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+Project Gutenberg Etext of A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's, by Harte
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+Title:  A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's
+
+Author:  Bret Harte
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+July, 2001  [Etext #2692]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's, by Harte
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+
+A PROTEGEE OF JACK HAMLIN'S
+
+by Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+A PROTEGEE OF JACK HAMLIN'S
+
+AN INGENUE OF THE SIERRAS
+
+THE REFORMATION OF JAMES REDDY
+
+THE HEIR OF THE McHULISHES
+
+AN EPISODE OF WEST WOODLANDS
+
+THE HOME-COMING OF JIM WILKES
+
+
+
+
+A PROTEGEE OF JACK HAMLIN'S.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+The steamer Silveropolis was sharply and steadily cleaving the
+broad, placid shallows of the Sacramento River.  A large wave like
+an eagre, diverging from its bow, was extending to either bank,
+swamping the tules and threatening to submerge the lower levees.
+The great boat itself--a vast but delicate structure of airy
+stories, hanging galleries, fragile colonnades, gilded cornices,
+and resplendent frescoes--was throbbing throughout its whole
+perilous length with the pulse of high pressure and the strong
+monotonous beat of a powerful piston.  Floods of foam pouring from
+the high paddle-boxes on either side and reuniting in the wake of
+the boat left behind a track of dazzling whiteness, over which
+trailed two dense black banners flung from its lofty smokestacks.
+
+Mr. Jack Hamlin had quietly emerged from his stateroom on deck and
+was looking over the guards.  His hands were resting lightly on his
+hips over the delicate curves of his white waistcoat, and he was
+whistling softly, possibly some air to which he had made certain
+card-playing passengers dance the night before.  He was in
+comfortable case, and his soft brown eyes under their long lashes
+were veiled with gentle tolerance of all things.  He glanced lazily
+along the empty hurricane deck forward; he glanced lazily down to
+the saloon deck below him.  Far out against the guards below him
+leaned a young girl.  Mr. Hamlin knitted his brows slightly.
+
+He remembered her at once.  She had come on board that morning with
+one Ned Stratton, a brother gambler, but neither a favorite nor
+intimate of Jack's.  From certain indications in the pair, Jack had
+inferred that she was some foolish or reckless creature whom "Ed"
+had "got on a string," and was spiriting away from her friends and
+family.  With the abstract morality of this situation Jack was not
+in the least concerned.  For himself he did not indulge in that
+sort of game; the inexperience and vacillations of innocence were
+apt to be bothersome, and besides, a certain modest doubt of his
+own competency to make an original selection had always made him
+prefer to confine his gallantries to the wives of men of greater
+judgment than himself who had.  But it suddenly occurred to him
+that he had seen Stratton quickly slip off the boat at the last
+landing stage.  Ah! that was it; he had cast away and deserted her.
+It was an old story.  Jack smiled.  But he was not greatly amused
+with Stratton.
+
+She was very pale, and seemed to be clinging to the network
+railing, as if to support herself, although she was gazing fixedly
+at the yellow glancing current below, which seemed to be sucked
+down and swallowed in the paddle-box as the boat swept on.  It
+certainly was a fascinating sight--this sloping rapid, hurrying on
+to bury itself under the crushing wheels.  For a brief moment Jack
+saw how they would seize anything floating on that ghastly incline,
+whirl it round in one awful revolution of the beating paddles, and
+then bury it, broken and shattered out of all recognition, deep in
+the muddy undercurrent of the stream behind them.
+
+She moved away presently with an odd, stiff step, chafing her
+gloved hands together as if they had become stiffened too in her
+rigid grasp of the railing.  Jack leisurely watched her as she
+moved along the narrow strip of deck.  She was not at all to his
+taste,--a rather plump girl with a rustic manner and a great deal
+of brown hair under her straw hat.  She might have looked better
+had she not been so haggard.  When she reached the door of the
+saloon she paused, and then, turning suddenly, began to walk
+quickly back again.  As she neared the spot where she had been
+standing her pace slackened, and when she reached the railing she
+seemed to relapse against it in her former helpless fashion.  Jack
+became lazily interested.  Suddenly she lifted her head and cast a
+quick glance around and above her.  In that momentary lifting of
+her face Jack saw her expression.  Whatever it was, his own changed
+instantly; the next moment there was a crash on the lower deck.  It
+was Jack who had swung himself over the rail and dropped ten feet,
+to her side.  But not before she had placed one foot in the meshes
+of the netting and had gripped the railing for a spring.
+
+The noise of Jack's fall might have seemed to her bewildered fancy
+as a part of her frantic act, for she fell forward vacantly on the
+railing.  But by this time Jack had grasped her arm as if to help
+himself to his feet.
+
+"I might have killed myself by that foolin', mightn't I?" he said
+cheerfully.
+
+The sound of a voice so near her seemed to recall to her dazed
+sense the uncompleted action his fall had arrested.  She made a
+convulsive bound towards the railing, but Jack held her fast.
+
+"Don't," he said in a low voice, "don't, it won't pay.  It's the
+sickest game that ever was played by man or woman.  Come here!"
+
+He drew her towards an empty stateroom whose door was swinging on
+its hinges a few feet from them.  She was trembling violently; he
+half led, half pushed her into the room, closed the door and stood
+with his back against it as she dropped into a chair.  She looked
+at him vacantly; the agitation she was undergoing inwardly had left
+her no sense of outward perception.
+
+"You know Stratton would be awfully riled," continued Jack easily.
+"He's just stepped out to see a friend and got left by the fool
+boat.  He'll be along by the next steamer, and you're bound to meet
+him in Sacramento."
+
+Her staring eyes seemed suddenly to grasp his meaning.  But to his
+surprise she burst out with a certain hysterical desperation, "No!
+no!  Never! NEVER again!  Let me pass!  I must go," and struggled
+to regain the door.  Jack, albeit singularly relieved to know that
+she shared his private sentiments regarding Stratton, nevertheless
+resisted her.  Whereat she suddenly turned white, reeled back, and
+sank in a dead faint in the chair.
+
+The gambler turned, drew the key from the inside of the door,
+passed out, locking it behind him, and walked leisurely into the
+main saloon.  "Mrs. Johnson," he said gravely, addressing the
+stewardess, a tall mulatto, with his usual winsome supremacy over
+dependents and children, "you'll oblige me if you'll corral a few
+smelling salts, vinaigrettes, hairpins, and violet powder, and
+unload them in deck stateroom No. 257.  There's a lady"--
+
+"A lady, Marse Hamlin?" interrupted the mulatto, with an archly
+significant flash of her white teeth.
+
+"A lady," continued Jack with unabashed gravity, "in a sort of
+conniption fit.  A relative of mine; in fact a niece, my only
+sister's child.  Hadn't seen each other for ten years, and it was
+too much for her."
+
+The woman glanced at him with a mingling of incredulous belief, but
+delighted obedience, hurriedly gathered a few articles from her
+cabin, and followed him to No. 257.  The young girl was still
+unconscious.  The stewardess applied a few restoratives with the
+skill of long experience, and the young girl opened her eyes.  They
+turned vacantly from the stewardess to Jack with a look of half
+recognition and half frightened inquiry.  "Yes," said Jack,
+addressing the eyes, although ostentatiously speaking to Mrs.
+Johnson, "she'd only just come by steamer to 'Frisco and wasn't
+expecting to see me, and we dropped right into each other here on
+the boat.  And I haven't seen her since she was so high.  Sister
+Mary ought to have warned me by letter; but she was always a slouch
+at letter writing.  There, that'll do, Mrs. Johnson.  She's coming
+round; I reckon I can manage the rest.  But you go now and tell the
+purser I want one of those inside staterooms for my niece,--MY
+NIECE, you hear,--so that you can be near her and look after her."
+
+As the stewardess turned obediently away the young girl attempted
+to rise, but Jack checked her.  "No," he said, almost brusquely;
+"you and I have some talking to do before she gets back, and we've
+no time for foolin'.  You heard what I told her just now!  Well,
+it's got to be as I said, you sabe.  As long as you're on this boat
+you're my niece, and my sister Mary's child.  As I haven't got any
+sister Mary, you don't run any risk of falling foul of her, and you
+ain't taking any one's place.  That settles that.  Now, do you or
+do you not want to see that man again?  Say yes, and if he's
+anywhere above ground I'll yank him over to you as soon as we touch
+shore."  He had no idea of interfering with his colleague's amours,
+but he had determined to make Stratton pay for the bother their
+slovenly sequence had caused him.  Yet he was relieved and
+astonished by her frantic gesture of indignation and abhorrence.
+"No?" he repeated grimly.  "Well, that settles that.  Now, look
+here; quick, before she comes--do you want to go back home to your
+friends?"
+
+But here occurred what he had dreaded most and probably thought he
+had escaped.  She had stared at him, at the stewardess, at the
+walls, with abstracted, vacant, and bewildered, but always undimmed
+and unmoistened eyes.  A sudden convulsion shook her whole frame,
+her blank expression broke like a shattered mirror, she threw her
+hands over her eyes and fell forward with her face to the back of
+her chair in an outburst of tears.
+
+Alas for Jack! with the breaking up of those sealed fountains came
+her speech also, at first disconnected and incoherent, and then
+despairing and passionate.  No! she had no longer friends or home!
+She had lost and disgraced them!  She had disgraced HERSELF!  There
+was no home for her but the grave.  Why had Jack snatched her from
+it?  Then, bit by bit, she yielded up her story,--a story decidedly
+commonplace to Jack, uninteresting, and even irritating to his
+fastidiousness.  She was a schoolgirl (not even a convent girl,
+but the inmate of a Presbyterian female academy at Napa.  Jack
+shuddered as he remembered to have once seen certain of the pupils
+walking with a teacher), and she lived with her married sister.
+She had seen Stratton while going to and fro on the San Francisco
+boat; she had exchanged notes with him, had met him secretly, and
+finally consented to elope with him to Sacramento, only to discover
+when the boat had left the wharf the real nature of his intentions.
+Jack listened with infinite weariness and inward chafing.  He had
+read all this before in cheap novelettes, in the police reports, in
+the Sunday papers; he had heard a street preacher declaim against
+it, and warn young women of the serpent-like wiles of tempters of
+the Stratton variety.  But even now Jack failed to recognize
+Stratton as a serpent, or indeed anything but a blundering cheat
+and clown, who had left his dirty 'prentice work on his (Jack's)
+hands.  But the girl was helpless and, it seemed, homeless, all
+through a certain desperation of feeling which, in spite of her
+tears, he could not but respect.  That momentary shadow of death
+had exalted her.  He stroked his mustache, pulled down his white
+waistcoat and her cry, without saying anything.  He did not know
+that this most objectionable phase of her misery was her salvation
+and his own.
+
+But the stewardess would return in a moment.  "You'd better tell me
+what to call you," he said quietly.  "I ought to know my niece's
+first name."
+
+The girl caught her breath, and, between two sobs, said,
+"Sophonisba."
+
+Jack winced.  It seemed only to need this last sentimental touch to
+complete the idiotic situation.  "I'll call you Sophy," he said
+hurriedly and with an effort.
+
+"And now look here!  You are going in that cabin with Mrs. Johnson
+where she can look after you, but I can't.  So I'll have to take
+your word, for I'm not going to give you away before Mrs. Johnson,
+that you won't try that foolishness--you know what I mean--before I
+see you again.  Can I trust you?"
+
+With her head still bowed over the chair back, she murmured slowly
+somewhere from under her disheveled hair:--
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Honest Injin?" adjured Jack gravely.
+
+"Yes."
+
+The shuffling step of the stewardess was heard slowly approaching.
+"Yes," continued Jack abruptly, lightly lifting his voice as Mrs.
+Johnson opened the door,--"yes, if you'd only had some of those
+spearmint drops of your aunt Rachel's that she always gave you
+when these fits came on you'd have been all right inside of five
+minutes.  Aunty was no slouch of a doctor, was she?  Dear me, it
+only seems yesterday since I saw her.  You were just playing round
+her knee like a kitten on the back porch.  How time does fly!  But
+here's Mrs. Johnson coming to take you in.  Now rouse up, Sophy,
+and just hook yourself on to Mrs. Johnson on that side, and we'll
+toddle along."
+
+The young girl put back her heavy hair, and with her face still
+averted submitted to be helped to her feet by the kindly stewardess.
+Perhaps something homely sympathetic and nurse-like in the touch of
+the mulatto gave her assurance and confidence, for her head lapsed
+quite naturally against the woman's shoulder, and her face was
+partly hidden as she moved slowly along the deck.  Jack accompanied
+them to the saloon and the inner stateroom door.  A few passengers
+gathered curiously near, as much attracted by the unusual presence
+of Jack Hamlin in such a procession as by the girl herself.  "You'll
+look after her specially, Mrs. Johnson," said Jack, in unusually
+deliberate terms.  "She's been a good deal petted at home, and my
+sister perhaps has rather spoilt her.  She's pretty much of a child
+still, and you'll have to humor her.  Sophy," he continued, with
+ostentatious playfulness, directing his voice into the dim recesses
+of the stateroom, "you'll just think Mrs. Johnson's your old nurse,
+won't you?  Think it's old Katy, hey?"
+
+To his great consternation the girl approached tremblingly from the
+inner shadow.  The faintest and saddest of smiles for a moment
+played around the corners of her drawn mouth and tear-dimmed eyes
+as she held out her hand and said:--
+
+"God bless you for being so kind."
+
+Jack shuddered and glanced quickly round.  But luckily no one heard
+this crushing sentimentalism, and the next moment the door closed
+upon her and Mrs. Johnson.
+
+It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high over the
+narrowing yellow river, when Jack again stepped out on deck.  He
+had just left the captain's cabin, and a small social game with the
+officers, which had served to some extent to vaguely relieve his
+irritation and their pockets.  He had presumably quite forgotten
+the incident of the afternoon, as he looked about him, and
+complacently took in the quiet beauty of the night.
+
+The low banks on either side offered no break to the uninterrupted
+level of the landscape, through which the river seemed to wind only
+as a race track for the rushing boat.  Every fibre of her vast but
+fragile bulk quivered under the goad of her powerful engines.
+There was no other movement but hers, no other sound but this
+monstrous beat and panting; the whole tranquil landscape seemed to
+breathe and pulsate with her; dwellers in the tules, miles away,
+heard and felt her as she passed, and it seemed to Jack, leaning
+over the railing, as if the whole river swept like a sluice through
+her paddle-boxes.
+
+Jack had quite unconsciously lounged before that part of the
+railing where the young girl had leaned a few hours ago.  As he
+looked down upon the streaming yellow mill-race below him, he
+noticed--what neither he nor the girl had probably noticed before--
+that a space of the top bar of the railing was hinged, and could be
+lifted by withdrawing a small bolt, thus giving easy access to the
+guards.  He was still looking at it, whistling softly, when
+footsteps approached.
+
+"Jack," said a lazy voice, "how's sister Mary?"
+
+"It's a long time since you've seen her only child, Jack, ain't
+it?" said a second voice; "and yet it sort o' seems to me somehow
+that I've seen her before."
+
+Jack recognized the voice of two of his late companions at the
+card-table.  His whistling ceased; so also dropped every trace of
+color and expression from his handsome face.  But he did not turn,
+and remained quietly gazing at the water.
+
+"Aunt Rachel, too, must be getting on in years, Jack," continued
+the first speaker, halting behind Jack.
+
+"And Mrs. Johnson does not look so much like Sophy's old nurse as
+she used to," remarked the second, following his example.  Still
+Jack remained unmoved.
+
+"You don't seem to be interested, Jack," continued the first
+speaker.  "What are you looking at?"
+
+Without turning his head the gambler replied, "Looking at the boat;
+she's booming along, just chawing up and spitting out the river,
+ain't she?  Look at that sweep of water going under her paddle-
+wheels," he continued, unbolting the rail and lifting it to allow
+the two men to peer curiously over the guards as he pointed to the
+murderous incline beneath them; "a man wouldn't stand much show who
+got dropped into it.  How these paddles would just snatch him bald-
+headed, pick him up and slosh him round and round, and then sling
+him out down there in such a shape that his own father wouldn't
+know him."
+
+"Yes," said the first speaker, with an ostentatious little laugh,
+"but all that ain't telling us how sister Mary is."
+
+"No," said the gambler slipping into the opening with a white and
+rigid face in which nothing seemed living but the eyes, "no, but
+it's telling you how two d----d fools who didn't know when to shut
+their mouths might get them shut once and forever.  It's telling
+you what might happen to two men who tried to 'play' a man who
+didn't care to be 'played,'--a man who didn't care much what he
+did, when he did it, or how he did it, but would do what he'd set
+out to do--even if in doing it he went to hell with the men he sent
+there."
+
+He had stepped out on the guards, beside the two men, closing the
+rail behind him.  He had placed his hands on their shoulders; they
+had both gripped his arms; yet, viewed from the deck above, they
+seemed at that moment an amicable, even fraternal group, albeit the
+faces of the three were dead white in the moonlight.
+
+"I don't think I'm so very much interested in sister Mary," said
+the first speaker quietly, after a pause.
+
+"And I don't seem to think so much of aunt Rachel as I did," said
+his companion.
+
+"I thought you wouldn't," said Jack, coolly reopening the rail and
+stepping back again.  "It all depends upon the way you look at
+those things.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+The three men paused, shook each other's hands silently, and
+separated, Jack sauntering slowly back to his stateroom.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The educational establishment of Mrs. Mix and Madame Bance,
+situated in the best quarter of Sacramento and patronized by the
+highest state officials and members of the clergy, was a pretty if
+not an imposing edifice.  Although surrounded by a high white
+picket fence and entered through a heavily boarded gate, its
+balconies festooned with jasmine and roses, and its spotlessly
+draped windows as often graced with fresh, flower-like faces, were
+still plainly and provokingly visible above the ostentatious spikes
+of the pickets.  Nevertheless, Mr. Jack Hamlin, who had six months
+before placed his niece, Miss Sophonisba Brown, under its
+protecting care, felt a degree of uneasiness, even bordering on
+timidity, which was new to that usually self-confident man.
+Remembering how his first appearance had fluttered this dovecote
+and awakened a severe suspicion in the minds of the two principals,
+he had discarded his usual fashionable attire and elegantly fitting
+garments for a rough, homespun suit, supposed to represent a homely
+agriculturist, but which had the effect of transforming him into
+an adorable Strephon, infinitely more dangerous in his rustic
+shepherd-like simplicity.  He had also shaved off his silken
+mustache for the same prudential reasons, but had only succeeded
+in uncovering the delicate lines of his handsome mouth, and so
+absurdly reducing his apparent years that his avuncular pretensions
+seemed more preposterous than ever; and when he had rung the bell
+and was admitted by a severe Irish waiting-maid, his momentary
+hesitation and half humorous diffidence had such an unexpected
+effect upon her, that it seemed doubtful if he would be allowed to
+pass beyond the vestibule.  "Shure, miss," she said in a whisper to
+an under teacher, "there's wan at the dhure who calls himself,
+'Mister' Hamlin, but av it is not a young lady maskeradin' in her
+brother's clothes Oim very much mistaken; and av it's a boy, one of
+the pupil's brothers, shure ye might put a dhress on him when you
+take the others out for a walk, and he'd pass for the beauty of the
+whole school."
+
+Meantime, the unconscious subject of this criticism was pacing
+somewhat uneasily up and down the formal reception room into which
+he had been finally ushered.  Its farther end was filled by an
+enormous parlor organ, a number of music books, and a cheerfully
+variegated globe.  A large presentation Bible, an equally massive
+illustrated volume on the Holy Land, a few landscapes in cold,
+bluish milk and water colors, and rigid heads in crayons--the work
+of pupils--were presumably ornamental.  An imposing mahogany sofa
+and what seemed to be a disproportionate excess of chairs somewhat
+coldly furnished the room.  Jack had reluctantly made up his mind
+that, if Sophy was accompanied by any one, he would be obliged to
+kiss her to keep up his assumed relationship.  As she entered the
+room with Miss Mix, Jack advanced and soberly saluted her on the
+cheek.  But so positive and apparent was the gallantry of his
+presence, and perhaps so suggestive of some pastoral flirtation,
+that Miss Mix, to Jack's surprise, winced perceptibly and became
+stony.  But he was still more surprised that the young lady herself
+shrank half uneasily from his lips, and uttered a slight
+exclamation.  It was a new experience to Mr. Hamlin.
+
+But this somewhat mollified Miss Mix, and she slightly relaxed her
+austerity.  She was glad to be able to give the best accounts of
+Miss Brown, not only as regarded her studies, but as to her conduct
+and deportment.  Really, with the present freedom of manners and
+laxity of home discipline in California, it was gratifying to meet
+a young lady who seemed to value the importance of a proper decorum
+and behavior, especially towards the opposite sex.  Mr. Hamlin,
+although her guardian, was perhaps too young to understand and
+appreciate this.  To this inexperience she must also attribute the
+indiscretion of his calling during school hours and without
+preliminary warning.  She trusted, however, that this informality
+could be overlooked after consultation with Madame Bance, but in
+the mean time, perhaps for half an hour, she must withdraw Miss
+Brown and return with her to the class.  Mr. Hamlin could wait in
+this public room, reserved especially for visitors, until they
+returned.  Or, if he cared to accompany one of the teachers in a
+formal inspection of the school, she added, doubtfully, with a
+glance at Jack's distracting attractions, she would submit this
+also to Madame Bance.
+
+"Thank you, thank you," returned Jack hurriedly, as a depressing
+vision of the fifty or sixty scholars rose before his eyes, "but
+I'd rather not.  I mean, you know, I'd just as lief stay here
+ALONE.  I wouldn't have called anyway, don't you see, only I had
+a day off,--and--and--I wanted to talk with my niece on family
+matters."  He did not say that he had received a somewhat
+distressful letter from her asking him to come; a new instinct
+made him cautious.
+
+Considerably relieved by Jack's unexpected abstention, which seemed
+to spare her pupils the distraction of his graces, Miss Mix smiled
+more amicably and retired with her charge.  In the single glance he
+had exchanged with Sophy he saw that, although resigned and
+apparently self-controlled, she still appeared thoughtful and
+melancholy.  She had improved in appearance and seemed more refined
+and less rustic in her school dress, but he was conscious of the
+same distinct separation of her personality (which was uninteresting
+to him) from the sentiment that had impelled him to visit her.  She
+was possibly still hankering after that fellow Stratton, in spite of
+her protestations to the contrary; perhaps she wanted to go back to
+her sister, although she had declared she would die first, and had
+always refused to disclose her real name or give any clue by which
+he could have traced her relations.  She would cry, of course; he
+almost hoped that she would not return alone; he half regretted he
+had come.  She still held him only by a single quality of her
+nature,--the desperation she had shown on the boat; that was
+something he understood and respected.
+
+He walked discontentedly to the window and looked out; he walked
+discontentedly to the end of the room and stopped before the organ.
+It was a fine instrument; he could see that with an admiring and
+experienced eye.  He was alone in the room; in fact, quite alone in
+that part of the house which was separated from the class-rooms.
+He would disturb no one by trying it.  And if he did, what then?
+He smiled a little recklessly, slowly pulled off his gloves, and
+sat down before it.
+
+He played cautiously at first, with the soft pedal down.  The
+instrument had never known a strong masculine hand before, having
+been fumbled and friveled over by softly incompetent, feminine
+fingers.  But presently it began to thrill under the passionate
+hand of its lover, and carried away by his one innocent weakness,
+Jack was launched upon a sea of musical reminiscences.  Scraps of
+church music, Puritan psalms of his boyhood; dying strains from
+sad, forgotten operas, fragments of oratorios and symphonies, but
+chiefly phases from old masses heard at the missions of San Pedro
+and Santa Isabel, swelled up from his loving and masterful fingers.
+He had finished an Agnus Dei; the formal room was pulsating with
+divine aspiration; the rascal's hands were resting listlessly on
+the keys, his brown lashes lifted, in an effort of memory, tenderly
+towards the ceiling.
+
+Suddenly, a subdued murmur of applause and a slight rustle behind
+him recalled him to himself again.  He wheeled his chair quickly
+round.  The two principals of the school and half a dozen teachers
+were standing gravely behind him, and at the open door a dozen
+curled and frizzled youthful heads peered in eagerly, but half
+restrained by their teachers.  The relaxed features and apologetic
+attitude of Madame Bance and Miss Mix showed that Mr. Hamlin had
+unconsciously achieved a triumph.
+
+He might not have been as pleased to know that his extraordinary
+performance had solved a difficulty, effaced his other graces, and
+enabled them to place him on the moral pedestal of a mere musician,
+to whom these eccentricities were allowable and privileged.  He
+shared the admiration extended by the young ladies to their music
+teacher, which was always understood to be a sexless enthusiasm and
+a contagious juvenile disorder.  It was also a fine advertisement
+for the organ.  Madame Bance smiled blandly, improved the occasion
+by thanking Mr. Hamlin for having given the scholars a gratuitous
+lesson on the capabilities of the instrument, and was glad to
+be able to give Miss Brown a half-holiday to spend with her
+accomplished relative.  Miss Brown was even now upstairs, putting
+on her hat and mantle.  Jack was relieved.  Sophy would not attempt
+to cry on the street.
+
+Nevertheless, when they reached it and the gate closed behind them,
+he again became uneasy.  The girl's clouded face and melancholy
+manner were not promising.  It also occurred to him that he might
+meet some one who knew him and thus compromise her.  This was to be
+avoided at all hazards.  He began with forced gayety:--
+
+"Well, now, where shall we go?"
+
+She slightly raised her tear-dimmed eyes.  "Where you please--
+I don't care."
+
+"There isn't any show going on here, is there?"  He had a vague
+idea of a circus or menagerie--himself behind her in the shadow of
+the box.
+
+"I don't know of any."
+
+"Or any restaurant--or cake shop?"
+
+"There's a place where the girls go to get candy on Main Street.
+Some of them are there now."
+
+Jack shuddered; this was not to be thought of.  "But where do you
+walk?"
+
+"Up and down Main Street."
+
+"Where everybody can see you?" said Jack, scandalized.
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+They walked on in silence for a few moments.  Then a bright idea
+struck Mr. Hamlin.  He suddenly remembered that in one of his many
+fits of impulsive generosity and largesse he had given to an old
+negro retainer--whose wife had nursed him through a dangerous
+illness--a house and lot on the river bank.  He had been told that
+they had opened a small laundry or wash-house.  It occurred to him
+that a stroll there and a call upon "Uncle Hannibal and Aunt Chloe"
+combined the propriety and respectability due to the young person
+he was with, and the requisite secrecy and absence of publicity due
+to himself.  He at once suggested it.
+
+"You see she was a mighty good woman and you ought to know her, for
+she was my old nurse"--
+
+The girl glanced at him with a sudden impatience.
+
+"Honest Injin," said Jack solemnly; "she did nurse me through my
+last cough.  I ain't playing old family gags on you now."
+
+"Oh, dear," burst out the girl impulsively, "I do wish you wouldn't
+ever play them again.  I wish you wouldn't pretend to be my uncle;
+I wish you wouldn't make me pass for your niece.  It isn't right.
+It's all wrong.  Oh, don't you know it's all wrong, and can't come
+right any way?  It's just killing me.  I can't stand it.  I'd
+rather you'd say what I am and how I came to you and how you pitied
+me."
+
+They had luckily entered a narrow side street, and the sobs which
+shook the young girl's frame were unnoticed.  For a few moments
+Jack felt a horrible conviction stealing over him, that in his
+present attitude towards her he was not unlike that hound Stratton,
+and that, however innocent his own intent, there was a sickening
+resemblance to the situation on the boat in the base advantage he
+had taken of her friendlessness.  He had never told her that he was
+a gambler like Stratton, and that his peculiarly infelix reputation
+among women made it impossible for him to assist her, except by a
+stealth or the deception he had practiced, without compromising
+her.  He who had for years faced the sneers and half-frightened
+opposition of the world dared not tell the truth to this girl, from
+whom he expected nothing and who did not interest him.  He felt he
+was almost slinking at her side.  At last he said desperately:--
+
+"But I snatched them bald-headed at the organ, Sophy, didn't I?"
+
+"Oh yes," said the girl, "you played beautifully and grandly.  It
+was so good of you, too.  For I think, somehow, Madame Bance had
+been a little suspicious of you, but that settled it.  Everybody
+thought it was fine, and some thought it was your profession.
+Perhaps," she added timidly, "it is?"
+
+"I play a good deal, I reckon," said Jack, with a grim humor which
+did not, however, amuse him.
+
+"I wish I could, and make money by it," said the girl eagerly.
+Jack winced, but she did not notice it as she went on hurriedly:
+"That's what I wanted to talk to you about.  I want to leave the
+school and make my own living.  Anywhere where people won't know me
+and where I can be alone and work.  I shall die here among these
+girls--with all their talk of their friends and their--sisters,--
+and their questions about you."
+
+"Tell 'em to dry up," said Jack indignantly.  "Take 'em to the cake
+shop and load 'em up with candy and ice cream.  That'll stop their
+mouths.  You've got money, you got my last remittance, didn't you?"
+he repeated quickly.  "If you didn't, here's"--his hand was already
+in his pocket when she stopped him with a despairing gesture.
+
+"Yes, yes, I got it all.  I haven't touched it.  I don't want it.
+For I can't live on you.  Don't you understand,--I want to work.
+Listen,--I can draw and paint.  Madame Bance says I do it well; my
+drawing-master says I might in time take portraits and get paid for
+it.  And even now I can retouch photographs and make colored
+miniatures from them.  And," she stopped and glanced at Jack half-
+timidly, "I've--done some already."
+
+A glow of surprised relief suffused the gambler.  Not so much at
+this astonishing revelation as at the change it seemed to effect
+in her.  Her pale blue eyes, made paler by tears, cleared and
+brightened under their swollen lids like wiped steel; the lines of
+her depressed mouth straightened and became firm.  Her voice had
+lost its hopeless monotone.
+
+"There's a shop in the next street,--a photographer's,--where they
+have one of mine in their windows," she went on, reassured by
+Jack's unaffected interest.  "It's only round the corner, if you
+care to see."
+
+Jack assented; a few paces farther brought them to the corner
+of a narrow street, where they presently turned into a broader
+thoroughfare and stopped before the window of a photographer.
+Sophy pointed to an oval frame, containing a portrait painted on
+porcelain.  Mr. Hamlin was startled.  Inexperienced as he was, a
+certain artistic inclination told him it was good, although it is
+to be feared he would have been astonished even if it had been
+worse.  The mere fact that this headstrong country girl, who had
+run away with a cur like Stratton, should be able to do anything
+else took him by surprise.
+
+"I got ten dollars for that," she said hesitatingly, "and I could
+have got more for a larger one, but I had to do that in my room,
+during recreation hours.  If I had more time and a place where I
+could work"--she stopped timidly and looked tentatively at Jack.
+But he was already indulging in a characteristically reckless idea
+of coming back after he had left Sophy, buying the miniature at an
+extravagant price, and ordering half a dozen more at extraordinary
+figures.  Here, however, two passers-by, stopping ostensibly to
+look in the window, but really attracted by the picturesque
+spectacle of the handsome young rustic and his schoolgirl
+companion, gave Jack such a fright that he hurried Sophy away again
+into the side street.  "There's nothing mean about that picture
+business," he said cheerfully; "it looks like a square kind of
+game," and relapsed into thoughtful silence.
+
+At which, Sophy, the ice of restraint broken, again burst into
+passionate appeal.  If she could only go away somewhere--where she
+saw no one but the people who would buy her work, who knew nothing
+of her past nor cared to know who were her relations!  She would
+work hard; she knew she could support herself in time.  She would
+keep the name he had given her,--it was not distinctive enough to
+challenge any inquiry,--but nothing more.  She need not assume to
+be his niece; he would always be her kind friend, to whom she owed
+everything, even her miserable life.  She trusted still to his
+honor never to seek to know her real name, nor ever to speak to her
+of that man if he ever met him.  It would do no good to her or to
+them; it might drive her, for she was not yet quite sure of
+herself, to do that which she had promised him never to do again.
+
+There was no threat, impatience, or acting in her voice, but he
+recognized the same dull desperation he had once heard in it, and
+her eyes, which a moment before were quick and mobile, had become
+fixed and set.  He had no idea of trying to penetrate the foolish
+secret of her name and relations; he had never had the slightest
+curiosity, but it struck him now that Stratton might at any time
+force it upon him.  The only way that he could prevent it was to
+let it be known that, for unexpressed reasons, he would shoot
+Stratton "on sight."  This would naturally restrict any verbal
+communication between them.  Jack's ideas of morality were vague,
+but his convictions on points of honor were singularly direct and
+positive.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+Meantime Hamlin and Sophy were passing the outskirts of the town;
+the open lots and cleared spaces were giving way to grassy
+stretches, willow copses, and groups of cottonwood and sycamore;
+and beyond the level of yellowing tules appeared the fringed and
+raised banks of the river.  Half tropical looking cottages with
+deep verandas--the homes of early Southern pioneers--took the place
+of incomplete blocks of modern houses, monotonously alike.  In
+these sylvan surroundings Mr. Hamlin's picturesque rusticity looked
+less incongruous and more Arcadian; the young girl had lost some of
+her restraint with her confidences, and lounging together side by
+side, without the least consciousness of any sentiment in their
+words or actions, they nevertheless contrived to impress the
+spectator with the idea that they were a charming pair of pastoral
+lovers.  So strong was this impression that, as they approached
+Aunt Chloe's laundry, a pretty rose-covered cottage with an
+enormous whitewashed barn-like extension in the rear, the black
+proprietress herself, standing at the door, called her husband
+to come and look at them, and flashed her white teeth in such
+unqualified commendation and patronage that Mr. Hamlin, withdrawing
+himself from Sophy's side, instantly charged down upon them.
+
+"If you don't slide the lid back over that grinning box of dominoes
+of yours and take it inside, I'll just carry Hannibal off with me,"
+he said in a quick whisper, with a half-wicked, half-mischievous
+glitter in his brown eyes.  "That young lady's--A LADY--do you
+understand?  No riffraff friend of mine, but a regular NUN--a
+saint--do you hear?  So you just stand back and let her take a good
+look round, and rest herself, until she wants you."  "Two black
+idiots, Miss Brown," he continued cheerfully in a higher voice of
+explanation, as Sophy approached, "who think because one of 'em
+used to shave me and the other saved my life they've got a right to
+stand at their humble cottage door and frighten horses!"
+
+So great was Mr. Hamlin's ascendency over his former servants that
+even this ingenious pleasantry was received with every sign of
+affection and appreciation of the humorist, and of the profound
+respect for his companion.  Aunt Chloe showed them effusively into
+her parlor, a small but scrupulously neat and sweet-smelling
+apartment, inordinately furnished with a huge mahogany centre-table
+and chairs, and the most fragile and meretricious china and glass
+ornaments on the mantel.  But the three jasmine-edged lattice
+windows opened upon a homely garden of old-fashioned herbs and
+flowers, and their fragrance filled the room.  The cleanest and
+starchiest of curtains, the most dazzling and whitest of tidies and
+chair-covers, bespoke the adjacent laundry; indeed, the whole
+cottage seemed to exhale the odors of lavender soap and freshly
+ironed linen.  Yet the cottage was large for the couple and their
+assistants.  "Dar was two front rooms on de next flo' dat dey never
+used," explained Aunt Chloe; "friends allowed dat dey could let 'em
+to white folks, but dey had always been done kep' for Marse Hamlin,
+ef he ever wanted to be wid his old niggers again."  Jack looked up
+quickly with a brightened face, made a sign to Hannibal, and the
+two left the room together.
