the box and walking off to the carriage.
+
+Nevertheless, as soon as he was fairly seated and rattling away
+from the station, the consul had a flashing conviction that he had
+not only been grievously insulted but also that he had allowed the
+wife of an acquaintance to be spoken of disrespectfully in his
+presence.  And he had done nothing!  Yes--it was like him!--he had
+LAUGHED at the absurdity of the impertinence without resenting it!
+Another man would have slapped the porter's face!  For an instant
+he hung out of the carriage window, intent upon ordering the
+coachman to drive back to the station, but the reflection--again a
+ludicrous one--that he would now be only bringing witnesses to a
+scene which might provoke a scandal more invidious to his
+acquaintance, checked him in time.  But his spirits, momentarily
+diverted by the porter's effrontery, sunk to a lower ebb than
+before.
+
+The clattering of his horses' hoofs echoed back from the rocky
+walls that occasionally hemmed in the road was not enlivening, but
+was less depressing than the recurring monotony of the open.  The
+scenery did not suggest wildness to his alien eyes so much as it
+affected him with a vague sense of scorbutic impoverishment.  It
+was not the loneliness of unfrequented nature, for there was a
+well-kept carriage road traversing its dreariness; and even when
+the hillside was clothed with scanty verdure, there were "outcrops"
+of smooth glistening weather-worn rocks showing like bare brown
+knees under the all too imperfectly kilted slopes.  And at a little
+distance, lifting above a black drift of firs, were the square
+rigid sky lines of Glenbogie House, standing starkly against the
+cold, lingering northern twilight.  As the vehicle turned, and
+rolled between two square stone gate-posts, the long avenue before
+him, though as well kept as the road, was but a slight improvement
+upon the outer sterility, and the dark iron-gray rectangular
+mansion beyond, guiltless of external decoration, even to the
+outlines of its small lustreless windows, opposed the grim
+inhospitable prospect with an equally grim inhospitable front.
+There were a few moments more of rapid driving, a swift swishing
+over soft gravel, the opening of a heavy door into a narrow
+vestibule, and then--a sudden sense of exquisitely diffused light
+and warmth from an arched and galleried central hall, the sounds of
+light laughter and subdued voices half lost in the airy space
+between the lofty pictured walls; the luxury of color in trophies,
+armor, and hangings; one or two careless groups before the recessed
+hearth or at the centre table, and the halted figure of a pretty
+woman on the broad, slow staircase.  The contrast was sharp,
+ironical, and bewildering.
+
+So much so that the consul, when he had followed the servant to his
+room, was impelled to draw aside the heavy window-curtains and look
+out again upon the bleak prospect it had half obliterated.  The
+wing in which he was placed overhung a dark ravine or gully choked
+with shrubs and brambles that grew in a new luxuriance.  As he
+gazed a large black bird floated upwards slowly from its depths,
+circled around the house with a few quick strokes of its wing, and
+then sped away--a black bolt--in one straight undeviating line
+towards the paling north.  He still gazed into the abyss--half
+expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional stir
+and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of
+nightfowl.  A long-forgotten fragment of old English verse began
+to haunt him--
+
+
+     Hark! the raven flaps hys wing
+       In the briered dell belowe,
+     Hark! the dethe owl loude doth synge
+       To the night maers as thaie goe.
+
+
+"Now, what put that stuff in my head?" he said as he turned
+impatiently from the window.  "And why does this house, with all
+its interior luxury, hypocritically oppose such a forbidding front
+to its neighbors?"  Then it occurred to him that perhaps the
+architect instinctively felt that a more opulent and elaborate
+exterior would only bring the poverty of surrounding nature into
+greater relief.  But he was not in the habit of troubling himself
+with abstruse problems.  A nearer recollection of the pretty frock
+he had seen on the staircase--in whose wearer he had just recognized
+his vivacious friend--turned his thoughts to her.  He remembered
+how at their first meeting he had been interested in her bright
+audacity, unconventionality, and high spirits, which did not,
+however, amuse him as greatly as his later suspicion that she was
+playing a self-elected role, often with difficulty, opposition, and
+feverishness, rather than spontaneity.  He remembered how he had
+watched her in the obtrusive assumption of a new fashion, in some
+reckless departure from an old one, or in some ostentatious
+disregard of certain hard and set rules of St. Kentigern; but that
+it never seemed to him that she was the happier for it.  He even
+fancied that her mirth at such times had an undue nervousness; that
+her pluck--which was undoubted--had something of the defiance of
+despair, and that her persistence often had the grimness of duty
+rather than the thoughtlessness of pure amusement.  What was she
+trying to do?--what was she trying to UNDO or forget?  Her married
+life was apparently happy and even congenial.  Her young husband was
+clever, complaisant, yet honestly devoted to her, even to the
+extension of a certain camaraderie to her admirers and a chivalrous
+protection by half-participation in her maddest freaks.  Nor could
+he honestly say that her attitude towards his own sex--although
+marked by a freedom that often reached the verge of indiscretion--
+conveyed the least suggestion of passion or sentiment.  The consul,
+more perceptive than analytical, found her a puzzle--who was,
+perhaps, the least mystifying to others who were content to sum up
+her eccentricities under the single vague epithet, "fast."  Most
+women disliked her: she had a few associates among them, but no
+confidante, and even these were so unlike her, again, as to puzzle
+him still more.  And yet he believed himself strictly impartial.
+
+He walked to the window again, and looked down upon the ravine
+from which the darkness now seemed to be slowly welling up and
+obliterating the landscape, and then, taking a book from his
+valise, settled himself in the easy-chair by the fire.  He was in
+no hurry to join the party below, whom he had duly recognized and
+greeted as he passed through.  They or their prototypes were
+familiar friends.  There was the recently created baronet, whose
+"bloody hand" had apparently wiped out the stains of his earlier
+Radicalism, and whose former provincial self-righteousness had been
+supplanted by an equally provincial skepticism; there was his wife,
+who through all the difficulties of her changed position had kept
+the stalwart virtues of the Scotch bourgeoisie, and was--"decent";
+there were the two native lairds that reminded him of "parts of
+speech," one being distinctly alluded to as a definite article, and
+the other being "of" something, and apparently governed always by
+that possessive case.  There were two or three "workers"--men of
+power and ability in their several vocations; indeed, there was the
+general over-proportion of intellect, characteristic of such Scotch
+gatherings, and often in excess of minor social qualities.  There
+was the usual foreigner, with Latin quickness, eagerness, and
+misapprehending adaptability.  And there was the solitary
+Englishman--perhaps less generously equipped than the others--
+whom everybody differed from, ridiculed, and then looked up to and
+imitated.  There were the half-dozen smartly frocked women, who,
+far from being the females of the foregoing species, were quite
+indistinctive, with the single exception of an American wife, who
+was infinitely more Scotch than her Scotch husband.
+
+Suddenly he became aware of a faint rustling at his door, and what
+seemed to be a slight tap on the panel.  He rose and opened it--the
+long passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could
+detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance.  As he re-entered
+his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was
+thrust through the keyhole of his door.  The consul smiled at this
+amiable solution of a mystery.  It was undoubtedly the playful
+mischievousness of the vivacious MacSpadden.  He placed it in
+water--intending to wear it in his coat at dinner as a gentle
+recognition of the fair donor's courtesy.
+
+Night had thickened suddenly as from a passing cloud.  He lit the
+two candles on his dressing-table, gave a glance into the now
+scarcely distinguishable abyss below his window, as he drew the
+curtains, and by the more diffused light for the first time
+surveyed his room critically.  It was a larger apartment than that
+usually set aside for bachelors; the heavy four-poster had a
+conjugal reserve about it, and a tall cheval glass and certain
+minor details of the furniture suggested that it had been used for
+a married couple.  He knew that the guest-rooms in country houses,
+as in hotels, carried no suggestion or flavor of the last tenant,
+and therefore lacked color and originality, and he was consequently
+surprised to find himself impressed with some distinctly novel
+atmosphere.  He was puzzling himself to discover what it might be,
+when he again became aware of cautious footsteps apparently halting
+outside his door.  This time he was prepared.  With a half smile he
+stepped softly to the door and opened it suddenly.  To his intense
+surprise he was face to face with a man.
+
+But his discomfiture was as nothing compared to that of the
+stranger--whom he at once recognized as one of his fellow-guests--
+the youthful Laird of Whistlecrankie.  The young fellow's healthy
+color at once paled, then flushed a deep crimson, and a forced
+smile stiffened his mouth.
+
+"I--beg your par-r-rdon," he said with a nervous brusqueness that
+brought out his accent.  "I couldna find ma room.  It'll be
+changed, and I--"
+
+"Perhaps I have got it," interrupted the consul smilingly.  "I've
+only just come, and they've put me in here."
+
+"Nae! Nae!" said the young man hurriedly, "it's no' thiss.  That
+is, it's no' mine noo."
+
+"Won't you come in?" suggested the consul politely, holding open
+the door.
+
+The young man entered the room with the quick strides but the
+mechanical purposelessness of embarrassment.  Then he stiffened
+and stood erect.  Yet in spite of all this he was strikingly
+picturesque and unconventional in his Highland dress, worn with the
+freedom of long custom and a certain lithe, barbaric grace.  As the
+consul continued to gaze at him encouragingly, the quick resentful
+pride of a shy man suddenly mantled his high cheekbones, and with
+an abrupt "I'll not deesturb ye longer," he strode out of the room.
+
+The consul watched the easy swing of his figure down the passage,
+and then closed the door.  "Delightful creature," he said musingly,
+"and not so very unlike an Apache chief either!  But what was he
+doing outside my door?  And was it HE who left that rose--not as
+a delicate Highland attention to an utter stranger, but"--the
+consul's mouth suddenly expanded--"to some fair previous occupant?
+Or was it really HIS room--he looked as if he were lying--and"--
+here the consul's mouth expanded even more wickedly--"and Mrs.
+MacSpadden had put the flower there for him."  This implied snub to
+his vanity was, however, more than compensated by his wicked
+anticipation of the pretty perplexity of his fair friend when HE
+should appear at dinner with the flower in his own buttonhole.  It
+would serve her right, the arrant flirt!  But here he was
+interrupted by the entrance of a tall housemaid with his hot water.
+
+"I am afraid I've dispossessed Mr.--Mr.--Kilcraithie rather
+prematurely," said the consul lightly.
+
+To his infinite surprise the girl answered with grim decision,
+"Nane too soon."
+
+The consul stared.  "I mean," he explained, "that I found him
+hesitating here in the passage, looking for his room."
+
+"Ay, he's always hoaverin' and glowerin' in the passages--but it's
+no' for his ROOM!  And it's a deesgrace to decent Christian folk
+his carryin' on wi' married weemen--mebbee they're nae better than
+he!"
+
+"That will do," said the consul curtly.  He had no desire to
+encourage a repetition of the railway porter's freedom.
+
+"Ye'll no fash yoursel' aboot HIM," continued the girl, without
+heeding the rebuff.  "It's no' the meestreess' wish that he's
+keepit here in the wing reserved for married folk, and she's no'
+sorry for the excuse to pit ye in his place.  Ye'll be married
+yoursel', I'm hearin'.  But, I ken ye's nae mair to be lippened tae
+for THAT."
+
+This was too much for the consul's gravity.  "I'm afraid," he said
+with diplomatic gayety, "that although I am married, as I haven't
+my wife with me, I've no right to this superior accommodation and
+comfort.  But you can assure your mistress that I'll try to deserve
+them."
+
+"Ay," said the girl, but with no great confidence in her voice as
+she grimly quitted the room.
+
+"When our foot's upon our native heath, whether our name's
+Macgregor or Kilcraithie, it would seem that we must tread warily,"
+mused the consul as he began to dress.  "But I'm glad she didn't
+see that rose, or MY reputation would have been ruined."  Here
+another knock at the door arrested him.  He opened it impatiently
+to a tall gillie, who instantly strode into the room.  There was
+such another suggestion of Kilcraithie in the man and his manner
+that the consul instantly divined that he was Kilcraithie's
+servant.
+
+"I'll be takin' some bit things that yon Whistlecrankie left," said
+the gillie gravely, with a stolid glance around the room.
+
+"Certainly," said the consul; "help yourself."  He continued his
+dressing as the man began to rummage in the empty drawers.  The
+consul had his back towards him, but, looking in the glass of the
+dressing-table, he saw that the gillie was stealthily watching him.
+Suddenly he passed before the mantelpiece and quickly slipped the
+rose from its glass into his hand.
+
+"I'll trouble you to put that back," said the consul quietly,
+without turning round.  The gillie slid a quick glance towards the
+door, but the consul was before him.  "I don't think THAT was left
+by your master," he said in an ostentatiously calm voice, for he
+was conscious of an absurd and inexplicable tumult in his blood,
+"and perhaps you'd better put it back."
+
+The man looked at the flower with an attention that might have been
+merely ostentatious, and replaced it in the glass.
+
+"A thocht it was hiss."
+
+"And I think it isn't," said the consul, opening the door.
+
+Yet when the man had passed out he was by no means certain that the
+flower was not Kilcraithie's.  He was even conscious that if the
+young Laird had approached him with a reasonable explanation or
+appeal he would have yielded it up.  Yet here he was--looking
+angrily pale in the glass, his eyes darker than they should be, and
+with an unmistakable instinct to do battle for this idiotic gage!
+Was there some morbid disturbance in the air that was affecting him
+as it had Kilcraithie?  He tried to laugh, but catching sight of
+its sardonic reflection in the glass became grave again.  He
+wondered if the gillie had been really looking for anything his
+master had left--he had certainly TAKEN nothing.  He opened one or
+two of the drawers, and found only a woman's tortoiseshell hairpin--
+overlooked by the footman when he had emptied them for the
+consul's clothes.  It had been probably forgotten by some fair and
+previous tenant to Kilcraithie.  The consul looked at his watch--it
+was time to go down.  He grimly pinned the fateful flower in his
+buttonhole, and half-defiantly descended to the drawing-room.
+
+Here, however, he was inclined to relax when, from a group of
+pretty women, the bright gray eyes of Mrs. MacSpadden caught his,
+were suddenly diverted to the lapel of his coat, and then leaped up
+to his again with a sparkle of mischief.  But the guests were
+already pairing off in dinner couples, and as they passed out of
+the room, he saw that she was on the arm of Kilcraithie.  Yet, as
+she passed him, she audaciously turned her head, and in a
+mischievous affectation of jealous reproach, murmured:--
+
+"So soon!"
+
+At dinner she was too far removed for any conversation with him,
+although from his seat by his hostess he could plainly see her
+saucy profile midway up the table.  But, to his surprise, her
+companion, Kilcraithie, did not seem to be responding to her
+gayety.  By turns abstracted and feverish, his glances occasionally
+wandered towards the end of the table where the consul was sitting.
+For a few moments he believed that the affair of the flower,
+combined, perhaps, with the overhearing of Mrs. MacSpadden's
+mischievous sentence, rankled in the Laird's barbaric soul.  But he
+became presently aware that Kilcraithie's eyes eventually rested
+upon a quiet-looking blonde near the hostess.  Yet the lady not
+only did not seem to be aware of it, but her face was more often
+turned towards the consul, and their eyes had once or twice met.
+He had been struck by the fact that they were half-veiled but
+singularly unimpassioned eyes, with a certain expression of cold
+wonderment and criticism quite inconsistent with their veiling.
+Nor was he surprised when, after a preliminary whispering over the
+plates, his hostess presented him.  The lady was the young wife of
+the middle-aged dignitary who, seated further down the table,
+opposite Mrs. MacSpadden, was apparently enjoying that lady's
+wildest levities.  The consul bowed, the lady leaned a little
+forward.
+
+"We were saying what a lovely rose you had."
+
+The consul's inward response was "Hang that flower!"  His outward
+expression was the modest query:--
+
+"Is it SO peculiar?"
+
+"No; but it's very pretty.  Would you allow me to see it?"
+
+Disengaging the flower from his buttonhole he handed it to her.
+Oddly enough, it seemed to him that half the table was watching and
+listening to them.  Suddenly the lady uttered a little cry.  "Dear
+me! it's full of thorns; of course you picked and arranged it
+yourself, for any lady would have wrapped something around the
+stalk!"
+
+But here there was a burlesque outcry and a good-humored protest
+from the gentlemen around her against this manifestly leading
+question.  "It's no fair!  Ye'll not answer her--for the dignity of
+our sex."  Yet in the midst of it, it suddenly occurred to the
+consul that there HAD been a slip of paper wrapped around it, which
+had come off and remained in the keyhole.  The blue eyes of the
+lady were meanwhile sounding his, but he only smiled and said:--
+
+"Then it seems it IS peculiar?"
+
+When the conversation became more general he had time to observe
+other features of the lady than her placid eyes.  Her light hair
+was very long, and grew low down the base of her neck.  Her mouth
+was firm, the upper lip slightly compressed in a thin red line, but
+the lower one, although equally precise at the corners, became
+fuller in the centre and turned over like a scarlet leaf, or, as it
+struck him suddenly, like the tell-tale drop of blood on the mouth
+of a vampire.  Yet she was very composed, practical, and decorous,
+and as the talk grew more animated--and in the vicinity of Mrs.
+MacSpadden, more audacious--she kept a smiling reserve of
+expression,--which did not, however, prevent her from following
+that lively lady, whom she evidently knew, with a kind of
+encouraging attention.
+
+"Kate is in full fling to-night," she said to the hostess.  Lady
+Macquoich smiled ambiguously--so ambiguously that the consul
+thought it necessary to interfere for his friend.  "She seems to
+say what most of us think, but I am afraid very few of us could
+voice as innocently," he smilingly suggested.
+
+"She is a great friend of yours," returned the lady, looking at him
+through her half-veiled lids.  "She has made us quite envy her."
+
+"And I am afraid made it impossible for ME to either sufficiently
+thank her or justify her taste," he said quietly.  Yet he was vexed
+at an unaccountable resentment which had taken possession of him--
+who but a few hours before had only laughed at the porter's
+criticism.
+
+After the ladies had risen, the consul with an instinct of sympathy
+was moving up towards "Jock" MacSpadden, who sat nearer the host,
+when he was stopped midway of the table by the dignitary who had
+sat opposite to Mrs. MacSpadden.  "Your frien' is maist amusing wi'
+her audacious tongue--ay, and her audacious ways," he said with
+large official patronage; "and we've enjoyed her here immensely,
+but I hae mae doots if mae Leddy Macquoich taks as kindly to them.
+You and I--men of the wurrld, I may say--we understand them for a'
+their worth; ay!--ma wife too, with whom I observed ye speakin'--is
+maist tolerant of her, but man! it's extraordinar'"--he lowered his
+voice slightly--"that yon husband of hers does na' check her
+freedoms with Kilcraithie.  I wadna' say anythin' was wrong, ye
+ken, but is he no' over confident and conceited aboot his wife?"
+
+"I see you don't know him," said the consul smilingly, "and I'd be
+delighted to make you acquainted.  Jock," he continued, raising his
+voice as he turned towards MacSpadden, "let me introduce you to Sir
+Alan Deeside, who don't know YOU, although he's a great admirer of
+your wife;" and unheeding the embarrassed protestations of Sir Alan
+and the laughing assertions of Jock that they were already
+acquainted, he moved on beside his host.  That hospitable knight,
+who had been airing his knowledge of London smart society to
+his English guest with a singular mixture of assertion and
+obsequiousness, here stopped short.  "Ay, sit down, laddie, it was
+so guid of ye to come, but I'm thinkin' at your end of the table ye
+lost the bit fun of Mistress MacSpadden.  Eh, but she was unco'
+lively to-night.  'Twas all Kilcraithie could do to keep her from
+proposin' your health with Hieland honors, and offerin' to lead off
+with her ain foot on the table!  Ay, and she'd ha' done it.  And
+that's a braw rose she's been givin' ye--and ye got out of it
+claverly wi' Lady Deeside."