+
+When he came through the passage a few moments later, there was a
+sound of laughter in the parlor.  He recognized the full, round
+lazy chuckle of Aunt Chloe, but there was a higher girlish ripple
+that he did not know.  He had never heard Sophy laugh before.  Nor,
+when he entered, had he ever seen her so animated.  She was helping
+Chloe set the table, to that lady's intense delight at "Missy's"
+girlish housewifery.  She was picking the berries fresh from the
+garden, buttering the Sally Lunn, making the tea, and arranging the
+details of the repast with apparently no trace of her former
+discontent and unhappiness in either face or manner.  He dropped
+quietly into a chair by the window, and, with the homely scents of
+the garden mixing with the honest odors of Aunt Chloe's cookery,
+watched her with an amusement that was as pleasant and grateful as
+it was strange and unprecedented.
+
+"Now den," said Aunt Chloe to her husband, as she put the finishing
+touch to the repast in a plate of doughnuts as exquisitely brown
+and shining as Jack's eyes were at that moment, "Hannibal, you just
+come away, and let dem two white quality chillens have dey tea.
+Dey's done starved, shuah."  And with an approving nod to Jack, she
+bundled her husband from the room.
+
+The door closed; the young girl began to pour out the tea, but Jack
+remained in his seat by the window.  It was a singular sensation
+which he did not care to disturb.  It was no new thing for Mr.
+Hamlin to find himself at a tete-a-tete repast with the admiring
+and complaisant fair; there was a 'cabinet particulier' in a
+certain San Francisco restaurant which had listened to their
+various vanities and professions of undying faith; he might have
+recalled certain festal rendezvous with a widow whose piety and
+impeccable reputation made it a moral duty for her to come to him
+only in disguise; it was but a few days ago that he had been let
+privately into the palatial mansion of a high official for a
+midnight supper with a foolish wife.  It was not strange, therefore,
+that he should be alone here, secretly, with a member of that
+indiscreet, loving sex.  But that he should be sitting there in a
+cheap negro laundry with absolutely no sentiment of any kind towards
+the heavy-haired, freckle-faced country schoolgirl opposite him,
+from whom he sought and expected nothing, and ENJOYING it without
+scorn of himself or his companion, to use his own expression, "got
+him."  Presently he rose and sauntered to the table with shining
+eyes.
+
+"Well, what do you think of Aunt Chloe's shebang?" he asked
+smilingly.
+
+"Oh, it's so sweet and clean and homelike," said the girl quickly.
+At any other time he would have winced at the last adjective.  It
+struck him now as exactly the word.
+
+"Would you like to live here, if you could?"
+
+Her face brightened.  She put the teapot down and gazed fixedly at
+Jack.
+
+"Because you can.  Look here.  I spoke to Hannibal about it.  You
+can have the two front rooms if you want to.  One of 'em is big
+enough and light enough for a studio to do your work in.  You tell
+that nigger what you want to put in 'em, and he's got my orders to
+do it.  I told him about your painting; said you were the daughter
+of an old friend, you know.  Hold on, Sophy; d--n it all, I've got
+to do a little gilt-edged lying; but I let you out of the niece
+business this time.  Yes, from this moment I'm no longer your
+uncle.  I renounce the relationship.  It's hard," continued the
+rascal, "after all these years and considering sister Mary's
+feelings; but, as you seem to wish it, it must be done."
+
+Sophy's steel-blue eyes softened.  She slid her long brown hand
+across the table and grasped Jack's.  He returned the pressure
+quickly and fraternally, even to that half-shamed, half-hurried
+evasion of emotion peculiar to all brothers.  This was also a new
+sensation; but he liked it.
+
+"You are too--too good, Mr. Hamlin," she said quietly.
+
+"Yes," said Jack cheerfully, "that's what's the matter with me.  It
+isn't natural, and if I keep it up too long it brings on my cough."
+
+Nevertheless, they were happy in a boy and girl fashion, eating
+heartily, and, I fear, not always decorously; scrambling somewhat
+for the strawberries, and smacking their lips over the Sally Lunn.
+Meantime, it was arranged that Mr. Hamlin should inform Miss Mix
+that Sophy would leave school at the end of the term, only a few
+days hence, and then transfer herself to lodgings with some old
+family servants, where she could more easily pursue her studies in
+her own profession.  She need not make her place of abode a secret,
+neither need she court publicity.  She would write to Jack
+regularly, informing him of her progress, and he would visit her
+whenever he could.  Jack assented gravely to the further
+proposition that he was to keep a strict account of all the moneys
+he advanced her, and that she was to repay him out of the proceeds
+of her first pictures.  He had promised also, with a slight mental
+reservation, not to buy them all himself, but to trust to her
+success with the public.  They were never to talk of what had
+happened before; she was to begin life anew.  Of such were their
+confidences, spoken often together at the same moment, and with
+their mouths full.  Only one thing troubled Jack; he had not yet
+told her frankly who he was and what was his reputation; he had
+hitherto carelessly supposed she would learn it, and in truth had
+cared little if she did; but it was evident from her conversation
+that day that by some miracle she was still in ignorance.  Unable
+now to tell her himself, he had charged Hannibal to break it to her
+casually after he was gone.  "You can let me down easy if you like,
+but you'd better make a square deal of it while you're about it.
+And," Jack had added cheerfully, "if she thinks after that she'd
+better drop me entirely, you just say that if she wishes to STAY,
+you'll see that I don't ever come here again.  And you keep your
+word about it too, you black nigger, or I'll be the first to thrash
+you."
+
+Nevertheless, when Hannibal and Aunt Chloe returned to clear away
+the repast, they were a harmonious party; albeit, Mr. Hamlin seemed
+more content to watch them silently from his chair by the window, a
+cigar between his lips, and the pleasant distraction of the homely
+scents and sounds of the garden in his senses.  Allusion having
+been made again to the morning performance of the organ, he was
+implored by Hannibal to diversify his talent by exercising it on an
+old guitar which had passed into that retainer's possession with
+certain clothes of his master's when they separated.  Mr. Hamlin
+accepted it dubiously; it had twanged under his volatile fingers in
+more pretentious but less innocent halls.  But presently he raised
+his tenor voice and soft brown lashes to the humble ceiling and
+sang.
+
+
+     "Way down upon the Swanee River,"
+
+
+Discoursed Jack plaintively,--
+
+
+            "Far, far away,
+     Thar's whar my heart is turning ever,
+     Thar's whar the old folks stay."
+
+
+The two dusky scions of an emotional race, that had been wont to
+sweeten its toil and condone its wrongs with music, sat wrapt and
+silent, swaying with Jack's voice until they could burst in upon
+the chorus.  The jasmine vines trilled softly with the afternoon
+breeze; a slender yellow-hammer, perhaps emulous of Jack, swung
+himself from an outer spray and peered curiously into the room; and
+a few neighbors, gathering at their doors and windows, remarked
+that "after all, when it came to real singing, no one could beat
+those d----d niggers."
+
+The sun was slowly sinking in the rolling gold of the river when
+Jack and Sophy started leisurely back through the broken shafts of
+light, and across the far-stretching shadows of the cottonwoods.
+In the midst of a lazy silence they were presently conscious of a
+distant monotonous throb, the booming of the up boat on the river.
+The sound came nearer--passed them, the boat itself hidden by the
+trees; but a trailing cloud of smoke above cast a momentary shadow
+upon their path.  The girl looked up at Jack with a troubled face.
+Mr. Hamlin smiled reassuringly; but in that instant he had made up
+his mind that it was his moral duty to kill Mr. Edward Stratton.
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+For the next two months Mr. Hamlin was professionally engaged in
+San Francisco and Marysville, and the transfer of Sophy from the
+school to her new home was effected without his supervision.  From
+letters received by him during that interval, it seemed that the
+young girl had entered energetically upon her new career, and that
+her artistic efforts were crowned with success.  There were a few
+Indian-ink sketches, studies made at school and expanded in her own
+"studio," which were eagerly bought as soon as exhibited in the
+photographer's window,--notably by a florid and inartistic
+bookkeeper, an old negro woman, a slangy stable boy, a gorgeously
+dressed and painted female, and the bearded second officer of a
+river steamboat, without hesitation and without comment.  This, as
+Mr. Hamlin intelligently pointed out in a letter to Sophy, showed a
+general and diversified appreciation on the part of the public.
+Indeed, it emboldened her, in the retouching of photographs, to
+offer sittings to the subjects, and to undertake even large crayon
+copies, which had resulted in her getting so many orders that she
+was no longer obliged to sell her drawings, but restricted herself
+solely to profitable portraiture.  The studio became known; even
+its quaint surroundings added to the popular interest, and the
+originality and independence of the young painter helped her to a
+genuine success.  All this she wrote to Jack.  Meantime Hannibal
+had assured him that he had carried out his instructions by
+informing "Missy" of his old master's real occupation and
+reputation, but that the young lady hadn't "took no notice."
+Certainly there was no allusion to it in her letters, nor any
+indication in her manner.  Mr. Hamlin was greatly, and it seemed to
+him properly, relieved.  And he looked forward with considerable
+satisfaction to an early visit to old Hannibal's laundry.
+
+It must be confessed, also, that another matter, a simple affair of
+gallantry, was giving him an equally unusual, unexpected, and
+absurd annoyance, which he had never before permitted to such
+trivialities.  In a recent visit to a fashionable watering-place,
+he had attracted the attention of what appeared to be a
+respectable, matter of fact woman, the wife of a recently elected
+rural Senator.  She was, however, singularly beautiful, and as
+singularly cold.  It was perhaps this quality, and her evident
+annoyance at some unreasoning prepossession which Jack's
+fascinations exercised upon her, that heightened that reckless
+desire for risk and excitement which really made up the greater
+part of his gallantry.  Nevertheless, as was his habit, he had
+treated her always with a charming unconsciousness of his own
+attentions, and a frankness that seemed inconsistent with any
+insidious approach.  In fact, Mr. Hamlin seldom made love to
+anybody, but permitted it to be made to him with good-humored
+deprecation and cheerful skepticism.  He had once, quite
+accidentally, while riding, come upon her when she had strayed
+from her own riding party, and had behaved with such unexpected
+circumspection and propriety, not to mention a certain thoughtful
+abstraction,--it was the day he had received Sophy's letter,--that
+she was constrained to make the first advances.  This led to a
+later innocent rendezvous, in which Mrs. Camperly was impelled to
+confide to Mr. Hamlin the fact that her husband had really never
+understood her.  Jack listened with an understanding and sympathy
+quickened by long experience of such confessions.  If anything had
+ever kept him from marriage it was this evident incompatibility of
+the conjugal relations with a just conception of the feminine soul
+and its aspirations.
+
+And so eventually this yearning for sympathy dragged Mrs.
+Camperly's clean skirts and rustic purity after Jack's heels into
+various places and various situations not so clean, rural, or
+innocent; made her miserably unhappy in his absence, and still more
+miserably happy in his presence; impelled her to lie, cheat, and
+bear false witness; forced her to listen with mingled shame and
+admiration to narrow criticism of his faults, from natures so
+palpably inferior to his own that her moral sense was confused and
+shaken; gave her two distinct lives, but so unreal and feverish
+that, with a recklessness equal to his own, she was at last ready
+to merge them both into his.  For the first time in his life Mr.
+Hamlin found himself bored at the beginning of an affair, actually
+hesitated, and suddenly disappeared from San Francisco.
+
+He turned up a few days later at Aunt Chloe's door, with various
+packages of presents and quite the air of a returning father of a
+family, to the intense delight of that lady and to Sophy's proud
+gratification.  For he was lost in a profuse, boyish admiration of
+her pretty studio, and in wholesome reverence for her art and her
+astounding progress.  They were also amused at his awe and evident
+alarm at the portraits of two ladies, her latest sitters, that were
+still on the easels, and, in consideration of his half-assumed,
+half-real bashfulness, they turned their faces to the wall.  Then
+his quick, observant eye detected a photograph of himself on the
+mantel.
+
+"What's that?" he asked suddenly.
+
+Sophy and Aunt Chloe exchanged meaning glances.  Sophy had, as a
+surprise to Jack, just completed a handsome crayon portrait of
+himself from an old photograph furnished by Hannibal, and the
+picture was at that moment in the window of her former patron,--
+the photographer.
+
+"Oh, dat!  Miss Sophy jus' put it dar fo' de lady sitters to look
+at to gib 'em a pleasant 'spresshion," said Aunt Chloe, chuckling.
+
+Mr. Hamlin did not laugh, but quietly slipped the photograph into
+his pocket.  Yet, perhaps, it had not been recognized.
+
+Then Sophy proposed to have luncheon in the studio; it was quite
+"Bohemian" and fashionable, and many artists did it.  But to her
+great surprise Jack gravely objected, preferring the little parlor
+of Aunt Chloe, the vine-fringed windows, and the heavy respectable
+furniture.  He thought it was profaning the studio, and then--
+anybody might come in.  This unusual circumspection amused them,
+and was believed to be part of the boyish awe with which Jack
+regarded the models, the draperies, and the studies on the walls.
+Certain it was that he was much more at his ease in the parlor, and
+when he and Sophy were once more alone at their meal, although he
+ate nothing, he had regained all his old naivete.  Presently he
+leaned forward and placed his hand fraternally on her arm.  Sophy
+looked up with an equally frank smile.
+
+"You know I promised to let bygones be bygones, eh?  Well, I
+intended it, and more,--I intended to make 'em so.  I told you I'd
+never speak to you again of that man who tried to run you off, and
+I intended that no one else should.  Well, as he was the only one
+who could talk--that meant him.  But the cards are out of my hands;
+the game's been played without me.  For he's dead!"
+
+The girl started.  Mr. Hamlin's hand passed caressingly twice or
+thrice along her sleeve with a peculiar gentleness that seemed to
+magnetize her.
+
+"Dead," he repeated slowly.  "Shot in San Diego by another man, but
+not by me.  I had him tracked as far as that, and had my eyes on
+him, but it wasn't my deal.  But there," he added, giving her
+magnetized arm a gentle and final tap as if to awaken it, "he's
+dead, and so is the whole story.  And now we'll drop it forever."
+
+The girl's downcast eyes were fixed on the table.  "But there's my
+sister," she murmured.
+
+"Did she know you went with him?" asked Jack.
+
+"No; but she knows I ran away."
+
+"Well, you ran away from home to study how to be an artist, don't
+you see?  Some day she'll find out you ARE ONE; that settles the
+whole thing."
+
+They were both quite cheerful again when Aunt Chloe returned to
+clear the table, especially Jack, who was in the best spirits,
+with preternaturally bright eyes and a somewhat rare color on his
+cheeks.  Aunt Chloe, who had noticed that his breathing was hurried
+at times, watched him narrowly, and when later he slipped from the
+room, followed him into the passage.  He was leaning against the
+wall.  In an instant the negress was at his side.
+
+"De Lawdy Gawd, Marse Jack, not AGIN?"
+
+He took his handkerchief, slightly streaked with blood, from his
+lips and said faintly, "Yes, it came on--on the boat; but I thought
+the d----d thing was over.  Get me out of this, quick, to some
+hotel, before she knows it.  You can tell her I was called away.
+Say that"--but his breath failed him, and when Aunt Chloe caught
+him like a child in her strong arms he could make no resistance.
+
+In another hour he was unconscious, with two doctors at his
+bedside, in the little room that had been occupied by Sophy.  It
+was a sharp attack, but prompt attendance and skillful nursing
+availed; he rallied the next day, but it would be weeks, the
+doctors said, before he could be removed in safety.  Sophy was
+transferred to the parlor, but spent most of her time at Jack's
+bedside with Aunt Chloe, or in the studio with the door open
+between it and the bedroom.  In spite of his enforced idleness and
+weakness, it was again a singularly pleasant experience to Jack; it
+amused him to sometimes see Sophy at her work through the open
+door, and when sitters came,--for he had insisted on her continuing
+her duties as before, keeping his invalid presence in the house a
+secret,--he had all the satisfaction of a mischievous boy in
+rehearsing to Sophy such of the conversation as could be overheard
+through the closed door, and speculating on the possible wonder and
+chagrin of the sitters had they discovered him.  Even when he was
+convalescent and strong enough to be helped into the parlor and
+garden, he preferred to remain propped up in Sophy's little
+bedroom.  It was evident, however, that this predilection was
+connected with no suggestion nor reminiscence of Sophy herself.  It
+was true that he had once asked her if it didn't make her "feel
+like home."  The decided negative from Sophy seemed to mildly
+surprise him.  "That's odd," he said; "now all these fixings and
+things," pointing to the flowers in a vase, the little hanging
+shelf of books, the knickknacks on the mantel-shelf, and the few
+feminine ornaments that still remained, "look rather like home to
+me."
+
+So the days slipped by, and although Mr. Hamlin was soon able to
+walk short distances, leaning on Sophy's arm, in the evening
+twilight, along the river bank, he was still missed from the haunts
+of dissipated men.  A good many people wondered, and others,
+chiefly of the more irrepressible sex, were singularly concerned.
+Apparently one of these, one sultry afternoon, stopped before the
+shadowed window of a photographer's; she was a handsome, well-
+dressed woman, yet bearing a certain countrylike simplicity that
+was unlike the restless smartness of the more urban promenaders
+who passed her.  Nevertheless she had halted before Mr. Hamlin's
+picture, which Sophy had not yet dared to bring home and present
+to him, and was gazing at it with rapt and breathless attention.
+Suddenly she shook down her veil and entered the shop.  Could the
+proprietor kindly tell her if that portrait was the work of a local
+artist?
+
+The proprietor was both proud and pleased to say that IT WAS!  It
+was the work of a Miss Brown, a young girl student; in fact, a mere
+schoolgirl one might say.  He could show her others of her
+pictures.
+
+Thanks.  But could he tell her if this portrait was from life?
+
+No doubt; the young lady had a studio, and he himself had sent her
+sitters.
+
+And perhaps this was the portrait of one that he had sent her?
+
+No; but she was very popular and becoming quite the fashion.  Very
+probably this gentleman, who, he understood, was quite a public
+character, had heard of her, and selected her on that account.
+
+The lady's face flushed slightly.  The photographer continued.  The
+picture was not for sale; it was only there on exhibition; in fact
+it was to be returned to-morrow.
+
+To the sitter?
+
+He couldn't say.  It was to go back to the studio.  Perhaps the
+sitter would be there.
+
+And this studio?  Could she have its address?
+
+The man wrote a few lines on his card.  Perhaps the lady would be
+kind enough to say that he had sent her.  The lady, thanking him,
+partly lifted her veil to show a charming smile, and gracefully
+withdrew.  The photographer was pleased.  Miss Brown had evidently
+got another sitter, and, from that momentary glimpse of her face,
+it would be a picture as beautiful and attractive as the man's.
+But what was the odd idea that struck him?  She certainly reminded
+him of some one!  There was the same heavy hair, only this lady's
+was golden, and she was older and more mature.  And he remained for
+a moment with knitted brows musing over his counter.
+
+Meantime the fair stranger was making her way towards the river
+suburb.  When she reached Aunt Chloe's cottage, she paused, with
+the unfamiliar curiosity of a newcomer, over its quaint and
+incongruous exterior.  She hesitated a moment also when Aunt Chloe
+appeared in the doorway, and, with a puzzled survey of her
+features, went upstairs to announce a visitor.  There was the sound
+of hurried shutting of doors, of the moving of furniture, quick
+footsteps across the floor, and then a girlish laugh that startled
+her.  She ascended the stairs breathlessly to Aunt Chloe's summons,
+found the negress on the landing, and knocked at a door which bore
+a card marked "Studio."  The door opened; she entered; there were
+two sudden outcries that might have come from one voice.
+
+"Sophonisba!"
+
+"Marianne!"
+
+"Hush."
+
+The woman had seized Sophy by the wrist and dragged her to the
+window.  There was a haggard look of desperation in her face akin
+to that which Hamlin had once seen in her sister's eyes on the
+boat, as she said huskily: "I did not know YOU were here.  I came
+to see the woman who had painted Mr. Hamlin's portrait.  I did not
+know it was YOU.  Listen!  Quick! answer me one question.  Tell me--
+I implore you--for the sake of the mother who bore us both!--tell
+me--is this the man for whom you left home?"
+
+"No!  No!  A hundred times no!"
+
+Then there was a silence.  Mr. Hamlin from the bedroom heard no
+more.
+
+An hour later, when the two women opened the studio door, pale but
+composed, they were met by the anxious and tearful face of Aunt
+Chloe.
+
+"Lawdy Gawd, Missy,--but dey done gone!--bofe of 'em!"
+
+"Who is gone?" demanded Sophy, as the woman beside her trembled and
+grew paler still.
+
+"Marse Jack and dat fool nigger, Hannibal."
+
+"Mr. Hamlin gone?" repeated Sophy incredulously.  "When?  Where?"
+
+"Jess now--on de down boat.  Sudden business.  Didn't like to
+disturb yo' and yo' friend.  Said he'd write."
+
+"But he was ill--almost helpless," gasped Sophy.
+
+"Dat's why he took dat old nigger.  Lawdy, Missy, bress yo' heart.
+Dey both knows aich udder, shuah!  It's all right.  Dar now, dar
+dey are; listen."
+
+She held up her hand.  A slow pulsation, that might have been the
+dull, labored beating of their own hearts, was making itself felt
+throughout the little cottage.  It came nearer,--a deep regular
+inspiration that seemed slowly to fill and possess the whole
+tranquil summer twilight.  It was nearer still--was abreast of the
+house--passed--grew fainter and at last died away like a deep-drawn
+sigh.  It was the down boat, that was now separating Mr. Hamlin and
+his protegee, even as it had once brought them together.
+
+
+
+
+AN INGENUE OF THE SIERRAS.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+We all held our breath as the coach rushed through the semi-
+darkness of Galloper's Ridge.  The vehicle itself was only a huge
+lumbering shadow; its side-lights were carefully extinguished, and
+Yuba Bill had just politely removed from the lips of an outside
+passenger even the cigar with which he had been ostentatiously
+exhibiting his coolness.  For it had been rumored that the Ramon
+Martinez gang of "road agents" were "laying" for us on the second
+grade, and would time the passage of our lights across Galloper's
+in order to intercept us in the "brush" beyond.  If we could cross
+the ridge without being seen, and so get through the brush before
+they reached it, we were safe.  If they followed, it would only be
+a stern chase with the odds in our favor.
+
+The huge vehicle swayed from side to side, rolled, dipped, and
+plunged, but Bill kept the track, as if, in the whispered words of
+the Expressman, he could "feel and smell" the road he could no
+longer see.  We knew that at times we hung perilously over the edge
+of slopes that eventually dropped a thousand feet sheer to the tops
+of the sugar-pines below, but we knew that Bill knew it also.  The
+half visible heads of the horses, drawn wedge-wise together by the
+tightened reins, appeared to cleave the darkness like a ploughshare,
+held between his rigid hands.  Even the hoof-beats of the six horses
+had fallen into a vague, monotonous, distant roll. Then the ridge
+was crossed, and we plunged into the still blacker obscurity of the
+brush.  Rather we no longer seemed to move--it was only the phantom
+night that rushed by us.  The horses might have been submerged in
+some swift Lethean stream; nothing but the top of the coach and the
+rigid bulk of Yuba Bill arose above them.  Yet even in that awful
+moment our speed was unslackened; it was as if Bill cared no longer
+to GUIDE but only to drive, or as if the direction of his huge
+machine was determined by other hands than his.  An incautious
+whisperer hazarded the paralyzing suggestion of our "meeting another
+team."  To our great astonishment Bill overheard it; to our greater
+astonishment he replied.  "It 'ud be only a neck and neck race which
+would get to h-ll first," he said quietly.  But we were relieved--
+for he had SPOKEN!  Almost simultaneously the wider turnpike began
+to glimmer faintly as a visible track before us; the wayside trees
+fell out of line, opened up, and dropped off one after another; we
+were on the broader table-land, out of danger, and apparently
+unperceived and unpursued.
+
+Nevertheless in the conversation that broke out again with the
+relighting of the lamps, and the comments, congratulations, and
+reminiscences that were freely exchanged, Yuba Bill preserved a
+dissatisfied and even resentful silence.  The most generous praise
+of his skill and courage awoke no response.  "I reckon the old man
+waz just spilin' for a fight, and is feelin' disappointed," said a
+passenger.  But those who knew that Bill had the true fighter's
+scorn for any purely purposeless conflict were more or less
+concerned and watchful of him.  He would drive steadily for four or
+five minutes with thoughtfully knitted brows, but eyes still keenly
+observant under his slouched hat, and then, relaxing his strained
+attitude, would give way to a movement of impatience.  "You ain't
+uneasy about anything, Bill, are you?" asked the Expressman
+confidentially.  Bill lifted his eyes with a slightly contemptuous
+surprise.  "Not about anything ter COME.  It's what HEZ happened
+that I don't exackly sabe.  I don't see no signs of Ramon's gang
+ever havin' been out at all, and ef they were out I don't see why
+they didn't go for us."
+
+"The simple fact is that our ruse was successful," said an outside
+passenger.  "They waited to see our lights on the ridge, and, not
+seeing them, missed us until we had passed.  That's my opinion."
+
+"You ain't puttin' any price on that opinion, air ye?" inquired
+Bill politely.
+
+"No."
+
+"'Cos thar's a comic paper in 'Frisco pays for them things, and
+I've seen worse things in it."
+
+"Come off, Bill," retorted the passenger, slightly nettled by the
+tittering of his companions.  "Then what did you put out the lights
+for?"
+
+"Well," returned Bill grimly, "it mout have been because I didn't
+keer to hev you chaps blazin' away at the first bush you THOUGHT
+you saw move in your skeer, and bringin' down their fire on us."
+
+The explanation, though unsatisfactory, was by no means an
+improbable one, and we thought it better to accept it with a laugh.
+Bill, however, resumed his abstracted manner.
+
+"Who got in at the Summit?" he at last asked abruptly of the
+Expressman.
+
+"Derrick and Simpson of Cold Spring, and one of the 'Excelsior'
+boys," responded the Expressman.
+
+"And that Pike County girl from Dow's Flat, with her bundles.
+Don't forget her," added the outside passenger ironically.
+
+"Does anybody here know her?" continued Bill, ignoring the irony.
+
+"You'd better ask Judge Thompson; he was mighty attentive to her;
+gettin' her a seat by the off window, and lookin' after her bundles
+and things."
+
+"Gettin' her a seat by the WINDOW?" repeated Bill.
+
+"Yes, she wanted to see everything, and wasn't afraid of the
+shooting."
+
+"Yes," broke in a third passenger, "and he was so d----d civil that
+when she dropped her ring in the straw, he struck a match agin all
+your rules, you know, and held it for her to find it.  And it was
+just as we were crossin' through the brush, too.  I saw the hull
+thing through the window, for I was hanging over the wheels with my
+gun ready for action.  And it wasn't no fault of Judge Thompson's
+if his d----d foolishness hadn't shown us up, and got us a shot
+from the gang."
+
+Bill gave a short grunt, but drove steadily on without further
+comment or even turning his eyes to the speaker.
+
+We were now not more than a mile from the station at the crossroads
+where we were to change horses.  The lights already glimmered in
+the distance, and there was a faint suggestion of the coming dawn
+on the summits of the ridge to the west.  We had plunged into a
+belt of timber, when suddenly a horseman emerged at a sharp canter
+from a trail that seemed to be parallel with our own.  We were all
+slightly startled; Yuba Bill alone preserving his moody calm.
+
+"Hullo!" he said.
+
+The stranger wheeled to our side as Bill slackened his speed.  He
+seemed to be a "packer" or freight muleteer.
+
+"Ye didn't get 'held up' on the Divide?" continued Bill cheerfully.
+
+"No," returned the packer, with a laugh; "I don't carry treasure.
+But I see you're all right, too.  I saw you crossin' over
+Galloper's."
+
+"SAW us?" said Bill sharply.  "We had our lights out."
+
+"Yes, but there was suthin' white--a handkerchief or woman's veil,
+I reckon--hangin' from the window.  It was only a movin' spot agin
+the hillside, but ez I was lookin' out for ye I knew it was you by
+that.  Good-night!"
+
+He cantered away.  We tried to look at each other's faces, and at
+Bill's expression in the darkness, but he neither spoke nor stirred
+until he threw down the reins when we stopped before the station.
+The passengers quickly descended from the roof; the Expressman was
+about to follow, but Bill plucked his sleeve.
+
+"I'm goin' to take a look over this yer stage and these yer
+passengers with ye, afore we start."
+
+"Why, what's up?"
+
+"Well," said Bill, slowly disengaging himself from one of his
+enormous gloves, "when we waltzed down into the brush up there I
+saw a man, ez plain ez I see you, rise up from it.  I thought our
+time had come and the band was goin' to play, when he sorter drew
+back, made a sign, and we just scooted past him."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," said Bill, "it means that this yer coach was PASSED THROUGH
+FREE to-night."
+
+"You don't object to THAT--surely?  I think we were deucedly
+lucky."
+
+Bill slowly drew off his other glove.  "I've been riskin' my
+everlastin' life on this d----d line three times a week," he said
+with mock humility, "and I'm allus thankful for small mercies.
+BUT," he added grimly, "when it comes down to being passed free by
+some pal of a hoss thief, and thet called a speshal Providence, I
+AIN'T IN IT!  No, sir, I ain't in it!"
+
+
+II.
+
+
+It was with mixed emotions that the passengers heard that a delay
+of fifteen minutes to tighten certain screw-bolts had been ordered
+by the autocratic Bill.  Some were anxious to get their breakfast
+at Sugar Pine, but others were not averse to linger for the
+daylight that promised greater safety on the road.  The Expressman,
+knowing the real cause of Bill's delay, was nevertheless at a loss
+to understand the object of it.  The passengers were all well
+known; any idea of complicity with the road agents was wild and
+impossible, and, even if there was a confederate of the gang among
+them, he would have been more likely to precipitate a robbery than
+to check it.  Again, the discovery of such a confederate--to whom
+they clearly owed their safety--and his arrest would have been
+quite against the Californian sense of justice, if not actually
+illegal.  It seemed evident that Bill's quixotic sense of honor was
+leading him astray.
+
+The station consisted of a stable, a wagon shed, and a building
+containing three rooms.  The first was fitted up with "bunks" or
+sleeping berths for the employees; the second was the kitchen; and
+the third and larger apartment was dining-room or sitting-room, and
+was used as general waiting-room for the passengers.  It was not a
+refreshment station, and there was no "bar."  But a mysterious
+command from the omnipotent Bill produced a demijohn of whiskey,
+with which he hospitably treated the company.  The seductive
+influence of the liquor loosened the tongue of the gallant Judge
+Thompson.  He admitted to having struck a match to enable the fair
+Pike Countian to find her ring, which, however, proved to have
+fallen in her lap.  She was "a fine, healthy young woman--a type of
+the Far West, sir; in fact, quite a prairie blossom! yet simple and
+guileless as a child."  She was on her way to Marysville, he
+believed, "although she expected to meet friends--a friend, in
+fact--later on."  It was her first visit to a large town--in fact,
+any civilized centre--since she crossed the plains three years ago.
+Her girlish curiosity was quite touching, and her innocence
+irresistible.  In fact, in a country whose tendency was to produce
+"frivolity and forwardness in young girls, he found her a most
+interesting young person."  She was even then out in the stable-
+yard watching the horses being harnessed, "preferring to indulge a
+pardonable healthy young curiosity than to listen to the empty
+compliments of the younger passengers."
+
+The figure which Bill saw thus engaged, without being otherwise
+distinguished, certainly seemed to justify the Judge's opinion.
+She appeared to be a well-matured country girl, whose frank gray
+eyes and large laughing mouth expressed a wholesome and abiding
+gratification in her life and surroundings.  She was watching the
+replacing of luggage in the boot.  A little feminine start, as one
+of her own parcels was thrown somewhat roughly on the roof, gave
+Bill his opportunity.  "Now there," he growled to the helper, "ye
+ain't carting stone!  Look out, will yer!  Some of your things,
+miss?" he added, with gruff courtesy, turning to her.  "These yer
+trunks, for instance?"
+
+She smiled a pleasant assent, and Bill, pushing aside the helper,
+seized a large square trunk in his arms.  But from excess of zeal,
+or some other mischance, his foot slipped, and he came down
+heavily, striking the corner of the trunk on the ground and
+loosening its hinges and fastenings.  It was a cheap, common-
+looking affair, but the accident discovered in its yawning lid a
+quantity of white, lace-edged feminine apparel of an apparently
+superior quality.  The young lady uttered another cry and came
+quickly forward, but Bill was profuse in his apologies, himself
+girded the broken box with a strap, and declared his intention of
+having the company "make it good" to her with a new one.  Then he
+casually accompanied her to the door of the waiting-room, entered,
+made a place for her before the fire by simply lifting the nearest
+and most youthful passenger by the coat collar from the stool that
+he was occupying, and, having installed the lady in it, displaced
+another man who was standing before the chimney, and, drawing
+himself up to his full six feet of height in front of her, glanced
+down upon his fair passenger as he took his waybill from his
+pocket.
+
+"Your name is down here as Miss Mullins?" he said.
+
+She looked up, became suddenly aware that she and her questioner
+were the centre of interest to the whole circle of passengers, and,
+with a slight rise of color, returned, "Yes."
+
+"Well, Miss Mullins, I've got a question or two to ask ye.  I ask
+it straight out afore this crowd.  It's in my rights to take ye
+aside and ask it---but that ain't my style; I'm no detective.  I
+needn't ask it at all, but act as ef I knowed the answer, or I
+might leave it to be asked by others.  Ye needn't answer it ef ye
+don't like; ye've got a friend over ther--Judge Thompson--who is a
+friend to ye, right or wrong, jest as any other man here is--as
+though ye'd packed your own jury.  Well, the simple question I've
+got to ask ye is THIS:  Did you signal to anybody from the coach
+when we passed Galloper's an hour ago?"
+
+We all thought that Bill's courage and audacity had reached its
+climax here.  To openly and publicly accuse a "lady" before a group
+of chivalrous Californians, and that lady possessing the further
+attractions of youth, good looks, and innocence, was little short
+of desperation.  There was an evident movement of adhesion towards
+the fair stranger, a slight muttering broke out on the right, but
+the very boldness of the act held them in stupefied surprise.
+Judge Thompson, with a bland propitiatory smile began: "Really,
+Bill, I must protest on behalf of this young lady"--when the fair
+accused, raising her eyes to her accuser, to the consternation of
+everybody answered with the slight but convincing hesitation of
+conscientious truthfulness:--
+
+"I DID."