+
+When he left the table with the others to join the ladies, the same
+unaccountable feeling of mingled shyness and nervous irascibility
+still kept possession of him.  He felt that in his present mood he
+could not listen to any further criticisms of his friend without
+betraying some unwonted heat, and as his companions filed into
+the drawing-room he slipped aside in the hope of recovering his
+equanimity by a few moments' reflection in his own room.  He glided
+quickly up the staircase and entered the corridor.  The passage
+that led to his apartment was quite dark, especially before his
+door, which was in a bay that really ended the passage.  He was
+consequently surprised and somewhat alarmed at seeing a shadowy
+female figure hovering before it.  He instinctively halted; the
+figure became more distinct from some luminous halo that seemed to
+encompass it.  It struck him that this was only the light of his
+fire thrown through his open door, and that the figure was probably
+that of a servant before it, who had been arranging his room.  He
+started forward again, but at the sound of his advancing footsteps
+the figure and the luminous glow vanished, and he arrived blankly
+face to face with his own closed door.  He looked around the dim
+bay; it was absolutely vacant.  It was equally impossible for any
+one to have escaped without passing him.  There was only his room
+left.  A half-nervous, half-superstitious thrill crept over him as
+he suddenly grasped the handle of the door and threw it open.  The
+leaping light of his fire revealed its emptiness: no one was there!
+He lit the candle and peered behind the curtains and furniture and
+under the bed; the room was as vacant and undisturbed as when he
+left it.
+
+Had it been a trick of his senses or a bona-fide apparition?  He
+had never heard of a ghost at Glenbogie--the house dated back some
+fifty years; Sir John Macquoich's tardy knighthood carried no such
+impedimenta.  He looked down wonderingly on the flower in his
+buttonhole.  Was there something uncanny in that innocent blossom?
+But here he was struck by another recollection, and examined the
+keyhole of his door.  With the aid of the tortoiseshell hairpin he
+dislodged the paper he had forgotten.  It was only a thin spiral
+strip, apparently the white outer edge of some newspaper, and it
+certainly seemed to be of little service as a protection against
+the thorns of the rose-stalk.  He was holding it over the fire,
+about to drop it into the blaze, when the flame revealed some
+pencil-marks upon it.  Taking it to the candle he read, deeply
+bitten into the paper by a hard pencil-point: "At half-past one."
+There was nothing else--no signature; but the handwriting was NOT
+Mrs. MacSpadden's!
+
+Then whose?  Was it that of the mysterious figure whom he had just
+seen?  Had he been selected as the medium of some spiritual
+communication, and, perhaps, a ghostly visitation later on?  Or was
+he the victim of some clever trick?  He had once witnessed such
+dubious attempts to relieve the monotony of a country house.  He
+again examined the room carefully, but without avail.  Well! the
+mystery or trick would be revealed at half-past one.  It was a
+somewhat inconvenient hour, certainly.  He looked down at the
+baleful gift in his buttonhole, and for a moment felt inclined to
+toss it in the fire.  But this was quickly followed by his former
+revulsion of resentment and defiance.  No! he would wear it, no
+matter what happened, until its material or spiritual owner came
+for it.  He closed the door and returned to the drawing-room.
+
+Midway of the staircase he heard the droning of pipes.  There was
+dancing in the drawing-room to the music of the gorgeous piper who
+had marshaled them to dinner.  He was not sorry, as he had no
+inclination to talk, and the one confidence he had anticipated with
+Mrs. MacSpadden was out of the question now.  He had no right to
+reveal his later discovery.  He lingered a few moments in the hall.
+The buzzing of the piper's drones gave him that impression of
+confused and blindly aggressive intoxication which he had often
+before noticed in this barbaric instrument, and had always seemed
+to him as the origin of its martial inspiration.  From this he was
+startled by voices and steps in the gallery he had just quitted,
+but which came from the opposite direction to his room.  It was
+Kilcraithie and Mrs. MacSpadden.  As she caught sight of him, he
+fancied she turned slightly and aggressively pale, with a certain
+hardening of her mischievous eyes.  Nevertheless, she descended the
+staircase more deliberately than her companion, who brushed past
+him with an embarrassed self-consciousness, quite in advance of
+her.  She lingered for an instant.
+
+"You are not dancing?" she said.
+
+"No."
+
+"Perhaps you are more agreeably employed?"
+
+"At this exact moment, certainly."
+
+She cast a disdainful glance at him, crossed the hall, and followed
+Kilcraithie.
+
+"Hang me, if I understand it all!" mused the consul, by no means
+good-humoredly.  "Does she think I have been spying upon her and
+her noble chieftain?  But it's just as well that I didn't tell her
+anything."
+
+He turned to follow them.  In the vestibule he came upon a figure
+which had halted before a large pier-glass.  He recognized M.
+Delfosse, the French visitor, complacently twisting the peak of his
+Henri Quatre beard.  He would have passed without speaking, but the
+Frenchman glanced smilingly at the consul and his buttonhole.
+Again the flower!
+
+"Monsieur is decore," he said gallantly.
+
+The consul assented, but added, not so gallantly, that though they
+were not in France he might still be unworthy of it.  The baleful
+flower had not improved his temper.  Nor did the fact that, as he
+entered the room, he thought the people stared at him--until he saw
+that their attention was directed to Lady Deeside, who had entered
+almost behind him.  From his hostess, who had offered him a seat
+beside her, he gathered that M. Delfosse and Kilcraithie had each
+temporarily occupied his room, but that they had been transferred
+to the other wing, apart from the married couples and young ladies,
+because when they came upstairs from the billiard and card room
+late, they sometimes disturbed the fair occupants.  No!--there were
+no ghosts at Glenbogie.  Mysterious footsteps had sometimes been
+heard in the ladies' corridor, but--with peculiar significance--she
+was AFRAID they could be easily accounted for.  Sir Alan, whose
+room was next to the MacSpaddens', had been disturbed by them.
+
+He was glad when it was time to escape to the billiard-room and
+tobacco.  For a while he forgot the evening's adventure, but
+eventually found himself listening to a discussion--carried on over
+steaming tumblers of toddy--in regard to certain predispositions of
+the always debatable sex.
+
+"Ye'll not always judge by appearances," said Sir Alan.  "Ye'll mind
+the story o' the meenester's wife of Aiblinnoch.  It was thocht
+that she was ower free wi' one o' the parishioners--ay! it was the
+claish o' the whole kirk, while none dare tell the meenester
+hisself--bein' a bookish, simple, unsuspectin' creeter.  At last
+one o' the elders bethocht him of a bit plan of bringing it home to
+the wife, through the gospel lips of her ain husband!  So he
+intimated to the meenester his suspicions of grievous laxity amang
+the female flock, and of the necessity of a special sermon on the
+Seventh Command.  The puir man consented--although he dinna ken why
+and wherefore--and preached a gran' sermon!  Ay, man! it was
+crammed wi' denunciation and an emptyin' o' the vials o' wrath!
+The congregation sat dumb as huddled sheep--when they were no'
+starin' and gowpin' at the meenester's wife settin' bolt upright in
+her place.  And then, when the air was blue wi' sulphur frae tae
+pit, the meenester's wife up rises!  Man!  Ivry eye was spearin'
+her--ivry lug was prickt towards her!  And she goes out in the
+aisle facin' the meenester, and--"
+
+Sir Alan paused.
+
+"And what?" demanded the eager auditory.
+
+"She pickit up the elder's wife, sobbin' and tearin' her hair in
+strong hysterics."
+
+At the end of a relieved pause Sir Alan slowly concluded: "It was
+said that the elder removed frae Aiblinnoch wi' his wife, but no'
+till he had effected a change of meenesters."
+
+It was already past midnight, and the party had dropped off one by
+one, with the exception of Deeside, Macquoich, the young Englishman,
+and a Scotch laird, who were playing poker--an amusement which he
+understood they frequently protracted until three in the morning.
+It was nearly time for him to expect his mysterious visitant.
+Before he went upstairs he thought he would take a breath of the
+outer evening air, and throwing a mackintosh over his shoulders,
+passed out of the garden door of the billiard-room.  To his
+surprise it gave immediately upon the fringe of laurel that hung
+over the chasm.
+
+It was quite dark; the few far-spread stars gave scarcely any
+light, and the slight auroral glow towards the north was all that
+outlined the fringe of the abyss, which might have proved dangerous
+to any unfamiliar wanderer.  A damp breath of sodden leaves came
+from its depths.  Beside him stretched the long dark facade of the
+wing he inhabited, his own window the only one that showed a faint
+light.  A few paces beyond, a singular structure of rustic wood and
+glass, combining the peculiarities of a sentry-box, a summer-house,
+and a shelter, was built against the blank wall of the wing.  He
+imagined the monotonous prospect from its windows of the tufted
+chasm, the coldly profiled northern hills beyond,--and shivered.
+A little further on, sunk in the wall like a postern, was a small
+door that evidently gave easy egress to seekers of this stern
+retreat.  In the still air a faint grating sound like the passage
+of a foot across gravel came to him as from the distance.  He
+paused, thinking he had been followed by one of the card-players,
+but saw no one, and the sound was not repeated.
+
+It was past one.  He re-entered the billiard-room, passed the
+unchanged group of card-players, and taking a candlestick from the
+hall ascended the dark and silent staircase into the corridor.  The
+light of his candle cast a flickering halo around him--but did not
+penetrate the gloomy distance.  He at last halted before his door,
+gave a scrutinizing glance around the embayed recess, and opened
+the door half expectantly.  But the room was empty as he had left
+it.
+
+It was a quarter past one.  He threw himself on the bed without
+undressing, and fixed his eyes alternately on the door and his
+watch.  Perhaps the unwonted seriousness of his attitude struck
+him, but a sudden sense of the preposterousness of the whole
+situation, of his solemnly ridiculous acceptance of a series of
+mere coincidences as a foregone conclusion, overcame him, and he
+laughed.  But in the same breath he stopped.
+
+There WERE footsteps approaching--cautious footsteps--but not at
+his door!  They were IN THE ROOM--no! in the WALL just behind him!
+They were descending some staircase at the back of his bed--he
+could hear the regular tap of a light slipper from step to step and
+the rustle of a skirt seemingly in his very ear.  They were
+becoming less and less distinct--they were gone!  He sprang to his
+feet, but almost at the same instant he was conscious of a sudden
+chill--that seemed to him as physical as it was mental.  The room
+was slowly suffused with a cool sodden breath and the dank odor of
+rotten leaves.  He looked at the candle--its flame was actually
+deflecting in this mysterious blast.  It seemed to come from a
+recess for hanging clothes topped by a heavy cornice and curtain.
+He had examined it before, but he drew the curtain once more aside.
+The cold current certainly seemed to be more perceptible there.  He
+felt the red-clothed backing of the interior, and his hand suddenly
+grasped a doorknob.  It turned, and the whole structure--cornice
+and curtains--swung inwards towards him with THE DOOR ON WHICH IT
+WAS HUNG!  Behind it was a dark staircase leading from the floor
+above to some outer door below, whose opening had given ingress to
+the chill humid current from the ravine.  This was the staircase
+where he had just heard the footsteps--and this was, no doubt, the
+door through which the mysterious figure had vanished from his room
+a few hours before!
+
+Taking his candle, he cautiously ascended the stairs until he found
+himself on the landing of the suites of the married couples and
+directly opposite to the rooms of the MacSpaddens and Deesides.
+He was about to descend again when he heard a far-off shout, a
+scuffling sound on the outer gravel, and the frenzied shaking of
+the handle of the lower door.  He had hardly time to blow out his
+candle and flatten himself against the wall, when the door was
+flung open and a woman frantically flew up the staircase.  His own
+door was still open; from within its depths the light of his fire
+projected a flickering beam across the steps.  As she rushed past
+it the light revealed her face; it needed not the peculiar perfume
+of her garments as she swept by his concealed figure to make him
+recognize--Lady Deeside!
+
+Amazed and confounded, he was about to descend, when he heard the
+lower door again open.  But here a sudden instinct bade him pause,
+turn, and reascend to the upper landing.  There he calmly relit his
+candle, and made his way down to the corridor that overlooked the
+central hall.  The sound of suppressed voices--speaking with the
+exhausted pauses that come from spent excitement--made him cautious
+again, and he halted.  It was the card party slowly passing from
+the billiard-room to the hall.
+
+"Ye owe it yoursel'--to your wife--not to pit up with it a day
+longer," said the subdued voice of Sir Alan.  "Man! ye war in an
+ace o' havin' a braw scandal."
+
+"Could ye no' get your wife to speak till her," responded
+Macquoich, "to gie her a hint that she's better awa' out of this?
+Lady Deeside has some influence wi' her."
+
+The consul ostentatiously dropped the extinguisher from his
+candlestick.  The party looked up quickly.  Their faces were still
+flushed and agitated, but a new restraint seemed to come upon them
+on seeing him.
+
+"I thought I heard a row outside," said the consul explanatorily.
+
+They each looked at their host without speaking.
+
+"Oh, ay," said Macquoich, with simulated heartiness, "a bit fuss
+between the Kilcraithie and yon Frenchman; but they're baith goin'
+in the mornin'."
+
+"I thought I heard MacSpadden's voice," said the consul quietly.
+
+There was a dead silence.  Then Macquoich said hurriedly:--
+
+"Is he no' in his room--in bed--asleep,--man?"
+
+"I really don't know; I didn't inquire," said the consul with a
+slight yawn.  "Good night!"
+
+He turned, not without hearing them eagerly whispering again, and
+entered the passage leading to his own room.  As he opened the door
+he was startled to find the subject of his inquiry--Jock MacSpadden--
+quietly seated in his armchair by his fire.
+
+"Jock!"
+
+"Don't be alarmed, old man; I came up by that staircase and saw the
+door open, and guessed you'd be returning soon.  But it seemed you
+went ROUND BY THE CORRIDOR," he said, glancing curiously at the
+consul's face.  "Did you meet the crowd?"
+
+"Yes, Jock!  WHAT does it all mean?"
+
+MacSpadden laughed.  "It means that I was just in time to keep
+Kilbraithie from chucking Delfosse down that ravine; but they both
+scooted when they saw me.  By Jove!  I don't know which was the
+most frightened."
+
+"But," said the consul slowly, "what was it all about, Jock?"
+
+"Some gallantry of that d----d Frenchman, who's trying to do some
+woman-stalking up here, and jealousy of Kilcraithie's, who's just
+got enough of his forbears' blood in him to think nothing of
+sticking three inches of his dirk in the wame of the man that
+crosses him.  But I say," continued Jock, leaning easily back in
+his chair, "YOU ought to know something of all this.  This room,
+old man, was used as a sort of rendezvous, having two outlets,
+don't you see, when they couldn't get at the summer-house below.
+By Jove! they both had it in turns--Kilcraithie and the Frenchman--
+until Lady Macquoich got wind of something, swept them out, and put
+YOU in it."
+
+The consul rose and approached his friend with a grave face.
+"Jock, I DO know something about it--more about it than any one
+thinks.  You and I are old friends.  Shall I tell you WHAT I know?"
+
+Jock's handsome face became a trifle paler, but his frank, clear
+eyes rested steadily on the consul's.
+
+"Go on!" he said.
+
+"I know that this flower which I am wearing was the signal for the
+rendezvous this evening," said the consul slowly, "and this paper,"
+taking it from his pocket, "contained the time of the meeting,
+written in the lady's own hand.  I know who she was, for I saw her
+face as plainly as I see yours now, by the light of the same fire;
+it was as pale, but not as frank as yours, old man.  That is what
+I know.  But I know also what people THINK they know, and for
+that reason I put that paper in YOUR hand.  It is yours--your
+vindication--your REVENGE, if you choose.  Do with it what you
+like."
+
+Jock, with unchanged features and undimmed eyes, took the paper
+from the consul's hand, without looking at it.
+
+"I may do with it what I like?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He was about to drop it into the fire, but the consul stayed his
+hand.
+
+"Are you not going to LOOK at the handwriting first?"
+
+There was a moment of silence.  Jock raised his eyes with a sudden
+flash of pride in them and said, "No!"
+
+The friends stood side by side, grasping each other's hands, as the
+burning paper leaped up the chimney in a vanishing flame.
+
+"Do you think you have done quite right, Jock, in view of any
+scandal you may hear?"
+
+"Quite!  You see, old man, I know MY WIFE--but I don't think that
+Deeside KNOWS HIS."
+
+
+
+THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA.
+
+
+Dick Bracy gazed again at the Hacienda de los Osos, and hesitated.
+There it lay--its low whitewashed walls looking like a quartz
+outcrop of the long lazy hillside--unmistakably hot, treeless, and
+staring broadly in the uninterrupted Californian sunlight.  Yet he
+knew that behind those blistering walls was a reposeful patio,
+surrounded by low-pitched verandas; that the casa was full of roomy
+corridors, nooks, and recesses, in which lurked the shadows of a
+century, and that hidden by the further wall was a lonely old
+garden, hoary with gnarled pear-trees, and smothered in the spice
+and dropping leaves of its baking roses.  He knew that, although
+the unwinking sun might glitter on its red tiles, and the unresting
+trade winds whistle around its angles, it always kept one unvarying
+temperature and untroubled calm, as if the dignity of years had
+triumphed over the changes of ephemeral seasons.  But would others
+see it with his eyes?  Would his practical, housekeeping aunt, and
+his pretty modern cousin--
+
+"Well, what do you say?  Speak the word, and you can go into it
+with your folks to-morrow.  And I reckon you won't want to take
+anything either, for you'll find everything there--just as the old
+Don left it.  I don't want it; the land is good enough for me; I
+shall have my vaqueros and rancheros to look after the crops and
+the cattle, and they won't trouble you, for their sheds and barns
+will be two miles away.  You can stay there as long as you like,
+and go when you choose.  You might like to try it for a spell; it's
+all the same to me.  But I should think it the sort of thing a man
+like you would fancy, and it seems the right thing to have you
+there.  Well,--what shall it be?  Is it a go?"
+
+Dick knew that the speaker was sincere.  It was an offer perfectly
+characteristic of his friend, the Western millionaire, who had
+halted by his side.  And he knew also that the slow lifting of his
+bridle-rein, preparatory to starting forward again, was the
+business-like gesture of a man who wasted no time even over his
+acts of impulsive liberality.  In another moment he would dismiss
+the unaccepted offer from his mind--without concern and without
+resentment.
+
+"Thank you--it is a go," said Dick gratefully.
+
+Nevertheless, when he reached his own little home in the outskirts
+of San Francisco that night, he was a trifle nervous in confiding
+to the lady, who was at once his aunt and housekeeper, the fact
+that he was now the possessor of a huge mansion in whose patio
+alone the little eight-roomed villa where they had lived
+contentedly might be casually dropped.  "You see, Aunt Viney," he
+hurriedly explained, "it would have been so ungrateful to have
+refused him--and it really was an offer as spontaneous as it was
+liberal.  And then, you see, we need occupy only a part of the
+casa."
+
+"And who will look after the other part?" said Aunt Viney grimly.
+"That will have to be kept tidy, too; and the servants for such a
+house, where in heaven are they to come from?  Or do they go with
+it?"
+
+"No," said Dick quickly; "the servants left with their old master,
+when Ringstone bought the property.  But we'll find servants enough
+in the neighborhood--Mexican peons and Indians, you know."
+
+Aunt Viney sniffed.  "And you'll have to entertain--if it's a
+big house.  There are all your Spanish neighbors.  They'll be
+gallivanting in and out all the time."
+
+"They won't trouble us," he returned, with some hesitation.  "You
+see, they're furious at the old Don for disposing of his lands to
+an American, and they won't be likely to look upon the strangers in
+the new place as anything but interlopers."
+
+"Oh, that is it, is it?" ejaculated Aunt Viney, with a slight
+puckering of her lips.  "I thought there was SOMETHING."
+
+"My dear aunt," said Dick, with a sudden illogical heat which he
+tried to suppress; "I don't know what you mean by 'it' and
+'something.'  Ringstone's offer was perfectly unselfish; he
+certainly did not suppose that I would be affected, any more than
+he would he, by the childish sentimentality of these people over a
+legitimate, every-day business affair.  The old Don made a good
+bargain, and simply sold the land he could no longer make
+profitable with his obsolete method of farming, his gang of idle
+retainers, and his Noah's Ark machinery, to a man who knew how to
+use steam reapers, and hired sensible men to work on shares."
+Nevertheless he was angry with himself for making any explanation,
+and still more disturbed that he was conscious of a certain feeling
+that it was necessary.
+
+"I was thinking," said Aunt Viney quietly, "that if we invited
+anybody to stay with us--like Cecily, for example--it might be
+rather dull for her if we had no neighbors to introduce her to."
+
+Dick started; he had not thought of this.  He had been greatly
+influenced by the belief that his pretty cousin, who was to make
+them a visit, would like the change and would not miss excitement.
+"We can always invite some girls down there and make our own
+company," he answered cheerfully.  Nevertheless, he was dimly
+conscious that he had already made an airy castle of the old
+hacienda, in which Cecily and her aunt moved ALONE.  It was to
+Cecily that he would introduce the old garden, it was Cecily whom
+he would accompany through the dark corridors, and with whom he
+would lounge under the awnings of the veranda.  All this innocently,
+and without prejudice or ulterior thought.  He was not yet in love
+with the pretty cousin whom he had seen but once or twice during
+the past few years, but it was a possibility not unpleasant to
+occasionally contemplate.  Yet it was equally possible that she
+might yearn for lighter companionship and accustomed amusement; that
+the passion-fringed garden and shadow-haunted corridor might be
+profaned by hoydenish romping and laughter, or by that frivolous
+flirtation which, in others, he had always regarded as commonplace
+and vulgar.
+
+Howbeit, at the end of two weeks he found himself regularly
+installed in the Hacienda de los Osos.  His little household,
+re-enforced by his cousin Cecily and three peons picked up at Los
+Pinos, bore their transplantation with a singular equanimity
+that seemed to him unaccountable.  Then occurred one of those
+revelations of character with which Nature is always ready to trip
+up merely human judgment.  Aunt Viney, an unrelenting widow of calm
+but unshaken Dutch prejudices, high but narrow in religious belief,
+merged without a murmur into the position of chatelaine of this
+unconventional, half-Latin household.  Accepting the situation
+without exaltation or criticism, placid but unresponsive amidst the
+youthful enthusiasm of Dick and Cecily over each quaint detail, her
+influence was, nevertheless, felt throughout the lingering length
+and shadowy breadth of the strange old house.  The Indian and
+Mexican servants, at first awed by her practical superiority,
+succumbed to her half-humorous toleration of their incapacity, and
+became her devoted slaves.  Dick was astonished, and even Cecily
+was confounded.  "Do you know," she said confidentially to her
+cousin, "that when that brown Conchita thought to please Aunty by
+wearing white stockings instead of going round as usual with her
+cinnamon-colored bare feet in yellow slippers--which I was afraid
+would be enough to send Aunty into conniption fits--she actually
+told her, very quietly, to take them off, and dress according to
+her habits and her station?  And you remember that in her big,
+square bedroom there is a praying-stool and a ghastly crucifix, at
+least three feet long, in ivory and black, quite too human for
+anything?  Well, when I offered to put them in the corridor, she
+said I 'needn't trouble'; that really she hadn't noticed them, and
+they would do very well where they were.  You'd think she had been
+accustomed to this sort of thing all her life.  It's just too sweet
+of her, any way, even if she's shamming.  And if she is, she just
+does it to the life too, and could give those Spanish women points.
+Why, she rode en pillion on Manuel's mule, behind him, holding on
+by his sash, across to the corral yesterday; and you should have
+seen Manuel absolutely scrape the ground before her with his
+sombrero when he let her down."  Indeed, her tall, erect figure in
+black lustreless silk, appearing in a heavily shadowed doorway, or
+seated in a recessed window, gave a new and patrician dignity to
+the melancholy of the hacienda.  It was pleasant to follow this
+quietly ceremonious shadow gliding along the rose garden at
+twilight, halting at times to bend stiffly over the bushes, garden-
+shears in hand, and carrying a little basket filled with withered
+but still odorous petals, as if she were grimly gathering the faded
+roses of her youth.
+
+It was also probable that the lively Cecily's appreciation of her
+aunt might have been based upon another virtue of that lady--
+namely, her exquisite tact in dealing with the delicate situation
+evolved from the always possible relations of the two cousins.  It
+was not to be supposed that the servants would fail to invest the
+young people with Southern romance, and even believe that the
+situation was prearranged by the aunt with a view to their eventual
+engagement.  To deal with the problem openly, yet without startling
+the consciousness of either Dick or Cecily; to allow them the
+privileges of children subject to the occasional restraints of
+childhood; to find certain household duties for the young girl that
+kept them naturally apart until certain hours of general relaxation;
+to calmly ignore the meaning of her retainers' smiles and glances,
+and yet to good-humoredly accept their interest as a kind of feudal
+loyalty, was part of Aunt Viney's deep diplomacy. Cecily enjoyed her
+freedom and companionship with Dick, as she enjoyed the novel
+experiences of the old house, the quaint, faded civilization that it
+represented, and the change and diversion always acceptable to
+youth.  She did not feel the absence of other girls of her own age;
+neither was she aware that through this omission she was spared the
+necessity of a confidante or a rival--both equally revealing to her
+thoughtless enjoyment.  They took their rides together openly and
+without concealment, relating their adventures afterwards to Aunt
+Viney with a naivete and frankness that dreamed of no suppression.
+The city-bred Cecily, accustomed to horse exercise solely as an
+ornamental and artificial recreation, felt for the first time the
+fearful joy of a dash across a league-long plain, with no onlookers
+but the scattered wild horses she might startle up to scurry before
+her, or race at her side.  Small wonder that, mounted on her fiery
+little mustang, untrammeled by her short gray riding-habit, free as
+the wind itself that blew through the folds of her flannel blouse,
+with her brown hair half-loosed beneath her slouched felt hat, she
+seemed to Dick a more beautiful and womanly figure than the stiff
+buckramed simulation of man's angularity and precision he had seen
+in the parks.  Perhaps one day she detected this consciousness too
+plainly in his persistent eyes.  Up to that moment she had only
+watched the glittering stretches of yellow grain, in which occasional
+wind-shorn evergreen oaks stood mid-leg deep like cattle in water,
+the distant silhouette of the Sierras against the steely blue, or
+perhaps the frankly happy face of the good-looking young fellow at
+her side.  But it seemed to her now that an intruder had entered the
+field--a stranger before whom she was impelled to suddenly fly--
+half-laughingly, half-affrightedly--the anxious Dick following
+wonderingly at her mustang's heels, until she reached the gates of
+the hacienda, where she fell into a gravity and seriousness that
+made him wonder still more.  He did not dream that his guileless
+cousin had discovered, with a woman's instinct, a mysterious invader
+who sought to share their guileless companionship, only to absorb it
+entirely, and that its name was--love!
+
+The next day she was so greatly preoccupied with her household
+duties that she could not ride with him.  Dick felt unaccountably
+lost.  Perhaps this check to their daily intercourse was no less
+accelerating to his feelings than the vague motive that induced
+Cecily to withhold herself.  He moped in the corridor; he rode out
+alone, bullying his mustang in proportion as he missed his cousin's
+gentle companionship, and circling aimlessly, but still unconsciously,
+around the hacienda as a centre of attraction.  The sun at last was
+sinking to the accompaniment of a rising wind, which seemed to blow
+and scatter its broad rays over the shimmering plain until every
+slight protuberance was burnished into startling brightness; the
+shadows of the short green oaks grew disproportionally long, and all
+seemed to point to the white-walled casa.  Suddenly he started and
+instantly reined up.
+
+The figure of a young girl, which he had not before noticed, was
+slowly moving down the half-shadowed lane made by the two walls of
+the garden and the corral.  Cecily!  Perhaps she had come out to
+meet him.  He spurred forward; but, as he came nearer, he saw that
+the figure and its attire were surely not hers.  He reined up again
+abruptly, mortified at his disappointment, and a little ashamed
+lest he should have seemed to have been following an evident
+stranger.  He vaguely remembered, too, that there was a trail to
+the high road, through a little swale clothed with myrtle and thorn
+bush which he had just passed, and that she was probably one of
+his reserved and secluded neighbors--indeed, her dress, in that
+uncertain light, looked half Spanish.  This was more confusing,
+since his rashness might have been taken for an attempt to force an
+acquaintance.  He wheeled and galloped towards the front of the
+casa as the figure disappeared at the angle of the wall.
+
+"I don't suppose you ever see any of our neighbors?" said Dick to
+his aunt casually.
+
+"I really can't say," returned the lady with quiet equanimity.
+"There were some extraordinary-looking foreigners on the road to
+San Gregorio yesterday.  Manuel, who was driving me, may have known
+who they were--he is a kind of Indian Papist himself, you know--but
+I didn't.  They might have been relations of his, for all I know."
+
+At any other time Dick would have been amused at this serene
+relegation of the lofty Estudillos and Peraltas to the caste of the
+Indian convert, but he was worried to think that perhaps Cecily was
+really being bored by the absence of neighbors.  After dinner, when
+they sought the rose garden, he dropped upon the little lichen-
+scarred stone bench by her side.  It was still warm from the sun;
+the hot musk of the roses filled the air; the whole garden,
+shielded from the cool evening trade winds by its high walls,
+still kept the glowing memory of the afternoon sunshine.  Aunt
+Viney, with her garden basket on her arm, moved ghost-like among
+the distant bushes.
+
+"I hope you are not getting bored here?" he said, after a slight
+inconsequent pause.
+
+"Does that mean that YOU are?" she returned, raising her mischievous
+eyes to his.
+
+"No; but I thought you might find it lonely, without neighbors."
+
+"I stayed in to-day," she said, femininely replying to the unasked
+question, "because I fancied Aunt Viney might think it selfish of
+me to leave her alone so much."
+
+"But YOU are not lonely?"
+
+Certainly not!  The young lady was delighted with the whole place,
+with the quaint old garden, the mysterious corridors, the restful
+quiet of everything, the picture of dear Aunt Viney--who was just
+the sweetest soul in the world--moving about like the genius of the
+casa.  It was such a change to all her ideas, she would never
+forget it.  It was so thoughtful of him, Dick, to have given them
+all that pleasure.
+
+"And the rides," continued Dick, with the untactful pertinacity of
+the average man at such moments--"you are not tired of THEM?"
+
+No; she thought them lovely.  Such freedom and freshness in the
+exercise; so different from riding in the city or at watering-
+places, where it was one-half show, and one was always thinking of
+one's habit or one's self.  One quite forgot one's self on that
+lovely plain--with everything so far away, and only the mountains
+to look at in the distance.  Nevertheless she did not lift her eyes
+from the point of the little slipper which had strayed beyond her
+skirt.
+
+Dick was relieved, but not voluble; he could only admiringly follow
+the curves of her pretty arms and hands, clasped lightly in her
+lap, down to the point of the little slipper.  But even that
+charming vanishing point was presently withdrawn--possibly through
+some instinct--for the young lady had apparently not raised her
+eyes.
+
+"I'm so glad you like it," said Dick earnestly, yet with a nervous
+hesitation that made his speech seem artificial to his own ears.
+"You see I--that is--I had an idea that you might like an
+occasional change of company.  It's a great pity we're not on
+speaking terms with one of these Spanish families.  Some of the
+men, you know, are really fine fellows, with an old-world courtesy
+that is very charming."
+
+He was surprised to see that she had lifted her head suddenly, with
+a quick look that however changed to an amused and half coquettish
+smile.
+
+"I am finding no fault with my present company," she said demurely,
+dropping her head and eyelids until a faint suffusion seemed to
+follow the falling lashes over her cheek.  "I don't think YOU ought
+to undervalue it."
+
+If he had only spoken then!  The hot scent of the roses hung
+suspended in the air, which seemed to be hushed around them in mute
+expectancy; the shadows which were hiding Aunt Viney from view were
+also closing round the bench where they sat.  He was very near her;
+he had only to reach out his hand to clasp hers, which lay idly in
+her lap.  He felt himself glowing with a strange emanation; he even
+fancied that she was turning mechanically towards him, as a flower
+might turn towards the fervent sunlight.  But he could not speak;
+he could scarcely collect his thoughts, conscious though he was of
+the absurdity of his silence.  What was he waiting for? what did he
+expect?  He was not usually bashful, he was no coward; there was
+nothing in her attitude to make him hesitate to give expression to
+what he believed was his first real passion.  But he could do
+nothing.  He even fancied that his face, turned towards hers, was
+stiffening into a vacant smile.
+
+The young girl rose.  "I think I heard Aunt Viney call me," she
+said constrainedly, and made a hesitating step forward.  The spell
+which had held Dick seemed to be broken suddenly; he stretched
+forth his arm to detain her.  But the next step appeared to carry
+her beyond his influence; and it was even with a half movement of
+rejection that she quickened her pace and disappeared down the
+path.  Dick fell back dejectedly into his seat, yet conscious of a
+feeling of RELIEF that bewildered him.
+
+But only for a moment.  A recollection of the chance that he had
+impotently and unaccountably thrown away returned to him.  He
+tried to laugh, albeit with a glowing cheek, over the momentary
+bashfulness which he thought had overtaken him, and which must have
+made him ridiculous in her eyes.  He even took a few hesitating
+steps in the direction of the path where she had disappeared.  The
+sound of voices came to his ear, and the light ring of Cecily's
+laughter.  The color deepened a little on his cheek; he re-entered
+the house and went to his room.
+
+The red sunset, still faintly showing through the heavily recessed
+windows to the opposite wall, made two luminous aisles through the
+darkness of the long low apartment.  From his easy-chair he watched
+the color drop out of the sky, the yellow plain grow pallid and
+seem to stretch itself to infinite rest; then a black line began to
+deepen and creep towards him from the horizon edge; the day was
+done.  It seemed to him a day lost.  He had no doubt now but that
+he loved his cousin, and the opportunity of telling her so--of
+profiting by her predisposition of the moment--had passed.  She
+would remember herself, she would remember his weak hesitancy, she
+would despise him.  He rose and walked uneasily up and down.  And
+yet--and it disgusted him with himself still more--he was again
+conscious of the feeling of relief he had before experienced.  A
+vague formula, "It's better as it is," "Who knows what might have
+come of it?" he found himself repeating, without reason and without
+resignation.
+
+Ashamed even of his seclusion, he rose to join the little family
+circle, which now habitually gathered around a table on the veranda
+of the patio under the rays of a swinging lamp to take their
+chocolate.  To his surprise the veranda was empty and dark; a light
+shining from the inner drawing-room showed him his aunt in her
+armchair reading, alone.  A slight thrill ran over him: Cecily
+might be still in the garden!  He noiselessly passed the drawing-
+room door, turned into a long corridor, and slipped through a
+grating in the wall into the lane that separated it from the
+garden.  The gate was still open; a few paces brought him into the
+long alley of roses.  Their strong perfume--confined in the high,
+hot walls--at first made him giddy.  This was followed by an
+inexplicable languor; he turned instinctively towards the stone
+bench and sank upon it.  The long rows of calla lilies against the
+opposite wall looked ghostlike in the darkness, and seemed to have
+turned their white faces towards him.  Then he fancied that ONE had
+detached itself from the rank and was moving away.  He looked
+again: surely there was something gliding along the wall!  A quick
+tremor of anticipation passed over him.  It was Cecily, who had
+lingered in the garden--perhaps to give him one more opportunity!
+He rose quickly, and stepped towards the apparition, which had now
+plainly resolved itself into a slight girlish figure; it slipped on
+beneath the trees; he followed quickly--his nervous hesitancy had
+vanished before what now seemed to be a half-coy, half-coquettish
+evasion of him.  He called softly," Cecily!" but she did not heed
+him; he quickened his pace--she increased hers.  They were both
+running.  She reached the angle of the wall where the gate opened
+upon the road.  Suddenly she stopped, as if intentionally, in the
+clear open space before it.  He could see her distinctly.  The lace
+mantle slipped from her head and shoulders.  It was NOT Cecily!
+
+But it was a face so singularly beautiful and winsome that he was
+as quickly arrested.  It was a woman's deep, passionate eyes and
+heavy hair, joined to a childish oval of cheek and chin, an
+infantine mouth, and a little nose whose faintly curved outline
+redeemed the lower face from weakness and brought it into charming
+harmony with the rest.  A yellow rose was pinned in the lustrous
+black hair above the little ear; a yellow silk shawl or mantle,
+which had looked white in the shadows, was thrown over one shoulder
+and twisted twice or thrice around the plump but petite bust.  The
+large black velvety eyes were fixed on his in half wonderment,
+half amusement; the lovely lips were parted in half astonishment
+and half a smile.  And yet she was like a picture, a dream,--
+a materialization of one's most fanciful imaginings,--like anything,
+in fact, but the palpable flesh and blood she evidently was,
+standing only a few feet before him, whose hurried breath he could
+see even now heaving her youthful breast.
+
+His own breath appeared suspended, although his heart beat rapidly
+as he stammered out: "I beg your pardon--I thought--"  He stopped
+at the recollection that this was the SECOND time he had followed
+her.
+
+She did not speak, although her parted lips still curved with their
+faint coy smile.  Then she suddenly lifted her right hand, which
+had been hanging at her side, clasping some long black object like
+a stick.  Without any apparent impulse from her fingers, the stick
+slowly seemed to broaden in her little hand into the segment of an
+opening disk, that, lifting to her face and shoulders, gradually
+eclipsed the upper part of her figure, until, mounting higher, the
+beautiful eyes and the yellow rose of her hair alone remained
+above--a large unfurled fan!  Then the long eyelashes drooped, as
+if in a mute farewell, and they too disappeared as the fan was
+lifted higher.  The half-hidden figure appeared to glide to the
+gateway, lingered for an instant, and vanished.  The astounded Dick
+stepped quickly into the road, but fan and figure were swallowed up
+in the darkness.
+
+Amazed and bewildered, he stood for a moment, breathless and
+irresolute.  It was no doubt the same stranger that he had seen
+before.  But WHO was she, and what was she doing there?  If she
+were one of their Spanish neighbors, drawn simply by curiosity to
+become a trespasser, why had she lingered to invite a scrutiny that
+would clearly identify her?  It was not the escapade of that giddy
+girl which the lower part of her face had suggested, for such a one
+would have giggled and instantly flown; it was not the deliberate
+act of a grave woman of the world, for its sequel was so purposeless.
+Why had she revealed herself to HIM alone?  Dick felt himself
+glowing with a half-shamed, half-secret pleasure.  Then he
+remembered Cecily, and his own purpose in coming into the garden.
+He hurriedly made a tour of the walks and shrubbery, ostentatiously
+calling her, yet seeing, as in a dream, only the beautiful eyes of
+the stranger still before him, and conscious of an ill-defined
+remorse and disloyalty he had never known before.  But Cecily was
+not there; and again he experienced the old sensation of relief!
+
+He shut the garden gate, crossed the road, and found the grille
+just closing behind a slim white figure.  He started, for it was
+Cecily; but even in his surprise he was conscious of wondering how
+he could have ever mistaken the stranger for her.  She appeared
+startled too; she looked pale and abstracted.  Could she have been
+a witness of his strange interview?
+
+Her first sentence dispelled the idea.
+
+"I suppose you were in the garden?" she said, with a certain
+timidity.  "I didn't go there--it seemed so close and stuffy--but
+walked a little down the lane."
+
+A moment before he would have eagerly told her his adventure; but
+in the presence of her manifest embarrassment his own increased.
+He concluded to tell her another time.  He murmured vaguely that he
+had been looking for her in the garden, yet he had a flushing sense
+of falsehood in his reserve; and they passed silently along the
+corridor and entered the patio together.  She lit the hanging lamp
+mechanically.  She certainly WAS pale; her slim hand trembled
+slightly.  Suddenly her eyes met his, a faint color came into her
+cheek, and she smiled.  She put up her hand with a girlish gesture
+towards the back of her head.