+
+"Ahem!" interposed the Judge hastily, "er--that is--er--you allowed
+your handkerchief to flutter from the window,--I noticed it
+myself,--casually--one might say even playfully--but without any
+particular significance."
+
+The girl, regarding her apologist with a singular mingling of pride
+and impatience, returned briefly:--
+
+"I signaled."
+
+"Who did you signal to?" asked Bill gravely.
+
+"The young gentleman I'm going to marry."
+
+A start, followed by a slight titter from the younger passengers,
+was instantly suppressed by a savage glance from Bill.
+
+"What did you signal to him for?" he continued.
+
+"To tell him I was here, and that it was all right," returned the
+young girl, with a steadily rising pride and color.
+
+"Wot was all right?" demanded Bill.
+
+"That I wasn't followed, and that he could meet me on the road
+beyond Cass's Ridge Station."  She hesitated a moment, and then,
+with a still greater pride, in which a youthful defiance was still
+mingled, said:
+
+"I've run away from home to marry him.  And I mean to!  No one can
+stop me.  Dad didn't like him just because he was poor, and dad's
+got money.  Dad wanted me to marry a man I hate, and got a lot of
+dresses and things to bribe me."
+
+"And you're taking them in your trunk to the other feller?" said
+Bill grimly.
+
+"Yes, he's poor," returned the girl defiantly.
+
+"Then your father's name is Mullins?" asked Bill.
+
+"It's not Mullins.  I--I--took that name," she hesitated, with her
+first exhibition of self-consciousness.
+
+"Wot IS his name?"
+
+"Eli Hemmings."
+
+A smile of relief and significance went round the circle.  The fame
+of Eli or "Skinner" Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had
+passed even beyond Galloper's Ridge.
+
+"The step that you're taking, Miss Mullins, I need not tell you, is
+one of great gravity," said Judge Thompson, with a certain paternal
+seriousness of manner, in which, however, we were glad to detect a
+glaring affectation; "and I trust that you and your affianced have
+fully weighed it.  Far be it from me to interfere with or question
+the natural affections of two young people, but may I ask you what
+you know of the--er--young gentleman for whom you are sacrificing
+so much, and, perhaps, imperiling your whole future?  For instance,
+have you known him long?"
+
+The slightly troubled air of trying to understand,--not unlike the
+vague wonderment of childhood,--with which Miss Mullins had
+received the beginning of this exordium, changed to a relieved
+smile of comprehension as she said quickly, "Oh yes, nearly a whole
+year."
+
+"And," said the Judge, smiling, "has he a vocation--is he in
+business?"
+
+"Oh yes," she returned; "he's a collector."
+
+"A collector?"
+
+"Yes; he collects bills, you know,--money," she went on, with
+childish eagerness, "not for himself,--HE never has any money, poor
+Charley,--but for his firm.  It's dreadful hard work, too; keeps
+him out for days and nights, over bad roads and baddest weather.
+Sometimes, when he's stole over to the ranch just to see me, he's
+been so bad he could scarcely keep his seat in the saddle, much
+less stand.  And he's got to take mighty big risks, too.  Times the
+folks are cross with him and won't pay; once they shot him in the
+arm, and he came to me, and I helped do it up for him.  But he
+don't mind.  He's real brave,--jest as brave as he's good."  There
+was such a wholesome ring of truth in this pretty praise that we
+were touched in sympathy with the speaker.
+
+"What firm does he collect for?" asked the Judge gently.
+
+"I don't know exactly--he won't tell me; but I think it's a Spanish
+firm.  You see"--she took us all into her confidence with a
+sweeping smile of innocent yet half-mischievous artfulness--"I only
+know because I peeped over a letter he once got from his firm,
+telling him he must hustle up and be ready for the road the next
+day; but I think the name was Martinez--yes, Ramon Martinez."
+
+In the dead silence that ensued--a silence so profound that we
+could hear the horses in the distant stable-yard rattling their
+harness--one of the younger "Excelsior" boys burst into a hysteric
+laugh, but the fierce eye of Yuba Bill was down upon him, and
+seemed to instantly stiffen him into a silent, grinning mask.  The
+young girl, however, took no note of it.  Following out, with
+lover-like diffusiveness, the reminiscences thus awakened, she went
+on:--
+
+"Yes, it's mighty hard work, but he says it's all for me, and as
+soon as we're married he'll quit it.  He might have quit it before,
+but he won't take no money of me, nor what I told him I could get
+out of dad!  That ain't his style.  He's mighty proud--if he is
+poor--is Charley.  Why thar's all ma's money which she left me in
+the Savin's Bank that I wanted to draw out--for I had the right--
+and give it to him, but he wouldn't hear of it!  Why, he wouldn't
+take one of the things I've got with me, if he knew it.  And so he
+goes on ridin' and ridin', here and there and everywhere, and
+gettin' more and more played out and sad, and thin and pale as a
+spirit, and always so uneasy about his business, and startin' up at
+times when we're meetin' out in the South Woods or in the far
+clearin', and sayin': 'I must be goin' now, Polly,' and yet always
+tryin' to be chiffle and chipper afore me.  Why he must have rid
+miles and miles to have watched for me thar in the brush at the
+foot of Galloper's to-night, jest to see if all was safe; and
+Lordy! I'd have given him the signal and showed a light if I'd died
+for it the next minit.  There!  That's what I know of Charley--
+that's what I'm running away from home for--that's what I'm running
+to him for, and I don't care who knows it!  And I only wish I'd
+done it afore--and I would--if--if--if--he'd only ASKED ME!  There
+now!"  She stopped, panted, and choked.  Then one of the sudden
+transitions of youthful emotion overtook the eager, laughing face;
+it clouded up with the swift change of childhood, a lightning
+quiver of expression broke over it, and--then came the rain!
+
+I think this simple act completed our utter demoralization!  We
+smiled feebly at each other with that assumption of masculine
+superiority which is miserably conscious of its own helplessness at
+such moments.  We looked out of the window, blew our noses, said:
+"Eh--what?" and "I say," vaguely to each other, and were greatly
+relieved, and yet apparently astonished, when Yuba Bill, who had
+turned his back upon the fair speaker, and was kicking the logs in
+the fireplace, suddenly swept down upon us and bundled us all into
+the road, leaving Miss Mullins alone.  Then he walked aside with
+Judge Thompson for a few moments; returned to us, autocratically
+demanded of the party a complete reticence towards Miss Mullins
+on the subject-matter under discussion, re-entered the station,
+reappeared with the young lady, suppressed a faint idiotic cheer
+which broke from us at the spectacle of her innocent face once more
+cleared and rosy, climbed the box, and in another moment we were
+under way.
+
+"Then she don't know what her lover is yet?" asked the Expressman
+eagerly.
+
+"No."
+
+"Are YOU certain it's one of the gang?"
+
+"Can't say FOR SURE.  It mout be a young chap from Yolo who bucked
+agin the tiger* at Sacramento, got regularly cleaned out and
+busted, and joined the gang for a flier.  They say thar was a new
+hand in that job over at Keeley's,--and a mighty game one, too; and
+ez there was some buckshot onloaded that trip, he might hev got his
+share, and that would tally with what the girl said about his arm.
+See!  Ef that's the man, I've heered he was the son of some big
+preacher in the States, and a college sharp to boot, who ran wild
+in 'Frisco, and played himself for all he was worth.  They're the
+wust kind to kick when they once get a foot over the traces.  For
+stiddy, comf'ble kempany," added Bill reflectively, "give ME the
+son of a man that was HANGED!"
+
+
+* Gambled at faro.
+
+
+"But what are you going to do about this?"
+
+"That depends upon the feller who comes to meet her."
+
+"But you ain't going to try to take him?  That would be playing it
+pretty low down on them both."
+
+"Keep your hair on, Jimmy!  The Judge and me are only going to
+rastle with the sperrit of that gay young galoot, when he drops
+down for his girl--and exhort him pow'ful!  Ef he allows he's
+convicted of sin and will find the Lord, we'll marry him and the
+gal offhand at the next station, and the Judge will officiate
+himself for nothin'.  We're goin' to have this yer elopement done
+on the square--and our waybill clean--you bet!"
+
+"But you don't suppose he'll trust himself in your hands?"
+
+"Polly will signal to him that it's all square."
+
+"Ah!" said the Expressman.  Nevertheless in those few moments the
+men seemed to have exchanged dispositions.  The Expressman looked
+doubtfully, critically, and even cynically before him.  Bill's face
+had relaxed, and something like a bland smile beamed across it, as
+he drove confidently and unhesitatingly forward.
+
+Day, meantime, although full blown and radiant on the mountain
+summits around us, was yet nebulous and uncertain in the valleys
+into which we were plunging.  Lights still glimmered in the cabins
+and few ranch buildings which began to indicate the thicker
+settlements.  And the shadows were heaviest in a little copse,
+where a note from Judge Thompson in the coach was handed up to Yuba
+Bill, who at once slowly began to draw up his horses.  The coach
+stopped finally near the junction of a small crossroad.  At the
+same moment Miss Mullins slipped down from the vehicle, and, with a
+parting wave of her hand to the Judge, who had assisted her from
+the steps, tripped down the crossroad, and disappeared in its semi-
+obscurity.  To our surprise the stage waited, Bill holding the
+reins listlessly in his hands.  Five minutes passed--an eternity
+of expectation, and, as there was that in Yuba Bill's face which
+forbade idle questioning, an aching void of silence also!  This
+was at last broken by a strange voice from the road:--
+
+"Go on we'll follow."
+
+The coach started forward.  Presently we heard the sound of other
+wheels behind us.  We all craned our necks backward to get a view
+of the unknown, but by the growing light we could only see that we
+were followed at a distance by a buggy with two figures in it.
+Evidently Polly Mullins and her lover!  We hoped that they would
+pass us.  But the vehicle, although drawn by a fast horse,
+preserved its distance always, and it was plain that its driver had
+no desire to satisfy our curiosity.  The Expressman had recourse to
+Bill.
+
+"Is it the man you thought of?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I reckon," said Bill briefly.
+
+"But," continued the Expressman, returning to his former
+skepticism, "what's to keep them both from levanting together now?"
+
+Bill jerked his hand towards the boot with a grim smile.
+
+"Their baggage."
+
+"Oh!" said the Expressman.
+
+"Yes," continued Bill.  "We'll hang on to that gal's little frills
+and fixin's until this yer job's settled, and the ceremony's over,
+jest as ef we waz her own father.  And, what's more, young man," he
+added, suddenly turning to the Expressman, "YOU'LL express them
+trunks of hers THROUGH TO SACRAMENTO with your kempany's labels,
+and hand her the receipts and checks for them, so she CAN GET 'EM
+THERE.  That'll keep HIM outer temptation and the reach o' the
+gang, until they get away among white men and civilization again.
+When your hoary-headed ole grandfather, or, to speak plainer, that
+partikler old whiskey-soaker known as Yuba Bill, wot sits on this
+box," he continued, with a diabolical wink at the Expressman,
+"waltzes in to pervide for a young couple jest startin' in life,
+thar's nothin' mean about his style, you bet.  He fills the bill
+every time!  Speshul Providences take a back seat when he's
+around."
+
+When the station hotel and straggling settlement of Sugar Pine, now
+distinct and clear in the growing light, at last rose within
+rifleshot on the plateau, the buggy suddenly darted swiftly by us,
+so swiftly that the faces of the two occupants were barely
+distinguishable as they passed, and keeping the lead by a dozen
+lengths, reached the door of the hotel.  The young girl and her
+companion leaped down and vanished within as we drew up.  They had
+evidently determined to elude our curiosity, and were successful.
+
+But the material appetites of the passengers, sharpened by the keen
+mountain air, were more potent than their curiosity, and, as the
+breakfast-bell rang out at the moment the stage stopped, a majority
+of them rushed into the dining-room and scrambled for places
+without giving much heed to the vanished couple or to the Judge and
+Yuba Bill, who had disappeared also.  The through coach to
+Marysville and Sacramento was likewise waiting, for Sugar Pine was
+the limit of Bill's ministration, and the coach which we had just
+left went no farther.  In the course of twenty minutes, however,
+there was a slight and somewhat ceremonious bustling in the hall
+and on the veranda, and Yuba Bill and the Judge reappeared.  The
+latter was leading, with some elaboration of manner and detail, the
+shapely figure of Miss Mullins, and Yuba Bill was accompanying her
+companion to the buggy.  We all rushed to the windows to get a good
+view of the mysterious stranger and probable ex-brigand whose life
+was now linked with our fair fellow-passenger.  I am afraid,
+however, that we all participated in a certain impression of
+disappointment and doubt.  Handsome and even cultivated-looking, he
+assuredly was--young and vigorous in appearance.  But there was a
+certain half-shamed, half-defiant suggestion in his expression, yet
+coupled with a watchful lurking uneasiness which was not pleasant
+and hardly becoming in a bridegroom--and the possessor of such a
+bride.  But the frank, joyous, innocent face of Polly Mullins,
+resplendent with a simple, happy confidence, melted our hearts
+again, and condoned the fellow's shortcomings.  We waved our hands;
+I think we would have given three rousing cheers as they drove away
+if the omnipotent eye of Yuba Bill had not been upon us.  It was
+well, for the next moment we were summoned to the presence of that
+soft-hearted autocrat.
+
+We found him alone with the Judge in a private sitting-room,
+standing before a table on which there was a decanter and glasses.
+As we filed expectantly into the room and the door closed behind
+us, he cast a glance of hesitating tolerance over the group.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said slowly, "you was all present at the beginnin'
+of a little game this mornin', and the Judge thar thinks that you
+oughter be let in at the finish.  I don't see that it's any of YOUR
+d----d business--so to speak; but ez the Judge here allows you're
+all in the secret, I've called you in to take a partin' drink to
+the health of Mr. and Mrs. Charley Byng--ez is now comf'ably off on
+their bridal tower.  What YOU know or what YOU suspects of the
+young galoot that's married the gal ain't worth shucks to anybody,
+and I wouldn't give it to a yaller pup to play with, but the Judge
+thinks you ought all to promise right here that you'll keep it
+dark.  That's his opinion.  Ez far as my opinion goes, gen'l'men,"
+continued Bill, with greater blandness and apparent cordiality, "I
+wanter simply remark, in a keerless, offhand gin'ral way, that ef I
+ketch any God-forsaken, lop-eared, chuckle-headed blatherin' idjet
+airin' HIS opinion"--
+
+"One moment, Bill," interposed Judge Thompson with a grave smile;
+"let me explain.  You understand, gentlemen," he said, turning to
+us, "the singular, and I may say affecting, situation which our
+good-hearted friend here has done so much to bring to what we
+hope will be a happy termination.  I want to give here, as my
+professional opinion, that there is nothing in his request which,
+in your capacity as good citizens and law-abiding men, you may not
+grant.  I want to tell you, also, that you are condoning no offense
+against the statutes; that there is not a particle of legal
+evidence before us of the criminal antecedents of Mr. Charles Byng,
+except that which has been told you by the innocent lips of his
+betrothed, which the law of the land has now sealed forever in the
+mouth of his wife, and that our own actual experience of his acts
+have been in the main exculpatory of any previous irregularity--if
+not incompatible with it.  Briefly, no judge would charge, no jury
+convict, on such evidence.  When I add that the young girl is of
+legal age, that there is no evidence of any previous undue
+influence, but rather of the reverse, on the part of the
+bridegroom, and that I was content, as a magistrate, to perform
+the ceremony, I think you will be satisfied to give your promise,
+for the sake of the bride, and drink a happy life to them both."
+
+I need not say that we did this cheerfully, and even extorted from
+Bill a grunt of satisfaction.  The majority of the company,
+however, who were going with the through coach to Sacramento, then
+took their leave, and, as we accompanied them to the veranda, we
+could see that Miss Polly Mullins's trunks were already transferred
+to the other vehicle under the protecting seals and labels of the
+all-potent Express Company.  Then the whip cracked, the coach
+rolled away, and the last traces of the adventurous young couple
+disappeared in the hanging red dust of its wheels.
+
+But Yuba Bill's grim satisfaction at the happy issue of the episode
+seemed to suffer no abatement.  He even exceeded his usual
+deliberately regulated potations, and, standing comfortably with
+his back to the centre of the now deserted barroom, was more than
+usually loquacious with the Expressman.  "You see," he said, in
+bland reminiscence, "when your old Uncle Bill takes hold of a job
+like this, he puts it straight through without changin' hosses.
+Yet thar was a moment, young feller, when I thought I was stompt!
+It was when we'd made up our mind to make that chap tell the gal
+fust all what he was!  Ef she'd rared or kicked in the traces, or
+hung back only ez much ez that, we'd hev given him jest five
+minits' law to get up and get and leave her, and we'd hev toted
+that gal and her fixin's back to her dad again!  But she jest gave
+a little scream and start, and then went off inter hysterics, right
+on his buzzum, laughing and cryin' and sayin' that nothin' should
+part 'em.  Gosh! if I didn't think HE woz more cut up than she
+about it; a minit it looked as ef HE didn't allow to marry her
+arter all, but that passed, and they was married hard and fast--you
+bet!  I reckon he's had enough of stayin' out o' nights to last
+him, and ef the valley settlements hevn't got hold of a very
+shining member, at least the foothills hev got shut of one more
+of the Ramon Martinez gang."
+
+"What's that about the Ramon Martinez gang?" said a quiet potential
+voice.
+
+Bill turned quickly.  It was the voice of the Divisional
+Superintendent of the Express Company,--a man of eccentric
+determination of character, and one of the few whom the autocratic
+Bill recognized as an equal,--who had just entered the barroom.
+His dusty pongee cloak and soft hat indicated that he had that
+morning arrived on a round of inspection.
+
+"Don't care if I do, Bill," he continued, in response to Bill's
+invitatory gesture, walking to the bar.  "It's a little raw out on
+the road.  Well, what were you saying about Ramon Martinez gang?
+You haven't come across one of 'em, have you?"
+
+"No," said Bill, with a slight blinking of his eye, as he
+ostentatiously lifted his glass to the light.
+
+"And you WON'T," added the Superintendent, leisurely sipping his
+liquor.  "For the fact is, the gang is about played out.  Not from
+want of a job now and then, but from the difficulty of disposing of
+the results of their work.  Since the new instructions to the
+agents to identify and trace all dust and bullion offered to them
+went into force, you see, they can't get rid of their swag.  All
+the gang are spotted at the offices, and it costs too much for them
+to pay a fence or a middleman of any standing.  Why, all that flaky
+river gold they took from the Excelsior Company can be identified
+as easy as if it was stamped with the company's mark.  They can't
+melt it down themselves; they can't get others to do it for them;
+they can't ship it to the Mint or Assay Offices in Marysville and
+'Frisco, for they won't take it without our certificate and seals;
+and WE don't take any undeclared freight WITHIN the lines that
+we've drawn around their beat, except from people and agents known.
+Why, YOU know that well enough, Jim," he said, suddenly appealing
+to the Expressman, "don't you?"
+
+Possibly the suddenness of the appeal caused the Expressman to
+swallow his liquor the wrong way, for he was overtaken with a fit
+of coughing, and stammered hastily as he laid down his glass,
+"Yes--of course--certainly."
+
+"No, sir," resumed the Superintendent cheerfully, "they're pretty
+well played out.  And the best proof of it is that they've lately
+been robbing ordinary passengers' trunks.  There was a freight
+wagon 'held up' near Dow's Flat the other day, and a lot of baggage
+gone through.  I had to go down there to look into it.  Darned if
+they hadn't lifted a lot o' woman's wedding things from that rich
+couple who got married the other day out at Marysville.  Looks as
+if they were playing it rather low down, don't it?  Coming down to
+hardpan and the bed rock--eh?"
+
+The Expressman's face was turned anxiously towards Bill, who, after
+a hurried gulp of his remaining liquor, still stood staring at the
+window.  Then he slowly drew on one of his large gloves.  "Ye
+didn't," he said, with a slow, drawling, but perfectly distinct,
+articulation, "happen to know old 'Skinner' Hemmings when you were
+over there?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And his daughter?"
+
+"He hasn't got any."
+
+"A sort o' mild, innocent, guileless child of nature?" persisted
+Bill, with a yellow face, a deadly calm and Satanic deliberation.
+
+"No.  I tell you he HASN'T any daughter.  Old man Hemmings is a
+confirmed old bachelor.  He's too mean to support more than one."
+
+"And you didn't happen to know any o' that gang, did ye?" continued
+Bill, with infinite protraction.
+
+"Yes.  Knew 'em all.  There was French Pete, Cherokee Bob, Kanaka
+Joe, One-eyed Stillson, Softy Brown, Spanish Jack, and two or three
+Greasers."
+
+"And ye didn't know a man by the name of Charley Byng?"
+
+"No," returned the Superintendent, with a slight suggestion of
+weariness and a distraught glance towards the door.
+
+"A dark, stylish chap, with shifty black eyes and a curled-up
+merstache?" continued Bill, with dry, colorless persistence.
+
+"No.  Look here, Bill, I'm in a little bit of a hurry--but I
+suppose you must have your little joke before we part.  Now, what
+is your little game?"
+
+"Wot you mean?" demanded Bill, with sudden brusqueness.
+
+"Mean?  Well, old man, you know as well as I do.  You're giving me
+the very description of Ramon Martinez himself, ha! ha!  No--Bill!
+you didn't play me this time.  You're mighty spry and clever, but
+you didn't catch on just then."
+
+He nodded and moved away with a light laugh.  Bill turned a stony
+face to the Expressman.  Suddenly a gleam of mirth came into his
+gloomy eyes.  He bent over the young man, and said in a hoarse,
+chuckling whisper:--
+
+"But I got even after all!"
+
+"How?"
+
+"He's tied up to that lying little she-devil, hard and fast!"
+
+
+
+
+THE REFORMATION OF JAMES REDDY.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+It was a freshly furrowed field, so large that the eye at first
+scarcely took in its magnitude.  The irregular surface of upturned,
+oily, wave-shaped clods took the appearance of a vast, black,
+chopping sea, that reached from the actual shore of San Francisco
+Bay to the low hills of the Coast Range.  The sea-breeze that blew
+chilly over this bleak expanse added to that fancy, and the line of
+straggling whitewashed farm buildings, that half way across lifted
+themselves above it, seemed to be placed on an island in its midst.
+Even the one or two huge, misshapen agricultural machines,
+abandoned in the furrows, bore an odd resemblance to hulks or
+barges adrift upon its waste.
+
+This marine suggestion was equally noticeable from the door of one
+of the farm buildings--a long, detached wooden shed--into which a
+number of farm laborers were slowly filing, although one man was
+apparently enough impressed by it to linger and gaze over that
+rigid sea.  Except in their rough dress and the labor-stains of
+soil on their hands and faces, they represented no particular type
+or class.  They were young and old, robust and delicate, dull and
+intelligent; kept together only by some philosophical, careless, or
+humorous acceptance of equally enforced circumstance in their
+labors, as convicts might have been.  For they had been picked up
+on the streets and wharves of San Francisco,--discharged sailors,
+broken-down miners, helpless newcomers, unemployed professional
+men, and ruined traders,--to assist in ploughing and planting
+certain broad leagues of rich alluvial soil for a speculative Joint
+Stock Company, at a weekly wage that would have made an European
+peasant independent for half a year.  Yet there was no enthusiasm
+in their labor, although it was seldom marked by absolute laziness
+or evasion, and was more often hindered by ill-regulated "spurts"
+and excessive effort, as if the laborer was anxious to get through
+with it; for in the few confidences they exchanged there was little
+allusion to the present, and they talked chiefly of what they were
+going to do when their work was over.  They were gregarious only at
+their meals in one of the sheds, or when at night they sought their
+"bunks" or berths together in the larger building.
+
+The man who had lingered to look at the dreary prospect had a
+somewhat gloomy, discontented face, whose sensitive lines indicated
+a certain susceptibility to such impressions.  He was further
+distinguished by having also lingered longer with the washing of
+his hands and face in the battered tin basin on a stool beside the
+door, and by the circumstance that the operation revealed the fact
+that they were whiter than those of his companions.  Drying his
+fingers slowly on the long roller-towel, he stood gazing with a
+kind of hard abstraction across the darkening field, the strip of
+faded colorless shore, and the chill gray sea, to the dividing
+point of land on the opposite coast, which in the dying daylight
+was silhouetted against the cold horizon.
+
+He knew that around that point and behind it lay the fierce, half-
+grown, half-tamed city of yesterday that had worked his ruin.
+
+It was scarcely a year ago that he had plunged into its wildest
+excesses,--a reckless gambler among speculators, a hopeless
+speculator among gamblers, until the little fortune he had brought
+thither had been swept away.
+
+From time to time he had kept up his failing spirit with the
+feverish exaltation of dissipation, until, awakening from a
+drunkard's dream one morning, he had found himself on board a
+steamboat crossing the bay, in company with a gang of farm laborers
+with whom he was hired.  A bitter smile crossed his lips as his
+eyes hovered over the cold, rugged fields before him.  Yet he knew
+that they had saved him.  The unaccustomed manual labor in the open
+air, the regular hours, the silent, heavy, passionless nights, the
+plain but wholesome food, were all slowly restoring his youth and
+strength again.  Temptation and passion had alike fled these
+unlovely fields and grim employment.  Yet he was not grateful.  He
+nursed his dreary convalescence as he had his previous dissipation,
+as part of a wrong done him by one for whose sake, he was wont to
+believe, he had sacrificed himself.  That person was a woman.
+
+Turning at last from the prospect and his bitter memories to join
+his companions, he found that they had all passed in.  The benches
+before the long table on which supper was spread were already
+filled, and he stood in hesitation, looking down the line of silent
+and hungrily preoccupied men on either side.  A young girl, who was
+standing near a smaller serving-table, apparently assisting an
+older woman in directing the operation of half a dozen Chinese
+waiters, moved forward and cleared a place for him at a side-table,
+pushing before it the only chair in the room,--the one she had
+lately vacated.  As she placed some of the dishes before him with a
+timid ostentation, and her large but well-shaped hands came
+suddenly in contact with, and in direst contrast to his own whiter
+and more delicate ones, she blushed faintly.  He lifted his eyes to
+hers.
+
+He had seen her half a dozen times before, for she was the daughter
+of the ranch superintendent, and occasionally assisted her mother
+in this culinary supervision--which did not, however, bring her
+into any familiar association with the men.  Even the younger ones,
+perhaps from over-consciousness of their inferior position or the
+preoccupation of their labor, never indulged in any gallantry
+toward her, and he himself, in his revulsion of feeling against the
+whole sex, had scarcely noticed that she was good-looking.  But
+this naive exhibition of preference could not be overlooked, either
+by his companions, who smiled cynically across the table, or by
+himself, from whose morbid fancy it struck an ignoble suggestion.
+Ah, well! the girl was pretty--the daughter of his employer, who
+rumor said owned a controlling share in the company; why should he
+not make this chance preference lead to something, if only to
+ameliorate, in ways like this, his despicable position here.  He
+knew the value of his own good looks, his superior education, and a
+certain recklessness which women liked; why should he not profit by
+them as well as the one woman who had brought him to this?  He owed
+her sex nothing; if those among them who were not bad were only
+fools, there was no reason why he should not deceive them as they
+had him.  There was all this small audacity and cynical purpose in
+his brown eyes as he deliberately fixed them on hers.  And I grieve
+to say that these abominable sentiments seemed only to impart to
+them a certain attractive brilliancy, and a determination which the
+undetermining sex is apt to admire.
+
+She blushed again, dropped her eyes, replied to his significant
+thanks with a few indistinct words, and drew away from the table
+with a sudden timidity that was half confession.
+
+She did not approach him again during the meal, but seemed to
+have taken a sudden interest in the efficiency of the waiters,
+generally, which she had not shown before.  I do not know whether
+this was merely an effort at concealment, or an awakened recognition
+of her duty; but, after the fashion of her sex,--and perhaps in
+contrast to his,--she was kinder that evening to the average man on
+account of HIM.  He did not, however, notice it; nor did her absence
+interfere with his now healthy appetite; he finished his meal, and
+only when he rose to take his hat from the peg above him did he
+glance around the room.  Their eyes met again. As he passed out,
+although it was dark, he put on his hat a little more smartly.
+
+The air was clear and cold, but the outlines of the landscape had
+vanished.  His companions, with the instinct of tired animals, were
+already making their way in knots of two or three, or in silent
+file, across the intervening space between the building and their
+dormitory.  A few had already lit their pipes and were walking
+leisurely, but the majority were hurrying from the chill sea-breeze
+to the warmth and comfort of the long, well-lit room, lined with
+blanketed berths, and set with plain wooden chairs and tables.  The
+young man lingered for a moment on the wooden platform outside the
+dining-shed,--partly to evade this only social gathering of his
+fellows as they retired for the night, and partly attracted by a
+strange fascination to the faint distant glow, beyond the point of
+land, which indicated the lights of San Francisco.
+
+There was a slight rustle behind him!  It was the young girl who,
+with a white woolen scarf thrown over her head and shoulders, had
+just left the room.  She started when she saw him, and for an
+instant hesitated.
+
+"You are going home, Miss Woodridge?" he said pleasantly.
+
+"Yes," she returned, in a faint, embarrassed voice.  "I thought I'd
+run on ahead of ma!"
+
+"Will you allow me to accompany you?"
+
+"It's only a step," she protested, indicating the light in the
+window of the superintendent's house, the most remote of the group
+of buildings, yet scarcely a quarter of a mile distant.
+
+"But it's quite dark," he persisted smilingly.
+
+She stepped from the platform to the ground; he instantly followed
+and ranged himself at a little distance from her side.  She
+protested still feebly against his "troubling himself," but
+in another moment they were walking on quietly together.
+Nevertheless, a few paces from the platform they came upon the
+upheaved clods of the fresh furrows, and their progress over them
+was slow and difficult.
+
+"Shall I help you?  Will you take my arm?" he said politely.
+
+"No, thank you, Mr. Reddy."
+
+So! she knew his name!  He tried to look into her eyes, but the
+woolen scarf hid her head.  After all, there was nothing strange in
+her knowing him; she probably had the names of the men before her
+in the dining-room, or on the books.  After a pause he said:--
+
+"You quite startled me.  One becomes such a mere working machine
+here that one quite forgets one's own name,--especially with the
+prefix of 'Mr.'"
+
+"And if it don't happen to be one's real name either," said the
+girl, with an odd, timid audacity.
+
+He looked up quickly--more attracted by her manner than her words;
+more amused than angry.
+
+"But Reddy happens to be my real name."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"What made you think it was not?"
+
+The clods over which they were clambering were so uneven that
+sometimes the young girl was mounting one at the same moment that
+Reddy was descending from another.  Her reply, half muffled in her
+shawl, was delivered over his head.  "Oh, because pa says most of
+the men here don't give their real names--they don't care to be
+known afterward.  Ashamed of their work, I reckon."
+
+His face flushed a moment, even in the darkness.  He WAS ashamed
+of his work, and perhaps a little of the pitiful sport he was
+beginning.  But oddly enough, the aggressive criticism only whetted
+his purpose.  The girl was evidently quite able to take care of
+herself; why should he be over-chivalrous?
+
+"It isn't very pleasant to be doing the work of a horse, an ox, or
+a machine, if you can do other things," he said half seriously.
+
+"But you never used to do anything at all, did you?" she asked.
+
+He hesitated.  Here was a chance to give her an affecting history
+of his former exalted fortune and position, and perhaps even to
+stir her evidently romantic nature with some suggestion of his
+sacrifices to one of her own sex.  Women liked that sort of thing.
+It aroused at once their emulation and their condemnation of each
+other.  He seized the opportunity, but--for some reason, he knew
+not why--awkwardly and clumsily, with a simulated pathos that was
+lachrymose, a self-assertion that was boastful, and a dramatic
+manner that was unreal.  Suddenly the girl stopped him.
+
+"Yes, I know all THAT; pa told me.  Told me you'd been given away
+by some woman."
+
+His face again flushed--this time with anger.  The utter failure of
+his story to excite her interest, and her perfect possession of
+herself and the situation,--so unlike her conduct a few moments
+before,--made him savagely silent, and he clambered on sullenly
+at her side.  Presently she stopped, balancing herself with a
+dexterity he could not imitate on one of the larger upheaved clods,
+and said:--
+
+"I was thinking that, as you can't do much with those hands of
+yours, digging and shoveling, and not much with your feet either,
+over ploughed ground, you might do some inside work, that would pay
+you better, too.  You might help in the dining room, setting table
+and washing up, helping ma and me--though I don't do much except
+overseeing.  I could show you what to do at first, and you'd learn
+quick enough.  If you say 'yes,' I'll speak to pa to-night.  He'll
+do whatever I say."
+
+The rage and shame that filled his breast choked even the bitter
+laugh that first rose to his lips.  If he could have turned on his
+heel and left her with marked indignation, he would have done so,
+but they were scarcely half way across the field; his stumbling
+retreat would have only appeared ridiculous, and he was by no means
+sure that she would not have looked upon it as merely a confession
+of his inability to keep up with her.  And yet there was something
+peculiarly fascinating and tantalizing in the situation.  She did
+not see the sardonic glitter in his eye as he said brutally:--
+
+"Ha! and that would give me the exquisite pleasure of being near
+you."
+
+She seemed a little confused, even under her enwrappings, and in
+stepping down her foot slipped.  Reddy instantly scrambled up to
+her and caught her as she was pitching forward into the furrow.
+Yet in the struggle to keep his own foothold he was aware that she
+was assisting him, and although he had passed his arm around her
+waist, as if for her better security, it was only through HER firm
+grasp of his wrists that he regained his own footing.  The "cloud"
+had fallen back from her head and shoulders, her heavy hair had
+brushed his cheek and left its faint odor in his nostrils; the
+rounded outline of her figure had been slightly drawn against his
+own.  His mean resentment wavered; her proposition, which at first
+seemed only insulting, now took a vague form of satisfaction; his
+ironical suggestion seemed a natural expression.  "Well, I say
+'yes' then," he said, with an affected laugh.  "That is, if you
+think I can manage to do the work; it is not exactly in my line,
+you know."  Yet he somehow felt that his laugh was feeble and
+unconvincing.
+
+"Oh, it's easy enough," said the girl quietly.  "You've only got to
+be clean--and that's in your line, I should say."
+
+"And if I thought it would please you," he added, with another
+attempt at gallantry.
+
+She did not reply, but moved steadily on, he fancied a little more
+rapidly.  They were nearing the house; he felt he was losing time
+and opportunity.  The uneven nature of the ground kept him from
+walking immediately beside her, unless he held her hand or arm.
+Yet an odd timidity was overtaking him.  Surely this was the same
+girl whose consciousness and susceptibility were so apparent a
+moment ago; yet her speech had been inconsistent, unsympathetic,
+and coldly practical.  "It's very kind of you," he began again,
+scrambling up one side of the furrow as she descended on the other,
+"to--to--take such an interest in--in a stranger, and I wish you
+knew how" (she had mounted the ridge again, and stood balancing
+herself as if waiting for him to finish his sentence) "how--how
+deeply--I--I"--  She dropped quickly down again with the same
+movement of uneasy consciousness, and he left the sentence
+unfinished.  The house was now only a few yards away; he hurried
+forward, but she reached the wooden platform and stoop upon it
+first.  He, however, at the same moment caught her hand.
+
+"I want to thank you," he said, "and say good-night."
+
+"Good-night."  Her voice was indistinct again, and she was
+trembling.  Emboldened and reckless, he sprang upon the platform,
+and encircling her with one arm, with his other hand he unloosed
+the woolen cloud around her head and bared her faintly flushed
+cheek and half-open, hurriedly breathing lips.  But the next moment
+she threw her head back with a single powerful movement, and, as it
+seemed to him, with scarcely an effort cast him off with both
+hands, and sent him toppling from the platform to the ground.
+He scrambled quickly to his feet again, flushed, angry, and--
+frightened!  Perhaps she would call her father; he would be
+insulted, or worse,--laughed at!  He had lost even this pitiful
+chance of bettering his condition.  But he was as relieved as he
+was surprised to see that she was standing quietly on the edge of
+the platform, apparently waiting for him to rise.  Her face was
+still uncovered, still slightly flushed, but bearing no trace of
+either insult or anger.  When he stood erect again, she looked at
+him gravely and drew the woolen cloud over her head, as she said
+calmly, "Then I'll tell pa you'll take the place, and I reckon
+you'll begin to-morrow morning."
+
+
+II.
+
+
+Angered, discomfited, and physically and morally beaten, James
+Reddy stumbled and clambered back across the field.  The beam of
+light that had streamed out over the dark field as the door opened
+and shut on the girl left him doubly confused and bewildered.  In
+his dull anger and mortification, there seemed only one course for
+him to pursue.  He would demand his wages in the morning, and cut
+the whole concern.  He would go back to San Francisco and work
+there, where he at least had friends who respected his station.
+Yet, he ought to have refused the girl's offer before she had
+repulsed him; his retreat now meant nothing, and might even tempt
+her, in her vulgar pique, to reveal her rebuff of him.  He raised
+his eyes mechanically, and looked gloomily across the dark waste
+and distant bay to the opposite shore.  But the fog had already
+hidden the glow of the city's lights, and, thickening around the
+horizon, seemed to be slowly hemming him in with the dreary rancho.
+In his present frame of mind there was a certain fatefulness in
+this that precluded his once free agency, and to that extent
+relieved and absolved HIM of any choice.  He reached the dormitory
+and its turned-down lights in a state of tired and dull uncertainty,
+for which sleep seemed to offer the only relief.  He rolled himself
+in his blankets with an animal instinct of comfort and shut his
+eyes, but their sense appeared to open upon Nelly Woodridge as she
+stood looking down upon him from the platform.  Even through the dull
+pain of his bruised susceptibilities he was conscious of a strange
+satisfaction he had not felt before.  He fell asleep at last, to
+waken only to the sunlight streaming through the curtainless windows
+on his face.  To his surprise the long shed was empty and deserted,
+except for a single Chinaman who was sweeping the floor at the
+farther end.  As Reddy started up, the man turned and approached him
+with a characteristic, vague, and patient smile.
+
+"All lity, John, you sleepee heap!  Mistel Woodlidge he say you no
+go wolkee field allee same Mellikan man.  You stoppee inside housee
+allee same ME.  Shabbee?  You come to glubbee [grub] now" (pointing
+to the distant dining-shed), "and then you washee dish."
+
+The full extent of his new degradation flashed upon Reddy with this
+added insult of his brother menial's implicit equality.  He
+understood it all.  He had been detached from the field-workers and
+was to come to a later breakfast, perhaps the broken victuals of
+the first repast, and wash the dishes.  He remembered his new
+bargain.  Very well! he would refuse positively, take his dismissal,
+and leave that morning!  He hurriedly dressed himself, and followed
+the Chinaman into the open air.
+
+The fog still hung upon the distant bay and hid the opposite point.
+But the sun shone with dry Californian brilliancy over the league-
+long field around him, revealing every detail of the rancho with
+sharp, matter of fact directness, and without the least illusion of
+distance or romance.  The rough, unplaned, unpainted walls of the
+dinner-shed stood out clearly before him; the half-filled buckets
+of water on the near platform, and the immense tubs piled with
+dirty dishes.  He scowled darkly as he walked forward, conscious,
+nevertheless, of the invigorating discipline of the morning air and
+the wholesome whip in the sky above him.  He entered sharply and
+aggressively.  To his relief, the room at first sight seemed, like
+the dormitory he had just left, to be empty.  But a voice, clear,
+dry, direct, and practical as the morning itself, spoke in his ear:
+"Mornin', Reddy!  My daughter says you're willin' to take an indoor
+job, and I reckon, speakin' square, as man to man, it's more in
+your line than what you've bin doin'.  It mayn't be high-toned
+work, but work's WORK anyhow you can fix it; and the only
+difference I kin see is in the work that a man does squarely, and
+the work that he shirks."
+
+"But," said Reddy hurriedly, "there's a mistake.  I came here only
+to"--
+
+"Work like the others, I understand.  Well, you see you CAN'T.  You
+do your best, I know.  I ain't findin' fault, but it ain't in your
+line.  THIS is, and the pay is better."
+
+"But," stammered Reddy, "Miss Woodridge didn't understand"--
+
+"Yes, she did," returned Woodridge impatiently, "and she told me.
+She says she'll show you round at first.  You'll catch on all
+right.  Sit down and eat your breakfast, and she'll be along before
+you're through.  Ez for ME, I must get up and get.  So long!" and
+before Reddy had an opportunity to continue his protest, he turned
+away.
+
+The young man glanced vexatiously around him.  A breakfast much
+better in service and quality than the one he had been accustomed
+to smoked on the table.  There was no one else in the room.  He
+could hear the voices of the Chinese waiters in the kitchen beyond.
+He was healthily hungry, and after a moment's hesitation sat down
+and began his meal.  He could expostulate with her afterward, and
+withdraw his promise.  He was entitled to his breakfast, anyway!
+
+Once or twice, while thus engaged, he heard the door of the kitchen
+open and the clipping tread of the Chinese waiters, who deposited
+some rattling burden on the adjacent tables, but he thought it
+prudent not to seem to notice them.  When he had finished, the
+pleasant, hesitating, boyish contralto of Miss Woodridge fell upon
+his ear.
+
+"When you're ready, I'll show you how to begin your work."
+
+He turned quickly, with a flush of mortification at being
+discovered at his repast, and his anger returned.  But as his eyes
+fell upon her delicately colored but tranquil face, her well-shaped
+figure, coquettishly and spotlessly cuffed, collared, and aproned,
+and her clear blue but half-averted eyes, he again underwent a
+change.  She certainly was very pretty--that most seductive
+prettiness which seemed to be warmed into life by her consciousness
+of himself.  Why should he take her or himself so seriously?  Why
+not play out the farce, and let those who would criticise him and
+think his acceptance of the work degrading understand that it was
+only an affair of gallantry.  He could afford to serve Woodridge at
+least a few weeks for the favor of this Rachel!  Forgetful of his
+rebuff of the night before, he fixed his brown eyes on hers with an
+audacious levity.
+
+"Oh yes--the work!  Let us see it.  I'm ready in name and nature
+for anything that Miss Woodridge wants of me.  I'm just dying to
+begin."
+
+His voice was raised slightly, with a high comedy jauntiness, for
+the benefit of the Chinese waiters who might be lingering to see
+the "Mellican man" assume their functions.  But it failed in
+effect.  With their characteristic calm acceptance of any
+eccentricity in a "foreign devil," they scarcely lifted their eyes.
+The young girl pointed to a deep basket filled with dishes which
+had been placed on the larger table, and said, without looking at
+Reddy:--
+
+"You had better begin by 'checking' the crockery.  That is,
+counting the pieces separately and then arranging them in sets as
+they come back from washing.  There's the book to compare them with
+and to set down what is broken, missing, or chipped.  You'll have a
+clean towel with you to wipe the pieces that have not been cleaned
+enough; or, if they are too dirty, you'll send them back to the
+kitchen."
+
+"Couldn't I wash them myself?" said Reddy, continuing his
+ostentatious levity.
+
+"Not yet," said the girl, with grave hesitation; "you'd break
+them."
+
+She stood watching him, as with affected hilarity he began to take
+the dishes from the basket.  But she noticed that in spite of this
+jocular simulation his grasp was firm and delicate, and that there
+was no clatter--which would have affected her sensitive ear--as he
+put them down.  She laid a pencil and account book beside him and
+turned away.
+
+"But you are not going?" he said, in genuine surprise.
+
+"Yes," she said quietly, "until you get through 'checking.'  Then
+I'll come back and show you what you have to do next.  You're
+getting on very well."
+
+"But that was because you were with me."
+
+She colored slightly and, without looking at him, moved slowly to
+the door and disappeared.
+
+Reddy went back to his work, disappointed but not discomfited.  He
+was getting accustomed to the girl's eccentricities.  Whether it
+was the freshness of the morning air and sunlight streaming in at
+the open windows, the unlooked-for solitude and security of the
+empty room, or that there was nothing really unpleasant in his
+occupation, he went on cheerfully "checking" the dishes, narrowly
+examining them for chips and cracks, and noting them in the book.
+Again discovering that a few were imperfectly cleaned and wiped, he
+repaired the defect with cold water and a towel without the least
+thought of the operation being degrading.  He had finished his task
+in half an hour; she had not returned; why should he not go on and
+set the table?  As he straightened and turned the coarse table-
+cloth, he made the discovery that the long table was really
+composed of half a dozen smaller ones, and that the hideous
+parallelogram which had always so offended him was merely the
+outcome of carelessness and want of taste.  Without a moment's
+hesitation he set at work to break up the monotonous line and
+rearranged the tables laterally, with small open spaces between
+them.  The task was no light one, even for a stronger man, but he
+persevered in it with a new-found energy until he had changed the
+whole aspect of the room.  It looked larger, wider, and less
+crowded; its hard practical, workhouse-like formality had
+disappeared.  He had paused to survey it, panting still with his
+unusual exertion, when a voice broke upon his solitude.
+
+"Well, I wanter know!"
+
+The voice was not Nelly's, but that of her mother,--a large-boned,
+angular woman of fifty,--who had entered the room unperceived.  The
+accents were simply those of surprise, but on James Reddy's present
+sensitive mood, coupled with the feeling that here was a new
+witness to his degradation, he might have resented it; but he
+detected the handsome, reserved figure of the daughter a few steps
+behind her.  Their eyes met; wonderful to relate, the young girl's
+no longer evaded him, but looked squarely into his with a bright
+expression of pleasure he had not seen before.  He checked himself
+with a sudden thrill of gratification.
+
+"Well, I declare," continued Mrs. Woodridge; "is that YOUR idea--or
+yours, Helen?"
+
+Here Reddy simply pointed out the advantages for serving afforded
+by the new arrangement; that all the tables were equally and
+quickly accessible from the serving-table and sideboard, and that
+it was no longer necessary to go the whole length of the room to
+serve the upper table.  He tactfully did not refer to the improved
+appearance of the room.
+
+"Well, as long as it ain't mere finikin," said the lady graciously,
+"and seems to bring the folks and their vittles nearer together--
+we'll try it to-day.  It does look kinder CITYFIED--and I reckoned
+that was all the good it was.  But I calkilated you were goin' to
+check the crockery this morning."
+
+"It's done," said Reddy, smilingly handing her the account-book.
+
+Mrs. Woodridge glanced over it, and then surveyed her new
+assistant.
+
+"And you didn't find any plates that were dirty and that had to be
+sent back?"
+
+"Yes, two or three, but I cleaned them myself."
+
+Mrs. Woodridge glanced at him with a look of approving curiosity,
+but his eyes were just then seeking her daughter's for a more
+grateful sympathy.  All of which the good lady noted, and as it
+apparently answered the unasked question in her own mind, she only
+uttered the single exclamation, "Humph!"
+
+But the approbation he received later at dinner, in the
+satisfaction of his old companions with the new arrangement, had
+also the effect of diverting from him the criticism he had feared
+they would make in finding him installed as an assistant to Mrs.
+Woodridge.  On the contrary, they appeared only to recognize in him
+some especial and superior faculty utilized for their comfort, and
+when the superintendent, equally pleased, said it was "all Reddy's
+own idea," no one doubted that it was this particular stroke of
+genius which gained him the obvious promotion.  If he had still
+thought of offering his flirtation with Nelly as an excuse, there
+was now no necessity for any.  Having shown to his employers his
+capacity for the highest and lowest work, they naturally preferred
+to use his best abilities--and he was kept from any menial service.
+His accounts were so carefully and intelligently rendered that the
+entire care of the building and its appointments was intrusted to
+him.  At the end of the week Mr. Woodridge took him aside.
+
+"I say, you ain't got any job in view arter you finish up here, hev
+ye?"
+
+Reddy started.  Scarcely ten days ago he had a hundred projects,
+schemes, and speculations, more or less wild and extravagant,
+wherewith he was to avenge and recoup himself in San Francisco.
+Now they were gone he knew not where and how.  He briefly said he
+had not.
+
+"Because," continued Woodridge, "I've got an idea of startin' a
+hotel in the Oak Grove, just on the slope back o' the rancho.  The
+company's bound to make some sort o' settlement there for the
+regular hands, and the place is pooty enough for 'Frisco people who
+want to run over here and get set up for a day or two.  Thar's
+plenty of wood and water up thar, and the company's sure to have a
+wharf down on the shore.  I'll provide the capital, if you will put
+in your time.  You can sling in ez much style as you like there"
+(this was an allusion to Reddy's attempt to enliven the blank walls
+with colored pictures from the illustrated papers and green
+ceanothus sprays from the slope); "in fact, the more style the
+better for them city folks.  Well, you think it over."
+
+He did.  But meantime he seemed to make little progress in his
+court of the superintendent's daughter.  He tried to think it was
+because he had allowed himself to be diverted by his work, but
+although she always betrayed the same odd physical consciousness of
+his presence, it was certain that she never encouraged him.  She
+gave him the few directions that his new occupation still made
+necessary, and looked her approval of his success.  But nothing
+more.  He was forced to admit that this was exactly what she might
+have done as the superintendent's daughter to a deserving employee.
+Whereat, for a few days he assumed an air of cold and ceremonious
+politeness, until perceiving that, far from piquing the girl, it
+seemed to gratify her, and even to render her less sensitive in his
+company, he sulked in good earnest.  This proving ineffective
+also,--except to produce a kind of compassionate curiosity,--his
+former dull rage returned.  The planting of the rancho was nearly
+over; his service would be ended next week; he had not yet given
+his answer to Woodridge's proposition; he would decline it and cut
+the whole concern!
+
+It was a crisp Sunday morning.  The breakfast hour was later on
+that day to allow the men more time for their holiday, which,
+however, they generally spent in cards, gossip, or reading in their
+sleeping sheds.  It usually delayed Reddy's work, but as he cared
+little for the companionship of his fellows, it enabled him,
+without a show of unsociability, to seclude himself in the dining-
+room.  And this morning he was early approached by his employer.
+
+"I'm goin' to take the women folks over to Oakdale to church," said
+Mr. Woodridge; "ef ye keer to join us thar's a seat in the wagon,
+and I'll turn on a couple of Chinamen to do the work for you, just
+now; and Nelly or the old woman will give you a lift this afternoon
+with the counting up."
+
+Reddy felt instinctively that the invitation had been instigated
+by the young girl.  A week before he would have rejoiced at it; a
+month ago he would have accepted it if only as a relief to his
+degraded position, but in the pique of this new passion he almost
+rudely declined it.  An hour later he saw Nelly, becomingly and
+even tastefully dressed,--with the American girl's triumphant
+superiority to her condition and surroundings,--ride past in her
+father's smart "carryall."  He was startled to see that she looked
+so like a lady.  Then, with a new and jealous inconsistency,
+significant of the progress of his passion, he resolved to go to
+church too.  She should see that he was not going to remain behind
+like a mere slave.  He remembered that he had still certain
+remnants of his past finery in his trunk; he would array himself
+in them, walk to Oakdale, and make one of the congregation.  He
+managed to change his clothes without attracting the attention of
+his fellows, and set out.
+
+The air was pure but keen, with none of the languor of spring in
+its breath, although a few flowers were beginning to star the weedy
+wagon-tracked lane, and there was an awakening spice in the wayside
+southernwood and myrtle.  He felt invigorated, although it seemed
+only to whet his jealous pique.  He hurried on without even
+glancing toward the distant coast-line of San Francisco or even
+thinking of it.  The bitter memories of the past had been
+obliterated by the bitterness of the present.  He no longer thought
+of "that woman;" even when he had threatened to himself to return
+to San Francisco, he was vaguely conscious that it was not SHE who
+was again drawing him there, but Nelly who was driving him away.
+
+The service was nearly over when he arrived at the chilly little
+corrugated-zinc church at Oakdale, but he slipped into one of the
+back seats.  A few worshipers turned round to look at him.  Among
+them were the daughters of a neighboring miller, who were slightly
+exercised over the unusual advent of a good-looking stranger with
+certain exterior signs of elegance.  Their excitement was
+communicated by some mysterious instinct to their neighbor, Nelly
+Woodridge.  She also turned and caught his eye.  But to all
+appearances she not only showed no signs of her usual agitation at
+his presence, but did not seem to even recognize him.  In the
+acerbity of his pique he was for a moment gratified at what he
+believed to be the expression of her wounded pride, but his
+uneasiness quickly returned, and at the conclusion of the service
+he slipped out of the church with one or two of the more restless
+in the congregation.  As he passed through the aisle he heard the
+escort of the miller's daughters, in response to a whispered
+inquiry, say distinctly: "Only the head-waiter over at the
+company's rancho."  Whatever hesitating idea Reddy might have had
+of waiting at the church door for the appearance of Nelly vanished
+before the brutal truth.  His brow darkened, and with flushed
+cheeks he turned his back upon the building and plunged into the
+woods.  This time there was no hesitation in his resolve; he would
+leave the rancho at the expiration of his engagement.  Even in a
+higher occupation he felt he could never live down his reputation
+there.
+
+In his morose abstraction he did not know how long or how aimlessly
+he had wandered among the mossy live-oaks, his head and shoulders
+often imperiled by the downcurving of some huge knotted limb; his
+feet straying blindly from the faint track over the thickly matted
+carpet of chickweed which hid their roots.  But it was nearly an
+hour before he emerged upon a wide, open, wooded slope, and, from
+the distant view of field and shore, knew that he was at Oak Grove,
+the site of Woodridge's projected hotel.  And there, surely, at a
+little distance, was the Woodridges' wagon and team tied up to a
+sapling, while the superintendent and his wife were slowly climbing
+the slope, and apparently examining the prospect.  Without waiting
+to see if Nelly was with them, Reddy instantly turned to avoid
+meeting them.  But he had not proceeded a hundred yards before he
+came upon that young lady, who had evidently strayed from the
+party, and who was now unconsciously advancing toward him.  A
+rencontre was inevitable.
+
+She started slightly, and then stopped, with all her old agitation
+and embarrassment.  But, to his own surprise, he was also
+embarrassed and even tongue-tied.
+
+She spoke first.
+
+"You were at church.  I didn't quite know you in--in--these
+clothes."
+
+In her own finery she had undergone such a change to Reddy's
+consciousness that he, for the first time in their acquaintance,
+now addressed her as on his own level, and as if she had no
+understanding of his own feelings.
+
+"Oh," he said, with easy bitterness, "OTHERS did, if you did not.
+They all detected the 'head-waiter' at the Union Company's rancho.
+Even if I had accepted your kindness in offering me a seat in your
+wagon it would have made no difference."  He was glad to put this
+construction on his previous refusal, for in the new relations
+which seemed to be established by their Sunday clothes he was
+obliged to soften the churlishness of that refusal also.
+
+"I don't think you'd look nice setting the table in kid gloves,"
+she said, glancing quickly at his finery as if accepting it as the
+real issue; "but you can wear what you like at other times.  I
+never found fault with your working clothes."
+
+There was such a pleasant suggestion in her emphasis that his ill-
+humor softened.  Her eyes wandered over the opposite grove, where
+her unconscious parents had just disappeared.
+
+"Papa's very keen about the hotel," she continued, "and is going to
+have the workmen break ground to-morrow.  He says he'll have it up
+in two months and ready to open, if he has to make the men work
+double time.  When you're manager, you won't mind what folks say."
+
+There was no excuse for his further hesitation.  He must speak out,
+but he did it in a half-hearted way.
+
+"But if I simply go away--WITHOUT being manager--I won't hear their
+criticism either."
+
+"What do you mean?" she said quickly.
+
+"I've--I've been thinking of--of going back to San Francisco,"
+he stammered awkwardly.
+
+A slight flush of contemptuous indignation passed over her face,
+and gave it a strength and expression he had never seen there
+before.  "Oh, you've not reformed yet, then?" she said, under her
+scornful lashes.
+
+"I don't understand you," he said, flushing.
+
+"Father ought to have told you," she went on dryly, "that that
+woman has gone off to the Springs with her husband, and you won't
+see HER at San Francisco."
+
+"I don't know what you mean--and your father seems to take an
+unwarrantable interest in my affairs," said Reddy, with an anger
+that he was conscious, however, was half simulated.
+
+"No more than he ought to, if he expects to trust you with all HIS
+affairs," said the girl shortly; "but you had better tell him you
+have changed your mind at once, before he makes any further
+calculations on your staying.  He's just over the hill there, with
+mother."
+
+She turned away coldly as she spoke, but moved slowly and in the
+direction of the hill, although she took a less direct trail than
+the one she had pointed to him.  But he followed her, albeit still
+embarrassedly, and with that new sense of respect which had checked
+his former surliness.  There was her strong, healthy, well-
+developed figure moving before him, but the modish gray dress
+seemed to give its pronounced outlines something of the dignity of
+a goddess.  Even the firm hands had the distinguishment of character.
+
+"You understand," he said apologetically, "that I mean no
+discourtesy to your father or his offer.  And"--he hesitated--
+"neither is my reason what you would infer."
+
+"Then what is it?" she asked, turning to him abruptly.  "You know
+you have no other place when you leave here, nor any chance as good
+as the one father offers you.  You are not fit for any other work,
+and you know it.  You have no money to speculate with, nor can you
+get any.  If you could, you would have never stayed here."
+
+He could not evade the appalling truthfulness of her clear eyes.
+He knew it was no use to lie to her; she had evidently thoroughly
+informed herself regarding his past; more than that, she seemed to
+read his present thoughts.  But not all of them!  No! he could
+startle her still!  It was desperate, but he had nothing now to
+lose.  And she liked the truth,--she should have it!
+
+"You are right," he said shortly; "these are not my reasons."
+
+"Then what reason have you?"
+
+"You!"
+
+"Me?" she repeated incredulously, yet with a rising color.
+
+"Yes, YOU!  I cannot stay here, and have you look down upon me."
+
+"I don't look down on you," she said simply, yet without the haste
+of repelling an unjust accusation.  "Why should I?  Mother and I
+have done the same work that you are doing,--if that's what you
+mean; and father, who is a man like yourself, helped us at first,
+until he could do other things better."  She paused.  "Perhaps you
+think so because YOU looked down on us when you first came here."
+
+"But I didn't," said Reddy quickly.
+
+"You did," said the young girl quietly.  "That's why you acted
+toward me as you did the night you walked home with me.  You would
+not have behaved in that way to any San Francisco young lady--and
+I'm not one of your--fast--MARRIED WOMEN."
+
+Reddy felt the hot blood mount to his cheek, and looked away.  "I
+was foolish and rude--and I think you punished me at the time," he
+stammered.  "But you see I was right in saying you looked down on
+me," he concluded triumphantly.
+
+This was at best a feeble sequitur, but the argument of the
+affections is not always logical.  And it had its effect on the
+girl.
+
+"I wasn't thinking of THAT," she said.  "It's that you don't know
+your own mind."
+
+"If I said that I would stay and accept your father's offer, would
+you think that I did?" he asked quickly.
+
+"I should wait and see what you actually DID do," she replied.
+
+"But if I stayed--and--and--if I told you that I stayed on YOUR
+account--to be with you and near you only--would you think that a
+proof?"  He spoke hesitatingly, for his lips were dry with a
+nervousness he had not known before.
+
+"I might, if you told father you expected to be engaged on those
+terms.  For it concerns HIM as much as me.  And HE engages you, and
+not I.  Otherwise I'd think it was only your talk."
+
+Reddy looked at her in astonishment.  There was not the slightest
+trace of coyness, coquetry, or even raillery in her clear, honest
+eyes, and yet it would seem as if she had taken his proposition in
+its fullest sense as a matrimonial declaration, and actually
+referred him to her father.  He was pleased, frightened, and
+utterly unprepared.
+
+"But what would YOU say, Nelly?"  He drew closer to her and held
+out both his hands.  But she retreated a step and slipped her own
+behind her.
+
+"Better see what father says first," she said quietly.  "You may
+change your mind again and go back to San Francisco."
+
+He was confused, and reddened again.  But he had become accustomed
+to her ways; rather, perhaps, he had begun to recognize the quaint
+justice that underlaid them, or, possibly, some better self of his
+own, that had been buried under bitterness and sloth and struggled
+into life.  "But whatever he says," he returned eagerly, "cannot
+alter my feelings to YOU.  It can only alter my position here, and
+you say you are above being influenced by that.  Tell me, Nelly--
+dear Nelly! have you nothing to say to me, AS I AM, or is it only
+to your father's manager that you would speak?"  His voice had an
+unmistakable ring of sincerity in it, and even startled him--half
+rascal as he was!
+
+The young girl's clear, scrutinizing eyes softened; her red
+resolute lips trembled slightly and then parted, the upper one
+hovering a little to one side over her white teeth.  It was Nelly's
+own peculiar smile, and its serious piquancy always thrilled him.
+But she drew a little farther back from his brightening eyes,
+her hands still curled behind her, and said, with the faintest
+coquettish toss of her head toward the hill: "If you want to see
+father, you'd better hurry up."
+
+With a sudden determination as new to him as it was incomprehensible,
+Reddy turned from her and struck forward in the direction of the
+hill.  He was not quite sure what he was going for.  Yet that he,
+who had only a moment before fully determined to leave the rancho
+and her, was now going to her father to demand her hand as a
+contingency of his remaining did not strike him as so extravagant
+and unexpected a denouement as it was a difficult one.  He was only
+concerned HOW, and in what way, he should approach him.  In a moment
+of embarrassment he hesitated, turned, and looked behind him.
+
+She was standing where he had left her, gazing after him, leaning
+forward with her hands still held behind her.  Suddenly, as with an
+inspiration, she raised them both, carried them impetuously to her
+lips, blew him a dozen riotous kisses, and then, lowering her head
+like a colt, whisked her skirt behind her, and vanished in the
+cover.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+It was only May, but the freshness of early summer already clothed
+the great fields of the rancho.  The old resemblance to a sea was
+still there, more accented, perhaps, by the undulations of bluish-
+green grain that rolled from the actual shore-line to the
+foothills.  The farm buildings were half submerged in this glowing
+tide of color and lost their uncouth angularity with their hidden
+rude foundations.  The same sea-breeze blew chilly and steadily
+from the bay, yet softened and subdued by the fresh odors of leaf
+and flower.  The outlying fringe of oaks were starred through their
+underbrush with anemones and dog-roses; there were lupines growing
+rankly in the open spaces, and along the gentle slopes of Oak Grove
+daisies were already scattered.  And, as if it were part of this
+vernal efflorescence, the eminence itself was crowned with that
+latest flower of progress and improvement,--the new Oak Grove
+Hotel!
+
+Long, low, dazzling with white colonnades, verandas, and balconies
+which retained, however, enough of the dampness of recent creation
+to make them too cool for loungers, except at high noon, the hotel
+nevertheless had the charms of freshness, youth, and cleanliness.
+Reddy's fastidious neatness showed itself in all the appointments,
+from the mirrored and marbled barroom, gilded parlors, and snowy
+dining-room, to the chintz and maple furnishing of the bedrooms
+above.  Reddy's taste, too, had selected the pretty site; his good
+fortune had afterward discovered in an adjoining thicket a spring
+of blandly therapeutic qualities.  A complaisant medical faculty
+of San Francisco attested to its merits; a sympathetic press
+advertised the excellence of the hotel; a novelty-seeking,
+fashionable circle--as yet without laws and blindly imitative--
+found the new hotel an admirable variation to the vulgar ordinary
+"across the bay" excursion, and an accepted excuse for a novel
+social dissipation.  A number of distinguished people had already
+visited it; certain exclusive families had secured the best rooms;
+there were a score of pretty women to be seen in its parlors; there
+had already been a slight scandal.  Nothing seemed wanting to
+insure its success.
+
+Reddy was passing through the little wood where four months before
+he had parted from Kelly Woodridge to learn his fate from her
+father.  He remembered that interview to which Nelly's wafted kiss
+had inspired him.  He recalled to-day, as he had many times before,
+the singular complacency with which Mr. Woodridge had received his
+suit, as if it were a slight and unimportant detail of the business
+in hand, and how he had told him that Kelly and her mother were
+going to the "States" for a three months' visit, but that after her
+return, if they were both "still agreed," he, Woodridge, would make
+no objection.  He remembered the slight shock which this announcement
+of Kelly's separation from him during his probationary labors had
+given him, and his sudden suspicion that he had been partly tricked
+of his preliminary intent to secure her company to solace him.  But
+he had later satisfied himself that she knew nothing of her father's
+intentions at the time, and he was fain to content himself with a
+walk through the fields at her side the day she departed, and a
+single kiss--which left him cold.  And now in a few days she would
+return to witness the successful fufillment of his labors, and--
+reward him!
+
+It was certainly a complacent prospect.  He could look forward to a
+sensible, prosperous, respectable future.  He had won back his good
+name, his fortune, and position,--not perhaps exactly in the way he
+had expected,--and he had stilled the wanton, foolish cravings of
+his passionate nature in the calm, virginal love of an honest,
+handsome girl who would make him a practical helpmeet, and a
+comfortable, trustworthy wife.  He ought to be very happy.  He had
+never known such perfect health before; he had lost his reckless
+habits; his handsome, nervous face had grown more placid and
+contented; his long curls had been conventionally clipped; he had
+gained flesh unmistakably, and the lower buttons of the slim
+waistcoat he had worn to church that memorable Sunday were too
+tight for comfort or looks.  HE WAS happy; yet as he glanced over
+the material spring landscape, full of practical health, blossom,
+and promise of fruition, it struck him that the breeze that blew
+over it was chilly, even if healthful; and he shivered slightly.
+
+He reached the hotel, entered the office, glanced at the register,
+and passed through into his private room.  He had been away for two
+days, and noticed with gratification that the influx of visitors
+was still increasing.  His clerk followed into the room.
+
+"There's a lady in 56 who wanted to see you when you returned.  She
+asked particularly for the manager."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Don't know.  It's a Mrs. Merrydew, from Sacramento.  Expecting her
+husband on the next steamer."
+
+"Humph!  You'll have to be rather careful about these solitary
+married women.  We don't want another scandal, you know."
+
+"She asked for you by name, sir, and I thought you might know her,"
+returned the clerk.
+
+"Very well.  I'll go up."
+
+He sent a waiter ahead to announce him, and leisurely mounted the
+stairs.  No. 56 was the sitting-room of a private suite on the
+first floor.  The waiter was holding the door open.  As he
+approached it a faint perfume from the interior made him turn pale.
+But he recovered his presence of mind sufficiently to close the
+door sharply upon the waiter behind him.
+
+"Jim," said a voice which thrilled him.
+
+He looked up and beheld what any astute reader of romance will have
+already suspected--the woman to whom he believed he owed his ruin
+in San Francisco.  She was as beautiful and alluring as ever,
+albeit she was thinner and more spiritual than he had ever seen
+her.  She was tastefully dressed, as she had always been, a certain
+style of languorous silken deshabille which she was wont to affect
+in better health now became her paler cheek and feverishly
+brilliant eyes.  There was the same opulence of lace and ornament,
+and, whether by accident or design, clasped around the slight wrist
+of her extended hand was a bracelet which he remembered had swept
+away the last dregs of his fortune.
+
+He took her hand mechanically, yet knowing whatever rage was in his
+heart he had not the strength to refuse it.
+
+"They told me it was Mrs. Merrydew," he stammered.
+
+"That was my mother's name," she said, with a little laugh.  "I
+thought you knew it.  But perhaps you didn't.  When I got my
+divorce from Dick--you didn't know that either, I suppose; it's
+three months ago,--I didn't care to take my maiden name again; too
+many people remembered it.  So after the decree was made I called
+myself Mrs. Merrydew.  You had disappeared.  They said you had gone
+East."
+
+"But the clerk says you are expecting your HUSBAND on the steamer.
+What does this mean?  Why did you tell him that?"  He had so far
+collected himself that there was a ring of inquisition in his
+voice.
+
+"Oh, I had to give him some kind of reason for my being alone when
+I did not find you as I expected," she said half wearily.  Then a
+change came over her tired face; a smile of mingled audacity and
+tentative coquetry lit up the small features.  "Perhaps it is true;
+perhaps I may have a husband coming on the steamer--that depends.
+Sit down, Jim."
+
+She let his hand drop, and pointed to an armchair from which she
+had just risen, and sank down herself in a corner of the sofa, her
+thin fingers playing with and drawing themselves through the
+tassels of the cushion.
+
+"You see, Jim, as soon as I was free, Louis Sylvester--you remember
+Louis Sylvester?--wanted to marry me, and even thought that he was
+the cause of Dick's divorcing me.  He actually went East to settle
+up some property he had left him there, and he's coming on the
+steamer."
+
+"Louis Sylvester!" repeated Reddy, staring at her.  "Why, he was a
+bigger fool than I was, and a worse man!" he added bitterly.
+
+"I believe he was," said the lady, smiling, "and I think he still
+is.  But," she added, glancing at Reddy under her light fringed
+lids, "you--you're regularly reformed, aren't you?  You're stouter,
+too, and altogether more solid and commercial looking.  Yet who'd
+have thought of your keeping a hotel or ever doing anything but
+speculate in wild-cat or play at draw poker.  How did you drift
+into it?  Come, tell me!  I'm not Mrs. Sylvester just yet, and
+maybe I might like to go into the business too.  You don't want a
+partner, do you?"
+
+Her manner was light and irresponsible, or rather it suggested a
+childlike putting of all responsibility for her actions upon
+others, which he remembered now too well.  Perhaps it was this
+which kept him from observing that the corners of her smiling lips,
+however, twitched slightly, and that her fingers, twisting the
+threads of the tassel, were occasionally stiffened nervously.  For
+he burst out:  Oh yes; he had drifted into it when it was a toss up
+if it wasn't his body instead that would be found drifting out to
+sea from the first wharf of San Francisco.  Yes, he had been a
+common laborer,--a farm hand, in those fields she had passed,--a
+waiter in the farm kitchen, and but for luck he might be taking her
+orders now in this very hotel.  It was not her fault if he was not
+in the gutter.
+
+She raised her thin hand with a tired gesture as if to ward off the
+onset of his words.  "The same old Jim," she repeated; "and yet I
+thought you had forgotten all that now, and become calmer and more
+sensible since you had taken flesh and grown so matter of fact.