+
+"What are you looking at?  Is my hair coming down?"
+
+"No," hesitated Dick, "but--I--thought--you were looking just a
+LITTLE pale."
+
+An aggressive ray slipped into her blue eyes.
+
+"Strange!  I thought YOU were.  Just now at the grille you looked
+as if the roses hadn't agreed with you."
+
+They both laughed, a little nervously, and Conchita brought the
+chocolate.  When Aunt Viney came from the drawing-room she found
+the two young people together, and Cecily in a gale of high
+spirits.
+
+She had had SUCH a wonderfully interesting walk, all by herself,
+alone on the plain.  It was really so queer and elfish to find
+one's self where one could see nothing above or around one anywhere
+but stars.  Stars above one, to right and left of one, and some so
+low down they seemed as if they were picketed on the plain.  It was
+so odd to find the horizon line at one's very feet, like a castaway
+at sea.  And the wind! it seemed to move one this way and that way,
+for one could not see anything, and might really be floating in the
+air.  Only once she thought she saw something, and was quite
+frightened.
+
+"What was it?" asked Dick quickly.
+
+"Well, it was a large black object; but--it turned out only to be a
+horse."
+
+She laughed, although she had evidently noticed her cousin's
+eagerness, and her own eyes had a nervous brightness.
+
+"And where was Dick all this while?" asked Aunt Viney quietly.
+
+Cecily interrupted, and answered for him briskly.  "Oh, he was
+trying to make attar of rose of himself in the garden.  He's still
+stupefied by his own sweetness."
+
+"If this means," said Aunt Viney, with matter-of-fact precision,
+"that you've been gallivanting all alone, Cecily, on that common
+plain, where you're likely to meet all sorts of foreigners and
+tramps and savages, and Heaven knows what other vermin, I shall set
+my face against a repetition of it.  If you MUST go out, and Dick
+can't go with you--and I must say that even you and he going out
+together there at night isn't exactly the kind of American
+Christian example to set to our neighbors--you had better get
+Concepcion to go with you and take a lantern."
+
+"But there is nobody one meets on the plain--at least, nobody
+likely to harm one," protested Cecily.
+
+"Don't tell ME," said Aunt Viney decidedly; "haven't I seen all
+sorts of queer figures creeping along by the brink after nightfall
+between San Gregorio and the next rancho?  Aren't they always
+skulking backwards and forwards to mass and aguardiente?"
+
+"And I don't know why WE should set any example to our neighbors.
+We don't see much of them, or they of us."
+
+"Of course not," returned Aunt Viney; "because all proper Spanish
+young ladies are shut up behind their grilles at night.  You don't
+see THEM traipsing over the plain in the darkness, WITH or WITHOUT
+cavaliers!  Why, Don Rafael would lock one of HIS sisters up in a
+convent and consider her disgraced forever, if he heard of it."
+
+Dick felt his cheeks burning; Cecily slightly paled.  Yet both said
+eagerly together: "Why, what do YOU know about it, Aunty?"
+
+"A great deal," returned Aunt Viney quietly, holding her tatting up
+to the light and examining the stitches with a critical eye.  "I've
+got my eyes about me, thank heaven! even if my ears don't understand
+the language.  And there's a great deal, my dears, that you young
+people might learn from these Papists."
+
+"And do you mean to say," continued Dick, with a glowing cheek and
+an uneasy smile, "that Spanish girls don't go out alone?"
+
+"No young LADY goes out without her duenna," said Aunt Viney
+emphatically.  "Of course there's the Concha variety, that go out
+without even stockings."
+
+As the conversation flagged after this, and the young people once
+or twice yawned nervously, Aunt Viney thought they had better go to
+bed.
+
+But Dick did not sleep.  The beautiful face beamed out again from
+the darkness of his room; the light that glimmered through his
+deep-set curtainless windows had an odd trick of bringing out
+certain hanging articles, or pieces of furniture, into a
+resemblance to a mantled figure.  The deep, velvety eyes, fringed
+with long brown lashes, again looked into his with amused,
+childlike curiosity.  He scouted the harsh criticisms of Aunt
+Viney, even while he shrank from proving to her her mistake in the
+quality of his mysterious visitant.  Of course she was a lady--far
+superior to any of her race whom he had yet met.  Yet how should he
+find WHO she was?  His pride and a certain chivalry forbade his
+questioning the servants--before whom it was the rule of the
+household to avoid all reference to their neighbors.  He would make
+the acquaintance of the old padre--perhaps HE might talk.  He would
+ride early along the trail in the direction of the nearest rancho,--
+Don Jose Amador's,--a thing he had hitherto studiously refrained
+from doing.  It was three miles away.  She must have come that
+distance, but not ALONE.  Doubtless she had kept her duenna in
+waiting in the road.  Perhaps it was she who had frightened Cecily.
+Had Cecily told ALL she had seen?  Her embarrassed manner certainly
+suggested more than she had told.  He felt himself turning hot with
+an indefinite uneasiness.  Then he tried to compose himself.  After
+all, it was a thing of the past.  The fair unknown had bribed the
+duenna for once, no doubt--had satisfied her girlish curiosity--she
+would not come again!  But this thought brought with it such a
+sudden sense of utter desolation, a deprivation so new and
+startling, that it frightened him.  Was his head turned by the
+witcheries of some black-eyed schoolgirl whom he had seen but once?
+Or--he felt his cheeks glowing in the darkness--was it really a
+case of love at first sight, and she herself had been impelled by
+the same yearning that now possessed him?  A delicious satisfaction
+followed, that left a smile on his lips as if it had been a kiss.
+He knew now why he had so strangely hesitated with Cecily.  He had
+never really loved her--he had never known what love was till now!
+
+He was up early the next morning, skimming the plain on the back of
+"Chu Chu," before the hacienda was stirring.  He did not want any
+one to suspect his destination, and it was even with a sense of
+guilt that he dashed along the swale in the direction of the Amador
+rancho.  A few vaqueros, an old Digger squaw carrying a basket, two
+little Indian acolytes on their way to mass passed him.  He was
+surprised to find that there were no ruts of carriage wheels within
+three miles of the casa, and evidently no track for carriages
+through the swale.  SHE must have come on HORSEBACK.  A broader
+highway, however, intersected the trail at a point where the low
+walls of the Amador rancho came in view.  Here he was startled by
+the apparition of an old-fashioned family carriage drawn by two
+large piebald mules.  But it was unfortunately closed.  Then, with
+a desperate audacity new to his reserved nature, he ranged close
+beside it, and even stared in the windows.  A heavily mantled old
+woman, whose brown face was in high contrast to her snow-white
+hair, sat in the back seat.  Beside her was a younger companion,
+with the odd blonde hair and blue eyes sometimes seen in the higher
+Castilian type.  For an instant the blue eyes caught his, half-
+coquettishly.  But the girl was NOT at all like his mysterious
+visitor, and he fell, discomfited, behind.
+
+He had determined to explain his trespass on the grounds of his
+neighbor, if questioned, by the excuse that he was hunting a
+strayed mustang.  But his presence, although watched with a cold
+reserve by the few peons who were lounging near the gateway,
+provoked no challenge from them; and he made a circuit of the low
+adobe walls, with their barred windows and cinnamon-tiled roofs,
+without molestation--but equally without satisfaction.  He felt he
+was a fool for imagining that he would see her in that way.  He
+turned his horse towards the little Mission half a mile away.
+There he had once met the old padre, who spoke a picturesque but
+limited English; now he was only a few yards ahead of him, just
+turning into the church.  The padre was pleased to see Don Ricardo;
+it was an unusual thing for the Americanos, he observed, to be up
+so early: for himself, he had his functions, of course.  No, the
+ladies that the caballero had seen had not been to mass!  They
+were Donna Maria and her daughter, going to San Gregorio.  They
+comprised ALL the family at the rancho,--there were none others,
+unless the caballero, of a possibility, meant Donna Inez, a maiden
+aunt of sixty--an admirable woman, a saint on earth!  He trusted
+that he would find his estray; there was no doubt a mark upon it,
+otherwise the plain was illimitable; there were many horses--the
+world was wide!
+
+Dick turned his face homewards a little less adventurously, and it
+must be confessed, with a growing sense of his folly.  The keen,
+dry morning air brushed away his fancies of the preceding night;
+the beautiful eyes that had lured him thither seemed to flicker
+and be blown out by its practical breath.  He began to think
+remorsefully of his cousin, of his aunt,--of his treachery to that
+reserve which the little alien household had maintained towards
+their Spanish neighbors.  He found Aunt Viney and Cecily at
+breakfast--Cecily, he thought, looking a trifle pale.  Yet (or was
+it only his fancy?) she seemed curious about his morning ride.  And
+he became more reticent.
+
+"You must see a good many of our neighbors when you are out so
+early?"
+
+"Why?" he asked shortly, feeling his color rise.
+
+"Oh, because--because we don't see them at any other time."
+
+"I saw a very nice chap--I think the best of the lot," he began,
+with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed
+on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre!  There were also two
+women in a queer coach."
+
+"Donna Maria Amador, and Dona Felipa Peralta--her daughter by her
+first husband," said Aunt Viney quietly.  "When you see the horses
+you think it's a circus; when you look inside the carriage you KNOW
+it's a funeral."
+
+Aunt Viney did not condescend to explain how she had acquired her
+genealogical knowledge of her neighbor's family, but succeeded in
+breaking the restraint between the young people.  Dick proposed a
+ride in the afternoon, which was cheerfully accepted by Cecily.
+Their intercourse apparently recovered its old frankness and
+freedom, marred only for a moment when they set out on the plain.
+Dick, really to forget his preoccupation of the morning, turned his
+horse's head AWAY from the trail, to ride in another direction; but
+Cecily oddly, and with an exhibition of caprice quite new to her,
+insisted upon taking the old trail.  Nevertheless they met nothing,
+and soon became absorbed in the exercise.  Dick felt something of
+his old tenderness return to this wholesome, pretty girl at his
+side; perhaps he betrayed it in his voice, or in an unconscious
+lingering by her bridle-rein, but she accepted it with a naive
+reserve which he naturally attributed to the effect of his own
+previous preoccupation.  He bore it so gently, however, that it
+awakened her interest, and, possibly, her pique.  Her reserve
+relaxed, and by the time they returned to the hacienda they had
+regained something of their former intimacy.  The dry, incisive
+breath of the plains swept away the last lingering remnants of
+yesterday's illusions.  Under this frankly open sky, in this clear
+perspective of the remote Sierras, which admitted no fanciful
+deception of form or distance--there remained nothing but a strange
+incident--to be later explained or forgotten.  Only he could not
+bring himself to talk to HER about it.
+
+After dinner, and a decent lingering for coffee on the veranda,
+Dick rose, and leaning half caressingly, half mischievously, over
+his aunt's rocking-chair, but with his eyes on Cecily, said:--
+
+"I've been deeply considering, dear Aunty, what you said last
+evening of the necessity of our offering a good example to our
+neighbors.  Now, although Cecily and I are cousins, yet, as I am
+HEAD of the house, lord of the manor, and padron, according to the
+Spanish ideas I am her recognised guardian and protector, and it
+seems to me it is my positive DUTY to accompany her if she wishes
+to walk out this evening."
+
+A momentary embarrassment--which, however, changed quickly into an
+answering smile to her cousin--came over Cecily's face.  She turned
+to her aunt.
+
+"Well, don't go too far," said that lady quietly.
+
+When they closed the grille behind them and stepped into the lane,
+Cecily shot a quick glance at her cousin.
+
+"Perhaps you'd rather walk in the garden?"
+
+"I?  Oh, no," he answered honestly.  "But"--he hesitated--"would
+you?"
+
+"Yes," she said faintly.
+
+He impulsively offered his arm; her slim hand slipped lightly
+through it and rested on his sleeve.  They crossed the lane
+together, and entered the garden.  A load appeared to be lifted
+from his heart; the moment seemed propitious,--here was a chance to
+recover his lost ground, to regain his self-respect and perhaps his
+cousin's affection.  By a common instinct, however, they turned to
+the right, and AWAY from the stone bench, and walked slowly down
+the broad allee.
+
+They talked naturally and confidingly of the days when they had met
+before, of old friends they had known and changes that had crept
+into their young lives; they spoke affectionately of the grim,
+lonely, but self-contained old woman they had just left, who had
+brought them thus again together.  Cecily talked of Dick's studies,
+of the scientific work on which he was engaged, that was to bring
+him, she was sure, fame and fortune!  They talked of the thoughtful
+charm of the old house, of its quaint old-world flavor.  They spoke
+of the beauty of the night, the flowers and the stars, in whispers,
+as one is apt to do--as fearing to disturb a super-sensitiveness in
+nature.
+
+They had come out later than on the previous night; and the moon,
+already risen above the high walls of the garden, seemed a vast
+silver shield caught in the interlacing tops of the old pear-trees,
+whose branches crossed its bright field like dark bends or bars.
+As it rose higher, it began to separate the lighter shrubbery, and
+open white lanes through the olive-trees.  Damp currents of air,
+alternating with drier heats, on what appeared to be different
+levels, moved across the whole garden, or gave way at times to a
+breathless lull and hush of everything, in which the long rose
+alley seemed to be swooning in its own spices.  They had reached
+the bottom of the garden, and had turned, facing the upper moonlit
+extremity and the bare stone bench.  Cecily's voice faltered, her
+hand leaned more heavily on his arm, as if she were overcome by the
+strong perfume.  His right hand began to steal towards hers.  But
+she had stopped; she was trembling.
+
+"Go on," she said in a half whisper.  "Leave me a moment; I'll join
+you afterwards."
+
+"You are ill, Cecily!  It's those infernal flowers!" said Dick
+earnestly.  "Let me help you to the bench."
+
+"No--it's nothing.  Go on, please.  Do!  Will you go!"
+
+She spoke with imperiousness, unlike herself.  He walked on
+mechanically a dozen paces and turned.  She had disappeared.  He
+remembered there was a smaller gate opening upon the plain near
+where they had stopped.  Perhaps she had passed through that.
+He continued on, slowly, towards the upper end of the garden,
+occasionally turning to await her return.  In this way he gradually
+approached the stone bench.  He was facing about to continue his
+walk, when his heart seemed to stop beating.  The beautiful visitor
+of last night was sitting alone on the bench before him!
+
+She had not been there a moment before; he could have sworn it.
+Yet there was no illusion now of shade or distance.  She was
+scarcely six feet from him, in the bright moonlight.  The whole of
+her exquisite little figure was visible, from her lustrous hair
+down to the tiny, black satin, low-quartered slipper, held as by
+two toes.  Her face was fully revealed; he could see even the few
+minute freckles, like powdered allspice, that heightened the pale
+satin sheen of her beautifully rounded cheek; he could detect even
+the moist shining of her parted red lips, the white outlines of her
+little teeth, the length of her curved lashes, and the meshes of
+the black lace veil that fell from the yellow rose above her ear to
+the black silk camisa; he noted even the thick yellow satin saya,
+or skirt, heavily flounced with black lace and bugles, and that it
+was a different dress from that worn on the preceding night, a
+half-gala costume, carried with the indescribable air of a woman
+looking her best and pleased to do so: all this he had noted,
+drawing nearer and nearer, until near enough to forget it all and
+drown himself in the depths of her beautiful eyes.  For they were
+no longer childlike and wondering: they were glowing with expectancy,
+anticipation--love!
+
+He threw himself passionately on the bench beside her.  Yet, even
+if he had known her language, he could not have spoken.  She leaned
+towards him; their eyes seemed to meet caressingly, as in an
+embrace.  Her little hand slipped from the yellow folds of her
+skirt to the bench.  He eagerly seized it.  A subtle thrill ran
+through his whole frame.  There was no delusion here; it was flesh
+and blood, warm, quivering, and even tightening round his own.  He
+was about to carry it to his lips, when she rose and stepped
+backwards.  He pressed eagerly forward.  Another backward step
+brought her to the pear-tree, where she seemed to plunge into its
+shadow.  Dick Bracy followed--and the same shadow seemed to fold
+them in its embrace.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+He did not return to the veranda and chocolate that evening, but
+sent word from his room that he had retired, not feeling well.
+
+Cecily, herself a little nervously exalted, corroborated the fact
+of his indisposition by telling Aunt Viney that the close odors of
+the rose garden had affected them both.  Indeed, she had been
+obliged to leave before him.  Perhaps in waiting for her return--
+and she really was not well enough to go back--he was exposed to
+the night air too long.  She was very sorry.
+
+Aunt Viney heard this with a slight contraction of her brows and a
+renewed scrutiny of her knitting; and, having satisfied herself by
+a personal visit to Dick's room that he was not alarmingly ill, set
+herself to find out what was really the matter with the young
+people; for there was no doubt that Cecily was in some vague way as
+disturbed and preoccupied as Dick.  He rode out again early the
+next morning, returning to his studies in the library directly
+after breakfast; and Cecily was equally reticent, except when, to
+Aunt Viney's perplexity, she found excuses for Dick's manner on the
+ground of his absorption in his work, and that he was probably
+being bored by want of society.  She proposed that she should ask
+an old schoolfellow to visit them.
+
+"It would give Dick a change of ideas, and he would not be
+perpetually obliged to look so closely after me."  She blushed
+slightly under Aunt Viney's gaze, and added hastily, "I mean, of
+course, he would not feel it his DUTY."
+
+She even induced her aunt to drive with her to the old mission
+church, where she displayed a pretty vivacity and interest in the
+people they met, particularly a few youthful and picturesque
+caballeros.  Aunt Viney smiled gravely.  Was the poor child
+developing an unlooked-for coquetry, or preparing to make the
+absent-minded Dick jealous?  Well, the idea was not a bad one.  In
+the evening she astonished the two cousins by offering to accompany
+them into the garden--a suggestion accepted with eager and effusive
+politeness by each, but carried out with great awkwardness by the
+distrait young people later.  Aunt Viney clearly saw that it was
+not her PRESENCE that was required.  In this way two or three days
+elapsed without apparently bringing the relations of Dick and
+Cecily to any more satisfactory conclusion.  The diplomatic Aunt
+Viney confessed herself puzzled.
+
+One night it was very warm; the usual trade winds had died away
+before sunset, leaving an unwonted hush in sky and plain.  There
+was something so portentous in this sudden withdrawal of that rude
+stimulus to the otherwise monotonous level, that a recurrence of
+such phenomena was always known as "earthquake weather."  The wild
+cattle moved uneasily in the distance without feeding; herds of
+unbroken mustangs approached the confines of the hacienda in vague
+timorous squads.  The silence and stagnation of the old house was
+oppressive, as if the life had really gone out of it at last; and
+Aunt Viney, after waiting impatiently for the young people to come
+in to chocolate, rose grimly, set her lips together, and went out
+into the lane.  The gate of the rose garden opposite was open.  She
+walked determinedly forward and entered.
+
+In that doubly stagnant air the odor of the roses was so suffocating
+and overpowering that she had to stop to take breath.  The whole
+garden, except a near cluster of pear-trees, was brightly
+illuminated by the moonlight.  No one was to be seen along the
+length of the broad allee, strewn an inch deep with scattered red
+and yellow petals--colorless in the moonbeams.  She was turning
+away, when Dick's familiar voice, but with a strange accent of
+entreaty in it, broke the silence.  It seemed to her vaguely to come
+from within the pear-tree shadow.
+
+"But we must understand one another, my darling!  Tell me all.
+This suspense, this mystery, this brief moment of happiness, and
+these hours of parting and torment, are killing me!"
+
+A slight cough broke from Aunt Viney.  She had heard enough--she
+did not wish to hear more.  The mystery was explained.  Dick loved
+Cecily; the coyness or hesitation was not on HIS part.  Some
+idiotic girlish caprice, quite inconsistent with what she had
+noticed at the mission church, was keeping Cecily silent, reserved,
+and exasperating to her lover.  She would have a talk with the
+young lady, without revealing the fact that she had overheard them.
+She was perhaps a little hurt that affairs should have reached this
+point without some show of confidence to her from the young people.
+Dick might naturally be reticent--but Cecily!
+
+She did not even look towards the pear-tree, but turned and walked
+stiffly out of the gate.  As she was crossing the lane she suddenly
+started back in utter dismay and consternation!  For Cecily, her
+niece,--in her own proper person,--was actually just coming OUT OF
+THE HOUSE!
+
+Aunt Viney caught her wrist.  "Where have you been?" she asked
+quickly.
+
+"In the house," stammered Cecily, with a frightened face.
+
+"You have not been in the garden with Dick?" continued Aunt Viney
+sharply--yet with a hopeless sense of the impossibility of the
+suggestion.
+
+"No, I was not even going there.  I thought of just strolling down
+the lane."
+
+The girl's accents were truthful; more than that, she absolutely
+looked relieved by her aunt's question.  "Do you want me, Aunty?"
+she added quickly.
+
+"Yes--no.  Run away, then--but don't go far."
+
+At any other time Aunt Viney might have wondered at the eagerness
+with which Cecily tripped away; now she was only anxious to get rid
+of her.  She entered the casa hurriedly.
+
+"Send Josefa to me at once," she said to Manuel.
+
+Josefa, the housekeeper,--a fat Mexican woman,--appeared.  "Send
+Concha and the other maids here."  They appeared, mutely wondering.
+Aunt Viney glanced hurriedly over them--they were all there--a few
+comely, but not too attractive, and all stupidly complacent.  "Have
+you girls any friends here this evening--or are you expecting any?"
+she demanded.  Of a surety, no!--as the padrona knew--it was not
+night for church.  "Very well," returned Aunt Viney; "I thought I
+heard your voices in the garden; understand, I want no gallivanting
+there.  Go to bed."
+
+She was relieved!  Dick certainly was not guilty of a low intrigue
+with one of the maids.  But who and what was she?
+
+Dick was absent again from chocolate; there was unfinished work to
+do.  Cecily came in later, just as Aunt Viney was beginning to be
+anxious.  Had she appeared distressed or piqued by her cousin's
+conduct, Aunt Viney might have spoken; but there was a pretty color
+on her cheek--the result, she said, of her rapid walking, and the
+fresh air; did Aunt Viney know that a cool breeze had just risen?--
+and her delicate lips were wreathed at times in a faint retrospective
+smile.  Aunt Viney stared; certainly the girl was not pining!  What
+young people were made of now-a-days she really couldn't conceive.
+She shrugged her shoulders and resumed her tatting.
+
+Nevertheless, as Dick's unfinished studies seemed to have whitened
+his cheek and impaired his appetite the next morning, she announced
+her intention of driving out towards the mission alone.  When she
+returned at luncheon she further astonished the young people by
+casually informing them they would have Spanish visitors to dinner--
+namely, their neighbors, Donna Maria Amador and the Dona Felipa
+Peralta.
+
+Both faces were turned eagerly towards her; both said almost in the
+same breath, "But, Aunt Viney! you don't know them!  However did
+you--  What does it all mean?"
+
+"My dears," said Aunt Viney placidly, "Mrs. Amador and I have
+always nodded to each other, and I knew they were only waiting for
+the slightest encouragement.  I gave it, and they're coming."
+
+It was difficult to say whether Cecily's or Dick's face betrayed
+the greater delight and animation.  Aunt Viney looked from the one
+to the other.  It seemed as if her attempt at diversion had been
+successful.
+
+"Tell us all about it, you dear, clever, artful Aunty!" said Cecily
+gayly.
+
+"There's nothing whatever to tell, my love!  It seems, however,
+that the young one, Dona Felipa, has seen Dick, and remembers him."
+She shot a keen glance at Dick, but was obliged to admit that the
+rascal's face remained unchanged.  "And I wanted to bring a
+cavalier for YOU, dear, but Don Jose's nephew isn't at home now."
+Yet here, to her surprise, Cecily was faintly blushing.
+
+Early in the afternoon the piebald horses and dark brown chariot of
+the Amadors drew up before the gateway.  The young people were
+delighted with Dona Felipa, and thought her blue eyes and tawny
+hair gave an added piquancy to her colorless satin skin and
+otherwise distinctively Spanish face and figure.  Aunt Viney, who
+entertained Donna Maria, was nevertheless watchful of the others;
+but failed to detect in Dick's effusive greeting, or the Dona's
+coquettish smile of recognition, any suggestion of previous
+confidences.  It was rather to Cecily that Dona Felipa seemed to be
+characteristically exuberant and childishly feminine.  Both mother
+and stepdaughter spoke a musical infantine English, which the
+daughter supplemented with her eyes, her eyebrows, her little brown
+fingers, her plump shoulders, a dozen charming intonations of
+voice, and a complete vocabulary in her active and emphatic fan.
+
+The young lady went over the house with Cecily curiously, as if
+recalling some old memories.  "Ah, yes, I remember it--but it was
+long ago and I was very leetle--you comprehend, and I have not
+arrive mooch when the old Don was alone.  It was too--too--what you
+call melank-oaly.  And the old man have not make mooch to himself
+of company."
+
+"Then there were no young people in the house, I suppose?" said
+Cecily, smiling.
+
+"No--not since the old man's father lif.  Then there were TWO.  It
+is a good number, this two, eh?"  She gave a single gesture, which
+took in, with Cecily, the distant Dick, and with a whole volume of
+suggestion in her shoulders, and twirling fan, continued: "Ah! two
+sometime make one--is it not?  But not THEN in the old time--ah,
+no!  It is a sad story.  I shall tell it to you some time, but not
+to HIM."
+
+But Cecily's face betrayed no undue bashful consciousness, and she
+only asked, with a quiet smile, "Why not to--to my cousin?"
+
+"Imbecile!" responded that lively young lady.
+
+After dinner the young people proposed to take Dona Felipa into
+the rose garden, while Aunt Viney entertained Donna Maria on the
+veranda.  The young girl threw up her hands with an affectation of
+horror.  "Santa Maria!--in the rose garden?  After the Angelus, you
+and him?  Have you not heard?"
+
+But here Donna Maria interposed.  Ah! Santa Maria!  What was all
+that!  Was it not enough to talk old woman's gossip and tell
+vaqueros tales at home, without making uneasy the strangers?  She
+would have none of it.  "Vamos!"
+
+Nevertheless Dona Felipa overcame her horror of the rose garden at
+infelicitous hours, so far as to permit herself to be conducted by
+the cousins into it, and to be installed like a rose queen on the
+stone bench, while Dick and Cecily threw themselves in submissive
+and imploring attitudes at her little feet.  The young girl looked
+mischievously from one to the other.
+
+"It ees very pret-ty, but all the same I am not a rose: I am what
+you call a big goose-berry!  Eh--is it not?"
+
+The cousins laughed, but without any embarrassed consciousness.
+"Dona Felipa knows a sad story of this house," said Cecily; "but
+she will not tell it before you, Dick."
+
+Dick, looking up at the coquettish little figure, with Heaven knows
+what OTHER memories in his mind, implored and protested.
+
+"Ah! but this little story--she ees not so mooch sad of herself as
+she ees str-r-r-ange!"  She gave an exaggerated little shiver under
+her lace shawl, and closed her eyes meditatively.
+
+"Go on," said Dick, smiling in spite of his interested expectation.
+
+Dona Felipa took her fan in both hands, spanning her knees, leaned
+forward, and after a preliminary compressing of her lips and
+knitting of her brows, said:--
+
+"It was a long time ago.  Don Gregorio he have his daughter Rosita
+here, and for her he will fill all thees rose garden and gif to
+her; for she like mooch to lif with the rose.  She ees very pret-ty.
+You shall have seen her picture here in the casa.  No?  It have
+hang under the crucifix in the corner room, turn around to the
+wall--WHY, you shall comprehend when I have made finish thees
+story.  Comes to them here one day Don Vincente, Don Gregorio's
+nephew, to lif when his father die.  He was yong, a pollio--same as
+Rosita.  They were mooch together; they have make lofe.  What will
+you?--it ees always the same.  The Don Gregorio have comprehend;
+the friends have all comprehend; in a year they will make marry.
+Dona Rosita she go to Monterey to see his family.  There ees an
+English warship come there; and Rosita she ees very gay with the
+officers, and make the flirtation very mooch.  Then Don Vincente he
+is onhappy, and he revenge himself to make lofe with another.  When
+Rosita come back it is very miserable for them both, but they say
+nossing.  The warship he have gone away; the other girl Vincente he
+go not to no more.  All the same, Rosita and Vincente are very
+triste, and the family will not know what to make.  Then Rosita she
+is sick and eat nossing, and walk to herself all day in the rose
+garden, until she is as white and fade away as the rose.  And
+Vincente he eat nossing, but drink mooch aguardiente.  Then he have
+fever and go dead.  And Rosita she have fainting and fits; and one
+day they have look for her in the rose garden, and she is not!  And
+they poosh and poosh in the ground for her, and they find her with
+so mooch rose-leaves--so deep--on top of her.  SHE has go dead.  It
+is a very sad story, and when you hear it you are very, very mooch
+dissatisfied."
+
+It is to be feared that the two Americans were not as thrilled by
+this sad recital as the fair narrator had expected, and even Dick
+ventured to point out that those sort of things happened also to
+his countrymen, and were not peculiar to the casa.
+
+"But you said that there was a terrible sequel," suggested Cecily
+smilingly: "tell us THAT.  Perhaps Mr. Bracy may receive it a
+little more politely."
+
+An expression of superstitious gravity, half real, half simulated,
+came over Dona Felipa's face, although her vivacity of gesticulation
+and emphasis did not relax.  She cast a hurried glance around her,
+and leaned a little forward towards the cousins.
+
+"When there are no more young people in the casa because they are
+dead," she continued, in a lower voice, "Don Gregorio he is very
+melank-oaly, and he have no more company for many years.  Then
+there was a rodeo near the hacienda, and there came five or six
+caballeros to stay with him for the feast.  Notabilimente comes
+then Don Jorge Martinez.  He is a bad man--so weeked--a Don Juan
+for making lofe to the ladies.  He lounge in the garden, he smoke
+his cigarette, he twist the moustache--so!  One day he came in, and
+he laugh and wink so and say, 'Oh, the weeked, sly Don Gregorio!
+He have hid away in the casa a beautiful, pret-ty girl, and he will
+nossing say.'  And the other caballeros say, 'Mira! what is this?
+there is not so mooch as one young lady in the casa.'  And Don
+Jorge he wink, and he say, 'Imbeciles! pigs!'  And he walk in the
+garden and twist his moustache more than ever.  And one day,
+behold! he walk into the casa, very white and angry, and he swear
+mooch to himself; and he orders his horse, and he ride away, and
+never come back no more, never-r-r!  And one day another caballero,
+Don Esteban Briones, he came in, and say, 'Hola! Don Jorge has
+forgotten his pret-ty girl: he have left her over on the garden
+bench.  Truly I have seen.'  And they say, 'We will too.'  And they
+go, and there is nossing.  And they say, 'Imbecile and pig!'  But
+he is not imbecile and pig; for he has seen, and Don Jorge has
+seen; and why?  For it is not a girl, but what you call her--a
+ghost!  And they will that Don Esteban should make a picture of
+her--a design; and he make one.  And old Don Gregorio he say,
+'madre de Dios! it is Rosita'--the same that hung under the
+crucifix in the big room."
+
+"And is that all?" asked Dick, with a somewhat pronounced laugh,
+but a face that looked quite white in the moonlight.
+
+"No, it ees NOT all.  For when Don Gregorio got himself more
+company another time--it ees all yonge ladies, and my aunt she is
+invite too; for she was yonge then, and she herself have tell to me
+this:--
+
+"One night she is in the garden with the other girls, and when they
+want to go in the casa one have say, 'Where is Francisca Pacheco?
+Look, she came here with us, and now she is not.'  Another one say,
+'She have conceal herself to make us affright.'  And my aunt she
+say, 'I will go seek that I shall find her.'  And she go.  And when
+she came to the pear-tree, she heard Francisca's voice, and it say
+to some one she see not, 'Fly! vamos! some one have come.'  And
+then she come at the moment upon Francisca, very white and
+trembling, and--alone.  And Francisca she have run away and say
+nossing, and shut herself in her room.  And one of the other girls
+say: 'It is the handsome caballero with the little black moustache
+and sad white face that I have seen in the garden that make this.
+It is truly that he is some poor relation of Don Gregorio, or some
+mad kinsman that he will not we should know.'  And my aunt ask Don
+Gregorio; for she is yonge.  And he have say: 'What silly fool ees
+thees?  There is not one caballero here, but myself.'  And when the
+other young girl have tell to him how the caballero look, he say:
+'The saints save us!  I cannot more say.  It ees Don Vincente, who
+haf gone dead.'  And he cross himself, and--  But look!  Madre de
+Dios! Mees Cecily, you are ill--you are affrighted.  I am a
+gabbling fool!  Help her, Don Ricardo; she is falling!"
+
+But it was too late: Cecily had tried to rise to her feet, had
+staggered forward and fallen in a faint on the bench.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+Dick did not remember how he helped to carry the insensible Cecily
+to the casa, nor what explanation he had given to the alarmed
+inmates of her sudden attack.  He recalled vaguely that something
+had been said of the overpowering perfumes of the garden at that
+hour, that the lively Felipa had become half hysterical in her
+remorseful apologies, and that Aunt Viney had ended the scene by
+carrying Cecily into her own room, where she presently recovered a
+still trembling but reticent consciousness.  But the fainting of
+his cousin and the presence of a real emergency had diverted his
+imagination from the vague terror that had taken possession of it,
+and for the moment enabled him to control himself.  With a
+desperate effort he managed to keep up a show of hospitable
+civility to his Spanish friends until their early departure.  Then
+he hurried to his own room.  So bewildered and horrified he had
+become, and a prey to such superstitious terrors, that he could not
+at that moment bring himself to the test of looking for the picture
+of the alleged Rosita, which might still be hanging in his aunt's
+room.  If it were really the face of his mysterious visitant--in
+his present terror--he felt that his reason might not stand the
+shock.  He would look at it to-morrow, when he was calmer!  Until
+then he would believe that the story was some strange coincidence
+with what must have been his hallucination, or a vulgar trick to
+which he had fallen a credulous victim.  Until then he would
+believe that Cecily's fright had been only the effect of Dona
+Felipa's story, acting upon a vivid imagination, and not a terrible
+confirmation of something she had herself seen.  He threw himself,
+without undressing, upon his bed in a benumbing agony of doubt.
+
+The gentle opening of his door and the slight rustle of a skirt
+started him to his feet with a feeling of new and overpowering
+repulsion.  But it was a familiar figure that he saw in the long
+aisle of light which led from his recessed window, whose face was
+white enough to have been a spirit's, and whose finger was laid
+upon its pale lips, as it softly closed the door behind it.
+
+"Cecily!"
+
+"Hush!" she said, in a distracted whisper: "I felt I must see you
+to-night.  I could not wait until day--no, not another hour!  I
+could not speak to you before them.  I could not go into that
+dreadful garden again, or beyond the walls of this house.  Dick, I
+want to--I MUST tell you something!  I would have kept it from
+every one--from you most of all!  I know you will hate me, and
+despise me; but, Dick, listen!"--she caught his hand despairingly,
+drawing it towards her--"that girl's awful story was TRUE!"  She
+threw his hand away.
+
+"And you have seen HER!" said Dick, frantically.  "Good God!"
+
+The young girl's manner changed.  "HER!" she said, half scornfully,
+"you don't suppose I believe THAT story?  No.  I--I--don't blame
+me, Dick,--I have seen HIM."
+
+"Him?"
+
+She pushed him nervously into a seat, and sat down beside him.  In
+the half light of the moon, despite her pallor and distraction, she
+was still very human, womanly, and attractive in her disorder.
+
+"Listen to me, Dick.  Do you remember one afternoon, when we were
+riding together, I got ahead of you, and dashed off to the casa.
+I don't know what possessed me, or WHY I did it.  I only know I
+wanted to get home quickly, and get away from you.  No, I was not
+angry, Dick, at YOU; it did not seem to be THAT; I--well, I confess
+I was FRIGHTENED--at something, I don't know what.  When I wheeled
+round into the lane, I saw--a man--a young gentleman standing by
+the garden-wall.  He was very picturesque-looking, in his red sash,
+velvet jacket, and round silver buttons; handsome, but oh, so pale
+and sad!  He looked at me very eagerly, and then suddenly drew
+back, and I heard you on Chu Chu coming at my heels.  You must have
+seen him and passed him too, I thought: but when you said nothing
+of it, I--I don't know why, Dick, I said nothing of it too.  Don't
+speak!" she added, with a hurried gesture: "I know NOW why you said
+nothing,--YOU had not seen him."
+
+She stopped, and put back a wisp of her disordered chestnut hair.
+
+"The next time was the night YOU were so queer, Dick, sitting on
+that stone bench.  When I left you--I thought you didn't care to
+have me stay--I went to seek Aunt Viney at the bottom of the
+garden.  I was very sad, but suddenly I found myself very gay,
+talking and laughing with her in a way I could not account for.
+All at once, looking up, I saw HIM standing by the little gate,
+looking at me very sadly.  I think I would have spoken to Aunt
+Viney, but he put his finger to his lips--his hand was so slim and
+white, quite like a hand in one of those Spanish pictures--and
+moved slowly backwards into the lane, as if he wished to speak with
+ME only--out there.  I know I ought to have spoken to Aunty; I knew
+it was wrong what I did, but he looked so earnest, so appealing, so
+awfully sad, Dick, that I slipped past Aunty and went out of the
+gate.  Just then she missed me, and called.  He made a kind of
+despairing gesture, raising his hand Spanish fashion to his lips,
+as if to say good-night.  You'll think me bold, Dick, but I was so
+anxious to know what it all meant, that I gave a glance behind to
+see if Aunty was following, before I should go right up to him and
+demand an explanation.  But when I faced round again, he was gone!
+I walked up and down the lane and out on the plain nearly half an
+hour, seeking him.  It was strange, I know; but I was not a bit
+FRIGHTENED, Dick--that was so queer--but I was only amazed and
+curious."
+
+The look of spiritual terror in Dick's face here seemed to give way
+to a less exalted disturbance, as he fixed his eyes on Cecily's.
+
+"You remember I met YOU coming in: you seemed so queer then that I
+did not say anything to you, for I thought you would laugh at me,
+or reproach me for my boldness; and I thought, Dick, that--that--
+that--this person wished to speak only to ME."  She hesitated.
+
+"Go on," said Dick, in a voice that had also undergone a singular
+change.
+
+The chestnut head was bent a little lower, as the young girl
+nervously twisted her fingers in her lap.
+
+"Then I saw him again--and--again," she went on hesitatingly.  "Of
+course I spoke to him, to--to--find out what he wanted; but you
+know, Dick, I cannot speak Spanish, and of course he didn't
+understand me, and didn't reply."
+
+"But his manner, his appearance, gave you some idea of his
+meaning?" said Dick suddenly.
+
+Cecily's head drooped a little lower.  "I thought--that is, I
+fancied I knew what he meant."
+
+"No doubt," said Dick, in a voice which, but for the superstitious
+horror of the situation, might have impressed a casual listener as
+indicating a trace of human irony.
+
+But Cecily did not seem to notice it.  "Perhaps I was excited that
+night, perhaps I was bolder because I knew you were near me; but I
+went up to him and touched him!  And then, Dick!--oh, Dick! think
+how awful--"
+
+Again Dick felt the thrill of superstitious terror creep over him.
+"And he vanished!" he said hoarsely.
+
+"No--not at once," stammered Cecily, with her head almost buried in
+her lap; "for he--he--he took me in his arms and--"
+
+"And kissed you?" said Dick, springing to his feet, with every
+trace of his superstitious agony gone from his indignant face.  But
+Cecily, without raising her head, caught at his gesticulating hand.