+You ought to have known then, as you know now, that I never could
+have been anything to you as long as I was tied to Dick.  And you
+know you forced your presents on me, Jim.  I took them from YOU
+because I would take nothing from Dick, for I hated him.  And I
+never knew positively that you were in straits then; you know you
+always talked big, Jim, and were always going to make your fortune
+with the next thing you had in hand!"
+
+It was true, and he remembered it.  He had not intended this kind
+of recrimination, but he was exasperated with her wearied
+acceptance of his reproaches and by a sudden conviction that his
+long-cherished grievance against her now that he had voiced it was
+inadequate, mean, and trifling.  Yet he could not help saying:--
+
+"Then you had presents from Sylvester, too.  I presume you did not
+hate him, either?"
+
+"He would have married me the day after I got my divorce."
+
+"And so would I," burst out Reddy.
+
+She looked at him fixedly.  "You would?" she said with a peculiar
+emphasis.  "And now"--
+
+He colored.  It had been part of his revengeful purpose on seeing
+her to tell her of his engagement to Kelly.  He now found himself
+tongue-tied, irresolute, and ashamed.  Yet he felt she was reading
+his innermost thoughts.
+
+She, however, only lowered her eyes, and with the same tired
+expression said: "No matter now.  Let us talk of something nearer.
+That was two months ago.  And so you have charge of this hotel!  I
+like it so much.  I mean the place itself.  I fancy I could live
+here forever.  It is so far away and restful.  I am so sick of
+towns and cities, and people.  And this little grove is so
+secluded.  If one had merely a little cottage here, one might be so
+happy."
+
+What did she mean?--what did she expect?--what did she think of
+doing?  She must be got rid of before Kelly's arrival, and yet he
+found himself wavering under her potent and yet scarcely exerted
+influence.  The desperation of weakness is apt to be more brutal
+than the determination of strength.  He remembered why he had come
+upstairs, and blurted out: "But you can't stay here.  The rules are
+very stringent in regard to--to strangers like yourself.  It will
+be known who you really are and what people say of you.  Even your
+divorce will tell against you.  It's all wrong, I know--but what
+can I do?  I didn't make the rules.  I am only a servant of the
+landlord, and must carry them out."
+
+She leaned back against the sofa and laughed silently.  But she
+presently recovered herself, although with the same expression of
+fatigue.  "Don't be alarmed, my poor Jim!  If you mean your friend,
+Mr. Woodridge, I know him.  It was he, himself, who suggested my
+coming here.  And don't misunderstand him--nor me either.  He's
+only a good friend of Sylvester's; they had some speculation
+together.  He's coming here to see me after Louis arrives.  He's
+waiting in San Francisco for his wife and daughter, who come on the
+same steamer.  So you see you won't get into trouble on my account.
+Don't look so scared, my dear boy."
+
+"Does he know that you knew me?" said Reddy, with a white face.
+
+"Perhaps.  But then that was three months ago," returned the lady,
+smiling, "and you know how you have reformed since, and grown ever
+so much more steady and respectable."
+
+"Did he talk to you of me?" continued Reddy, still aghast.
+
+"A little--complimentary of course.  Don't look so frightened.  I
+didn't give you away."
+
+Her laugh suddenly ceased, and her face changed into a more nervous
+activity as she rose and went toward the window.  She had heard the
+sound of wheels outside--the coach had just arrived.
+
+"There's Mr. Woodridge now," she said in a more animated voice.
+"The steamer must be in.  But I don't see Louis; do you?"
+
+She turned to where Reddy was standing, but he was gone.
+
+The momentary animation of her face changed.  She lifted her
+shoulders with a half gesture of scorn, but in the midst of it
+suddenly threw herself on the sofa, and buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+A few moments elapsed with the bustle of arrival in the hall and
+passages.  Then there was a hesitating step at her door.  She
+quickly passed her handkerchief over her wet eyes and resumed her
+former look of weary acceptation.  The door opened.  But it was Mr.
+Woodridge who entered.  The rough shirt-sleeved ranchman had
+developed, during the last four months, into an equally blunt but
+soberly dressed proprietor.  His keen energetic face, however, wore
+an expression of embarrassment and anxiety, with an added
+suggestion of a half humorous appreciation of it.
+
+"I wouldn't have disturbed you, Mrs. Merrydew," he said, with a
+gentle bluntness, "if I hadn't wanted to ask your advice before I
+saw Reddy.  I'm keeping out of his way until I could see you.  I
+left Nelly and her mother in 'Frisco.  There's been some queer
+goings-on on the steamer coming home; Kelly has sprang a new game
+on her mother, and--and suthin' that looks as if there might be a
+new deal.  However," here a sense that he was, perhaps, treating
+his statement too seriously, stopped him, and he smiled
+reassuringly, "that is as may be."
+
+"I don't know," he went on, "as I ever told you anything about my
+Kelly and Reddy,--partik'lerly about Kelly.  She's a good girl, a
+square girl, but she's got some all-fired romantic ideas in her
+head.  Mebbee it kem from her reading, mebbee it kem from her not
+knowing other girls, or seeing too much of a queer sort of men; but
+she got an interest in the bad ones, and thought it was her mission
+to reform them,--reform them by pure kindness, attentive little
+sisterly ways, and moral example.  She first tried her hand on
+Reddy.  When he first kem to us he was--well, he was a blazin'
+ruin!  She took him in hand, yanked him outer himself, put his foot
+on the bedrock, and made him what you see him now.  Well--what
+happened; why, he got reg'larly soft on her; wanted to MARRY HER,
+and I agreed conditionally, of course, to keep him up to the mark.
+Did you speak?"
+
+"No," said the lady, with her bright eyes fixed upon him.
+
+"Well, that was all well and good, and I'd liked to have carried
+out my part of the contract, and was willing, and am still.  But
+you see, Kelly, after she'd landed Reddy on firm ground, got a
+little tired, I reckon, gal-like, of the thing she'd worked so
+easily, and when she went East she looked around for some other
+wreck to try her hand on, and she found it on the steamer coming
+back.  And who do you think it was?  Why, our friend Louis
+Sylvester!"
+
+Mrs. Merrydew smiled slightly, with her bright eyes still on the
+speaker.
+
+"Well, you know he IS fast at times--if he is a friend of mine--and
+she reg'larly tackled him; and as my old woman says, it was a sight
+to see her go for him.  But then HE didn't tumble to it.  No!
+Reformin' ain't in HIS line I'm afeard.  And what was the result?
+Why, Kelly only got all the more keen when she found she couldn't
+manage him like Reddy,--and, between you and me, she'd have liked
+Reddy more if he hadn't been so easy,--and it's ended, I reckon, in
+her now falling dead in love with Sylvester.  She swears she won't
+marry any one else, and wants to devote her whole life to him!
+Now, what's to be done!  Reddy don't know it yet, and I don't know
+how to tell him.  Kelly says her mission was ended when she made a
+new man of him, and he oughter be thankful for that.  Couldn't you
+kinder break the news to him and tell him there ain't any show for
+him?"
+
+"Does he love the girl so much, then?" said the lady gently.
+
+"Yes; but I am afraid there is no hope for Reddy as long as she
+thinks there's a chance of her capturing Sylvester."
+
+The lady rose and went to the writing-table.  "Would it be any
+comfort to you, Mr. Woodridge, if you were told that she had not
+the slightest chance with Sylvester?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She wrote a few lines on a card, put it in an envelope, and handed
+it to Woodridge.  "Find out where Sylvester is in San Francisco,
+and give him that card.  I think it will satisfy you.  And now as I
+have to catch the return coach in ten minutes, I must ask you to
+excuse me while I put my things together."
+
+"And you won't first break the news to Reddy for me?"
+
+"No; and I advise you to keep the whole matter to yourself for the
+present.  Good-by!"
+
+She smiled again, fascinatingly as usual, but, as it seemed to him,
+a trifle wearily, and then passed into the inner room.  Years
+after, in his practical, matter of fact recollections of this
+strange woman, he always remembered her by this smile.
+
+But she had sufficiently impressed him by her parting adjuration to
+cause him to answer Reddy's eager inquiries with the statement that
+Kelly and her mother were greatly preoccupied with some friends in
+San Francisco, and to speedily escape further questioning.  Reddy's
+disappointment was somewhat mitigated by the simultaneous
+announcement of Mrs. Merrydew's departure.  But he was still more
+relieved and gratified to hear, a few days later, of the marriage
+of Mrs. Merrydew with Louis Sylvester.  If, to the general surprise
+and comment it excited, he contributed only a smile of cynical
+toleration and superior self-complacency, the reader will
+understand and not blame him.  Nor did the public, who knew the
+austere completeness of his reform.  Nor did Mr. Woodridge, who
+failed to understand the only actor in this little comedy who might
+perhaps have differed from them all.
+
+A month later James Reddy married Kelly Woodridge, in the chilly
+little church at Oakdale.  Perhaps by that time it might have
+occurred to him that although the freshness and fruition of summer
+were everywhere, the building seemed to be still unwarmed.  And
+when he stepped forth with his bride, and glanced across the
+prosperous landscape toward the distant bay and headlands of San
+Francisco, he shivered slightly at the dryly practical kiss of the
+keen northwestern Trades.
+
+But he was prosperous and comfortable thereafter, as the
+respectable owner of broad lands and paying shares.  It was said
+that Mrs. Reddy contributed much to the popularity of the hotel by
+her charming freedom from prejudice and sympathy with mankind; but
+this was perhaps only due to the contrast to her more serious and
+at times abstracted husband.  At least this was the charitable
+opinion of the proverbially tolerant and kind-hearted Baroness
+Streichholzer (nee Merrydew, and relict of the late lamented Louis
+Sylvester, Esq.), whom I recently had the pleasure of meeting at
+Wiesbaden, where the waters and reposeful surroundings strongly
+reminded her of Oakdale.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEIR OF THE McHULISHES.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+The consul for the United States of America at the port of St.
+Kentigern was sitting alone in the settled gloom of his private
+office.  Yet it was only high noon, of a "seasonable" winter's day,
+by the face of the clock that hung like a pallid moon on the murky
+wall opposite to him.  What else could be seen of the apartment by
+the faint light that struggled through the pall of fog outside the
+lustreless windows presented the ordinary aspect of a business
+sanctum.  There were a shelf of fog-bound admiralty law, one or
+two colored prints of ocean steamships under full steam, bow on,
+tremendously foreshortened, and seeming to force themselves through
+shadowy partitions; there were engravings of Lincoln and Washington,
+as unsubstantial and shadowy as the dead themselves.  Outside,
+against the window, which was almost level with the street, an
+occasional procession of black silhouetted figures of men and women,
+with prayer-books in their hands and gloom on their faces, seemed to
+be born of the fog, and prematurely to return to it.  At which a
+conviction of sin overcame the consul.  He remembered that it was
+the Sabbath day, and that he had no business to be at the consulate
+at all.
+
+Unfortunately, with this shameful conviction came the sound of a
+bell ringing somewhere in the depths of the building, and the
+shuffling of feet on the outer steps.  The light of his fire had
+evidently been seen, and like a beacon had attracted some wandering
+and possibly intoxicated mariner with American papers.  The consul
+walked into the hall with a sudden righteous frigidity of manner.
+It was one thing to be lounging in one's own office on the Sabbath
+day, and quite another to be deliberately calling there on
+business.
+
+He opened the front door, and a middle-aged man entered, accompanying
+and partly shoving forward a more diffident and younger one.
+Neither appeared to be a sailor, although both were dressed in that
+dingy respectability and remoteness of fashion affected by second
+and third mates when ashore.  They were already well in the hall,
+and making their way toward the private office, when the elder man
+said, with an air of casual explanation, "Lookin' for the American
+consul; I reckon this yer's the consulate?"
+
+"It is the consulate," said the official dryly, "and I am the
+consul; but"--
+
+"That's all right," interrupted the stranger, pushing past him, and
+opening the door of the private office, into which he shoved his
+companion.  "Thar now!" he continued to the diffident youth,
+pointing to a chair, and quite ignoring the presence of the consul;
+"thar's a bit of America.  Sit down thar.  You're under the flag
+now, and can do as you darn please."  Nevertheless, he looked a
+little disappointed as he glanced around him, as if he had expected
+a different environment and possibly a different climate.
+
+"I presume," said the consul suavely, "you wish to see me on some
+urgent matter; for you probably know that the consulate is closed
+on Sunday to ordinary business.  I am here myself quite
+accidentally."
+
+"Then you don't live here?" said the visitor disappointedly.
+
+"No."
+
+"I reckon that's the reason why we didn't see no flag a-flyin' when
+we was a-huntin' this place yesterday.  We were directed here, but
+I says to Malcolm, says I, 'No; it ain't here, or you'd see the
+Stars and Stripes afore you'd see anythin' else.'  But I reckon you
+float it over your house, eh?"
+
+The consul here explained smilingly that he did NOT fly a flag over
+his lodgings, and that except on national holidays it was not
+customary to display the national ensign on the consulate.
+
+"Then you can't do here--and you a CONSUL--what any nigger can do
+in the States, eh?  That's about how it pans out, don't it?  But I
+didn't think YOU'D tumble to it quite so quick, Jack."
+
+At this mention of his Christian name, the consul turned sharply on
+the speaker.  A closer scrutiny of the face before him ended with a
+flash of reminiscence.  The fog without and within seemed to melt
+away; he was standing once more on a Western hillside with this
+man; a hundred miles of sparkling sunshine and crisp, dry air
+stretching around him, and above a blue and arched sky that roofed
+the third of a continent with six months' summer.  And then the fog
+seemed to come back heavier and thicker to his consciousness.  He
+emotionally stretched out his hand to the stranger.  But it was the
+fog and his personal surroundings which now seemed to be unreal
+
+"Why it's Harry Custer!" he said with a laugh that, however, ended
+in a sigh.  "I didn't recognize you in this half light."  He then
+glanced curiously toward the diffident young man, as if to identify
+another possible old acquaintance.
+
+"Well, I spotted you from the first," said Custer, "though I ain't
+seen you since we were in Scott's Camp together.  That's ten years
+ago.  You're lookin' at HIM," he continued, following the consul's
+wandering eye.  "Well, it's about him that I came to see you.  This
+yer's a McHulish--a genuine McHulish!"
+
+He paused, as if to give effect to this statement.  But the name
+apparently offered no thrilling suggestion to the consul, who
+regarded the young man closely for further explanation.  He was a
+fair-faced youth of about twenty years, with pale reddish-brown
+eyes, dark hair reddish at the roots, and a singular white and pink
+waxiness of oval cheek, which, however, narrowed suddenly at the
+angle of the jaw, and fell away with the retreating chin.
+
+"Yes," continued Custer; "I oughter say the ONLY McHulish.  He is
+the direct heir--and of royal descent!  He's one of them McHulishes
+whose name in them old history times was enough to whoop up the
+boys and make 'em paint the town red.  A regular campaign boomer--
+the old McHulish was.  Stump speeches and brass-bands warn't in it
+with the boys when HE was around.  They'd go their bottom dollar
+and last cartridge--if they'd had cartridges in them days--on him.
+That was the regular McHulish gait.  And Malcolm there's the last
+of 'em--got the same style of features, too."
+
+Ludicrous as the situation was, it struck the consul dimly, as
+through fog and darkness, that the features of the young man were
+not unfamiliar, and indeed had looked out upon him dimly and
+vaguely at various times, from various historic canvases.  It was
+the face of complacent fatuity, incompetency, and inconstancy,
+which had dragged down strength, competency, and constancy to its
+own idiotic fate and levels,--a face for whose weaknesses valor and
+beauty had not only sacrificed themselves, but made things equally
+unpleasant to a great many minor virtues.  Nevertheless, the
+consul, with an amused sense of its ridiculous incongruity to the
+grim Scottish Sabbath procession in the street, and the fog-bound
+volumes of admiralty law in the room, smiled affably.
+
+"Of course our young friend has no desire to test the magic of his
+name here, in these degenerate days."
+
+"No," said Custer complacently; "though between you and me, old
+man, there's always no tellin' what might turn up over in this yer
+monarchy.  Things of course are different over our way.  But jest
+now Malcolm will be satisfied to take the title and property to
+which he's rightful heir."
+
+The consul's face fell.  Alas! it was only the old, old story.  Its
+endless repetitions and variations had been familiar to him even in
+his youth and in his own land.  "Ef that man had his rights," had
+once been pointed out to him in a wild Western camp, "he'd be now
+sittin' in scarlet on the right of the Queen of England!"  The
+gentleman who was indicated in this apocalyptical vision, it
+appeared, simply bore a singular likeness to a reigning Hanoverian
+family, which for some unexplained reason he had contented himself
+with bearing with fortitude and patience.  But it was in his
+official capacity that the consul's experience had been the most
+trying.  At times it had seemed to him that much of the real
+property and peerage of Great Britain was the inherited right of
+penniless American republicans who had hitherto refrained from
+presenting their legal claims, and that the habitual first duty of
+generations of British noblemen on coming into their estates and
+titles was to ship their heirs and next of kin to America, and then
+forget all about them.  He had listened patiently to claims to
+positions more or less exalted,--claims often presented with
+ingenuous sophistry or pathetic simplicity, prosecuted with great
+good humor, and abandoned with invincible cheerfulness; but they
+seldom culminated more seriously than in the disbursement of a few
+dollars by the consul to enable the rightful owner of millions to
+procure a steerage passage back to his previous democratic
+retirement.  There had been others, less sincere but more
+pretentious in quality, to whom, however, a letter to the Heralds'
+College in London was all sufficient, and who, on payment of
+various fees and emoluments, were enabled to stagger back to New
+York or Boston with certain unclaimed and forgotten luggage which a
+more gallant ancestor had scorned to bring with him into the new
+life, or had thrown aside in his undue haste to make them citizens
+of the republic.  Still, all this had grown monotonous and
+wearisome, and was disappointing as coming through the intervention
+of an old friend who ought to know better.
+
+"Of course you have already had legal opinion on the subject over
+there," said the consul, with a sigh, "but here, you know, you
+ought first to get some professional advice from those acquainted
+with Scotch procedure.  But perhaps you have that too."
+
+"No," said Custer cheerfully.  "Why, it ain't only two months ago
+that I first saw Malcolm.  Tumbled over him on his own farm jest
+out of MacCorkleville, Kentucky, where he and his fathers before
+him had been livin' nigh a hundred years--yes, A HUNDRED YEARS, by
+Jove! ever since they first emigrated to the country.  Had a talk
+over it; saw an old Bible about as big and as used up as that,"--
+lifting the well-worn consular Bible,--"with dates in it, and heard
+the whole story.  And here we are."
+
+"And you have consulted no lawyer?" gasped the consul.
+
+"The McHulishes," said an unexpected voice that sounded thin and
+feminine, "never took any legal decision.  From the craggy summits
+of Glen Crankie he lifted the banner of his forefathers, or raised
+the war-cry, 'Hulish dhu, ieroe!' from the battlements of
+Craigiedurrach.  And the clan gathered round him with shouts that
+rent the air.  That was the way of it in old times.  And the boys
+whooped him up and stood by him."  It was the diffident young man
+who had half spoken, half recited, with an odd enthusiasm that even
+the culminating slang could not make conventional.
+
+"That's about the size of it," said Custer, leaning back in his
+chair easily with an approving glance at the young man.  "And I
+don't know if that ain't the way to work the thing now."
+
+The consul stared hopelessly from the one to the other.  It had
+always seemed possible that this dreadful mania might develop into
+actual insanity, and he had little doubt but that the younger man's
+brain was slightly affected.  But this did not account for the
+delusion and expectations of the elder.  Harry Custer, as the
+consul remembered him, was a level-headed, practical miner, whose
+leaning to adventure and excitement had not prevented him from
+being a cool speculator, and he had amassed more than a competency
+by reason of his judicious foresight and prompt action.  Yet he was
+evidently under the glamour of this madman, although outwardly as
+lazily self-contained as ever.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," said the consul in a suppressed voice,
+"that you two have come here equipped only with a statement of
+facts and a family Bible, and that you expect to take advantage of
+a feudal enthusiasm which no longer exists--and perhaps never did
+exist out of the pages of romance--as a means of claiming estates
+whose titles have long since been settled by law, and can be
+claimed only under that tenure?  Surely I have misunderstood you.
+You cannot be in earnest."
+
+"Honest Injun," said Custer, nodding his head lazily.  "We mean it,
+but not jest that way you've put it.  F'r instance, it ain't only
+us two.  This yer thing, ole pard, we're runnin' as a syndicate."
+
+"A syndicate?" echoed the consul.
+
+"A syndicate," repeated Custer.  "Half the boys that were at Eagle
+Camp are in it, and two of Malcolm's neighbors from Kentucky--the
+regular old Scotch breed like himself; for you know that MacCorkle
+County was settled by them old Scotch Covenanters, and the folks
+are Scotch Presbyterians to this day.  And for the matter of that,
+the Eagle boys that are in it are of Scotch descent, or a kind of
+blend, you know; in fact, I'm half Scotch myself--or Irish," he
+added thoughtfully.  "So you see that settles your argument about
+any local opinion, for if them Scots don't know their own people,
+who does?"
+
+"May I ask," said the consul, with a desperate attempt to preserve
+his composure, "what you are proposing to do?"
+
+"Well," said Custer, settling himself comfortably back in his chair
+again, "that depends.  Do you remember the time that we jumped them
+Mexican claims on the North Fork--the time them greasers wanted to
+take in the whole river-bank because they'd found gold on one of
+the upper bars?  Seems to me we jest went peaceful-like over there
+one moonshiny night, and took up THEIR stakes and set down OURS.
+Seems to me YOU were one of the party."
+
+"That was in our own country," returned the consul hastily, "and
+was an indefensible act, even in a lawless frontier civilization.
+But you are surely not mad enough even to conceive of such a thing
+HERE!"
+
+"Keep your hair on, Jack," said Custer lazily.  "What's the matter
+with constitutional methods, eh?  Do you remember the time when we
+didn't like Pueblo rules, and we laid out Eureka City on their
+lines, and whooped up the Mexicans and diggers to elect mayor and
+aldermen, and put the city front on Juanita Creek, and then
+corraled it for water lots?  Seems to me you were county clerk
+then.  Now who's to keep Dick Macgregor and Joe Hamilton, that are
+both up the Nile now, from droppin' in over here to see Malcolm in
+his own house?  Who's goin' to object to Wallace or Baird, who are
+on this side, doin' the Eytalian lakes, from comin' here on their
+way home; or Watson and Moore and Timley, that are livin' over in
+Paris, from joinin' the boys in givin' Malcolm a housewarmin' in
+his old home?  What's to keep the whole syndicate from gatherin' at
+Kelpie Island up here off the west coast, among the tombs of
+Malcolm's ancestors, and fixin' up things generally with the clan?"
+
+"Only one thing," said the consul, with a gravity which he
+nevertheless felt might be a mistaken attitude.  "You shouldn't
+have told ME about it.  For if, as your old friend, I cannot keep
+you from committing an unconceivable folly, as the American consul
+here it will be my first duty to give notice to our legation, and
+perhaps warn the authorities.  And you may be sure I will do it."
+
+To his surprise Custer leaned forward and pressed his hand with an
+expression of cheerful relief.  "That's so, old pard; I reckoned on
+it.  In fact, I told Malcolm that that would be about your gait.
+Of course you couldn't do otherwise.  And it would have been
+playin' it rather low down on you to have left you out in the cold--
+without even THAT show in the game.  For what you will do in
+warnin' the other fellows, don't you see, will just waken up the
+clan.  It's better than a campaign circular."
+
+"Don't be too sure of that," said the consul, with a half-
+hysterical laugh.  "But we won't consider so lamentable a
+contingency.  Come and dine with me, both of you, and we'll discuss
+the only thing worth discussing,--your LEGAL rights,--and you can
+tell me your whole story, which, by the way, I haven't heard."
+
+"Sorry, Jack, but it can't be done," said Custer, with his first
+approach to seriousness of manner.  "You see, we'd made up our mind
+not to come here again after this first call.  We ain't goin' to
+compromise you."
+
+"I am the best judge of that," returned the consul dryly.  Then
+suddenly changing his manner, he grasped Custer's hands with both
+his own.  "Come, Harry," he said earnestly; "I will not believe
+that this is not a joke, but I beg of you to promise me one thing,--
+do not move a step further in this matter without legal counsel.
+I will give you a letter to a legal friend of mine--a man of
+affairs, a man of the world, and a Scot as typical, perhaps, as any
+you have mentioned.  State your LEGAL case to him--only that; but
+his opinion will show you also, if I am not mistaken, the folly of
+your depending upon any sectional or historical sentiment in this
+matter."
+
+Without waiting for a reply, he sat down and hastily wrote a few
+lines to a friendly local magnate.  When he had handed the note to
+Custer, the latter looked at the address, and showed it to his
+young companion.
+
+"Same name, isn't it?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," responded Mr. McHulish.
+
+"Do you know him?" asked the consul, evidently surprised.
+
+"We don't, but he's a friend of one of the Eagle boys.  I reckon we
+would have seen him anyhow; but we'll agree with you to hold on
+until we do.  It's a go.  Goodby, old pard!  So long."
+
+They both shook the consul's hand, and departed, leaving him
+staring at the fog into which they had melted as if they were
+unreal shadows of the past.
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The next morning the fog had given way to a palpable, horizontally
+driving rain, which wet the inside as well as the outside of
+umbrellas, and caused them to be presented at every conceivable
+angle as they drifted past the windows of the consulate.  There was
+a tap at the door, and a clerk entered.
+
+"Ye will be in to Sir James MacFen?"
+
+The consul nodded, and added, "Show him in here."
+
+It was the magnate to whom he had sent the note the previous day,
+a man of large yet slow and cautious nature, learned and even
+pedantic, yet far-sighted and practical; very human and hearty in
+social intercourse, which, however, left him as it found him,--with
+no sentimental or unbusiness-like entanglements.  The consul had
+known him sensible and sturdy at board meetings and executive
+councils; logical and convincing at political gatherings; decorous
+and grave in the kirk; and humorous and jovial at festivities,
+where perhaps later in the evening, in company with others, hands
+were clasped over a libation lyrically defined as a "right guid
+williewaught."  On one of these occasions they had walked home
+together, not without some ostentation of steadiness; yet when
+MacFen's eminently respectable front door had closed upon him,
+the consul was perfectly satisfied that a distinctly proper and
+unswerving man of business would issue from it the next morning.
+
+"Ay, but it's a soft day," said Sir James, removing his gloves.
+"Ye'll not be gadding about in this weather."
+
+"You got my note of introduction, I suppose?" said the consul, when
+the momentous topic of the weather was exhausted.
+
+"Oh, ay."
+
+"And you saw the gentlemen?"
+
+"Ay."
+
+"And what's your opinion of--his claims?"
+
+"He's a fine lad--that Malcolm--a fine type of a lad," said Sir
+James, with an almost too effusive confidence.  "Ye'll be thinking
+so yourself--no doubt?  Ay, it's wonderful to consider the
+preservation of type so long after its dispersal in other lands.
+And it's a strange and wonderful country that of yours, with its
+plantations--as one might say--of homogeneity unimpaired for so
+many years, and keeping the old faith too--and all its strange
+survivals.  Ay, and that Kentucky, where his land is--it will be a
+rich State!  It's very instructing and interesting to hear his
+account of that remarkable region they call 'the blue grass
+country,' and the stock they raise there.  I'm obliged to ye, my
+friend, for a most edifying and improving evening."
+
+"But his claim--did he not speak of that?"
+
+"Oh, ay.  And that Mr. Custer--he's a grand man, and an amusing
+one.  Ye'll be great comrades, you and he!  Man! it was delightful
+to hear him tell of the rare doings and the bit fun ye two had in
+the old times.  Eh, sir, but who'd think that of the proper
+American consul at St. Kentigern!"  And Sir James leaned back in
+his chair, and bestowed an admiring smile on that official.
+
+The consul thought he began to understand this evasion.  "Then you
+don't think much of Mr. McHulish's claim?" he said.
+
+"I'm not saying that."
+
+"But do you really think a claim based upon a family Bible and a
+family likeness a subject for serious consideration?"
+
+"I'm not saying THAT either, laddie."
+
+"Perhaps he has confided to you more fully than he has to me,
+or possibly you yourself knew something in corroboration of his
+facts."
+
+His companion had evidently no desire to be communicative.  But the
+consul had heard enough to feel that he was justified in leaving
+the matter in his hands.  He had given him fair warning.  Yet,
+nevertheless, he would be even more explicit.
+
+"I do not know," he began, "whether this young McHulish confided to
+you his great reliance upon some peculiar effect of his presence
+among the tenants, and of establishing his claim to the property by
+exciting the enthusiasm of the clan.  It certainly struck me that
+he had some rather exaggerated ideas, borrowed, perhaps, from
+romances he'd read, like Don Quixote his books of chivalry.  He
+seems to believe in the existence of a clan loyalty, and the actual
+survival of old feudal instincts and of old feudal methods in the
+Highlands.  He appears to look upon himself as a kind of local
+Prince Charlie, and, by Jove! I've an idea he's almost as crazy."
+
+"And why should he na believe in his own kith and kin?" said Sir
+James, quickly, with a sudden ring in his voice, and a dialectical
+freedom quite distinct from his former deliberate and cautious
+utterance.  "The McHulishes were chieftains before America was
+discovered, and many's the time they overran the border before they
+went as far as that.  If there's anything in blood and loyalty, it
+would be strange if they did na respond.  And I can tell ye, ma
+frien', there's more in the Hielands than any 'romancer,' as ye
+call them,--ay, even Scott hissel', and he was but an Edinboro'
+man,--ever dreamed of.  Don't fash yoursel' about that.  And you
+and me'll not agree about Prince Charlie.  Some day I'll tell ye,
+ma frien', mair aboot that bonnie laddie than ye'll gather from
+your partisan historians.  Until then ye'll be wise when ye'll be
+talking to Scotchmen not to be expressing your Southern prejudices."
+
+Intensely surprised and amused at this sudden outbreak of
+enthusiasm on the part of the usually cautious lawyer, the consul
+could not refrain from accenting it by a marked return to practical
+business.
+
+"I shall be delighted to learn more about Prince Charlie," he said,
+smiling, "but just now his prototype--if you'll allow me to call
+him so--is a nearer topic, and for the present, at least until he
+assume his new titles and dignities, has a right to claim my
+protection, and I am responsible for him as an American citizen.
+Now, my dear friend, is there really any property, land, or title
+of any importance involved in his claim, and what and where, in
+Heaven's name, is it?  For I assure you I know nothing practical
+about it, and cannot make head or tail of it."
+
+Sir James resumed his slow serenity, and gathered up his gloves.
+"Ay, there's a great deer-forest in Ballochbrinkie, and there's
+part of Loch Phillibeg in Cairngormshire, and there's Kelpie Island
+off Moreovershire.  Ay, there's enough land when the crofters are
+cleared off, and the small sheep-tenants evicted.  It will be a
+grand property then."
+
+The consul stared.  "The crofters and tenants evicted!" he
+repeated.  "Are they not part of the clan, and loyal to the
+McHulish?"
+
+"The McHulish," said Sir James with great deliberation, "hasn't set
+foot there for years.  They'd be burning him in effigy."
+
+"But," said the astonished consul, "that's rather bad for the
+expectant heir--and the magic of the McHulish presence."
+
+"I'm not saying that," returned Sir James cautiously.  "Ye see he
+can be making better arrangements with the family on account of it."
+
+"With the family?" repeated the consul.  "Then does he talk of
+compromising?"
+
+"I mean they would be more likely to sell for a fair consideration,
+and he'd be better paying money to them than the lawyers.  The
+syndicate will be rich, eh?  And I'm not saying the McHulish
+wouldn't take Kentucky lands in exchange.  It's a fine country,
+that blue grass district."
+
+The consul stared at Sir James so long that a faint smile came into
+the latter's shrewd eyes; at which the consul smiled, too.  A vague
+air of relief and understanding seemed to fill the apartment.
+
+"Oh, ay," continued Sir James, drawing on his gloves with easy
+deliberation, "he's a fine lad that Malcolm, and it's a
+praiseworthy instinct in him to wish to return to the land of his
+forebears, and take his place again among them.  And I'm noticing,
+Mr. Consul, that a great many of your countrymen are doing the
+same.  Eh, yours is a gran' country of progress and ceevel and
+religious liberty, but for a' that, as Burns says, it's in your
+blood to turn to the auld home again.  And it's a fine thing to
+have the money to do it--and, I'm thinking, money well spent all
+around.  Good-morning.  Eh, but I'm forgetting that I wanted to ask
+you to dine with me and Malcolm, and your Mr. Custer, and Mr.
+Watson, who will be one of your syndicate, and whom I once met
+abroad.  But ye'll get a bit note of invitation, with the day, from
+me later."
+
+The consul remembered that Custer had said that one of the "Eagle
+boys" had known Sir James.  This was evidently Watson.  He smiled
+again, but this time Sir James responded only in a general sort of
+way, as he genially bowed himself out of the room.
+
+The consul watched his solid and eminently respectable figure as it
+passed the window, and then returned to his desk, still smiling.
+First of all he was relieved.  What had seemed to him a wild and
+reckless enterprise, with possibly some grim international
+complications on the part of his compatriots, had simply resolved
+itself into an ordinary business speculation--the ethics of which
+they had pretty equally divided with the local operators.  If
+anything, it seemed that the Scotchman would get the best of the
+bargain, and that, for once at least, his countrymen were deficient
+in foresight.  But that was a matter between the parties, and
+Custer himself would probably be the first to resent any suggestion
+of the kind from the consul.  The vision of the McHulish burned in
+effigy by his devoted tenants and retainers, and the thought that
+the prosaic dollars of his countrymen would be substituted for the
+potent presence of the heir, tickled, it is to be feared, the
+saturnine humor of the consul.  He had taken an invincible dislike
+to the callow representative of the McHulish, who he felt had in
+some extraordinary way imposed upon Custer's credulity.  But then
+he had apparently imposed equally upon the practical Sir James.
+The thought of this sham ideal of feudal and privileged incompetency
+being elevated to actual position by the combined efforts of
+American republicans and hard-headed Scotch dissenters, on whom the
+soft Scotch mists fell from above with equal impartiality, struck
+him as being very amusing, and for some time thereafter lightened
+the respectable gloom of his office.  Other engagements prevented
+his attendance at Sir James's dinner, although he was informed
+afterward that it had passed off with great eclat, the later singing
+of "Auld lang Syne," and the drinking of the health of Custer and
+Malcolm with "Hieland honors."  He learned also that Sir James had
+invited Custer and Malcolm to his lacustrine country-seat in the
+early spring.  But he learned nothing more of the progress of
+Malcolm's claim, its details, or the manner in which it was
+prosecuted.  No one else seemed to know anything about it; it found
+no echo in the gossip of the clubs, or in the newspapers of St.
+Kentigern.  In the absence of the parties connected with it, it
+began to assume to him the aspect of a half-humorous romance.  He
+often found himself wondering if there had been any other purpose in
+this quest or speculation than what had appeared on the surface, it
+seemed so inadequate in result.  It would have been so perfectly
+easy for a wealthy syndicate to buy up a much more valuable estate.