+
+"Oh, Dick, Dick! do you think he really did it?  The horror of it,
+Dick! to be kissed by a--a--man who has been dead a hundred years!"
+
+"A hundred fiddlesticks!" said Dick furiously.  "We have been
+deceived!  No," he stammered, "I mean YOU have been deceived--
+insulted!"
+
+"Hush!  Aunty will hear you," murmured the girl despairingly.
+
+Dick, who had thrown away his cousin's hand, caught it again, and
+dragged her along the aisle of light to the window.  The moon shone
+upon his flushed and angry face.
+
+"Listen!" he said; "you have been fooled, tricked--infamously
+tricked by these people, and some confederate, whom--whom I shall
+horsewhip if I catch.  The whole story is a lie!"
+
+"But you looked as if you believed it--about the girl," said
+Cecily; "you acted so strangely.  I even thought, Dick,--sometimes--
+you had seen HIM."
+
+Dick shuddered, trembled; but it is to be feared that the lower,
+more natural human element in him triumphed.
+
+"Nonsense!" he stammered; "the girl was a foolish farrago of
+absurdities, improbable on the face of things, and impossible to
+prove.  But that infernal, sneaking rascal was flesh and blood."
+
+It seemed to him to relieve the situation and establish his own
+sanity to combat one illusion with another.  Cecily had already
+been deceived--another lie wouldn't hurt her.  But, strangely
+enough, he was satisfied that Cecily's visitant was real, although
+he still had doubts about his own.
+
+"Then you think, Dick, it was actually some real man?" she said
+piteously.  "Oh, Dick, I have been so foolish!"
+
+Foolish she no doubt had been; pretty she certainly was, sitting
+there in her loosened hair, and pathetic, appealing earnestness.
+Surely the ghostly Rosita's glances were never so pleading as these
+actual honest eyes behind their curving lashes.  Dick felt a
+strange, new-born sympathy of suffering, mingled tantalizingly with
+a new doubt and jealousy, that was human and stimulating.
+
+"Oh, Dick, what are WE to do?"
+
+The plural struck him as deliciously sweet and subtle.  Had they
+really been singled out for this strange experience, or still
+stranger hallucination?  His arm crept around her; she gently
+withdrew from it.
+
+"I must go now," she murmured; "but I couldn't sleep until I told
+you all.  You know, Dick, I have no one else to come to, and it
+seemed to me that YOU ought to know it first.  I feel better for
+telling you.  You will tell me to-morrow what you think we ought to
+do."
+
+They reached the door, opening it softly.  She lingered for a
+moment on the threshold.
+
+"Tell me, Dick" (she hesitated), "if that--that really were a
+spirit, and not a real man,--you don't think that--that kiss" (she
+shuddered) "could do me harm!"
+
+He shuddered too, with a strange and sympathetic consciousness
+that, happily, she did not even suspect.  But he quickly recovered
+himself and said, with something of bitterness in his voice, "I
+should be more afraid if it really were a man."
+
+"Oh, thank you, Dick!"
+
+Her lips parted in a smile of relief; the color came faintly back
+to her cheek.
+
+A wild thought crossed his fancy that seemed an inspiration.  They
+would share the risks alike.  He leaned towards her: their lips met
+in their first kiss.
+
+"Oh, Dick!"
+
+"Dearest!"
+
+"I think--we are saved."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It wasn't at all like that."
+
+He smiled as she flew swiftly down the corridor.  Perhaps he
+thought so too.
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+No picture of the alleged Rosita was ever found.  Dona Felipa,
+when the story was again referred to, smiled discreetly, but was
+apparently too preoccupied with the return of Don Jose's absent
+nephew for further gossiping visits to the hacienda; and Dick and
+Cecily, as Mr. and Mrs. Bracy, would seem to have survived--if they
+never really solved--the mystery of the Hacienda de los Osos.  Yet
+in the month of June, when the moon is high, one does not sit on
+the stone bench in the rose garden after the last stroke of the
+Angelus.
+
+
+
+CHU CHU.
+
+
+I do not believe that the most enthusiastic lover of that "useful
+and noble animal," the horse, will claim for him the charm of
+geniality, humor, or expansive confidence.  Any creature who will
+not look you squarely in the eye--whose only oblique glances are
+inspired by fear, distrust, or a view to attack; who has no way of
+returning caresses, and whose favorite expression is one of head-
+lifting disdain, may be "noble" or "useful," but can be hardly said
+to add to the gayety of nations.  Indeed it may be broadly stated
+that, with the single exception of gold-fish, of all animals kept
+for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of
+exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless.  I deem these
+general remarks necessary to prove that my unreciprocated affection
+for "Chu Chu" was not purely individual or singular.  And I may add
+that to these general characteristics she brought the waywardness
+of her capricious sex.
+
+She came to me out of the rolling dust of an emigrant wagon, behind
+whose tailboard she was gravely trotting.  She was a half-broken
+colt--in which character she had at different times unseated
+everybody in the train--and, although covered with dust, she had a
+beautiful coat, and the most lambent gazelle-like eyes I had ever
+seen.  I think she kept these latter organs purely for ornament--
+apparently looking at things with her nose, her sensitive ears,
+and, sometimes, even a slight lifting of her slim near fore-leg.
+On our first interview I thought she favored me with a coy glance,
+but as it was accompanied by an irrelevant "Look out!" from her
+owner, the teamster, I was not certain.  I only know that after
+some conversation, a good deal of mental reservation, and the
+disbursement of considerable coin, I found myself standing in the
+dust of the departing emigrant-wagon with one end of a forty-foot
+riata in my hand, and Chu Chu at the other.
+
+I pulled invitingly at my own end, and even advanced a step or two
+towards her.  She then broke into a long disdainful pace, and began
+to circle round me at the extreme limit of her tether.  I stood
+admiring her free action for some moments--not always turning with
+her, which was tiring--until I found that she was gradually winding
+herself up ON ME!  Her frantic astonishment when she suddenly found
+herself thus brought up against me was one of the most remarkable
+things I ever saw, and nearly took me off my legs.  Then when she
+had pulled against the riata until her narrow head and prettily
+arched neck were on a perfectly straight line with it, she as
+suddenly slackened the tension and condescended to follow me, at an
+angle of her own choosing.  Sometimes it was on one side of me,
+sometimes on the other.  Even then the sense of my dreadful
+contiguity apparently would come upon her like a fresh discovery,
+and she would become hysterical.  But I do not think that she
+really SAW me.  She looked at the riata and sniffed it disparagingly,
+she pawed some pebbles that were near me tentatively with her small
+hoof; she started back with a Robinson Crusoe-like horror of my
+footprints in the wet gully, but my actual personal presence she
+ignored.  She would sometimes pause, with her head thoughtfully
+between her fore-legs, and apparently say: "There is some
+extraordinary presence here: animal, vegetable, or mineral--I can't
+make out which--but it's not good to eat, and I loathe and detest
+it."
+
+When I reached my house in the suburbs, before entering the "fifty
+vara" lot inclosure, I deemed it prudent to leave her outside while
+I informed the household of my purchase; and with this object I
+tethered her by the long riata to a solitary sycamore which stood
+in the centre of the road, the crossing of two frequented
+thoroughfares.  It was not long, however, before I was interrupted
+by shouts and screams from that vicinity, and on returning thither
+I found that Chu Chu, with the assistance of her riata, had
+securely wound up two of my neighbors to the tree, where they
+presented the appearance of early Christian martyrs.  When I
+released them it appeared that they had been attracted by Chu Chu's
+graces, and had offered her overtures of affection, to which she
+had characteristically rotated with this miserable result.  I led
+her, with some difficulty, warily keeping clear of the riata, to
+the inclosure, from whose fence I had previously removed several
+bars.  Although the space was wide enough to have admitted a troop
+of cavalry she affected not to notice it, and managed to kick away
+part of another section on entering.  She resisted the stable for
+some time, but after carefully examining it with her hoofs, and an
+affectedly meek outstretching of her nose, she consented to
+recognize some oats in the feed-box--without looking at them--and
+was formally installed.  All this while she had resolutely ignored
+my presence.  As I stood watching her she suddenly stopped eating;
+the same reflective look came over her.  "Surely I am not mistaken,
+but that same obnoxious creature is somewhere about here!" she
+seemed to say, and shivered at the possibility.
+
+It was probably this which made me confide my unreciprocated
+affection to one of my neighbors--a man supposed to be an authority
+on horses, and particularly of that wild species to which Chu Chu
+belonged.  It was he who, leaning over the edge of the stall
+where she was complacently and, as usual, obliviously munching,
+absolutely dared to toy with a pet lock of hair which she wore over
+the pretty star on her forehead.  "Ye see, captain," he said with
+jaunty easiness, "hosses is like wimmen; ye don't want ter use any
+standoffishness or shyness with THEM; a stiddy but keerless sort o'
+familiarity, a kind o' free but firm handlin', jess like this, to
+let her see who's master"--
+
+We never clearly knew HOW it happened; but when I picked up my
+neighbor from the doorway, amid the broken splinters of the stall
+rail, and a quantity of oats that mysteriously filled his hair and
+pockets, Chu Chu was found to have faced around the other way, and
+was contemplating her forelegs, with her hind ones in the other
+stall.  My neighbor spoke of damages while he was in the stall, and
+of physical coercion when he was out of it again.  But here Chu
+Chu, in some marvelous way, righted herself, and my neighbor
+departed hurriedly with a brimless hat and an unfinished sentence.
+
+My next intermediary was Enriquez Saltello--a youth of my own age,
+and the brother of Consuelo Saltello, whom I adored.  As a Spanish
+Californian he was presumed, on account of Chu Chu's half-Spanish
+origin, to have superior knowledge of her character, and I even
+vaguely believed that his language and accent would fall familiarly
+on her ear.  There was the drawback, however, that he always
+preferred to talk in a marvelous English, combining Castilian
+precision with what he fondly believed to be Californian slang.
+
+"To confer then as to thees horse, which is not--observe me--a
+Mexican plug!  Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that.  She is of
+Castilian stock--believe me and strike me dead!  I will myself at
+different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her
+as to the assault, and why she should do thees thing.  When she is
+of the exercise I will also accost and restrain her.  Remain
+tranquil, my friend!  When a few days shall pass much shall be
+changed, and she will be as another.  Trust your oncle to do thees
+thing!  Comprehend me?  Everything shall be lovely, and the goose
+hang high!"
+
+Conformably with this he "overlooked" her the next day, with a
+cigarette between his yellow-stained finger-tips, which made
+her sneeze in a silent pantomimic way, and certain Spanish
+blandishments of speech which she received with more complacency.
+But I don't think she ever even looked at him.  In vain he
+protested that she was the "dearest" and "littlest" of his "little
+loves"--in vain he asserted that she was his patron saint, and
+that it was his soul's delight to pray to her; she accepted the
+compliment with her eyes fixed upon the manger.  When he had
+exhausted his whole stock of endearing diminutives, adding a few
+playful and more audacious sallies, she remained with her head
+down, as if inclined to meditate upon them.  This he declared was
+at least an improvement on her former performances.  It may have
+been my own jealousy, but I fancied she was only saying to herself,
+"Gracious! can there be TWO of them?"
+
+"Courage and patience, my friend," he said, as we were slowly
+quitting the stable.  "Thees horse is yonge, and has not yet the
+habitude of the person.  To-morrow, at another season, I shall give
+to her a foundling" ("fondling," I have reason to believe, was the
+word intended by Enriquez)--"and we shall see.  It shall be as easy
+as to fall away from a log.  A leetle more of this chin music which
+your friend Enriquez possesses, and some tapping of the head and
+neck, and you are there.  You are ever the right side up.  Houp la!
+But let us not precipitate this thing.  The more haste, we do not
+so much accelerate ourselves."
+
+He appeared to be suiting the action to the word as he lingered in
+the doorway of the stable.  "Come on," I said.
+
+"Pardon," he returned, with a bow that was both elaborate and
+evasive, "but you shall yourself precede me--the stable is YOURS."
+
+"Oh, come along!" I continued impatiently.  To my surprise he
+seemed to dodge back into the stable again.  After an instant he
+reappeared.
+
+"Pardon! but I am re-strain!  Of a truth, in this instant I am
+grasp by the mouth of thees horse in the coat-tail of my dress!
+She will that I should remain.  It would seem"--he disappeared
+again--"that"--he was out once more--"the experiment is a sooccess!
+She reciprocate!  She is, of a truth, gone on me.  It is lofe!"--a
+stronger pull from Chu Chu here sent him in again--"but"--he was
+out now triumphantly with half his garment torn away--"I shall
+coquet."
+
+Nothing daunted, however, the gallant fellow was back next day with
+a Mexican saddle, and attired in the complete outfit of a vaquero.
+Overcome though HE was by heavy deerskin trousers, open at the side
+from the knees down, and fringed with bullion buttons, an enormous
+flat sombrero, and a stiff, short embroidered velvet jacket, I was
+more concerned at the ponderous saddle and equipments intended for
+the slim Chu Chu.  That these would hide and conceal her beautiful
+curves and contour, as well as overweight her, seemed certain;
+that she would resist them all to the last seemed equally clear.
+Nevertheless, to my surprise, when she was led out, and the saddle
+thrown deftly across her back, she was passive.  Was it possible
+that some drop of her old Spanish blood responded to its clinging
+embrace?  She did not either look at it nor smell it.  But when
+Enriquez began to tighten the "cinch" or girth a more singular
+thing occurred.  Chu Chu visibly distended her slender barrel to
+twice its dimensions; the more he pulled the more she swelled,
+until I was actually ashamed of her.  Not so Enriquez.  He smiled
+at us, and complacently stroked his thin moustache.
+
+"Eet is ever so!  She is the child of her grandmother!  Even when
+you shall make saddle thees old Castilian stock, it will make
+large--it will become a balloon!  Eet is a trick--eet is a leetle
+game--believe me.  For why?"
+
+I had not listened, as I was at that moment astonished to see the
+saddle slowly slide under Chu Chu's belly, and her figure resume,
+as if by magic, its former slim proportions.  Enriquez followed my
+eyes, lifted his shoulders, shrugged them, and said smilingly, "Ah,
+you see!"
+
+When the girths were drawn in again with an extra pull or two from
+the indefatigable Enriquez, I fancied that Chu Chu nevertheless
+secretly enjoyed it, as her sex is said to appreciate tight-lacing.
+She drew a deep sigh, possibly of satisfaction, turned her neck,
+and apparently tried to glance at her own figure--Enriquez promptly
+withdrawing to enable her to do so easily.  Then the dread moment
+arrived.  Enriquez, with his hand on her mane, suddenly paused and,
+with exaggerated courtesy, lifted his hat and made an inviting
+gesture.
+
+"You will honor me to precede."
+
+I shook my head laughingly.
+
+"I see," responded Enriquez gravely.  "You have to attend the
+obsequies of your aunt who is dead, at two of the clock.  You have
+to meet your broker who has bought you feefty share of the Comstock
+lode--at thees moment--or you are loss!  You are excuse!  Attend!
+Gentlemen, make your bets!  The band has arrived to play!  'Ere we
+are!"
+
+With a quick movement the alert young fellow had vaulted into the
+saddle.  But, to the astonishment of both of us, the mare remained
+perfectly still.  There was Enriquez bolt upright in the stirrups,
+completely overshadowing by his saddle-flaps, leggings, and
+gigantic spurs the fine proportions of Chu Chu, until she might
+have been a placid Rosinante, bestridden by some youthful Quixote.
+She closed her eyes, she was going to sleep!  We were dreadfully
+disappointed.  This clearly would not do.  Enriquez lifted the
+reins cautiously!  Chu Chu moved forward slowly--then stopped,
+apparently lost in reflection.
+
+"Affront her on thees side."
+
+I approached her gently.  She shot suddenly into the air, coming
+down again on perfectly stiff legs with a springless jolt.  This
+she instantly followed by a succession of other rocket-like
+propulsions, utterly unlike a leap, all over the inclosure.  The
+movements of the unfortunate Enriquez were equally unlike any
+equitation I ever saw.  He appeared occasionally over Chu Chu's
+head, astride of her neck and tail, or in the free air, but never
+IN the saddle.  His rigid legs, however, never lost the stirrups,
+but came down regularly, accentuating her springless hops.  More
+than that, the disproportionate excess of rider, saddle, and
+accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the appearance of
+lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior strength, and
+of actually contributing to her exercise!  As they came towards me,
+a wild tossing and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was not only
+difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much of
+the jumping was done by Enriquez separately.  At last Chu Chu
+brought matters to a close by making for the low-stretching
+branches of an oak-tree which stood at the corner of the lot.
+In a few moments she emerged from it--but without Enriquez.
+
+I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a
+branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and
+confident, and his cigarette between his teeth.  Then for the first
+time he removed it, and seating himself easily on the branch with
+his legs dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries
+with a gentle reassuring gesture.
+
+"Remain tranquil, my friend.  Thees does not count!  I have
+conquer--you observe--for why?  I have NEVER for once ARRIVE AT THE
+GROUND!  Consequent she is disappoint!  She will ever that I
+SHOULD!  But I have got her when the hair is not long!  Your oncle
+Henry"--with an angelic wink--"is fly!  He is ever a bully boy,
+with the eye of glass!  Believe me.  Behold!  I am here!  Big
+Injin!  Whoop!"
+
+He leaped lightly to the ground.  Chu Chu, standing watchfully at a
+little distance, was evidently astonished at his appearance.  She
+threw out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the
+stirrups crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the
+stable in a succession of rabbit-like bounds--taking the precaution
+to remove the saddle, on entering, by striking it against the
+lintel of the door.  "You observe," said Enriquez blandly, "she
+would make that thing of ME.  Not having the good occasion, she ees
+dissatisfied.  Where are you now?"
+
+Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same
+result--accepted by him with the same heroic complacency.  As we
+did not, for certain reasons, care to use the open road for this
+exercise, and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were
+obliged to submit to the inevitable.  On the following day I
+mounted her--undergoing the same experience as Enriquez, with the
+individual sensation of falling from a third-story window on top of
+a counting-house stool, and the variation of being projected over
+the fence.  When I found that Chu Chu had not accompanied me, I saw
+Enriquez at my side.  "More than ever is become necessary that we
+should do thees things again," he said gravely, as he assisted me
+to my feet.  "Courage, my noble General!  God and Liberty!  Once
+more on to the breach!  Charge, Chestare, charge!  Come on, Don
+Stanley!  'Ere we are!"
+
+He helped me none too quickly to catch my seat again, for it
+apparently had the effect of the turned peg on the enchanted horse
+in the Arabian Nights, and Chu Chu instantly rose into the air.
+But she came down this time before the open window of the kitchen,
+and I alighted easily on the dresser.  The indefatigable Enriquez
+followed me.
+
+"Won't this do?" I asked meekly.
+
+"It ees BETTER--for you arrive NOT on the ground," he said
+cheerfully; "but you should not once but a thousand times make
+trial!  Ha!  Go and win!  Nevare die and say so!  'Eave ahead!
+'Eave!  There you are! "
+
+Luckily, this time I managed to lock the rowels of my long spurs
+under her girth, and she could not unseat me.  She seemed to
+recognize the fact after one or two plunges, when, to my great
+surprise, she suddenly sank to the ground and quietly rolled over
+me.  The action disengaged my spurs, but, righting herself without
+getting up, she turned her beautiful head and absolutely LOOKED at
+me!--still in the saddle.  I felt myself blushing!  But the voice
+of Enriquez was at my side.
+
+"Errise, my friend; you have conquer!  It is SHE who has arrive at
+the ground!  YOU are all right.  It is done; believe me, it is
+feenish!  No more shall she make thees thing.  From thees instant
+you shall ride her as the cow--as the rail of thees fence--and
+remain tranquil.  For she is a-broke!  Ta-ta!  Regain your hats,
+gentlemen!  Pass in your checks!  It is ovar!  How are you now?"
+He lit a fresh cigarette, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled
+at me blandly.
+
+For all that, I ventured to point out that the habit of alighting
+in the fork of a tree, or the disengaging of one's self from the
+saddle on the ground, was attended with inconvenience, and even
+ostentatious display.  But Enriquez swept the objections away with
+a single gesture.  "It is the PREENCIPAL--the bottom fact--at which
+you arrive.  The next come of himself!  Many horse have achieve
+to mount the rider by the knees, and relinquish after thees same
+fashion.  My grandfather had a barb of thees kind--but she has gone
+dead, and so have my grandfather.  Which is sad and strange!
+Otherwise I shall make of them both an instant example!"
+
+I ought to have said that although these performances were never
+actually witnessed by Enriquez's sister--for reasons which he and I
+thought sufficient--the dear girl displayed the greatest interest
+in them, and, perhaps aided by our mutually complimentary accounts
+of each other, looked upon us both as invincible heroes.  It is
+possible also that she over-estimated our success, for she suddenly
+demanded that I should RIDE Chu Chu to her house, that she might
+see her.  It was not far; by going through a back lane I could
+avoid the trees which exercised such a fatal fascination for Chu
+Chu.  There was a pleading, child-like entreaty in Consuelo's voice
+that I could not resist, with a slight flash from her lustrous dark
+eyes that I did not care to encourage.  So I resolved to try it at
+all hazards.
+
+My equipment for the performance was modeled after Enriquez's
+previous costume, with the addition of a few fripperies of silver
+and stamped leather out of compliment to Consuelo, and even with a
+faint hope that it might appease Chu Chu.  SHE certainly looked
+beautiful in her glittering accoutrements, set off by her jet-black
+shining coat.  With an air of demure abstraction she permitted me
+to mount her, and even for a hundred yards or so indulged in a
+mincing maidenly amble that was not without a touch of coquetry.
+Encouraged by this, I addressed a few terms of endearment to her,
+and in the exuberance of my youthful enthusiasm I even confided to
+her my love for Consuelo, and begged her to be "good" and not
+disgrace herself and me before my Dulcinea.  In my foolish
+trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress, and to pat her soft
+neck.  She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder.  I knew what
+was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of my
+baleful existence.
+
+The saddle and bridle Chu Chu was becoming accustomed to, but who
+was this living, breathing object that had actually touched her?
+Presently her oblique vision was attracted by the fluttering
+movement of a fallen oak-leaf in the road before her.  She had
+probably seen many oak-leaves many times before; her ancestors had
+no doubt been familiar with them on the trackless hills and in
+field and paddock, but this did not alter her profound conviction
+that I and the leaf were identical, that our baleful touch was
+something indissolubly connected.  She reared before that innocent
+leaf, she revolved round it, and then fled from it at the top of
+her speed.
+
+The lane passed before the rear wall of Saltello's garden.
+Unfortunately, at the angle of the fence stood a beautiful Madrono-
+tree, brilliant with its scarlet berries, and endeared to me as
+Consuelo's favorite haunt, under whose protecting shade I had more
+than once avowed my youthful passion.  By the irony of fate Chu Chu
+caught sight of it, and with a succession of spirited bounds
+instantly made for it.  In another moment I was beneath it, and Chu
+Chu shot like a rocket into the air.  I had barely time to withdraw
+my feet from the stirrups, to throw up one arm to protect my glazed
+sombrero and grasp an overhanging branch with the other, before Chu
+Chu darted off.  But to my consternation, as I gained a secure
+perch on the tree, and looked about me, I saw her--instead of
+running away--quietly trot through the open gate into Saltello's
+garden.
+
+Need I say that it was to the beneficent Enriquez that I again owed
+my salvation?  Scarcely a moment elapsed before his bland voice
+rose in a concentrated whisper from the corner of the garden below
+me.  He had divined the dreadful truth!
+
+"For the love of God, collect to yourself many kinds of thees
+berry!  All you can!  Your full arms round!  Rest tranquil.  Leave
+to your ole oncle to make for you a delicate exposure.  At the
+instant!"
+
+He was gone again.  I gathered, wonderingly, a few of the larger
+clusters of parti-colored fruit and patiently waited.  Presently he
+reappeared, and with him the lovely Consuelo--her dear eyes filled
+with an adorable anxiety.
+
+"Yes," continued Enriquez to his sister, with a confidential
+lowering of tone but great distinctness of utterance, "it is ever
+so with the American!  He will ever make FIRST the salutation of
+the flower or the fruit, picked to himself by his own hand, to the
+lady where he call.  It is the custom of the American hidalgo!  My
+God--what will you?  I make it not--it is so!  Without doubt he is
+in this instant doing thees thing.  That is why he have let go his
+horse to precede him here; it is always the etiquette to offer
+these things on the feet.  Ah!  Behold! it is he!--Don Francisco!
+Even now he will descend from thees tree!  Ah!  You make the blush,
+little sister (archly)!  I will retire!  I am discreet; two is not
+company for the one!  I make tracks!  I am gone!"
+
+How far Consuelo entirely believed and trusted her ingenious
+brother I do not know, nor even then cared to inquire.  For there
+was a pretty mantling of her olive cheek, as I came forward with my
+offering, and a certain significant shyness in her manner that were
+enough to throw me into a state of hopeless imbecility.  And I was
+always miserably conscious that Consuelo possessed an exalted
+sentimentality, and a predilection for the highest mediaeval
+romance, in which I knew I was lamentably deficient.  Even in our
+most confidential moments I was always aware that I weakly lagged
+behind this daughter of a gloomily distinguished ancestry, in her
+frequent incursions into a vague but poetic past.  There was
+something of the dignity of the Spanish chatelaine in the sweetly
+grave little figure that advanced to accept my specious offering.
+I think I should have fallen on my knees to present it, but for the
+presence of the all seeing Enriquez.  But why did I even at that
+moment remember that he had early bestowed upon her the nickname of
+"Pomposa"?  This, as Enriquez himself might have observed, was "sad
+and strange."
+
+I managed to stammer out something about the Madrono berries being
+at her "disposicion" (the tree was in her own garden!), and she
+took the branches in her little brown hand with a soft response to
+my unutterable glances.
+
+But here Chu Chu, momentarily forgotten, executed a happy diversion.
+To our astonishment she gravely walked up to Consuelo and, stretching
+out her long slim neck, not only sniffed curiously at the berries,
+but even protruded a black underlip towards the young girl herself.
+In another instant Consuelo's dignity melted.  Throwing her arms
+around Chu Chu's neck she embraced and kissed her.  Young as I
+was, I understood the divine significance of a girl's vicarious
+effusiveness at such a moment, and felt delighted.  But I was the
+more astonished that the usually sensitive horse not only submitted
+to these caresses, but actually responded to the extent of affecting
+to nip my mistress's little right ear.
+
+This was enough for the impulsive Consuelo.  She ran hastily into
+the house, and in a few moments reappeared in a bewitching riding-
+skirt gathered round her jimp waist.  In vain Enriquez and myself
+joined in earnest entreaty: the horse was hardly broken for even a
+man's riding yet; the saints alone could tell what the nervous
+creature might do with a woman's skirt flapping at her side!  We
+begged for delay, for reflection, for at least time to change the
+saddle--but with no avail!  Consuelo was determined, indignant,
+distressingly reproachful!  Ah, well! if Don Pancho (an ingenious
+diminutive of my Christian name) valued his horse so highly--if he
+were jealous of the evident devotion of the animal to herself, he
+would--but here I succumbed!  And then I had the felicity of
+holding that little foot for one brief moment in the hollow of my
+hand, of readjusting the skirt as she threw her knee over the
+saddle-horn, of clasping her tightly--only half in fear--as I
+surrendered the reins to her grasp.  And to tell the truth, as
+Enriquez and I fell back, although I had insisted upon still
+keeping hold of the end of the riata, it was a picture to admire.
+The petite figure of the young girl, and the graceful folds of her
+skirt, admirably harmonized with Chu Chu's lithe contour, and as
+the mare arched her slim neck and raised her slender head under the
+pressure of the reins, it was so like the lifted velvet-capped
+toreador crest of Consuelo herself, that they seemed of one race.
+
+"I would not that you should hold the riata," said Consuelo
+petulantly.
+
+I hesitated--Chu Chu looked certainly very amiable--I let go.  She
+began to amble towards the gate, not mincingly as before, but with
+a freer and fuller stride.  In spite of the incongruous saddle the
+young girl's seat was admirable.  As they neared the gate she cast
+a single mischievous glance at me, jerked at the rein, and Chu Chu
+sprang into the road at a rapid canter.  I watched them fearfully
+and breathlessly, until at the end of the lane I saw Consuelo rein
+in slightly, wheel easily, and come flying back.  There was no
+doubt about it; the horse was under perfect control.  Her second
+subjugation was complete and final!
+
+Overjoyed and bewildered, I overwhelmed them with congratulations;
+Enriquez alone retaining the usual brotherly attitude of criticism,
+and a superior toleration of a lover's enthusiasm.  I ventured to
+hint to Consuelo (in what I believed was a safe whisper) that Chu
+Chu only showed my own feelings towards her.  "Without doubt,"
+responded Enriquez gravely.  "She have of herself assist you to
+climb to the tree to pull to yourself the berry for my sister."
+But I felt Consuelo's little hand return my pressure, and I forgave
+and even pitied him.
+
+From that day forward, Chu Chu and Consuelo were not only firm
+friends but daily companions.  In my devotion I would have
+presented the horse to the young girl, but with flattering delicacy
+she preferred to call it mine.  "I shall erride it for you,
+Pancho," she said; "I shall feel," she continued with exalted
+although somewhat vague poetry, "that it is of YOU!  You lofe the
+beast--it is therefore of a necessity YOU, my Pancho!  It is YOUR
+soul I shall erride like the wings of the wind--your lofe in this
+beast shall be my only cavalier for ever."  I would have preferred
+something whose vicarious qualities were less uncertain than I
+still felt Chu Chu's to be, but I kissed the girl's hand
+submissively.  It was only when I attempted to accompany her in
+the flesh, on another horse, that I felt the full truth of my
+instinctive fears.  Chu Chu would not permit any one to approach
+her mistress's side.  My mounted presence revived in her all her
+old blind astonishment and disbelief in my existence; she would
+start suddenly, face about, and back away from me in utter
+amazement as if I had been only recently created, or with an
+affected modesty as if I had been just guilty of some grave
+indecorum towards her sex which she really could not stand.  The
+frequency of these exhibitions in the public highway were not only
+distressing to me as a simple escort, but as it had the effect on
+the casual spectators of making Consuelo seem to participate in Chu
+Chu's objections, I felt that, as a lover, it could not be borne.
+Any attempt to coerce Chu Chu ended in her running away.  And my
+frantic pursuit of her was open to equal misconstruction.  "Go it,
+Miss, the little dude is gainin' on you!" shouted by a drunken
+teamster to the frightened Consuelo, once checked me in mid career.
+Even the dear girl herself saw the uselessness of my real presence,
+and after a while was content to ride with "my soul."
+
+Notwithstanding this, I am not ashamed to say that it was my
+custom, whenever she rode out, to keep a slinking and distant
+surveillance of Chu Chu on another horse, until she had fairly
+settled down to her pace.  A little nod of Consuelo's round black-
+and-red toreador hat or a kiss tossed from her riding-whip was
+reward enough!
+
+I remember a pleasant afternoon when I was thus awaiting her in the
+outskirts of the village.  The eternal smile of the Californian
+summer had begun to waver and grow less fixed; dust lay thick on
+leaf and blade; the dry hills were clothed in russet leather; the
+trade winds were shifting to the south with an ominous warm
+humidity; a few days longer and the rains would be here.  It so
+chanced that this afternoon my seclusion on the roadside was
+accidentally invaded by a village belle--a Western young lady
+somewhat older than myself, and of flirtatious reputation.  As she
+persistently and--as I now have reason to believe--mischievously
+lingered, I had only a passing glimpse of Consuelo riding past at
+an unaccustomed speed which surprised me at the moment.  But as I
+reasoned later that she was only trying to avoid a merely formal
+meeting, I thought no more about it.  It was not until I called at
+the house to fetch Chu Chu at the usual hour, and found that
+Consuelo had not yet returned, that a recollection of Chu Chu's
+furious pace again troubled me.  An hour passed--it was getting
+towards sunset, but there were no signs of Chu Chu nor her
+mistress.  I became seriously alarmed.  I did not care to reveal
+my fears to the family, for I felt myself responsible for Chu Chu.
+At last I desperately saddled my horse, and galloped off in the
+direction she had taken.  It was the road to Rosario and the
+hacienda of one of her relations, where she sometimes halted.
+
+The road was a very unfrequented one, twisting like a mountain
+river; indeed, it was the bed of an old watercourse, between brown
+hills of wild oats, and debouching at last into a broad blue lake-
+like expanse of alfalfa meadows.  In vain I strained my eyes over
+the monotonous level; nothing appeared to rise above or move across
+it.  In the faint hope that she might have lingered at the
+hacienda, I was spurring on again when I heard a slight splashing
+on my left.  I looked around.  A broad patch of fresher-colored
+herbage and a cluster of dwarfed alders indicated a hidden spring.
+I cautiously approached its quaggy edges, when I was shocked by
+what appeared to be a sudden vision!  Mid-leg deep in the centre of
+a greenish pool stood Chu Chu!  But without a strap or buckle of
+harness upon her--as naked as when she was foaled!
+
+For a moment I could only stare at her in bewildered terror.  Far
+from recognizing me, she seemed to be absorbed in a nymph-like
+contemplation of her own graces in the pool.  Then I called
+"Consuelo!" and galloped frantically around the spring.  But there
+was no response, nor was there anything to be seen but the all-
+unconscious Chu Chu.  The pool, thank Heaven! was not deep enough
+to have drowned any one; there were no signs of a struggle on its
+quaggy edges.  The horse might have come from a distance!  I
+galloped on, still calling.  A few hundred yards further I detected
+the vivid glow of Chu Chu's scarlet saddle-blanket, in the brush
+near the trail.  My heart leaped--I was on the track.  I called
+again; this time a faint reply, in accents I knew too well, came
+from the field beside me!
+
+Consuelo was there! reclining beside a manzanita bush which
+screened her from the road, in what struck me, even at that supreme
+moment, as a judicious and picturesquely selected couch of scented
+Indian grass and dry tussocks.  The velvet hat with its balls of
+scarlet plush was laid carefully aside; her lovely blue-black hair
+retained its tight coils undisheveled, her eyes were luminous and
+tender.  Shocked as I was at her apparent helplessness, I remember
+being impressed with the fact that it gave so little indication of
+violent usage or disaster.
+
+I threw myself frantically on the ground beside her.
+
+"You are hurt, Consita!  For Heaven's sake, what has happened?"
+
+She pushed my hat back with her little hand, and tumbled my hair
+gently.
+
+"Nothing.  YOU are here, Pancho--eet is enofe!  What shall come
+after thees--when I am perhaps gone among the grave--make nothing!
+YOU are here--I am happy.  For a little, perhaps--not mooch."
+
+"But," I went on desperately, "was it an accident?  Were you
+thrown?  Was it Chu Chu?"--for somehow, in spite of her languid
+posture and voice, I could not, even in my fears, believe her
+seriously hurt.
+
+"Beat not the poor beast, Pancho.  It is not from HER comes thees
+thing.  She have make nothing--believe me!  I have come upon your
+assignation with Miss Essmith!  I make but to pass you--to fly--to
+never come back!  I have say to Chu Chu, 'Fly!'  We fly many miles.
+Sometimes together, sometimes not so mooch!  Sometimes in the
+saddle, sometimes on the neck!  Many things remain in the road; at
+the end, I myself remain!  I have say, 'Courage, Pancho will come!'
+Then I say, 'No, he is talk with Miss Essmith!'  I remember not
+more.  I have creep here on the hands.  Eet is feenish!"
+
+I looked at her distractedly.  She smiled tenderly, and slightly
+smoothed down and rearranged a fold of her dress to cover her
+delicate little boot.
+
+"But," I protested, "you are not much hurt, dearest.  You have
+broken no bones.  Perhaps," I added, looking at the boot, "only a
+slight sprain.  Let me carry you to my horse; I will walk beside
+you, home.  Do, dearest Consita!"
+
+She turned her lovely eyes towards me sadly.  "You comprehend not,
+my poor Pancho!  It is not of the foot, the ankle, the arm, or the
+head that I can say, 'She is broke!'  I would it were even so.
+But"--she lifted her sweet lashes slowly--"I have derrange my
+inside.  It is an affair of my family.  My grandfather have once
+toomble over the bull at a rodeo.  He speak no more; he is dead.
+For why?  He has derrange his inside.  Believe me, it is of the
+family.  You comprehend?  The Saltellos are not as the other
+peoples for this.  When I am gone, you will bring to me the berry
+to grow upon my tomb, Pancho; the berry you have picked for me.
+The little flower will come too, the little star will arrive, but
+Consuelo, who lofe you, she will come not more!  When you are happy
+and talk in the road to the Essmith, you will not think of me.  You
+will not see my eyes, Pancho; thees little grass"--she ran her
+plump little fingers through a tussock--"will hide them; and the
+small animals in the black coats that lif here will have much
+sorrow--but you will not.  It ees better so!  My father will not
+that I, a Catholique, should marry into a camp-meeting, and lif in
+a tent, and make howl like the coyote."  (It was one of Consuelo's
+bewildering beliefs that there was only one form of dissent--
+Methodism!)  "He will not that I should marry a man who possess not
+the many horses, ox, and cow, like him.  But I care not.  YOU are
+my only religion, Pancho!  I have enofe of the horse, and ox, and
+cow when YOU are with me!  Kiss me, Pancho.  Perhaps it is for the
+last time--the feenish!  Who knows?"
+
+There were tears in her lovely eyes; I felt that my own were
+growing dim; the sun was sinking over the dreary plain to the slow
+rising of the wind; an infinite loneliness had fallen upon us, and
+yet I was miserably conscious of some dreadful unreality in it all.
+A desire to laugh, which I felt must be hysterical, was creeping
+over me; I dared not speak.  But her dear head was on my shoulder,
+and the situation was not unpleasant.
+
+Nevertheless, something must be done!  This was the more difficult
+as it was by no means clear what had already been done.  Even while
+I supported her drooping figure I was straining my eyes across her
+shoulder for succor of some kind.  Suddenly the figure of a rapid
+rider appeared upon the road.  It seemed familiar.  I looked again--
+it was the blessed Enriquez!  A sense of deep relief came over me.
+I loved Consuelo; but never before had lover ever hailed the
+irruption of one of his beloved's family with such complacency.
+
+"You are safe, dearest; it is Enriquez!"
+
+I thought she received the information coldly.  Suddenly she turned
+upon me her eyes, now bright and glittering.  "Swear to me at the
+instant, Pancho, that you will not again look upon Miss Essmith,
+even for once."
+
+I was simple and literal.  Miss Smith was my nearest neighbor, and,
+unless I was stricken with blindness, compliance was impossible.  I
+hesitated--but swore.
+
+"Enofe--you have hesitate--I will no more."
+
+She rose to her feet with grave deliberation.  For an instant, with
+the recollection of the delicate internal organization of the
+Saltellos on my mind, I was in agony lest she should totter and
+fall, even then, yielding up her gentle spirit on the spot.  But
+when I looked again she had a hairpin between her white teeth, and
+was carefully adjusting her toreador hat.  And beside us was
+Enriquez--cheerful, alert, voluble, and undaunted.
+
+"Eureka!  I have found!  We are all here!  Eet is a leetle public--
+eh! a leetle too much of a front seat for a tete-a-tete, my yonge
+friends," he said, glancing at the remains of Consuelo's bower,
+"but for the accounting of taste there is none.  What will you?
+The meat of the one man shall envenom the meat of the other.  But"
+(in a whisper to me) "as to thees horse--thees Chu Chu, which I
+have just pass--why is she undress?  Surely you would not make an
+exposition of her to the traveler to suspect!  And if not, why so?"