+He disbelieved utterly in the sincerity of Malcolm's sentimental
+attitude.  There must be some other reason--perhaps not known even
+to the syndicate.
+
+One day he thought that he had found it.  He had received a note
+addressed from one of the principal hotels, but bearing a large
+personal crest on paper and envelope.  A Miss Kirkby, passing
+through St. Kentigern on her way to Edinburgh, desired to see the
+consul the next day, if he would appoint an hour at the consulate;
+or, as her time was limited, she would take it as a great favor if
+he would call at her hotel.  Although a countrywoman, her name
+might not be so well known to him as those of her "old friends"
+Harry Custer, Esq., and Sir Malcolm McHulish.  The consul was a
+little surprised; the use of the title--unless it referred to some
+other McHulish--would seem to indicate that Malcolm's claim was
+successful.  He had, however, no previous knowledge of the title of
+"Sir" in connection with the estate, and it was probable that his
+fair correspondent--like most of her countrywomen--was more
+appreciative than correct in her bestowal of dignities.  He
+determined to waive his ordinary business rules, and to call upon
+her at once, accepting, as became his patriotism, that charming
+tyranny which the American woman usually reserves exclusively for
+her devoted countrymen.
+
+She received him with an affectation of patronage, as if she had
+lately become uneasily conscious of being in a country where there
+were distinctions of class.  She was young, pretty, and tastefully
+dressed; the national feminine adaptability had not, however,
+extended to her voice and accent.  Both were strongly Southwestern,
+and as she began to speak she seemed to lose her momentary
+affectation.
+
+"It was mighty good of you to come and see me, for the fact is, I
+didn't admire going to your consulate--not one bit.  You see, I'm a
+Southern girl, and never was 'reconstructed' either.  I don't
+hanker after your Gov'ment.  I haven't recognized it, and don't
+want to.  I reckon I ain't been under the flag since the wah.  So
+you see, I haven't any papers to get authenticated, nor any
+certificates to ask for, and ain't wanting any advice or
+protection.  I thought I'd be fair and square with you from the
+word 'go.'"
+
+Nothing could be more fascinating and infectious than the mirthful
+ingenuousness which accompanied and seemed to mitigate this
+ungracious speech, and the consul was greatly amused, albeit
+conscious that it was only an attitude, and perhaps somewhat worn
+in sentiment.  He knew that during the war of the rebellion, and
+directly after it, Great Britain was the resort of certain
+Americans from the West as well as from the South who sought social
+distinction by the affectation of dissatisfaction with their own
+government or the ostentatious simulation of enforced exile; but he
+was quite unprepared for this senseless protraction of dead and
+gone issues.  He ventured to point out with good-humored practicality
+that several years had elapsed since the war, that the South and
+North were honorably reconciled, and that he was legally supposed to
+represent Kentucky as well as New York.  "Your friends," he added
+smilingly, "Mr. Custer and Mr. McHulish, seemed to accept the fact
+without any posthumous sentiment."
+
+"I don't go much on that," she said with a laugh.  "I've been
+living in Paris till maw--who's lying down upstairs--came over and
+brought me across to England for a look around.  And I reckon
+Malcolm's got to keep touch with you on account of his property."
+
+The consul smiled.  "Ah, then, I hope you can tell me something
+about THAT, for I really don't know whether he has established his
+claim or not."
+
+"Why," returned the girl with naive astonishment, "that was just
+what I was going to ask YOU.  He reckoned you'd know all about it."
+
+"I haven't heard anything of the claim for two months," said the
+consul; "but from your reference to him as 'Sir Malcolm,' I
+presumed you considered it settled.  Though, of course, even then
+he wouldn't be 'Sir Malcolm,' and you might have meant somebody
+else."
+
+"Well, then, Lord Malcolm--I can't get the hang of those titles
+yet."
+
+"Neither 'Lord' nor 'Sir'; you know the estate carries no title
+whatever with it," said the consul smilingly.
+
+"But wouldn't he be the laird of something or other, you know?"
+
+"Yes; but that is only a Scotch description, not a title.  It's not
+the same as Lord."
+
+The young girl looked at him with undisguised astonishment.  A half
+laugh twitched the corners of her mouth.  "Are you sure?" she said.
+
+"Perfectly," returned the consul, a little impatiently; "but do I
+understand that you really know nothing more of the progress of the
+claim?"
+
+Miss Kirkby, still abstracted by some humorous astonishment, said
+quickly: "Wait a minute.  I'll just run up and see if maw's coming
+down.  She'd admire to see you."  Then she stopped, hesitated, and
+as she rose added, "Then a laird's wife wouldn't be Lady anything,
+anyway, would she?"
+
+"She certainly would acquire no title merely through her marriage."
+
+The young girl laughed again, nodded, and disappeared.  The consul,
+amused yet somewhat perplexed over the naive brusqueness of the
+interview, waited patiently.  Presently she returned, a little out
+of breath, but apparently still enjoying some facetious retrospect,
+and said, "Maw will be down soon."  After a pause, fixing her
+bright eyes mischievously on the consul, she continued:--
+
+"Did you see much of Malcolm?"
+
+"I saw him only once."
+
+"What did you think of him?"
+
+The consul in so brief a period had been unable to judge.
+
+"You wouldn't think I was half engaged to him, would you?"
+
+The consul was obliged again to protest that in so short an
+interview he had been unable to conceive of Malcolm's good fortune.
+
+"I know what you mean," said the girl lightly.  "You think he's a
+crank.  But it's all over now; the engagement's off."
+
+"I trust that this does not mean that you doubt his success?"
+
+The lady shrugged her shoulders disdainfully.  "That's all right
+enough, I reckon.  There's a hundred thousand dollars in the
+syndicate.  Maw put in twenty thousand, and Custer's bound to make
+it go--particularly as there's some talk of a compromise.  But
+Malcolm's a crank, and I reckon if it wasn't for the compromise the
+syndicate wouldn't have much show.  Why, he didn't even know that
+the McHulishes had no title."
+
+"Do you think he has been suffering under a delusion in regard to
+his relationship?"
+
+"No; he was only a fool in the way he wanted to prove it.  He
+actually got these boys to think it could be filibustered into his
+possession.  Had a sort of idea of 'a rising in the Highlands,' you
+know, like that poem or picture--which is it?  And those fool boys,
+and Custer among them, thought it would be great fun and a great
+spree.  Luckily, maw had the gumption to get Watson to write over
+about it to one of his friends, a Mr.--Mr.--MacFen, a very
+prominent man."
+
+"Perhaps you mean Sir James MacFen," suggested the consul.  "He's a
+knight.  And what did HE say?" he added eagerly.
+
+"Oh, he wrote a most sensible letter," returned the lady, apparently
+mollified by the title of Watson's adviser, "saying that there was
+little doubt, if any, that if the American McHulishes wanted the old
+estate they could get it by the expenditure of a little capital.  He
+offered to make the trial; that was the compromise they're talking
+about.  But he didn't say anything about there being no 'Lord'
+McHulish."
+
+"Perhaps he thought, as you were Americans, you didn't care for
+THAT," said the consul dryly.
+
+"That's no reason why we shouldn't have it if it belonged to us, or
+we chose to pay for it," said the lady pertly.
+
+"Then your changed personal relations with Mr. McHulish is the
+reason why you hear so little of his progress or his expectations?"
+
+"Yes; but he don't know that they are changed, for we haven't seen
+him since we've been here, although they say he's here, and hiding
+somewhere about."
+
+"Why should he be hiding?"
+
+The young girl lifted her pretty brows.  "Maybe he thinks it's
+mysterious.  Didn't I tell you he was a crank?"  Yet she laughed so
+naively, and with such sublime unconsciousness of any reflection on
+herself, that the consul was obliged to smile too.
+
+"You certainly do not seem to be breaking your heart as well as
+your engagement," he said.
+
+"Not much--but here comes maw.  Look here," she said, turning
+suddenly and coaxingly upon him, "if she asks you to come along
+with us up north, you'll come, won't you?  Do!  It will be such
+fun!"
+
+"Up north?" repeated the consul interrogatively.
+
+"Yes; to see the property.  Here's maw."
+
+A more languid but equally well-appointed woman had entered the
+room.  When the ceremony of introduction was over, she turned to
+her daughter and said, "Run away, dear, while I talk business with--
+er--this gentleman," and, as the girl withdrew laughingly, she
+half stifled a reminiscent yawn, and raised her heavy lids to the
+consul.
+
+"You've had a talk with my Elsie?"
+
+The consul confessed to having had that pleasure.
+
+"She speaks her mind," said Mrs. Kirkby wearily, "but she means
+well, and for all her flightiness her head's level.  And since her
+father died she runs me," she continued with a slight laugh.  After
+a pause, she added abstractedly, "I suppose she told you of her
+engagement to young McHulish?"
+
+"Yes; but she said she had broken it."
+
+Mrs. Kirkby lifted her eyebrows with an expression of relief.  "It
+was a piece of girl and boy foolishness, anyway," she said.  "Elsie
+and he were children together at MacCorkleville,--second cousins,
+in fact,--and I reckon he got her fancy excited over his nobility,
+and his being the chief of the McHulishes.  Of course Custer will
+manage to get something for the shareholders out of it,--I never
+knew him to fail in a money speculation yet,--but I think that's
+about all.  I had an idea of going up with Elsie to take a look at
+the property, and I thought of asking you to join us.  Did Elsie
+tell you?  I know she'd like it--and so would I."
+
+For all her indolent, purposeless manner, there was enough latent
+sincerity and earnestness in her request to interest the consul.
+Besides, his own curiosity in regard to this singularly supported
+claim was excited, and here seemed to be an opportunity of
+satisfying it.  He was not quite sure, either, that his previous
+antagonism to his fair countrywoman's apparent selfishness and
+snobbery was entirely just.  He had been absent from America a long
+time; perhaps it was he himself who had changed, and lost touch
+with his compatriots.  And yet the demonstrative independence and
+recklessness of men like Custer were less objectionable to, and
+less inconsistent with, his American ideas than the snobbishness
+and almost servile adaptability of the women.  Or was it possible
+that it was only a weakness of the sex, which no republican
+nativity or education could eliminate?  Nevertheless he looked up
+smilingly.
+
+"But the property is, I understand, scattered about in various
+places," he said.
+
+"Oh, but we mean to go only to Kelpie Island, where there is the
+ruin of an old castle.  Elsie must see that."
+
+The consul thought it might be amusing.  "By all means let us see
+that.  I shall be delighted to go with you."
+
+His ready and unqualified assent appeared to relieve and dissipate
+the lady's abstraction.  She became more natural and confiding;
+spoke freely of Malcolm's mania, which she seemed to accept as a
+hallucination or a conviction with equal cheerfulness, and, in
+brief, convinced the consul that her connection with the scheme was
+only the caprice of inexperienced and unaccustomed idleness.  He
+left her, promising to return the next day and arrange for their
+early departure.
+
+His way home lay through one of the public squares of St.
+Kentigern, at an hour of the afternoon when it was crossed by
+working men and women returning to their quarters from the docks
+and factories.  Never in any light a picturesque or even cheery
+procession, there were days when its unwholesome, monotonous
+poverty and dull hopelessness of prospect impressed him more
+forcibly.  He remembered how at first the spectacle of barefooted
+girls and women slipping through fog and mist across the greasy
+pavement had offended his fresh New World conception of a more
+tenderly nurtured sex, until his susceptibilities seemed to have
+grown as callous and hardened as the flesh he looked upon, and he
+had begun to regard them from the easy local standpoint of a
+distinct and differently equipped class.
+
+It chanced, also, that this afternoon some of the male workers had
+added to their usual solidity a singular trance-like intoxication.
+It had often struck him before as a form of drunkenness peculiar to
+the St. Kentigern laborers.  Men passed him singly and silently, as
+if following some vague alcoholic dream, or moving through some
+Scotch mist of whiskey and water.  Others clung unsteadily but as
+silently together, with no trace of convivial fellowship or
+hilarity in their dull fixed features and mechanically moving
+limbs.  There was something weird in this mirthless companionship,
+and the appalling loneliness of those fixed or abstracted eyes.
+Suddenly he was aware of two men who were reeling toward him under
+the influence of this drug-like intoxication, and he was startled
+by a likeness which one of them bore to some one he had seen; but
+where, and under what circumstances, he could not determine.  The
+fatuous eye, the features of complacent vanity and self-satisfied
+reverie were there, either intensified by drink, or perhaps
+suggesting it through some other equally hopeless form of
+hallucination.  He turned and followed the man, trying to identify
+him through his companion, who appeared to be a petty tradesman of
+a shrewder, more material type.  But in vain, and as the pair
+turned into a side street the consul slowly retraced his steps.
+But he had not proceeded far before the recollection that had
+escaped him returned, and he knew that the likeness suggested by
+the face he had seen was that of Malcolm McHulish.
+
+
+III.
+
+
+A journey to Kelpie Island consisted of a series of consecutive
+episodes by rail, by coach, and by steamboat.  The consul was
+already familiar with them, as indeed were most of the civilized
+world, for it seemed that all roads at certain seasons led out of
+and returned to St. Kentigern as a point in a vast circle wherein
+travelers were sure to meet one another again, coming or going, at
+certain depots and caravansaries with more or less superiority or
+envy.  Tourists on the road to the historic crags of Wateffa came
+sharply upon other tourists returning from them, and glared
+suspiciously at them, as if to wrest the dread secret from their
+souls--a scrutiny which the others returned with half-humorous pity
+or superior calm.
+
+The consul knew, also, that the service by boat and rail was
+admirable and skillful; for were not the righteous St.
+Kentigerners of the tribe of Tubal-cain, great artificers in steel
+and iron, and a mighty race of engineers before the Lord, who had
+carried their calling and accent beyond the seas?  He knew, too,
+that the land of these delightful caravansaries overflowed with
+marmalade and honey, and that the manna of delicious scones and
+cakes fell even upon deserted waters of crag and heather.  He knew
+that their way would lie through much scenery whose rude
+barrenness, and grim economy of vegetation, had been usually
+accepted by cockney tourists for sublimity and grandeur; but he
+knew, also, that its severity was mitigated by lowland glimpses
+of sylvan luxuriance and tangled delicacy utterly unlike the
+complacent snugness of an English pastoral landscape, with which
+it was often confounded and misunderstood, as being tame and
+civilized.
+
+It rained the day they left St. Kentigern, and the next, and
+the day after that, spasmodically, as regarded local effort,
+sporadically, as seen through the filmed windows of railway
+carriages or from the shining decks of steamboats.  There was
+always a shower being sown somewhere along the valley, or
+reluctantly tearing itself from a mountain-top, or being pulled
+into long threads from the leaden bosom of a lake; the coach swept
+in and out of them to the folding and unfolding of umbrellas and
+mackintoshes, accompanied by flying beams of sunlight that raced
+with the vehicle on long hillsides, and vanished at the turn of the
+road.  There were hat-lifting scurries of wind down the mountain-
+side, small tumults in little lakes below, hysteric ebullitions on
+mild, melancholy inland seas, boisterous passages of nearly half an
+hour with landings on tempestuous miniature quays.  All this seen
+through wonderful aqueous vapor, against a background of sky
+darkened at times to the depths of an India ink washed sketch, but
+more usually blurred and confused on the surface like the gray
+silhouette of a child's slate-pencil drawing, half rubbed from the
+slate by soft palms.  Occasionally a rare glinting of real sunshine
+on a distant fringe of dripping larches made some frowning crest
+appear to smile as through wet lashes.
+
+Miss Elsie tucked her little feet under the mackintosh.  "I know,"
+she said sadly, "I should get web-footed if I stayed here long,
+Why, it's like coming down from Ararat just after the deluge
+cleared up."
+
+Mrs. Kirkby suggested that if the sun would only shine squarely and
+decently, like a Christian, for a few moments, they could see the
+prospect better.
+
+The consul here pointed out that the admirers of Scotch scenery
+thought that this was its greatest charm.  It was this misty effect
+which made it so superior to what they called the vulgar chromos
+and sun-pictures of less favored lands.
+
+"You mean because it prevents folks from seeing how poor the view
+really is."
+
+The consul remarked that perhaps distance was lacking.  As to the
+sun shining in a Christian way, this might depend upon the local
+idea of Christianity.
+
+"Well, I don't call the scenery giddy or frivolous, certainly.  And
+I reckon I begin to understand the kind of sermons Malcolm's folks
+brought over to MacCorkleville.  I guess they didn't know much of
+the heaven they only saw once a year.  Why, even the highest hills--
+which they call mountains here--ain't big enough to get above the
+fogs of their own creating."
+
+Feminine wit is not apt to be abstract.  It struck the consul that
+in Miss Elsie's sprightliness there was the usual ulterior and
+personal object, and he glanced around at his fellow-passengers.
+The object evidently was sitting at the end of the opposite seat,
+an amused but well-behaved listener.  For the rest, he was still
+young and reserved, but in face, figure, and dress utterly unlike
+his companions,--an Englishman of a pronounced and distinct type,
+the man of society and clubs.  While there was more or less hinting
+of local influence in the apparel of the others,--there was a kilt,
+and bare, unweather-beaten knees from Birmingham, and even the
+American Elsie wore a bewitching tam-o'-shanter,--the stranger
+carried easy distinction, from his tweed traveling-cap to his well-
+made shoes and gaiters, as an unmistakable Southerner.  His deep
+and pleasantly level voice had been heard only once or twice, and
+then only in answering questions, and his quiet, composed eyes
+alone had responded to the young girl's provocation.
+
+They were passing a brown glen, in the cheerless depths of which a
+brown watercourse, a shade lighter, was running, and occasionally
+foaming like brown beer.  Beyond it heaved an arid bulk of
+hillside, the scant vegetation of which, scattered like patches of
+hair, made it look like the decaying hide of some huge antediluvian
+ruminant.  On the dreariest part of the dreary slope rose the ruins
+of a tower, and crumbling walls and battlements.
+
+"Whatever possessed folks to build there?" said Miss Elsie.  "If
+they were poor, it might be some excuse; but that those old swells,
+or chiefs, should put up a castle in such a God-forsaken place gets
+ME."
+
+"But don't you know, they WERE poor, according to our modern ideas,
+and I fancy they built these things more for defense than show, and
+really more to gather in cattle--like one of your Texan ranches--
+after a raid.  That is, I have heard so; I rather fancy that was
+the idea, wasn't it?"  It was the Englishman who had spoken, and
+was now looking around at the other passengers as if in easy
+deference to local opinion.
+
+"What raid?" said Miss Elsie, animatedly.  "Oh, yes; I see--one of
+their old border raids--moss-troopers.  I used to like to read
+about them."
+
+"I fancy, don't you know," said the Englishman slowly, "that it
+wasn't exactly THAT sort of thing, you know, for it's a good way
+from the border; but it was one of their raids upon their
+neighbors, to lift their cattle--steal 'em, in fact.  That's the
+way those chaps had.  But of course you've read all about that.
+You Americans, don't you know, are all up in these historical
+matters."
+
+"Eh, but they were often reprisals," said a Scotch passenger.
+
+"I don't suppose they took much trouble to inquire if the beasts
+belonged to an enemy," said the Englishman.
+
+But here Miss Elsie spoke of castles generally, and averred that
+the dearest wish of her life was to see Macbeth's castle at Glamis,
+where Duncan was murdered.  At which the Englishman, still
+deferentially, mistrusted the fact that the murder had been
+committed there, and thought that the castle to which Shakespeare
+probably referred, if he hadn't invented the murder, too, was
+farther north, at Cawdor.  "You know," he added playfully, "over
+there in America you've discovered that Shakespeare himself was an
+invention."
+
+This led to some retaliating brilliancy from the young lady, and
+when the coach stopped at the next station their conversation had
+presumably become interesting enough to justify him in securing a
+seat nearer to her.  The talk returning to ruins, Miss Elsie
+informed him that they were going to see some on Kelpie Island.
+The consul, from some instinctive impulse,--perhaps a recollection
+of Custer's peculiar methods, gave her a sign of warning.  But the
+Englishman only lifted his eyebrows in a kind of half-humorous
+concern.
+
+"I don't think you'd like it, you know.  It's a beastly place,--
+rocks and sea,--worse than this, and half the time you can't see
+the mainland, only a mile away.  Really, you know, they oughtn't to
+have induced you to take tickets there--those excursion-ticket
+chaps.  They're jolly frauds.  It's no place for a stranger to go
+to."
+
+"But there are the ruins of an old castle, the old seat of"--
+began the astonished Miss Elsie; but she was again stopped by a
+significant glance from the consul.
+
+"I believe there was something of the kind there once--something
+like your friends the cattle-stealers' castle over on that
+hillside," returned the Englishman; "but the stones were taken by
+the fishermen for their cabins, and the walls were quite pulled
+down."
+
+"How dared they do that?" said the young lady indignantly.  "I call
+it not only sacrilege, but stealing."
+
+"It was defrauding the owner of the property; they might as well
+take his money," said Mrs. Kirkby, in languid protest.
+
+The smile which this outburst of proprietorial indignation brought
+to the face of the consul lingered with the Englishman's reply.
+
+"But it was only robbing the old robbers, don't you know, and they
+put their spoils to better use than their old masters did;
+certainly to more practical use than the owners do now, for the
+ruins are good for nothing."
+
+"But the hallowed associations--the picturesqueness!" continued
+Mrs. Kirkby, with languid interest.
+
+"The associations wouldn't be anything except to the family, you
+know; and I should fancy they wouldn't be either hallowed or
+pleasant.  As for picturesqueness, the ruins are beastly ugly;
+weather-beaten instead of being mellowed by time, you know, and
+bare where they ought to be hidden by vines and moss.  I can't make
+out why anybody sent you there, for you Americans are rather
+particular about your sightseeing."
+
+"We heard of them through a friend," said the consul, with assumed
+carelessness.  "Perhaps it's as good an excuse as any for a
+pleasant journey."
+
+"And very likely your friend mistook it for something else, or was
+himself imposed upon," said the Englishman politely.  "But you
+might not think it so, and, after all," he added thoughtfully,
+"it's years since I've seen it.  I only meant that I could show you
+something better a few miles from my place in Gloucestershire, and
+not quite so far from a railway as this.  If," he added with a
+pleasant deliberation which was the real courtesy of his
+conventionally worded speech, "you ever happened at any time to be
+anywhere near Audrey Edge, and would look me up, I should be glad
+to show it to you and your friends."  An hour later, when he left
+them at a railway station where their paths diverged, Miss Elsie
+recovered a fluency that she had lately checked.  "Well, I like
+that!  He never told us his name, or offered a card.  I wonder if
+they call that an invitation over here.  Does he suppose anybody's
+going to look up his old Audrey Edge--perhaps it's named after his
+wife--to find out who HE is?  He might have been civil enough to
+have left his name, if he--meant anything."
+
+"But I assure you he was perfectly sincere, and meant an
+invitation," returned the consul smilingly.  "Audrey Edge is
+evidently a well-known place, and he a man of some position.  That
+is why he didn't specify either."
+
+"Well, you won't catch me going there," said Miss Elsie.
+
+"You would be quite right in either going or staying away," said
+the consul simply.
+
+Miss Elsie tossed her head slightly.  Nevertheless, before they
+left the station, she informed him that she had been told that the
+station-master had addressed the stranger as "my lord," and that
+another passenger had said he was "Lord Duncaster."
+
+"And that proves"--
+
+"That I'm right," said the young lady decisively, "and that his
+invitation was a mere form."
+
+It was after sundown when they reached the picturesque and well-
+appointed hotel that lifted itself above the little fishing-village
+which fronted Kelpie Island.  The hotel was in as strong contrast
+to the narrow, curving street of dull, comfortless-looking stone
+cottages below it, as were the smart tourists who had just landed
+from the steamer to the hard-visaged, roughly clad villagers who
+watched them with a certain mingling of critical independence and
+superior self-righteousness.  As the new arrivals walked down the
+main street, half beach, half thoroughfare, their baggage following
+them in low trolleys drawn by porters at their heels, like a
+decorous funeral, the joyless faces of the lookers-on added to the
+resemblance.  Beyond them, in the prolonged northern twilight, the
+waters of the bay took on a peculiar pewtery brightness, but with
+the usual mourning-edged border of Scotch seacoast scenery.  Low
+banks of cloud lay on the chill sea; the outlines of Kelpie Island
+were hidden.
+
+But the interior of the hotel, bright with the latest fastidiousness
+in modern decoration and art-furniture, and gay with pictured
+canvases and color, seemed to mock the sullen landscape, and the
+sterile crags amid which the building was set.  An attempt to make a
+pleasance in this barren waste had resulted only in empty vases,
+bleak statuary, and iron settees, as cold and slippery to the touch
+as the sides of their steamer.
+
+"It'll be a fine morning to-morra, and ther'll be a boat going away
+to Kelpie for a peekneek in the ruins," said the porter, as the
+consul and his fair companions looked doubtfully from the windows
+of the cheerful hall.
+
+A picnic in the sacred ruins of Kelpie!  The consul saw the ladies
+stiffening with indignation at this trespass upon their possible
+rights and probable privileges, and glanced at them warningly.
+
+"Do you mean to say that it is common property, and ANYBODY can go
+there?" demanded Miss Elsie scornfully.
+
+"No; it's only the hotel that owns the boat and gives the tickets--
+a half-crown the passage."
+
+"And do the owners, the McHulishes, permit this?"
+
+The porter looked at them with a puzzled, half-pitying politeness.
+He was a handsome, tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a
+certain naive and gentle courtesy of manner that relieved his
+strong accent, "Oh, ay," he said, with a reassuring smile; "ye'll
+no be troubled by THEM.  I'll just gang away noo, and see if I can
+secure the teekets."
+
+An elderly guest, who was examining a time-table on the wall,
+turned to them as the porter disappeared.
+
+"Ye'll be strangers noo, and not knowing that Tonalt the porter is
+a McHulish hissel'?" he said deliberately.
+
+"A what?" said the astonished Miss Elsie.
+
+"A McHulish.  Ay, one of the family.  The McHulishes of Kelpie were
+his own forebears.  Eh, but he's a fine lad, and doin' well for the
+hotel."
+
+Miss Elsie extinguished a sudden smile with her handkerchief as her
+mother anxiously inquired, "And are the family as poor as that?"
+
+"But I am not saying he's POOR, ma'am, no," replied the stranger,
+with native caution.  "What wi' tips and gratooities and
+percentages on the teekets, it's a bit of money he'll be having in
+the bank noo."
+
+The prophecy of Donald McHulish as to the weather came true.  The
+next morning was bright and sunny, and the boat to Kelpie Island--
+a large yawl--duly received its complement of passengers and
+provision hampers.  The ladies had apparently become more tolerant
+of their fellow pleasure-seekers, and it appeared that Miss Elsie
+had even overcome her hilarity at the discovery of what "might have
+been" a relative in the person of the porter Donald.  "I had a long
+talk with him before breakfast this morning," she said gayly, "and
+I know all about him.  It appears that there are hundreds of him--
+all McHulishes--all along the coast and elsewhere--only none of
+them ever lived ON the island, and don't want to.  But he looks
+more like a 'laird' and a chief than Malcolm, and if it comes to
+choosing a head of the family, remember, maw, I shall vote solid
+for him."
+
+"How can you go on so, Elsie?" said Mrs. Kirkby, with languid
+protest.  "Only I trust you didn't say anything to him of the
+syndicate.  And, thank Heaven! the property isn't here."
+
+"No; the waiter tells me all the lovely things we had for breakfast
+came from miles away.  And they don't seem to have ever raised
+anything on the island, from its looks.  Think of having to row
+three miles for the morning's milk!"
+
+There was certainly very little appearance of vegetation on the
+sterile crags that soon began to lift themselves above the steely
+waves ahead.  A few scraggy trees and bushes, which twisted and
+writhed like vines around the square tower and crumbling walls of
+an irregular but angular building, looked in their brown shadows
+like part of the debris.
+
+"It's just like a burnt-down bone-boiling factory," said Miss Elsie
+critically; "and I shouldn't wonder if that really was old
+McHulish's business.  They couldn't have it on the mainland for its
+being a nuisance."
+
+Nevertheless, she was one of the first to leap ashore when the
+yawl's bow grated in a pebbly cove, and carried her pretty but
+incongruous little slippers through the seaweed, wet sand, and
+slimy cobbles with a heroism that redeemed her vanity.  A
+scrambling ascent of a few moments brought them to a wall with a
+gap in it, which gave easy ingress to the interior of the ruins.
+This was merely a little curving hollow from which the outlines of
+the plan had long since faded.  It was kept green by the brown
+walls, which, like the crags of the mainland valleys, sheltered it
+from the incessant strife of the Atlantic gales.  A few pale
+flowers that might have grown in a damp cellar shivered against the
+stones.  Scraps of newspapers, soda-water and beer bottles, highly
+decorated old provision tins, and spent cartridge cases,--the
+remains of chilly picnics and damp shooting luncheons,--had at
+first sight lent color to the foreground by mere contrast, but the
+corrosion of time and weather had blackened rather than mellowed
+the walls in a way which forcibly reminded the consul of Miss
+Elsie's simile of the "burnt-down factory."  The view from the
+square tower--a mere roost for unclean sea-fowl, from the sides of
+which rags of peeling moss and vine hung like tattered clothing--
+was equally depressing.  The few fishermen's huts along the shore
+were built of stones taken from the ruin, and roofed in with sodden
+beams and timbers in the last stages of deliquescence.  The thick
+smoke of smouldering peat-fires came from the low chimneys, and
+drifted across the ruins with the odors of drying fish.
+
+"I've just seen a sort of ground-plan of the castle," said Miss
+Elsie cheerfully.  "It never had a room in it as big as our bedroom
+in the hotel, and there weren't windows enough to go round.  A slit
+in the wall, about two inches wide by two feet long, was considered
+dazzling extravagance to Malcolm's ancestors.  I don't wonder some
+of 'em broke out and swam over to America.  That reminds me.  Who
+do you suppose is here--came over from the hotel in a boat of his
+own, just to see maw!"
+
+"Not Malcolm, surely."
+
+"Not much," replied Miss Elsie, setting her small lips together.
+"It's Mr. Custer.  He's talking business with her now down on the
+beach.  They'll be here when lunch is ready."
+
+The consul remembered the romantic plan which the enthusiastic
+Custer had imparted to him in the foggy consulate at St. Kentigern,
+and then thought of the matter of fact tourists, the few stolid
+fishermen, and the prosaic ruins around them, and smiled.  He looked
+up, and saw that Miss Elsie was watching him.
+
+"You know Mr. Custer, don't you?"
+
+"We are old Californian friends."
+
+"I thought so; but I think he looked a little upset when he heard
+you were here, too."
+
+He certainly was a little awkward, as if struggling with some half-
+humorous embarrassment, as he came forward a few moments later with
+Mrs. Kirkby.  But the stimulation of the keen sea air triumphed
+over the infelicities of the situation and surroundings, and the
+little party were presently enjoying their well-selected luncheon
+with the wholesome appetite of travel and change.  The chill damp
+made limp the napkins and table-cloth, and invaded the victuals;
+the wind, which was rising, whistled round the walls, and made
+miniature cyclones of the torn paper and dried twigs around them:
+but they ate, drank, and were merry.  At the end of the repast the
+two gentlemen rose to light their cigars in the lee of the wall.
+
+"I suppose you know all about Malcolm?" said Custer, after an
+awkward pause.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the consul, somewhat impatiently, "I know
+nothing about him, and you ought to know that by this time."
+
+"I thought YOUR FRIEND, Sir James, might have told you," continued
+Custer, with significant emphasis.
+
+"I have not seen Sir James for two months."
+
+"Well, Malcolm's a crank--always was one, I reckon, and is
+reg'larly off his head now.  Yes, sir; Scotch whiskey and your
+friend Sir James finished him.  After that dinner at MacFen's he
+was done for--went wild.  Danced a sword-dance, or a strathspey, or
+some other blamed thing, on the table, and yelled louder than the
+pipes.  So they all did.  Jack, I've painted the town red once
+myself; I thought I knew what a first-class jamboree was: but they
+were prayer-meetings to that show.  Everybody was blind drunk--but
+they all got over it except HIM.  THEY were a different lot of men
+the next day, as cool and cautious as you please, but HE was shut
+up for a week, and came out crazy."
+
+"But what's that to do with his claim?"
+
+"Well, there ain't much use 'whooping up the boys' when only the
+whooper gets wild."
+
+"Still, that does not affect any right he may have in the
+property."
+
+"But it affects the syndicate," said Custer gloomily; "and when we
+found that he was whooping up some shopkeepers and factory hands
+who claimed to belong to the clan,--and you can't heave a stone at
+a dog around here without hitting a McHulish,--we concluded we
+hadn't much use for him ornamentally.  So we shipped him home last
+steamer."
+
+"And the property?"
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Custer, still gloomily.  "We've
+effected an amicable compromise, as Sir James calls it.  That means
+we've taken a lot of land somewhere north, that you can shoot over--
+that is, you needn't be afraid of hitting a house, or a tree, or a
+man anywhere; and we've got a strip more of the same sort on the
+seashore somewhere off here, occupied only by some gay galoots
+called crofters, and you can raise a lawsuit and an imprecation on
+every acre.  Then there's this soul-subduing, sequestered spot, and
+what's left of the old bone-boiling establishment, and the rights
+of fishing and peat-burning, and otherwise creating a nuisance off
+the mainland.  It cost the syndicate only a hundred thousand
+dollars, half cash and half in Texan and Kentucky grass lands.  But
+we've carried the thing through."
+
+"I congratulate you," said the consul.
+
+"Thanks."  Custer puffed at his cigar for a few moments.  "That Sir
+James MacFen is a fine man."
+
+"He is."
+
+"A large, broad, all-round man.  Knows everything and everybody,
+don't he?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Big man in the church, I should say?  No slouch at a party
+canvass, or ward politics, eh?  As a board director, or president,
+just takes the cake, don't he?"
+
+"I believe so."
+
+"Nothing mean about Jimmy as an advocate or an arbitrator, either,
+is there?  Rings the bell every time, don't he?  Financiers take a
+back seat when he's around?  Owns half of Scotland by this time, I
+reckon."
+
+The consul believed that Sir James had the reputation of being
+exceedingly sagacious in financial and mercantile matters, and that
+he was a man of some wealth.
+
+"Naturally.  I wonder what he'd take to come over to America, and
+give the boys points," continued Custer, in meditative admiration.
+"There were two or three men on Scott's River, and one Chinaman,
+that we used to think smart, but they were doddering ijuts to HIM.
+And as for me--I say, Jack, you didn't see any hayseed in my hair
+that day I walked inter your consulate, did you?"
+
+The consul smilingly admitted that he had not noticed these signs
+of rustic innocence in his friend.
+
+"Nor any flies?  Well, for all that, when I get home I'm going to
+resign.  No more foreign investments for ME.  When anybody calls at
+the consulate and asks for H. J. Custer, say you don't know me.
+And you don't.  And I say, Jack, try to smooth things over for me
+with HER."