+
+I tried to explain, looking at Consuelo, that Chu Chu had run away,
+that Consuelo had met with a terrible accident, had been thrown,
+and I feared had suffered serious internal injury.  But to my
+embarrassment Consuelo maintained a half scornful silence, and an
+inconsistent freshness of healthful indifference, as Enriquez
+approached her with an engaging smile.  "Ah, yes, she have the
+headache, and the molligrubs.  She will sit on the damp stone when
+the gentle dew is falling.  I comprehend.  Meet me in the lane when
+the clock strike nine!  But," in a lower voice, "of thees undress
+horse I comprehend nothing!  Look you--it is sad and strange."
+
+He went off to fetch Chu Chu, leaving me and Consuelo alone.  I do
+not think I ever felt so utterly abject and bewildered before in my
+life.  Without knowing why, I was miserably conscious of having in
+some way offended the girl for whom I believed I would have given
+my life, and I had made her and myself ridiculous in the eyes of
+her brother.  I had again failed in my slower Western nature to
+understand her high romantic Spanish soul!  Meantime she was
+smoothing out her riding-habit, and looking as fresh and pretty
+as when she first left her house.
+
+"Consita," I said hesitatingly, "you are not angry with me?"
+
+"Angry?" she repeated haughtily, without looking at me.  "Oh, no!
+Of a possibility eet is Mees Essmith who is angry that I have
+interroopt her tete-a-tete with you, and have send here my brother
+to make the same with me."
+
+"But," I said eagerly, "Miss Smith does not even know Enriquez!"
+
+Consuelo turned on me a glance of unutterable significance.  "Ah!"
+she said darkly, "you TINK!"
+
+Indeed I KNEW.  But here I believed I understood Consuelo, and was
+relieved.  I even ventured to say gently, "And you are better?"
+
+She drew herself up to her full height, which was not much.  "Of my
+health, what is it?  A nothing.  Yes!  Of my soul let us not
+speak."
+
+Nevertheless, when Enriquez appeared with Chu Chu she ran towards
+her with outstretched arms.  Chu Chu protruded about six inches of
+upper lip in response--apparently under the impression, which I
+could quite understand, that her mistress was edible.  And, I may
+have been mistaken, but their beautiful eyes met in an absolute and
+distinct glance of intelligence!
+
+During the home journey Consuelo recovered her spirits, and parted
+from me with a magnanimous and forgiving pressure of the hand.  I
+do not know what explanation of Chu Chu's original escapade was
+given to Enriquez and the rest of the family; the inscrutable
+forgiveness extended to me by Consuelo precluded any further
+inquiry on my part.  I was willing to leave it a secret between her
+and Chu Chu.  But, strange to say, it seemed to complete our own
+understanding, and precipitated, not only our lovemaking, but the
+final catastrophe which culminated that romance.  For we had
+resolved to elope.  I do not know that this heroic remedy was
+absolutely necessary from the attitude of either Consuelo's family
+or my own; I am inclined to think we preferred it, because it
+involved no previous explanation or advice.  Need I say that our
+confidant and firm ally was Consuelo's brother--the alert, the
+linguistic, the ever-happy, ever-ready Enriquez!  It was understood
+that his presence would not only give a certain mature respectability
+to our performance--but I do not think we would have contemplated
+this step without it.  During one of our riding excursions we were
+to secure the services of a Methodist minister in the adjoining
+county, and, later, that of the Mission padre--when the secret was
+out.  "I will gif her away," said Enriquez confidently, "it will on
+the instant propitiate the old shadbelly who shall perform the
+affair, and withhold his jaw.  A little chin-music from your oncle
+'Arry shall finish it!  Remain tranquil and forgot not a ring!  One
+does not always, in the agony and dissatisfaction of the moment, a
+ring remember.  I shall bring two in the pocket of my dress."
+
+If I did not entirely participate in this roseate view it may have
+been because Enriquez, although a few years my senior, was much
+younger-looking, and with his demure deviltry of eye, and his upper
+lip close shaven for this occasion, he suggested a depraved acolyte
+rather than a responsible member of a family.  Consuelo had also
+confided to me that her father--possibly owing to some rumors of
+our previous escapade--had forbidden any further excursions with me
+alone.  The innocent man did not know that Chu Chu had forbidden it
+also, and that even on this momentous occasion both Enriquez and
+myself were obliged to ride in opposite fields like out flankers.
+But we nevertheless felt the full guilt of disobedience added to
+our desperate enterprise.  Meanwhile, although pressed for time,
+and subject to discovery at any moment, I managed at certain points
+of the road to dismount and walk beside Chu Chu (who did not seem
+to recognize me on foot), holding Consuelo's hand in my own, with
+the discreet Enriquez leading my horse in the distant field.  I
+retain a very vivid picture of that walk--the ascent of a gentle
+slope towards a prospect as yet unknown, but full of glorious
+possibilities; the tender dropping light of an autumn sky, slightly
+filmed with the promise of the future rains, like foreshadowed
+tears, and the half frightened, half serious talk into which
+Consuelo and I had insensibly fallen.  And then, I don't know how
+it happened, but as we reached the summit Chu Chu suddenly reared,
+wheeled, and the next moment was flying back along the road we had
+just traveled, at the top of her speed!  It might have been that,
+after her abstracted fashion, she only at that moment detected my
+presence; but so sudden and complete was her evolution that before
+I could regain my horse from the astonished Enriquez she was
+already a quarter of a mile on the homeward stretch, with the
+frantic Consuelo pulling hopelessly at the bridle.  We started in
+pursuit.  But a horrible despair seized us.  To attempt to overtake
+her, to even follow at the same rate of speed would only excite Chu
+Chu and endanger Consuelo's life.  There was absolutely no help for
+it, nothing could be done; the mare had taken her determined long,
+continuous stride, the road was a straight, steady descent all the
+way back to the village, Chu Chu had the bit between her teeth,
+and there was no prospect of swerving her.  We could only follow
+hopelessly, idiotically, furiously, until Chu Chu dashed triumphantly
+into the Saltellos' courtyard, carrying the half-fainting Consuelo
+back to the arms of her assembled and astonished family.
+
+It was our last ride together.  It was the last I ever saw of
+Consuelo before her transfer to the safe seclusion of a convent in
+Southern California.  It was the last I ever saw of Chu Chu, who in
+the confusion of that rencontre was overlooked in her half-loosed
+harness, and allowed to escape though the back gate to the fields.
+Months afterwards it was said that she had been identified among a
+band of wild horses in the Coast Range, as a strange and beautiful
+creature who had escaped the brand of the rodeo and had become a
+myth.  There was another legend that she had been seen, sleek, fat,
+and gorgeously caparisoned, issuing from the gateway of the Rosario
+patio, before a lumbering Spanish cabriole in which a short, stout
+matron was seated--but I will have none of it.  For there are days
+when she still lives, and I can see her plainly still climbing the
+gentle slope towards the summit, with Consuelo on her back, and
+myself at her side, pressing eagerly forward towards the
+illimitable prospect that opens in the distance.
+
+
+
+MY FIRST BOOK.
+
+
+When I say that my "First Book" was NOT my own, and contained
+beyond the title-page not one word of my own composition, I trust
+that I will not be accused of trifling with paradox, or tardily
+unbosoming myself of youthful plagiary.  But the fact remains that
+in priority of publication the first book for which I became
+responsible, and which probably provoked more criticism than
+anything I have written since, was a small compilation of
+Californian poems indited by other hands.
+
+A well-known bookseller of San Francisco one day handed me a
+collection of certain poems which had already appeared in Pacific
+Coast magazines and newspapers, with the request that I should,
+if possible, secure further additions to them, and then make a
+selection of those which I considered the most notable and
+characteristic, for a single volume to be issued by him.  I have
+reason to believe that this unfortunate man was actutated by a
+laudable desire to publish a pretty Californian book--HIS first
+essay in publication--and at the same time to foster Eastern
+immigration by an exhibit of the Californian literary product; but,
+looking back upon his venture, I am inclined to think that the
+little volume never contained anything more poetically pathetic or
+touchingly imaginative than that gentle conception.  Equally simple
+and trustful was his selection of myself as compiler.  It was based
+somewhat, I think, upon the fact that "the artless Helicon" I
+boasted "was Youth," but I imagine it was chiefly owing to the
+circumstance that I had from the outset, with precocious foresight,
+confided to him my intention of not putting any of my own verses in
+the volume.  Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so
+sublime, to say nothing of its security, was not without its effect.
+
+We settled to our work with fatuous self-complacency, and no
+suspicion of the trouble in store for us, or the storm that was to
+presently hurtle around our devoted heads.  I winnowed the poems,
+and he exploited a preliminary announcement to an eager and waiting
+press, and we moved together unwittingly to our doom.  I remember
+to have been early struck with the quantity of material coming in--
+evidently the result of some popular misunderstanding of the
+announcement.  I found myself in daily and hourly receipt of sere
+and yellow fragments, originally torn from some dead and gone
+newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in wallet or
+pocketbook.  Need I say that most of them were of an emotional or
+didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs,
+often discolored by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or,
+heaven knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears!  Enough that I knew
+now what had become of those original but never recopied verses
+which filled the "Poet's Corner" of every country newspaper on the
+coast.  I knew now the genesis of every didactic verse that "coldly
+furnished forth the marriage table" in the announcement of weddings
+in the rural press.  I knew now who had read--and possibly indited--
+the dreary hic jacets of the dead in their mourning columns.  I knew
+now why certain letters of the alphabet had been more tenderly
+considered than others, and affectionately addressed. I knew the
+meaning of the "Lines to Her who can best understand them," and I
+knew that they HAD been understood.  The morning's post buried my
+table beneath these withered leaves of posthumous passion. They lay
+there like the pathetic nosegays of quickly fading wild flowers,
+gathered by school children, inconsistently abandoned upon roadsides,
+or as inconsistently treasured as limp and flabby superstitions in
+their desks.  The chill wind from the Bay blowing in at the window
+seemed to rustle them into sad articulate appeal.  I remember that
+when one of them was whisked from the window by a stronger gust than
+usual, and was attaining a circulation it had never known before, I
+ran a block or two to recover it.  I was young then, and in an
+exalted sense of editorial responsibility which I have since
+survived, I think I turned pale at the thought that the reputation
+of some unknown genius might have thus been swept out and swallowed
+by the all-absorbing sea.
+
+There were other difficulties arising from this unexpected wealth
+of material.  There were dozens of poems on the same subject.  "The
+Golden Gate," "Mount Shasta," "The Yosemite," were especially
+provocative.  A beautiful bird known as the "Californian Canary"
+appeared to have been shot at and winged by every poet from
+Portland to San Diego.  Lines to the "Mariposa" flower were as
+thick as the lovely blossoms themselves in the Merced valley, and
+the Madrone tree was as "berhymed" as Rosalind.  Again, by a
+liberal construction of the publisher's announcement, MANUSCRIPT
+poems, which had never known print, began to coyly unfold their
+virgin blossoms in the morning's mail.  They were accompanied by a
+few lines stating, casually, that their sender had found them lying
+forgotten in his desk, or, mendaciously, that they were "thrown
+off" on the spur of the moment a few hours before.  Some of the
+names appended to them astonished me.  Grave, practical business
+men, sage financiers, fierce speculators, and plodding traders,
+never before suspected of poetry, or even correct prose, were
+among the contributors.  It seemed as if most of the able-bodied
+inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in the habit at some time
+of expressing themselves in verse.  Some sought confidential
+interviews with the editor.  The climax was reached when, in
+Montgomery Street, one day, I was approached by a well known and
+venerable judicial magnate.  After some serious preliminary
+conversation, the old gentleman finally alluded to what he was
+pleased to call a task of "great delicacy and responsibility" laid
+upon my young shoulders."  "In fact," he went on paternally, adding
+the weight of his judicial hand to that burden, "I have thought of
+speaking to you about it.  In my leisure moments on the Bench I
+have, from time to time, polished and perfected a certain college
+poem begun years ago, but which may now be said to have been
+finished in California, and thus embraced in the scope of your
+proposed selection.  If a few extracts, selected by myself, to save
+you all trouble and responsibility, be of any benefit to you, my
+dear young friend, consider them at your service."
+
+In this fashion the contributions had increased to three times the
+bulk of the original collection, and the difficulties of selection
+were augmented in proportion.  The editor and publisher eyed each
+other aghast.  "Never thought there were so many of the blamed
+things alive," said the latter with great simplicity, "had you?"
+The editor had not.  "Couldn't you sorter shake 'em up and condense
+'em, you know? keep their ideas--and their names--separate, so that
+they'd have proper credit.  See?"  The editor pointed out that this
+would infringe the rule he had laid down.  "I see," said the
+publisher thoughtfully; "well, couldn't you pare 'em down; give the
+first verse entire and sorter sample the others?"  The editor
+thought not.  There was clearly nothing to do but to make a more
+rigid selection--a difficult performance when the material was
+uniformly on a certain dead level, which it is not necessary to
+define here.  Among the rejections were, of course, the usual
+plagiarisms from well-known authors imposed upon an inexperienced
+country press; several admirable pieces detected as acrostics of
+patent medicines, and certain veiled libels and indecencies such as
+mark the "first" publications on blank walls and fences of the
+average youth.  Still the bulk remained too large, and the youthful
+editor set to work reducing it still more with a sympathizing
+concern which the good-natured, but unliterary, publisher failed to
+understand, and which, alas! proved to be equally unappreciated by
+the rejected contributors.
+
+The book appeared--a pretty little volume typographically, and
+externally a credit to pioneer book-making.  Copies were liberally
+supplied to the press, and authors and publishers self-complacently
+awaited the result.  To the latter this should have been
+satisfactory; the book sold readily from his well-known counters
+to purchasers who seemed to be drawn by a singular curiosity,
+unaccompanied, however, by any critical comment.  People would
+lounge in to the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes, say
+carelessly, "Got a new book of California poetry out, haven't you?"
+purchase it, and quietly depart.  There were as yet no notices from
+the press; the big dailies were silent; there was something ominous
+in this calm.
+
+Out of it the bolt fell.  A well-known mining weekly, which I here
+poetically veil under the title of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk," was
+first to swoop down upon the tuneful and unsuspecting quarry.  At
+this century-end of fastidious and complaisant criticism, it may be
+interesting to recall the direct style of the Californian "sixties."
+"The hogwash and 'purp'-stuff ladled out from the slop-bucket of
+Messrs. ---- and Co., of 'Frisco, by some lop-eared Eastern
+apprentice, and called 'A Compilation of Californian Verse,' might
+be passed over, so far as criticism goes.  A club in the hands of
+any able-bodied citizen of Red Dog, and a steamboat ticket to the
+Bay, cheerfully contributed from this office, would be all-sufficient.
+But when an imported greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture
+'Californian,' it is an insult to the State that has produced the
+gifted 'Yellow Hammer,' whose lofty flights have from time to time
+dazzled our readers in the columns of the 'Jay Hawk.'  That this
+complacent editorial jackass, browsing among the dock and thistles
+which he has served up in this volume, should make no allusion to
+California's greatest bard, is rather a confession of his idiocy
+than a slur upon the genius of our esteemed contributor." I turned
+hurriedly to my pile of rejected contributions--the nom de plume of
+"Yellow Hammer" did NOT appear among them; certainly I had never
+heard of its existence.  Later, when a friend showed me one of that
+gifted bard's pieces, I was inwardly relieved!  It was so like the
+majority of the other verses, in and out of the volume, that the
+mysterious poet might have written under a hundred aliases.  But the
+Dutch Flat "Clarion," following, with no uncertain sound, left me
+small time for consideration.  "We doubt," said that journal, "if a
+more feeble collection of drivel could have been made, even if taken
+exclusively from the editor's own verses, which we note he has, by
+an equal editorial incompetency, left out of the volume.  When we
+add that, by a felicity of idiotic selection, this person has chosen
+only one, and the least characteristic, of the really clever poems
+of Adoniram Skaggs, which have so often graced these columns, we
+have said enough to satisfy our readers."  The Mormon Hill "Quartz
+Crusher" relieved this simple directness with more fancy: "We don't
+know why Messrs. ---- and Co. send us, under the title of
+'Selections of Californian Poetry,' a quantity of slumgullion which
+really belongs to the sluices of a placer mining camp, or the
+ditches of the rural districts.  We have sometimes been compelled to
+run a lot of tailings through our stamps, but never of the grade of
+the samples offered, which, we should say, would average about
+33-1/3 cents per ton.  We have, however, come across a single
+specimen of pure gold evidently overlooked by the serene ass who has
+compiled this volume.  We copy it with pleasure, as it has already
+shone in the 'Poet's Corner' of the 'Crusher' as the gifted effusion
+of the talented Manager of the Excelsior Mill, otherwise known to
+our delighted readers as 'Outcrop.'"  The Green Springs "Arcadian"
+was no less fanciful in imagery: "Messrs. ---- and Co. send us a
+gaudy green-and-yellow, parrot-colored volume, which is supposed to
+contain the first callow 'cheepings' and 'peepings' of Californian
+songsters.  From the flavor of the specimens before us we should say
+that the nest had been disturbed prematurely.  There seems to be a
+good deal of the parrot inside as well as outside the covers, and we
+congratulate our own sweet singer 'Blue Bird,' who has so often made
+these columns melodious, that she has escaped the ignominy of being
+exhibited in Messrs. ---- and Co.'s aviary."  I should add that this
+simile of the aviary and its occupants was ominous, for my tuneful
+choir was relentlessly slaughtered; the bottom of the cage was
+strewn with feathers!  The big dailies collected the criticisms
+and published them in their own columns with the grim irony of
+exaggerated head-lines.  The book sold tremendously on account of
+this abuse, but I am afraid that the public was disappointed.  The
+fun and interest lay in the criticisms, and not in any pointedly
+ludicrous quality in the rather commonplace collection, and I fear I
+cannot claim for it even that merit.  And it will be observed that
+the animus of the criticism appeared to be the omission rather than
+the retention of certain writers.
+
+But this brings me to the most extraordinary feature of this
+singular demonstration.  I do not think that the publishers were at
+all troubled by it; I cannot conscientiously say that I was; I have
+every reason to believe that the poets themselves, in and out of
+the volume, were not displeased at the notoriety they had not
+expected, and I have long since been convinced that my most
+remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some
+sudden impulse started by the first attacking journal.  The
+extravagance of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk" was emulated by others: it
+was a large, contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a
+peculiar cyclonic Western fashion.  And there still lingers, not
+unpleasantly, in my memory the conclusion of a cheerfully scathing
+review of the book which may make my meaning clearer: "If we have
+said anything in this article which might cause a single pang to
+the poetically sensitive nature of the youthful individual calling
+himself Mr. Francis Bret Harte--but who, we believe, occasionally
+parts his name and his hair in the middle--we will feel that we
+have not labored in vain, and are ready to sing Nunc Dimittis, and
+hand in our checks.  We have no doubt of the absolutely pellucid
+and lacteal purity of Franky's intentions.  He means well to the
+Pacific Coast, and we return the compliment.  But he has strayed
+away from his parents and guardians while he was too fresh.  He
+will not keep without a little salt."
+
+It was thirty years ago.  The book and its Rabelaisian criticisms
+have been long since forgotten.  Alas! I fear that even the
+capacity for that Gargantuan laughter which met them, in those
+days, exists no longer.  The names I have used are necessarily
+fictitious, but where I have been obliged to quote the criticisms
+from memory I have, I believe, only softened their asperity.
+I do not know that this story has any moral.  The criticisms here
+recorded never hurt a reputation nor repressed a single honest
+aspiration.  A few contributors to the volume, who were of original
+merit, have made their mark, independently of it or its critics. The
+editor, who was for two months the most abused man on the Pacific
+slope, within the year became the editor of its first successful
+magazine.  Even the publisher prospered, and died respected!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bell-Ringer of Angel's, by Harte
+
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