+
+"With Miss Elsie?"
+
+Custer cast a glance of profound pity upon the consul.  "No with
+Mrs. Kirkby, of course.  See?"
+
+The consul thought he did see, and that he had at last found a clue
+to Custer's extraordinary speculation.  But, like most theorists
+who argue from a single fact, a few months later he might have
+doubted his deduction.
+
+He was staying at a large country-house many miles distant from the
+scene of his late experiences.  Already they had faded from his
+memory with the departure of his compatriots from St. Kentigern.
+He was smoking by the fire in the billiard-room late one night when
+a fellow-guest approached him.
+
+"Saw you didn't remember me at dinner."
+
+The voice was hesitating, pleasant, and not quite unfamiliar.  The
+consul looked up, and identified the figure before him as one of
+the new arrivals that day, whom, in the informal and easy courtesy
+of the house, he had met with no further introduction than a vague
+smile.  He remembered, too, that the stranger had glanced at him
+once or twice at dinner, with shy but engaging reserve.
+
+"You must see such a lot of people, and the way things are arranged
+and settled here everybody expects to look and act like everybody
+else, don't you know, so you can't tell one chap from another.
+Deuced annoying, eh?  That's where you Americans are different, and
+that's why those countrywomen of yours were so charming, don't you
+know, so original.  We were all together on the top of a coach in
+Scotland, don't you remember?  Had such a jolly time in the beastly
+rain.  You didn't catch my name.  It's Duncaster."
+
+The consul at once recalled his former fellow-traveler.  The two
+men shook hands.  The Englishman took a pipe from his smoking-
+jacket, and drew a chair beside the consul.
+
+"Yes," he continued, comfortably filling his pipe, "the daughter,
+Miss Kirkby, was awfully good fun; so fresh, so perfectly natural
+and innocent, don't you know, and yet so extraordinarily sharp and
+clever.  She had some awfully good chaff over that Scotch scenery
+before those Scotch tourists, do you remember?  And it was all so
+beastly true, too.  Perhaps she's with you here?"
+
+There was so much unexpected and unaffected interest in the young
+Englishman's eyes that the consul was quite serious in his regrets
+that the ladies had gone back to Paris.
+
+"I'd like to have taken them over to Audrey Edge from here.  It's
+no distance by train.  I did ask them in Scotland, but I suppose
+they had something better to do.  But you might tell them I've got
+some sisters there, and that it is an old place and not half bad,
+don't you know, when you write to them.  You might give me their
+address."
+
+The consul did so, and added a few pleasant words regarding their
+position,--barring the syndicate,--which he had gathered from
+Custer.  Lord Duncaster's look of interest, far from abating,
+became gently confidential.
+
+"I suppose you must see a good deal of your countrymen in your
+business, and I suppose, just like Englishmen, they differ, by
+Jove!  Some of them, don't you know, are rather pushing and anxious
+for position, and all that sort of thing; and some of 'em, like
+your friends, are quite independent and natural."
+
+He stopped, and puffed slowly at his pipe.  Presently he took it
+from his mouth, with a little laugh.  "I've a mind to tell you a
+rather queer experience of mine.  It's nothing against your people
+generally, you know, nor do I fancy it's even an American type; so
+you won't mind my speaking of it.  I've got some property in
+Scotland,--rather poor stuff you'd call it,--but, by Jove! some
+Americans have been laying claim to it under some obscure plea of
+relationship.  There might have been something in it, although not
+all they claim, but my business man, a clever chap up in your
+place,--perhaps you may have heard of him, Sir James MacFen,--wrote
+to me that what they really wanted were some ancestral lands with
+the right to use the family name and privileges.  The oddest part
+of the affair was that the claimant was an impossible sort of
+lunatic, and the whole thing was run by a syndicate of shrewd
+Western men.  As I don't care for the property, which has only been
+dropping a lot of money every year for upkeep and litigation, Sir
+James, who is an awfully far-sighted chap at managing, thought he
+could effect a compromise, and get rid of the property at a fair
+valuation.  And, by Jove! he did.  But what your countrymen can get
+out of it,--for the shooting isn't half as good as what they can
+get in their own country,--or what use the privileges are to them,
+I can't fancy."
+
+"I think I know the story," said the consul, eying his fellow-guest
+attentively; "but if I remember rightly, the young man claimed to
+be the rightful and only surviving heir."
+
+The Englishman rose, and, bending over the hearth, slowly knocked
+the ashes from his pipe.  "That's quite impossible, don't you know.
+For," he added, as he stood up in front of the fire in face,
+figure, and careless repose more decidedly English than ever, "you
+see my title of Duncaster only came to me through an uncle, but I
+am the direct and sole heir of the old family, and the Scotch
+property.  I don't perhaps look like a Scot,--we've been settled in
+England some time,--but," he continued with an invincible English
+drawling deliberation, "I--am--really--you--know--what they call
+The McHulish."
+
+
+
+
+AN EPISODE OF WEST WOODLANDS.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+The rain was dripping monotonously from the scant eaves of the
+little church of the Sidon Brethren at West Woodlands.  Hewn out of
+the very heart of a thicket of buckeye spruce and alder, unsunned
+and unblown upon by any wind, it was so green and unseasoned in its
+solitude that it seemed a part of the arboreal growth, and on damp
+Sundays to have taken root again and sprouted.  There were moss and
+shining spots on the underside of the unplaned rafters, little
+green pools of infusoria stood on the ledge of the windows whose
+panes were at times suddenly clouded by mysterious unknown breaths
+from without or within.  It was oppressed with an extravagance of
+leaves at all seasons, whether in summer, when green and limp they
+crowded the porch, doorways, and shutters, or when penetrating
+knot-holes and interstices of shingle and clapboard, on some
+creeping vine, they unexpectedly burst and bourgeoned on the walls
+like banners; or later, when they rotted in brown heaps in corners,
+outlined the edges of the floor with a thin yellow border, or
+invaded the ranks of the high-backed benches which served as pews.
+
+There had been a continuous rustling at the porch and the shaking
+out of waterproofs and closing of umbrellas until the half-filled
+church was already redolent of damp dyes and the sulphur of India
+rubber.  The eyes of the congregation were turned to the door with
+something more than the usual curiosity and expectation.  For the
+new revivalist preacher from Horse Shoe Bay was coming that
+morning.  Already voices of authority were heard approaching, and
+keeping up their conversation to the very door of the sacred
+edifice in marked contrast with the awed and bashful whisperings in
+the porch of the ordinary congregation.  The worshipers recognized
+the voices of Deacons Shadwell and Bradley; in the reverential hush
+of the building they seemed charged with undue importance.
+
+"It was set back in the road for quiet in the Lord's work," said
+Bradley.
+
+"Yes, but it oughtn't be hidden!  Let your light so shine before
+men, you know, Brother Bradley," returned a deep voice,
+unrecognized and unfamiliar--presumably that of the newcomer.
+
+"It wouldn't take much to move it--on skids and rollers--nearer to
+the road," suggested Shadwell tentatively.
+
+"No, but if you left it stranded there in the wind and sun, green
+and sappy as it is now, ye'd have every seam and crack startin'
+till the ribs shone through, and no amount of calkin' would make it
+watertight agin.  No; my idea is--clear out the brush and shadder
+around it!  Let the light shine in upon it!  Make the waste places
+glad around it, but keep it THERE!  And that's my idea o' gen'ral
+missionary work; that's how the gospel orter be rooted."
+
+Here the bell, which from the plain open four-posted belfry above
+had been clanging with a metallic sharpness that had an odd
+impatient worldliness about it, suddenly ceased.
+
+"That bell," said Bradley's voice, with the same suggestion of
+conveying important truths to the listening congregation within,
+"was took from the wreck of the Tamalpais.  Brother Horley bought
+it at auction at Horse Shoe Bay and presented it.  You know the
+Tamalpais ran ashore on Skinner's Reef, jest off here."
+
+"Yes, with plenty of sea room, not half a gale o' wind blowing, and
+her real course fifty miles to westward!  The whole watch must have
+drunk or sunk in slothful idleness," returned the deep voice again.
+A momentary pause followed, and then the two deacons entered the
+church with the stranger.
+
+He appeared to be a powerfully-built man, with a square, beardless
+chin; a face that carried one or two scars of smallpox and a deeper
+one of a less peaceful suggestion, set in a complexion weather-
+beaten to the color of Spanish leather.  Two small, moist gray
+eyes, that glistened with every emotion, seemed to contradict the
+hard expression of the other features.  He was dressed in cheap
+black, like the two deacons, with the exception of a loose, black
+alpaca coat and the usual black silk neckerchief tied in a large
+bow under a turndown collar,--the general sign and symbol of a
+minister of his sect.  He walked directly to the raised platform at
+the end of the chapel, where stood a table on which was a pitcher
+of water, a glass and hymnbook, and a tall upright desk holding a
+Bible.  Glancing over these details, he suddenly paused, carefully
+lifted some hitherto undetected object from the desk beside the
+Bible, and, stooping gently, placed it upon the floor.  As it
+hopped away the congregation saw that it was a small green frog.
+The intrusion was by no means an unusual one, but some odd contrast
+between this powerful man and the little animal affected them
+profoundly.  No one--even the youngest--smiled; every one--even the
+youngest--became suddenly attentive.  Turning over the leaves of
+the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn.  The
+choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into
+wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more
+musically the lugubrious chant.  At the close of the verse the
+preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that
+seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea.
+Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens" from
+the preacher, with a nautical suggestion of "Ay, ay," about them,
+and he began his sermon.
+
+It was, as those who knew his methods might have expected, a
+suggestion of the conversation they had already overheard.  He
+likened the little chapel, choked with umbrage and rotting in its
+dampness, to the gospel seed sown in crowded places, famishing in
+the midst of plenty, and sterile from the absorptions of the more
+active life around it.  He pointed out again the true work of the
+pioneer missionary; the careful pruning and elimination of those
+forces that grew up with the Christian's life, which many people
+foolishly believed were a part of it.  "The WORLD must live and the
+WORD must live," said they, and there were easy-going brethren who
+thought they could live together.  But he warned them that the
+World was always closing upon--"shaddering"--and strangling the
+Word, unless kept down, and that "fair seemin' settlement," or
+city, which appeared to be "bustin' and bloomin'" with life and
+progress, was really "hustlin' and jostlin'" the Word of God, even
+in the midst of these "fancy spires and steeples" it had erected to
+its glory.  It was the work of the missionary pioneer to keep down
+or root out this carnal, worldly growth as much in the settlement
+as in the wilderness.  Some were for getting over the difficulty by
+dragging the mere wasted "letter of the Word," or the rotten and
+withered husks of it, into the highways and byways, where the
+"blazin'" scorn of the World would finish it.  A low, penitential
+groan from Deacon Shadwell followed this accusing illustration.
+But the preacher would tell them that the only way was to boldly
+attack this rankly growing World around them; to clear out fresh
+paths for the Truth, and let the sunlight of Heaven stream among
+them.
+
+There was little doubt that the congregation was moved.  Whatever
+they might have thought of the application, the fact itself was
+patent.  The rheumatic Beaseleys felt the truth of it in their
+aching bones; it came home to the fever and ague stricken Filgees
+in their damp seats against the sappy wall; it echoed plainly in
+the chronic cough of Sister Mary Strutt and Widow Doddridge; and
+Cissy Appleby, with her round brown eyes fixed upon the speaker,
+remembering how the starch had been taken out of her Sunday frocks,
+how her long ringlets had become uncurled, her frills limp, and
+even her ribbons lustreless, felt that indeed a prophet had arisen
+in Israel!
+
+One or two, however, were disappointed that he had as yet given no
+indication of that powerful exhortatory emotion for which he was
+famed, and which had been said to excite certain corresponding
+corybantic symptoms among his sensitive female worshipers.  When
+the service was over, and the congregation crowded around him,
+Sister Mary Strutt, on the outer fringe of the assembly, confided
+to Sister Evans that she had "hearn tell how that when he was over
+at Soquel he prayed that pow'ful that all the wimmen got fits and
+tremblin' spells, and ole Mrs. Jackson had to be hauled off his
+legs that she was kneelin' and claspin' while wrestling with the
+Sperit."
+
+"I reckon we seemed kinder strange to him this morning, and he
+wanted to jest feel his way to our hearts first," exclaimed Brother
+Jonas Steers politely.  "He'll be more at home at evenin' service.
+It's queer that some of the best exhortin' work is done arter early
+candlelight.  I reckon he's goin' to stop over with Deacon Bradley
+to dinner."
+
+But it appeared that the new preacher, now formally introduced as
+Brother Seabright, was intending to walk over to Hemlock Mills to
+dinner.  He only asked to be directed the nearest way; he would not
+trouble Brother Shadwell or Deacon Bradley to come with him.
+
+"But here's Cissy Appleby lives within a mile o' thar, and you
+could go along with her.  She'd jest admire to show you the way,"
+interrupted Brother Shadwell.  "Wouldn't you, Cissy?"
+
+Thus appealed to, the young chorister--a tall girl of sixteen or
+seventeen--timidly raised her eyes to Brother Seabright as he was
+about to repeat his former protestation, and he stopped.
+
+"Ef the young lady IS goin' that way, it's only fair to accept her
+kindness in a Christian sperit," he said gently.
+
+Cissy turned with a mingling of apology and bashfulness towards a
+young fellow who seemed to be acting as her escort, but who was
+hesitating in an equal bashfulness, when Seabright added: "And
+perhaps our young friend will come too?"
+
+But the young friend drew back with a confused laugh, and Brother
+Seabright and Cissy passed out from the porch together.  For a few
+moments they mingled with the stream and conversation of the
+departing congregation, but presently Cissy timidly indicated a
+diverging bypath, and they both turned into it.
+
+It was much warmer in the open than it had been in the chapel and
+thicket, and Cissy, by way of relieving a certain awkward tension
+of silence, took off the waterproof cloak and slung it on her arm.
+This disclosed her five long brown cable-like curls that hung down
+her shoulders, reaching below her waist in some forgotten fashion
+of girlhood.  They were Cissy's peculiar adornment, remarkable for
+their length, thickness, and the extraordinary youthfulness
+imparted to a figure otherwise precociously matured.  In some
+wavering doubt of her actual years and privileges, Brother
+Seabright offered to carry her cloak for her, but she declined it
+with a rustic and youthful pertinacity that seemed to settle the
+question.  In fact, Cissy was as much embarrassed as she was
+flattered by the company of this distinguished stranger.  However,
+it would be known to all West Woodland that he had walked home with
+her, while nobody but herself would know that they had scarcely
+exchanged a word.  She noticed how he lounged on with a heavy,
+rolling gait, sometimes a little before or behind her as the path
+narrowed.  At such times when they accidentally came in contact in
+passing, she felt a half uneasy, physical consciousness of him,
+which she referred to his size, the scars on his face, or some
+latent hardness of expression, but was relieved to see that he had
+not observed it.  Yet this was the man that made grown women cry;
+she thought of old Mrs. Jackson fervently grasping the plodding
+ankles before her, and a hysteric desire to laugh, with the fear
+that he might see it on her face, overcame her.  Then she wondered
+if he was going to walk all the way home without speaking, yet she
+knew she would be more embarrassed if he began to talk to her.
+
+Suddenly he stopped, and she bumped up against him.
+
+"Oh, excuse me!" she stammered hurriedly.
+
+"Eh?"  He evidently had not noticed the collision.  "Did you
+speak?"
+
+"No!--that is--it wasn't anything," returned the girl, coloring.
+
+But he had quite forgotten her, and was looking intently before
+him.  They had come to a break in the fringe of woodland, and upon
+a sudden view of the ocean.  At this point the low line of coast-
+range which sheltered the valley of West Woodlands was abruptly
+cloven by a gorge that crumbled and fell away seaward to the shore
+of Horse Shoe Bay.  On its northern trend stretched the settlement
+of Horse Shoe to the promontory of Whale Mouth Point, with its
+outlying reef of rocks curved inwards like the vast submerged jaw
+of some marine monster, through whose blunt, tooth-like projections
+the ship-long swell of the Pacific streamed and fell.  On the
+southern shore the light yellow sands of Punta de las Concepcion
+glittered like sunshine all the way to the olive-gardens and white
+domes of the Mission.  The two shores seemed to typify the two
+different climates and civilizations separated by the bay.
+
+The heavy, woodland atmosphere was quickened by the salt breath of
+the sea.  The stranger inhaled it meditatively.
+
+"That's the reef where the Tamalpais struck," he said, "and more'n
+fifty miles out of her course--yes, more'n fifty miles from where
+she should have bin!  It don't look nat'ral.  No--it--don't--look--
+nat'ral!"
+
+As he seemed to be speaking to himself, the young girl, who had
+been gazing with far greater interest at the foreign-looking
+southern shore, felt confused and did not reply.  Then, as if
+recalling her presence, Brother Seabright turned to her and said:--
+
+"Yes, young lady; and when you hear the old bell of the Tamalpais,
+and think of how it came here, you may rejoice in the goodness of
+the Lord that made even those who strayed from the straight course
+and the true reckoning the means of testifying onto Him."
+
+But the young are quicker to detect attitudes and affectation than
+we are apt to imagine; and Cissy could distinguish a certain other
+straying in this afterthought or moral of the preacher called up by
+her presence, and knew that it was not the real interest which the
+view had evoked.  She had heard that he had been a sailor, and,
+with the tact of her sex, answered with what she thought would
+entertain him:--
+
+"I was a little girl when it happened, and I heard that some
+sailors got ashore down there, and climbed up this gully from the
+rocks below.  And they camped that night--for there were no houses
+at West Woodlands then--just in the woods where our chapel now
+stands.  It was funny, wasn't it?--I mean," she corrected herself
+bashfully, "it was strange they chanced to come just there?"
+
+But she had evidently hit the point of interest.
+
+"What became of them?" he said quickly.  "They never came to Horse
+Shoe Settlement, where the others landed from the wreck.  I never
+heard of that boat's crew or of ANY landing HERE."
+
+"No.  They kept on over the range south to the Mission.  I reckon
+they didn't know there was a way down on this side to Horse Shoe,"
+returned Cissy.
+
+Brother Seabright moved on and continued his slow, plodding march.
+But he kept a little nearer Cissy, and she was conscious that he
+occasionally looked at her.  Presently he said:--
+
+"You have a heavenly gift, Miss Appleby."
+
+Cissy flushed, and her hand involuntarily went to one of her long,
+distinguishing curls.  It might be THAT.  The preacher continued:--
+
+"Yes; a voice like yours is a heavenly gift.  And you have properly
+devoted it to His service.  Have you been singing long?"
+
+"About two years.  But I've got to study a heap yet."
+
+"The little birds don't think it necessary to study to praise Him,"
+said the preacher sententiously.
+
+It occurred to Cissy that this was very unfair argument.  She said
+quickly:--
+
+"But the little birds don't have to follow words in the hymn-books.
+You don't give out lines to larks and bobolinks," and blushed.
+
+The preacher smiled.  It was a very engaging smile, Cissy thought,
+that lightened his hard mouth.  It enabled her to take heart of
+grace, and presently to chatter like the very birds she had
+disparaged.  Oh yes; she knew she had to learn a great deal more.
+She had studied "some" already.  She was taking lessons over at
+Point Concepcion, where her aunt had friends, and she went three
+times a week.  The gentleman who taught her was not a Catholic,
+and, of course, he knew she was a Protestant.  She would have
+preferred to live there, but her mother and father were both dead,
+and had left her with her aunt.  She liked it better because it was
+sunnier and brighter there.  She loved the sun and warmth.  She had
+listened to what he had said about the dampness and gloom of the
+chapel.  It was true.  The dampness was that dreadful sometimes it
+just ruined her clothes, and even made her hoarse.  Did he think
+they would really take his advice and clear out the woods round the
+chapel?
+
+"Would you like it?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you think you wouldn't pine so much for the sunshine and
+warmth of the Mission?
+
+"I'm not pining," said Cissy with a toss of her curls, "for
+anything or anybody; but I think the woods ought to be cleared out.
+It's just as it was when the runaways hid there."
+
+"When the RUNAWAYS HID THERE!" said Brother Seabright quickly.
+"What runaways?"
+
+"Why, the boat's crew," said Cissy.
+
+"Why do you call them runaways?"
+
+"I don't know.  Didn't YOU?" said Cissy simply.  "Didn't you say
+they never came back to Horse Shoe Bay.  Perhaps I had it from
+aunty.  But I know it's damp and creepy; and when I was littler I
+used to be frightened to be alone there practicing."
+
+"Why?" said the preacher quickly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," hurried on Cissy, with a vague impression that
+she had said too much.  "Only my fancy, I guess."
+
+"Well," said Brother Seabright after a pause; "we'll see what can
+be done to make a clearing there.  Birds sing best in the sunshine,
+and YOU ought to have some say about it."
+
+Cissy's dimples and blushes came together this time.  "That's our
+house," she said suddenly, with a slight accent of relief, pointing
+to a weather-beaten farmhouse on the edge of the gorge.  "I turn
+off here, but you keep straight on for the Mills; they're back in
+the woods a piece.  But," she stammered with a sudden sense of
+shame of forgotten hospitality, "won't you come in and see aunty?"
+
+"No, thank you, not now."  He stopped, turning his gaze from the
+house to her.  "How old is your house?  Was it there at the time of
+the wreck?"
+
+"Yes," said Cissy.
+
+"It's odd that the crew did not come there for help, eh?"
+
+"Maybe they overlooked it in the darkness and the storm," said
+Cissy simply.  "Good-by, sir."
+
+The preacher held her hand for an instant in his powerful, but
+gently graduated grasp.  "Good-by until evening service."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Cissy.
+
+The young girl tripped on towards her house a little agitated and
+conscious, and yet a little proud as she saw the faces of her aunt,
+her uncle, her two cousins, and even her discarded escort, Jo
+Adams, at the windows, watching her.
+
+"So," said her aunt, as she entered breathlessly, "ye walked home
+with the preacher!  It was a speshal providence and manifestation
+for ye, Cissy.  I hope ye was mannerly and humble--and profited by
+the words of grace."
+
+"I don't know," said Cissy, putting aside her hat and cloak
+listlessly.  "He didn't talk much of anything--but the old wreck of
+the Tamalpais."
+
+"What?" said her aunt quickly.
+
+"The wreck of the Tamalpais, and the boat's crew that came up the
+gorge," repeated the young girl.
+
+"And what did HE know about the boat's crew?" said her aunt
+hurriedly, fixing her black eyes on Cissy.
+
+"Nothing except what I told him."
+
+"What YOU told him!" echoed her aunt, with an ominous color filling
+the sallow hollows of her cheek.
+
+"Yes!  He has been a sailor, you know--and I thought it would
+interest him; and it did!  He thought it strange."
+
+"Cecilia Jane Appleby," said her aunt shrilly, "do you mean to say
+that you threw away your chances of salvation and saving grace just
+to tell gossiping tales that you knew was lies, and evil report,
+and false witnesses!"
+
+"I only talked of what I'd heard, aunt Vashti," said Cecilia
+indignantly.  "And he afterwards talked of--of--my voice, and said
+I had a heavenly gift," she added, with a slight quiver of her lip.
+
+Aunt Vashti regarded the girl sharply.
+
+"And you may thank the Lord for that heavenly gift," she said, in a
+slightly lowered voice; "for ef ye hadn't to use it tonight, I'd
+shut ye up in your room, to make it pay for yer foolish gaddin'
+TONGUE!  And I reckon I'll escort ye to chapel tonight myself,
+miss, and get shut o' some of this foolishness."
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The broad plaza of the Mission de la Concepcion had been baking
+in the day-long sunlight.  Shining drifts from the outlying sand
+dunes, blown across the ill-paved roadway, radiated the heat in the
+faces of the few loungers like the pricking of liliputian arrows,
+and invaded even the cactus hedges.  The hot air visibly quivered
+over the dark red tiles of the tienda roof as if they were
+undergoing a second burning.  The black shadow of a chimney on the
+whitewashed adobe wall was like a door or cavernous opening in the
+wall itself; the tops of the olive and pear trees seen above it
+were russet and sere already in the fierce light.  Even the moist
+breath of the sea beyond had quite evaporated before it crossed the
+plaza, and now rustled the leaves in the Mission garden with a dry,
+crepitant sound.
+
+Nevertheless, it seemed to Cissy Appleby, as she crossed the plaza,
+a very welcome change from West Woodlands.  Although the late
+winter rains had ceased a month ago,--a few days after the
+revivalist preacher had left,--the woods around the chapel were
+still sodden and heavy, and the threatened improvement in its site
+had not taken place.  Neither had the preacher himself alluded to
+it again; his evening sermon--the only other one he preached there--
+was unexciting, and he had, in fact, left West Woodlands without
+any display of that extraordinary exhortatory faculty for which he
+was famous.  Yet Cissy, in spite of her enjoyment of the dry, hot
+Mission, remembered him, and also recalled, albeit poutingly, his
+blunt suggesting that she was "pining for it."  Nevertheless, she
+would like to have sung for him HERE--supposing it was possible to
+conceive of a Sidon Brotherhood Chapel at the Mission.  It was a
+great pity, she thought, that the Sidon Brotherhood and the
+Franciscan Brotherhood were not more brotherly TOWARDS EACH OTHER.
+Cissy belonged to the former by hereditary right, locality, and
+circumstance, but it is to be feared that her theology was
+imperfect.
+
+She entered a lane between the Mission wall and a lighter iron
+fenced inclosure, once a part of the garden, but now the
+appurtenance of a private dwelling that was reconstructed over the
+heavy adobe shell of some forgotten structure of the old
+ecclesiastical founders.  It was pierced by many windows and
+openings, and that sunlight and publicity which the former padres
+had jealously excluded was now wooed from long balconies and
+verandas by the new proprietor, a well to do American.  Elisha
+Braggs, whose name was generously and euphoniously translated by
+his native neighbors into "Don Eliseo," although a heretic, had
+given largess to the church in the way of restoring its earthquake-
+shaken tower, and in presenting a new organ to its dilapidated
+choir.  He had further endeared himself to the conservative Spanish
+population by introducing no obtrusive improvements; by distributing
+his means through the old channels; by apparently inciting no
+further alien immigration, but contenting himself to live alone
+among them, adopting their habits, customs, and language.  A
+harmless musical taste, and a disposition to instruct the young boy
+choristers, was equally balanced by great skill in horsemanship and
+the personal management of a ranche of wild cattle on the inland
+plains.
+
+Consciously pretty, and prettily conscious in her white-starched,
+rose-sprigged muslin, her pink parasol, beribboned gypsy hat, and
+the long mane-like curls that swung over her shoulders, Cissy
+entered the house and was shown to the large low drawing-room on
+the ground-floor.  She once more inhaled its hot potpourri
+fragrance, in which the spice of the Castilian rose-leaves of the
+garden was dominant.  A few boys, whom she recognized as the
+choristers of the Mission and her fellow-pupils, were already
+awaiting her with some degree of anxiety and impatience.  This
+fact, and a certain quick animation that sprang to the blue eyes of
+the master of the house as the rose-sprigged frock and long curls
+appeared at the doorway, showed that Cissy was clearly the favorite
+pupil.
+
+Elisha Braggs was a man of middle age, with a figure somewhat
+rounded by the adipose curves of a comfortable life, and an air of
+fastidiousness which was, however, occasionally at variance with
+what seemed to be his original condition.  He greeted Cissy with a
+certain nervous overconsciousness of his duties as host and
+teacher, and then plunged abruptly into the lesson.  It lasted an
+hour, Cissy tactfully dividing his somewhat exclusive instruction
+with the others, and even interpreting it to their slower
+comprehension.  When it was over, the choristers shyly departed,
+according to their usual custom, leaving Cissy and Don Eliseo--and
+occasionally one of the padres to more informal practicing and
+performance.  Neither the ingenuousness of Cissy nor the worldly
+caution of aunt Vashti had ever questioned the propriety of these
+prolonged and secluded seances; and the young girl herself,
+although by no means unaccustomed to the bashful attentions of the
+youth of West Woodlands, had never dreamed of these later musical
+interviews as being anything but an ordinary recreation of her art.
+The feeling of gratitude and kindness she had for Don Eliseo, her
+aunt's friend, had never left her conscious or embarrassed when she
+was alone with him.  But to-day, possibly from his own nervousness
+and preoccupation, she was aware of some vague uneasiness, and at
+an early opportunity rose to go.  But Don Eliseo gently laid his
+hand on hers and said:--
+
+"Don't go yet; I want to talk to you."  His touch suddenly reminded
+her that once or twice before he had done the same thing, and she
+had been disagreeably impressed by it.  But she lifted her brown
+eyes to his with an unconsciousness that was more crushing than a
+withdrawal of her hand, and waited for him to go on.
+
+"It is such a long way for you to come, and you have so little time
+to stay when you are here, that I am thinking of asking your aunt
+to let you live here at the Mission, as a pupil, in the house of
+the Senora Hernandez, until your lessons are finished.  Padre Jose
+will attend to the rest of your education.  Would you like it?"
+
+Poor Cissy's eyes leaped up in unaffected and sparkling affirmation
+before her tongue replied.  To bask in this beloved sunshine for
+days together; to have this quaint Spanish life before her eyes,
+and those soft Spanish accents in her ears; to forget herself in
+wandering in the old-time Mission garden beyond; to have daily
+access to Mr. Braggs's piano and the organ of the church--this was
+indeed the realization of her fondest dreams!  Yet she hesitated.
+Somewhere in her inherited Puritan nature was a vague conviction
+that it was wrong, and it seemed even to find an echo in the
+warning of the preacher: this was what she was "pining for."
+
+"I don't know," she stammered.  "I must ask auntie; I shouldn't
+like to leave her; and there's the chapel."
+
+"Isn't that revivalist preacher enough to run it for a while?" said
+her companion, half-sneeringly.
+
+The remark was not a tactful one.
+
+"Mr. Seabright hasn't been here for a month," she answered somewhat
+quickly.  "But he's coming next Sunday, and I'm glad of it.  He's a
+very good man.  And there's nothing he don't notice.  He saw how
+silly it was to stick the chapel into the very heart of the woods,
+and he told them so."
+
+"And I suppose he'll run up a brand-new meeting-house out on the
+road," said Braggs, smiling.
+
+"No, he's going to open up the woods, and let the sun and light in,
+and clear out the underbrush."
+
+"And what's that for?"
+
+There was such an utter and abrupt change in the speaker's voice
+and manner--which until then had been lazily fastidious and
+confident--that Cissy was startled.  And the change being rude and
+dictatorial, she was startled into opposition.  She had wanted to
+say that the improvement had been suggested by HER, but she took a
+more aggressive attitude.
+
+"Brother Seabright says it's a question of religion and morals.
+It's a scandal and a wrong, and a disgrace to the Word, that the
+chapel should have been put there."
+
+Don Eliseo's face turned so white and waxy that Cissy would have
+noticed it had she not femininely looked away while taking this
+attitude.
+
+"I suppose that's a part of his sensation style, and very
+effective," he said, resuming his former voice and manner.  "I must
+try to hear him some day.  But, now, in regard to your coming here,
+of course I shall consult your aunt, although I imagine she will
+have no objection.  I only wanted to know how YOU felt about it."
+He again laid his hand on hers.
+
+"I should like to come very much," said Cissy timidly; "and it's
+very kind of you, I'm sure; but you'll see what auntie says, won't
+you?"  She withdrew her hand after momentarily grasping his, as if
+his own act had been only a parting salutation, and departed.
+
+Aunt Vashti received Cissy's account of her interview with a grim
+satisfaction.  She did not know what ideas young gals had nowadays,
+but in HER time she'd been fit to jump outer her skin at such an
+offer from such a good man as Elisha Braggs.  And he was a rich
+man, too.  And ef he was goin' to give her an edication free, it
+wasn't goin' to stop there.  For her part, she didn't like to put
+ideas in young girls' heads,--goodness knows they'd enough
+foolishness already; but if Cissy made a Christian use of her
+gifts, and 'tended to her edication and privileges, and made
+herself a fit helpmeet for any man, she would say that there were
+few men in these parts that was as "comf'ble ketch" as Lish Braggs,
+or would make as good a husband and provider.
+
+The blood suddenly left Cissy's cheeks and then returned with
+uncomfortable heat.  Her aunt's words had suddenly revealed to her
+the meaning of the uneasiness she had felt in Braggs's house that
+morning--the old repulsion that had come at his touch.  She had
+never thought of him as a suitor or a beau before, yet it now
+seemed perfectly plain to her that this was the ulterior meaning of
+his generosity.  And yet she received that intelligence with the
+same mixed emotions with which she had received his offer to
+educate her.  She did not conceal from herself the pride and
+satisfaction she felt in this presumptive selection of her as his
+wife; the worldly advantages that it promised; nor that it was a
+destiny far beyond her deserts.  Yet she was conscious of exactly
+the same sense of wrong-doing in her preferences--something that
+seemed vaguely akin to that "conviction of sin" of which she had
+heard so much--as when she received his offer of education.  It was
+this mixture of fear and satisfaction that caused her alternate
+paling and flushing, yet this time it was the fear that came first.
+Perhaps she was becoming unduly sensitive.  The secretiveness of
+her sex came to her aid here, and she awkwardly changed the
+subject.  Aunt Vashti, complacently believing that her words had
+fallen on fruitful soil, discreetly said no more.
+
+It was a hot morning when Cissy walked alone to chapel early next
+Sunday.  There was a dry irritation in the air which even the
+northwest trades, blowing through the seaward gorge, could not
+temper, and for the first time in her life she looked forward to
+the leafy seclusion of the buried chapel with a feeling of longing.
+She had avoided her youthful escort, for she wished to practice
+alone for an hour before the service with the new harmonium that
+had taken the place of the old accordion and its unskillful
+performer.  Perhaps, too, there was a timid desire to be at her
+best on the return of Brother Seabright, and to show him, with a
+new performance, that the "heavenly gift" had not been neglected.
+She opened the chapel with the key she always carried, "swished"
+away an intrusive squirrel, left the door and window open for a
+moment, until the beating of frightened wings against the rafters
+had ceased, and, after carefully examining the floor for spiders,
+mice, and other creeping things, brushed away a few fallen leaves
+and twigs from the top of the harmonium.  Then, with her long curls
+tossed over her shoulders and hanging limply down the back of her
+new maple-leaf yellow frock,--which was also a timid recognition of
+Brother Seabright's return,--and her brown eyes turned to the
+rafters, this rustic St. Cecilia of the Coast Range began to sing.
+The shell of the little building dilated with the melody; the
+sashes of the windows pulsated, the two ejected linnets joined in
+timidly from their coign of vantage in the belfry outside, and the
+limp vines above the porch swayed like her curls.  Once she thought
+she heard stealthy footsteps without; once she was almost certain
+she felt the brushing of somebody outside against the thin walls of
+the chapel, and once she stopped to glance quickly at the window
+with a strange instinct that some one was looking at her.  But she
+quickly reflected that Brother Seabright would come there only when
+the deacons did, and with them.  Why she should think that it was
+Brother Seabright, or why Brother Seabright should come thus and at
+such a time, she could not have explained.
+
+He did not, in fact, make his appearance until later, and after the
+congregation had quite filled the chapel; he did not, moreover,
+appear to notice her as she sat there, and when he gave out the
+hymn he seemed to have quietly overlooked the new harmonium.  She
+sang her best, however, and more than one of the audience thought
+that "little Sister Appleby" had greatly improved.  Indeed, it
+would not have seemed strange to some--remembering Brother
+Seabright's discursive oratory--if he had made some allusion to it.
+But he did not.  His heavy eyes moved slowly over the congregation,
+and he began.
+
+As usual he did not take a text.  But he would talk to them that
+morning about "The Conviction of Sin" and the sense of wrong-doing
+that was innate in the sinner.  This included all form of
+temptation, for what was temptation but the inborn consciousness
+of something to struggle against, and that was sin!  At this
+apparently concise exposition of her own feelings in regard to Don
+Eliseo's offer, Cissy felt herself blushing to the roots of her
+curls.  Could it be possible that Brother Seabright had heard of
+her temptation to leave West Woodlands, and that this warning was
+intended for her?  He did not even look in her direction.  Yet his
+next sentence seemed to be an answer to her own mental query.
+
+"Folks might ask," he continued, "if even the young and
+inexperienced should feel this--or was there a state of innocent
+guilt without consciousness?"  He would answer that question by
+telling them what had happened to him that morning.  He had come to
+the chapel, not by the road, but through the tangled woods behind
+them (Cissy started)--through the thick brush and undergrowth that
+was choking the life out of this little chapel--the wilderness that
+he had believed was never before trodden by human feet, and was
+known only to roaming beasts and vermin.  But that was where he was
+wrong.
+
+In the stillness and listening silence, a sudden cough from some
+one in one of the back benches produced that instantaneous
+diversion of attention common to humanity on such occasions.
+Cissy's curls swung round with the others.  But she was surprised
+to see that Mr. Braggs was seated in one of the benches near the
+door, and from the fact of his holding a handkerchief to his mouth,
+and being gazed at by his neighbors, it was evident that it was he
+who had coughed.  Perhaps he had come to West Woodlands to talk to
+her aunt!  With the preacher before her, and her probable suitor
+behind her, she felt herself again blushing.
+
+Brother Seabright continued.  Yes, he was WRONG, for there before
+him, in the depths of the forest, were two children.  They were
+looking at a bush of "pizon berries,"--the deadly nightshade, as it
+was fitly called,--and one was warning the other of its dangerous
+qualities.
+
+"But how do you know it's the 'pizon berry'?" asked the other.
+
+"Because it's larger, and nicer, and bigger, and easier to get than
+the real good ones," returned the other.
+
+And it was so.  Thus was the truth revealed from the mouths of
+babes and sucklings; even they were conscious of temptation and
+sin!  But here there was another interruption from the back
+benches, which proved, however, to be only the suppressed giggle of
+a boy--evidently the youthful hero of the illustration, surprised
+into nervous hilarity.
+
+The preacher then passed to the "Conviction of Sin" in its more
+familiar phases.  Many brothers confounded this with DISCOVERY AND
+PUBLICITY.  It was not their own sin "finding them out," but others
+discovering it.  Until that happened, they fancied themselves safe,
+stilling their consciences, confounding the blinded eye of the
+world with the all-seeing eye of the Lord.  But were they safe even
+then?  Did not sooner or later the sea deliver up its dead, the
+earth what was buried in it, the wild woods what its depths had
+hidden?  Was not the foolish secret, the guilty secret, the
+forgotten sin, sure to be disclosed?  Then if they could not fly
+from the testimony of His works, if they could not evade even their
+fellow-man, why did they not first turn to Him?  Why, from the
+penitent child at his mother's knee to the murderer on the
+scaffold, did they only at THE LAST confess unto Him?
+
+His voice and manner had suddenly changed.  From the rough note of
+accusation and challenge it had passed into the equally rough, but
+broken and sympathetic, accents of appeal.  Why did they hesitate
+longer to confess their sin--not to man--but unto Him?  Why did
+they delay?  Now--that evening!  That very moment!  This was the
+appointed time!  He entreated them in the name of religious faith,
+in the name of a human brotherly love.  His delivery was now no
+longer deliberate, but hurried and panting; his speech now no
+longer chosen, but made up of reiterations and repetitions,
+ejaculations, and even incoherent epithets.  His gestures and long
+intonations which began to take the place of even that interrupted
+speech affected them more than his reasoning!  Short sighs escaped
+them; they swayed to and fro with the rhythm of his voice and
+movements.  They had begun to comprehend this exacerbation of
+emotion--this paroxysmal rhapsody.  This was the dithyrambic
+exaltation they had ardently waited for.  They responded quickly.
+First with groans, equally inarticulate murmurs of assent, shouts
+of "Glory," and the reckless invocation of sacred names.  Then a
+wave of hysteria seemed to move the whole mass, and broke into
+tears and sobs among the women.  In her own excited consciousness
+it seemed to Cissy that some actual struggle between good and evil--
+like unto the casting out of devils--was shaking the little
+building.  She cast a hurried glance behind her and saw Mr. Braggs
+sitting erect, white and scornful.  She knew that she too was
+shrinking from the speaker,--not from any sense of conviction, but
+because he was irritating and disturbing her innate sense of
+fitness and harmony,--and she was pained that Mr. Braggs should see
+him thus.  Meantime the weird, invisible struggle continued,
+heightened and, it seemed to her, incited by the partisan groans
+and exultant actions of those around her, until suddenly a wild
+despairing cry arose above the conflict.  A vague fear seized her--
+the voice was familiar!  She turned in time to see the figure of
+aunt Vashti rise in her seat with a hysterical outburst, and fall
+convulsively forward upon her knees!  She would have rushed to her
+side, but the frenzied woman was instantly caught by Deacon
+Shadwell and surrounded by a group of her own sex and became
+hidden.  And when Cissy recovered herself she was astonished to
+find Brother Seabright--with every trace of his past emotion
+vanished from his hard-set face--calmly taking up his coherent
+discourse in his ordinary level tones.  The furious struggle of the
+moment before was over; the chapel and its congregation had fallen
+back into an exhausted and apathetic silence!  Then the preacher
+gave out the hymn--the words were singularly jubilant among that
+usually mournful collection in the book before her--and Cissy began
+it with a tremulous voice.  But it gained strength, clearness, and
+volume as she went on, and she felt thrilled throughout with a new
+human sympathy she had never known before.  The preacher's bass
+supported her now for the first time not unmusically--and the
+service was over.
+
+Relieved, she turned quickly to join her aunt, but a hand was laid
+gently upon her shoulder.  It was Brother Seabright, who had just
+stepped from the platform.  The congregation, knowing her to be the
+niece of the hysteric woman, passed out without disturbing them.
+
+"You have, indeed, improved your gift, Sister Cecilia," he said
+gravely.  "You must have practiced much."
+
+"Yes--that is, no!--only a little," stammered Cissy.
+
+"But, excuse me, I must look after auntie," she added, drawing
+timidly away.
+
+"Your aunt is better, and has gone on with Sister Shadwell.  She is
+not in need of your help, and really would do better without you
+just now.  I shall see her myself presently."
+
+"But YOU made her sick already," said Cissy, with a sudden, half-
+nervous audacity.  "You even frightened ME."
+
+"Frightened you?" repeated Seabright, looking at her quickly.
+
+"Yes," said Cissy, meeting his gaze with brown, truthful eyes.
+"Yes, when you--when you--made those faces.  I like to hear you
+talk, but"--she stopped.
+
+Brother Seabright's rare smile again lightened his face.  But it
+seemed sadder than when she had first seen it.
+
+"Then you have been practicing again at the Mission?" he said
+quietly; "and you still prefer it?"
+
+"Yes," said Cissy.  She wanted to appear as loyal to the Mission in
+Brother Seabright's presence as she was faithful to West Woodlands
+in Mr. Braggs's.  She had no idea that this was dangerously near to
+coquetry.  So she said a little archly, "I don't see why YOU don't
+like the Mission.  You're a missionary yourself.  The old padres
+came here to spread the Word.  So do you."
+
+"But not in that way," he said curtly.  "I've seen enough of them
+when I was knocking round the world a seafaring man and a sinner.
+I knew them--receivers of the ill-gotten gains of adventurers,
+fools, and scoundrels.  I knew them--enriched by the spoils of
+persecution and oppression; gathering under their walls outlaws and
+fugitives from justice, and flinging an indulgence here and an
+absolution there, as they were paid for it.  Don't talk to me of
+THEM--I know them."
+
+They were passing out of the chapel together, and he made an
+impatient gesture as if dismissing the subject.  Accustomed though
+she was to the sweeping criticism of her Catholic friends by her
+West Woodlands associates, she was nevertheless hurt by his
+brusqueness.  She dropped a little behind, and they separated at
+the porch.  Notwithstanding her anxiety to see her aunt, she felt
+she could not now go to Deacon Shadwell's without seeming to follow
+him--and after he had assured her that her help was not required!
+She turned aside and made her way slowly towards her home.
+
+There she found that her aunt had not returned, gathering from
+her uncle that she was recovering from a fit of "high strikes"
+(hysterics), and would be better alone.  Whether he underrated her
+complaint, or had a consciousness of his masculine helplessness in
+such disorders, he evidently made light of it.  And when Cissy,
+afterwards, a little ashamed that she had allowed her momentary
+pique against Brother Seabright to stand in the way of her duty,
+determined to go to her aunt, instead of returning to the chapel
+that evening, he did not oppose it.  She learned also that Mr.
+Braggs had called in the morning, but, finding that her aunt Vashti
+was at chapel, he had followed her there, intending to return with
+her.  But he had not been seen since the service, and had evidently
+returned to the Mission.
+
+But when she reached Deacon Shadwell's house she was received by
+Mrs. Shadwell only.  Her aunt, said that lady, was physically
+better, but Brother Seabright had left "partkler word" that she was
+to see nobody.  It was an extraordinary case of "findin' the Lord,"
+the like of which had never been known before in West Woodlands,
+and she (Cissy) would yet be proud of one of her "fammerly being
+speshally selected for grace."  But the "workin's o' salvation was
+not to be finicked away on worldly things or even the affections of
+the flesh;" and if Cissy really loved her aunt, "she wouldn't
+interfere with her while she was, so to speak, still on the
+mourners' bench, wrastlin' with the Sperret in their back sittin'-
+room."  But she might wait until Brother Seabright's return from
+evening chapel after service.
+
+Cissy waited.  Nine o'clock came, but Brother Seabright did not
+return.  Then a small but inconsequent dignity took possession of
+her, and she slightly tossed her long curls from her shoulders.
+She was not going to wait for any man's permission to see her own
+aunt.  If auntie did not want to see her, that was enough.  She
+could go home alone.  She didn't want any one to go with her.
+
+Lifted and sustained by these lofty considerations, with an erect
+head and slightly ruffled mane, well enwrapped in a becoming white
+merino "cloud," the young girl stepped out on her homeward journey.
+She had certainly enough to occupy her mind and, perhaps, justify
+her independence.  To have a suitor for her hand in the person of
+the superior and wealthy Mr. Braggs,--for that was what his visit
+that morning to West Woodlands meant,--and to be personally
+complimented on her improvement by the famous Brother Seabright,
+all within twelve hours, was something to be proud of, even
+although it was mitigated by her aunt's illness, her suitor's
+abrupt departure, and Brother Seabright's momentary coldness and
+impatience.  Oddly enough, this last and apparently trivial
+circumstance occupied her thoughts more than the others.  She found
+herself looking out for him in the windings of the moonlit road,
+and when, at last, she reached the turning towards the little wood
+and chapel, her small feet unconsciously lingered until she felt
+herself blushing under her fleecy "cloud."  She looked down the
+lane.  From the point where she was standing the lights of the
+chapel should have been plainly visible; but now all was dark.  It
+was nearly ten o'clock, and he must have gone home by another road.
+Then a spirit of adventure seized her.  She had the key of the
+chapel in her pocket.  She remembered she had left a small black
+Spanish fan--a former gift of Mr. Braggs lying on the harmonium.
+She would go and bring it away, and satisfy herself that Brother
+Seabright was not there still.  It was but a step, and in the clear
+moonlight.
+
+The lane wound before her like a silver stream, except where it was
+interrupted and bridged over by jagged black shadows.  The chapel
+itself was black, the clustering trees around it were black also;
+the porch seemed to cover an inky well of shadow; the windows were
+rayless and dead, and in the chancel one still left open showed a
+yawning vault of obscurity within.  Nevertheless, she opened the
+door softly, glided into the dark depths, and made her way to the
+harmonium.  But here the sound of footsteps without startled her;
+she glanced hurriedly through the open window, and saw the figure
+of Elisha Braggs suddenly revealed in the moonlight as he crossed
+the path behind the chapel.  He was closely followed by two peons,
+whom she recognized as his servants at the Mission, and they each
+carried a pickaxe.  From their manner it was evident that they had
+no suspicion of her presence in the chapel.  But they had stopped
+and were listening.  Her heart beat quickly; with a sudden instinct
+she ran and bolted the door.  But it was evidently another intruder
+they were watching, for she presently saw Brother Seabright quietly
+cross the lane and approach the chapel.  The three men had
+disappeared; but there was a sudden shout, the sound of scuffling,
+the deep voice of Brother Seabright saying, "Back, there, will you!
+Hands off!" and a pause.  She could see nothing; she listened in
+every pulse.  Then the voice of Brother Seabright arose again quite
+clearly, slowly, and as deliberately as if it had risen from the
+platform in the chapel.
+
+"Lish Barker!  I thought as much!  Lish Barker, first mate of the
+Tamalpais, who was said to have gone down with a boat's crew and
+the ship's treasure after she struck.  I THOUGHT I knew that face
+today."
+
+"Yes," said the voice of him whom she had known as Elisha Braggs,--
+"yes, and I knew YOUR face, Jim Seabright, ex-whaler, slaver,
+pirate, and bo's'n of the Highflyer, marooned in the South Pacific,
+where you found the Lord--ha! ha!--and became the psalm-singing,
+converted American sailor preacher!"
+
+"I am not ashamed before men of my past, which every one knows,"
+returned Seabright slowly.  "But what of YOURS, Elisha Barker--
+YOURS that has made you sham death itself to hide it from them?
+What of YOURS--spent in the sloth of your ill-gotten gains!  Turn,
+sinner, turn!  Turn, Elisha Braggs, while there is yet time!"
+
+"Belay there, Brother Seabright; we're not INSIDE your gospel-shop
+just now!  Keep your palaver for those that need it.  Let me pass,
+before I have to teach you that you haven't to deal with a gang of
+hysterical old women to-night."
+
+"But not until you know that one of those women,--Vashti White,--
+by God's grace converted of her sins, has confessed her secret and
+yours, Elisha Barker!  Yes!  She has told me how her sister's
+husband--the father of the young girl you are trying to lure away--
+helped you off that night with your booty, took his miserable
+reward and lived and died in exile with the rest of your wretched
+crew,--afraid to return to his home and country--whilst you--
+shameless and impenitent--lived in slothful ease at the Mission!"
+
+"Liar!  Let me pass!"
+
+"Not until I know your purpose here to-night."
+
+"Then take the consequences!  Here, Pedro!  Ramon!  Seize him.  Tie
+him head and heels together, and toss him in the bush!"
+
+The sound of scuffling recommenced.  The struggle seemed fierce and
+long, with no breath wasted in useless outcry.  Then there was a
+bright flash, a muffled report, and the stinging and fire of
+gunpowder at the window.
+
+Transfixed with fear, Cissy cast a despairing glance around her.
+Ah, the bell-rope!  In another instant she had grasped it
+frantically in her hands.
+
+All the fear, indignation, horror, sympathy, and wild appeal for
+help that had arisen helplessly in her throat and yet remained
+unuttered, now seemed to thrill through her fingers and the
+tightened rope, and broke into frantic voice in the clanging metal
+above her.  The whole chapel, the whole woodland, the clear,
+moonlit sky above was filled with its alarming accents.  It
+shrieked, implored, protested, summoned, and threatened, in one
+ceaseless outcry, seeming to roll over and over--as, indeed, it
+did--in leaps and bounds that shook the belfry.  Never before, even
+in the blows of the striking surges, had the bell of the Tamalpais
+clamored like that!  Once she heard above the turmoil the shaking
+of the door against the bolt that still held firmly; once she
+thought she heard Seabright's voice calling to her; once she
+thought she smelled the strong smoke of burning grass.  But she
+kept on, until the window was suddenly darkened by a figure, and
+Brother Seabright, leaping in, caught her in his arms as she was
+reeling fainting, but still clinging to the rope.  But his strong
+presence and some powerful magnetism in his touch restored her.
+
+"You have heard all!" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then for your aunt's sake, for your dead father's sake, FORGET
+all!  That wretched man has fled with his wounded hirelings--let
+his sin go with him.  But the village is alarmed--the brethren may
+be here any moment!  Neither question nor deny what I shall tell
+them.  Fear nothing.  God will forgive the silence that leaves the
+vengeance to His hands alone!"  Voices and footsteps were heard
+approaching the chapel.  Brother Seabright significantly pressed
+her hand and strode towards the door.  Deacon Shadwell was first to
+enter.
+
+"You here--Brother Seabright!  What has happened?"
+
+"God be praised!" said Brother Seabright cheerfully, "nothing of
+consequence!  The danger is over!  Yet, but for the courage and
+presence of mind of Sister Appleby a serious evil might have
+been done."  He paused, and with another voice turned half-
+interrogatively towards her.  "Some children, or a passing tramp,
+had carelessly thrown matches in the underbrush, and they were
+ignited beside the chapel.  Sister Appleby, chancing to return here
+for"--
+
+"For my fan," said Cissy with a timid truthfulness of accent.
+
+"Found herself unable to cope with it, and it occurred to her to
+give the alarm you heard.  I happened to be passing and was first
+to respond.  Happily the flames had made but little headway, and
+were quickly beaten down.  It is all over now.  But let us hope
+that the speedy clearing out of the underbrush and the opening of
+the woods around the chapel will prevent any recurrence of the
+alarm of to-night."
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+That the lesson thus reiterated by Brother Seabright was effective,
+the following extract, from the columns of the "Whale Point
+Gazette," may not only be offered as evidence, but may even give
+the cautious reader further light on the episode itself:--
+
+
+STRANGE DISCOVERY AT WEST WOODLANDS.--THE TAMALPAIS MYSTERY AGAIN.
+
+The improvements in the clearing around the Sidon Chapel at West
+Woodlands, undertaken by the Rev. James Seabright, have disclosed
+another link in the mystery which surrounded the loss of the
+Tamalpais some years ago at Whale Mouth Point.  It will be
+remembered that the boat containing Adams & Co.'s treasure, the
+Tamalpais' first officer, and a crew of four men was lost on the
+rocks shortly after leaving the ill-fated vessel.  None of the
+bodies were ever recovered, and the treasure itself completely
+baffled the search of divers and salvers.  A lidless box bearing
+the mark of Adams & Co., of the kind in which their treasure was
+usually shipped, was yesterday found in the woods behind the
+chapel, half buried in brush, bark, and windfalls.  There were no
+other indications, except the traces of a camp-fire at some remote
+period, probably long before the building of the chapel.  But how
+and when the box was transported to the upland, and by whose
+agency, still remains a matter of conjecture.  Our reporter who
+visited the Rev. Mr. Seabright, who has lately accepted the regular
+ministry of the chapel, was offered every facility for information,
+but it was evident that the early settlers who were cognizant of
+the fact--if there were any--are either dead or have left the
+vicinity.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOME-COMING OF JIM WILKES.
+
+
+I.
+
+
+For many minutes there had been no sound but the monotonous
+drumming of the rain on the roof of the coach, the swishing of
+wheels through the gravelly mud, and the momentary clatter of hoofs
+upon some rocky outcrop in the road.  Conversation had ceased; the
+light-hearted young editor in the front seat, more than suspected
+of dangerous levity, had relapsed into silence since the heavy man
+in the middle seat had taken to regarding the ceiling with
+ostentatious resignation, and the thin female beside him had
+averted her respectable bonnet.  An occasional lurch of the coach
+brought down a fringe of raindrops from its eaves that filmed the
+windows and shut out the sodden prospect already darkening into
+night.  There had been a momentary relief in their hurried dash
+through Summit Springs, and the spectacle of certain newly arrived
+County Delegates crowding the veranda of its one hotel; but that
+was now three miles behind.  The young editor's sole resource was
+to occasionally steal a glance at the face of the one passenger who
+seemed to be in sympathy with him, but who was too far away for
+easy conversation.  It was the half-amused, half-perplexed face of
+a young man who had been for some time regarding him from a remote
+corner of the coach with an odd mingling of admiring yet cogitating
+interest, which, however, had never extended to any further
+encouragement than a faint sad smile.  Even this at last faded out
+in the growing darkness; the powerful coach lamps on either side
+that flashed on the wayside objects gave no light to the interior.
+Everybody was slowly falling asleep.  Suddenly everybody woke up to
+find that the coach was apparently standing still!  When it had
+stopped no one knew!  The young editor lowered his window.  The
+coach lamp on that side was missing, but nothing was to be seen.
+In the distance there appeared to be a faint splashing.
+
+"Well," called out an impatient voice from the box above; "what do
+you make it?"  It was the authoritative accents of Yuba Bill, the
+driver, and everybody listened eagerly for the reply.
+
+It came faintly from the distance and the splashing.  "Almost four
+feet here, and deepening as you go."
+
+"Dead water?"
+
+"No--back water from the Fork."
+
+There was a general movement towards the doors and windows.  The
+splashing came nearer.  Then a light flashed on the trees, the
+windows, and--two feet of yellow water peacefully flowing beneath
+them!  The thin female gave a slight scream.
+
+"There's no danger," said the Expressman, now wading towards them
+with the coach lamp in his hand.  "But we'll have to pull round out
+of it and go back to the Springs.  There's no getting past this
+break to-night."
+
+"Why didn't you let us know this before," said the heavy man
+indignantly from the window.
+
+"Jim," said the driver with that slow deliberation which instantly
+enforced complete attention.
+
+"Yes, Bill."
+
+"Have you got a spare copy of that reg'lar bulletin that the Stage
+Kempany issoos every ten minutes to each passenger to tell 'em
+where we are, how far it is to the next place, and wots the state
+o' the weather gin'rally?"
+
+"No!" said the Expressman grimly, as he climbed to the box,
+"there's not one left.  Why?"
+
+"Cos the Emperor of Chiny's inside wantin' one!  Hoop!  Keep your
+seats down there!  G'lang!" the whip cracked, there was a desperate
+splashing, a backward and forward jolting of the coach, the
+glistening wet flanks and tossing heads of the leaders seen for a
+moment opposite the windows, a sickening swirl of the whole body of
+the vehicle as if parting from its axles, a long straight dragging
+pull, and--presently the welcome sound of hoofs once more beating
+the firmer ground.
+
+"Hi!  Hold up--driver!"
+
+It was the editor's quiet friend who was leaning from the window.
+
+"Isn't Wilkes's ranch just off here?"
+
+"Yes, half a mile along the ridge, I reckon," returned the driver
+shortly.
+
+"Well, if you're not going on to-night, I'd get off and stop
+there."
+
+"I reckon your head's level, stranger," said Bill approvingly; "for
+they're about chock full at the Springs' House."
+
+To descend, the passenger was obliged to pass out by the middle
+seat and before the young editor.  As he did so he cast a shy look
+on him and, leaning over, said hesitatingly, in a lower voice: "I
+don't think you will be able to get in at the Springs Hotel.  If--
+if--you care to come with me to--to--the ranch, I can take care of
+you."
+
+The young editor--a man of action--paused for an instant only.
+Then seizing his bag, he said promptly: "Thank you," and followed
+his newly-found friend to the ground.  The whip cracked, the coach
+rolled away.
+
+"You know Wilkes?" he said.
+
+"Ye-ee-s.  He's my father."
+
+"Ah," said the editor cheerfully, "then you're going home?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+It was quite light in the open, and the stranger, after a moment's
+survey of the prospect,--a survey that, however, seemed to be
+characterized by his previous hesitation,--said: "This way,"
+crossed the road, and began to follow a quite plain but long
+disused wagon track along the slope.  His manner was still so
+embarrassed that the young editor, after gayly repeating his thanks
+for his companion's thoughtful courtesy, followed him in silence.
+At the end of ten minutes they had reached some cultivated fields
+and orchards; the stranger brightened, although still with a
+preoccupied air, quickened his pace, and then suddenly stopped.
+When the editor reached his side he was gazing with apparently
+still greater perplexity upon the level, half obliterated, and
+blackened foundations of what had been a large farmhouse.
+
+"Why, it's been burnt down!" he said thoughtfully.
+
+The editor stared at him!  Burnt down it certainly had been, but by
+no means recently.  Grasses were already springing up from the
+charred beams in the cellar, vines were trailing over the fallen
+chimneys, excavations, already old, had been made among the ruins.
+"When were you here last?" the editor asked abruptly.
+
+"Five years ago," said the stranger abstractedly.
+
+"Five years!--and you knew nothing of THIS?"
+
+"No.  I was in Tahiti, Australia, Japan, and China all the time."
+
+"And you never heard from home?"
+
+"No.  You see I quo'led with the old man, and ran away."
+
+"And you didn't write to tell them you were coming?"
+
+"No."  He hesitated, and then added: "Never thought o' coming till
+I saw YOU."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"Yes; you and--the high water."
+
+"Do you mean to say," said the young editor sharply, "that you
+brought ME--an utter stranger to you--out of that coach to claim
+the hospitality of a father you had quarreled with--hadn't seen for
+five years and didn't know if he would receive you?"
+
+"Yes,--you see that's just WHY I did it.  You see, I reckoned my
+chances would be better to see him along with a cheerful, chipper
+fellow like you.  I didn't, of course, kalkilate on this," he
+added, pointing dejectedly to the ruins.
+
+The editor gasped; then a sudden conception of the unrivaled
+absurdity of the situation flashed upon him,--of his passively
+following the amiable idiot at his side in order to contemplate, by
+the falling rain and lonely night, a heap of sodden ruins, while
+the coach was speeding to Summit Springs and shelter, and, above
+all, the reason WHY he was invited,--until, putting down his bag,
+he leaned upon his stick, and laughed until the tears came to his
+eyes.
+
+At which his companion visibly brightened.  "I told you so," he
+said cheerfully; "I knew you'd be able to take it--and the old man--
+in THAT WAY, and that would have fetched him round."
+
+"For Heaven's sake! don't talk any more," said the editor, wiping
+his eyes, "but try to remember if you ever had any neighbors about
+here where we can stay tonight.  We can't walk to Summit Springs,
+and we can't camp out on these ruins."
+
+"There didn't use to be anybody nearer than the Springs."
+
+"But that was five years ago, you say," said the editor
+impatiently; "and although your father probably moved away after
+the house burned down, the country's been thickly settled since
+then.  That field has been lately planted.  There must be another
+house beyond.  Let's follow the trail a little farther."
+
+They tramped along in silence, this time the editor leading.
+Presently he stopped.  "There's a house--in there--among the
+trees," he said, pointing.  "Whose is it?"
+
+The stranger shook his head dubiously.  Although apparently
+unaffected by any sentimental consideration of his father's
+misfortune, the spectacle of the blackened ruins of the homestead
+had evidently shaken his preconceived plans.  "It wasn't there in
+MY time," he said musingly.
+
+"But it IS there in OUR time," responded the editor briskly, "and I
+propose to go there.  From what you have told me of your father--
+even if his house were still standing--our chances of getting
+supper and a bed from him would be doubtful!  I suppose," he
+continued as they moved on together, "you left him in anger--five
+years ago?"
+
+"Ye-es."
+
+"Did he say anything as you left?"
+
+"I don't remember anything particular that he SAID."
+
+"Well, what did he DO?"
+
+"Shot at me from the window!"
+
+"Ah!" said the young editor softly.  Nevertheless they walked on
+for some time in silence.  Gradually a white picket fence came into
+view at right angles with the trail, and a man appeared walking
+leisurely along what seemed to be the regularly traveled road,
+beside it.  The editor, who had taken matters in his own hands,
+without speaking to his companion, ran quickly forward and accosted
+the stranger, briefly stating that he had left the stage-coach with
+a companion, because it was stopped by high water, and asked,
+without entering into further details, to be directed to some place
+where they could pass the night.  The man quite as briefly directed
+him to the house among the trees, which he said was his own, and
+then leisurely pursued his way along the road.  The young editor
+ran back to his companion, who had halted in the dripping shadow of
+a sycamore, and recounted his good fortune.
+
+"I didn't," he added, "say anything about your father.  You can
+make inquiries yourself later."
+
+"I reckon there won't be much need of that," returned his
+companion.  "You didn't take much note o' that man, did you?"
+
+"Not much," said the editor.
+
+"Well, THAT'S MY FATHER, and I reckon that new house must be his."
+
+
+II.
+
+
+The young editor was a little startled.  The man he had just
+quitted certainly was not dangerous looking, and yet, remembering
+what his son had said, there WERE homicidal possibilities.  "Look
+here," he said quickly, "he's not there NOW.  Why don't you seize
+the opportunity to slip into the house, make peace with your mother
+and sisters, and get them to intercede with your father when he
+returns?"
+
+"Thar ain't any mother; she died afore I left.  My sister Almiry's
+a little girl--though that's four years ago and mebbee she's
+growed.  My brothers and me didn't pull together much.  But I was
+thinkin' that mebbee YOU might go in thar for me first, and see how
+the land lays; then sorter tell 'em 'bout me in your takin',
+chipper, easy way; make 'em laugh, and when you've squared 'em--
+I'll be hangin' round outside--you kin call ME in.  Don't you see?"
+
+The young editor DID see.  Ridiculous as the proposal would have
+seemed to him an hour ago, it now appeared practical, and even
+commended itself to his taste.  His name was well known in the
+county and his mediation might be effective.  Perhaps his vanity
+was slightly flattered by his companion's faith in him; perhaps he
+was not free from a certain human curiosity to know the rest;
+perhaps he was more interested than he cared to confess in the
+helpless home-seeker beside him.
+
+"But you must tell me something more of yourself, and your fortune
+and prospects.  They'll be sure to ask questions."
+
+"Mebbee they won't.  But you can say I've done well--made my pile
+over in Australia, and ain't comin' on THEM.  Remember--say I
+'ain't comin' on them'!"
+
+The editor nodded, and then, as if fearful of letting his present
+impulse cool, ran off towards the house.
+
+It was large and respectable looking, and augured well for the
+present fortunes of the Wilkes's.  The editor had determined to
+attack the citadel on its weaker, feminine side, and when the front
+door was opened to his knock, asked to see Miss Almira Wilkes.  The
+Irish servant showed him into a comfortable looking sitting-room,
+and in another moment with a quick rustle of skirts in the passage
+a very pretty girl impulsively entered.  From the first flash of
+her keen blue eyes the editor--a fair student of the sex--conceived
+the idea that she had expected somebody else; from the second that
+she was an arrant flirt, and did not intend to be disappointed.
+This much was in his favor.
+
+Spurred by her provoking eyes and the novel situation, he stated
+his business with an airy lightness and humor that seemed to
+justify his late companion's estimate of his powers.  But even in
+his cynical attitude he was unprepared for the girl's reception of
+his news.  He had expected some indignation or even harshness
+towards this man whom he was beginning to consider as a kind of
+detrimental outcast or prodigal, but he was astounded at the
+complete and utter indifference--the frank and heartless unconcern--
+with which she heard of his return.  When she had followed the
+narrator rather than his story to the end, she languidly called her
+brothers from the adjoining room.  "This gentleman, Mr. Grey, of
+the 'Argus,' has come across Jim--and Jim is calculating to come
+here and see father."
+
+The two brothers stared at Grey, slightly shrugged their shoulders
+with the same utter absence of fraternal sympathy or concern which
+the girl had shown, and said nothing.
+
+"One moment," said Grey a little warmly; "I have no desire to
+penetrate family secrets, but would you mind telling me if there is
+any grave reason why he should not come.  Was there any scandalous
+conduct, unpardonable offense--let us even say--any criminal act on
+his part which makes his return to this roof impossible?"
+
+The three looked at each other with a dull surprise that ended in a
+vacant wondering smile.  "No, no," they said in one voice.  "No,
+only"--
+
+"Only what?" asked Grey impatiently.
+
+"Dad just hates him!"
+
+"Like pizon," smiled Almira.
+
+The young editor rose with a slight increase of color.  "Look
+here," said the girl, whose dimples had deepened as she keenly
+surveyed him, as if detecting some amorous artifice under his show
+of interest for her brother.  "Dad's gone down to the sheepfold and
+won't be back for an hour.  Yo' might bring--YO' FRIEND--in."
+
+"He ain't wantin' anything?  Ain't dead broke? nor nothin', eh?"
+suggested one of the brothers dubiously.
+
+Grey hastened to assure them of Jim's absolute solvency, and even
+enlarged considerably on his Australian fortune.  They looked
+relieved but not interested.
+
+"Go and fetch him," said the witch, archly hovering near Grey with
+dancing eyes; "and mind YO' come back, too!"
+
+Grey hesitated a moment and then passed out in the dark porch.  A
+dripping figure emerged from the trees opposite.  It was Jim.
+
+"Your sister and brothers will see you," said Grey hastily, to
+avoid embarrassing details.  "HE won't be here for an hour.  But
+I'd advise you to make the most of your time, and get the good-will
+of your sister."  He would have drawn back to let the prodigal pass
+in alone, but the man appealingly seized his arm, and Grey was
+obliged to re-enter with him.  He noticed, however, that he
+breathed hard.
+
+They turned slightly towards their relative, but did not offer to
+shake hands with him, nor did he with them.  He sat down sideways
+on an unoffered chair.  "The old house got burnt!" he said, wiping
+his lips, and then drying his wet hair with his handkerchief.
+
+As the remark was addressed to no one in particular it was some
+seconds before the elder brother replied: "Yes."
+
+"Almira's growed."
+
+Again no one felt called upon to answer, and Almira glanced archly
+at the young editor as if he might have added: "and improved."
+
+"You've done well?" returned one of the brothers tentatively.
+
+"Yes, I'm all right," said Jim.
+
+There was another speechless interval.  Even the conversational
+Grey felt under some unhallowed spell of silence that he could not
+break.
+
+"I see the old well is there yet," said Jim, wiping his lips again.
+
+"Where dad was once goin' to chuck you down for givin' him back
+talk," said the younger brother casually.
+
+To Mr. Grey's relief and yet astonishment, Jim burst into a loud
+laugh and rubbed his legs.  "That's so--how old times DO come
+back!"
+
+"And," said the bright-eyed Almira, there's that old butternut-tree
+that you shinned up one day when we set the hounds on you.
+Goodness! how you scooted!"
+
+Again Jim laughed loudly and nodded.  "Yes, the same old butternut.
+How you DO remember, Almira?"  This admiringly.
+
+And don't you remember Delia Short?" continued Almira, pleased at
+the admiration, and perhaps a little exalted at the singular
+attention which the young editor was giving to those cheerful
+reminiscences.  "She, you know, you was reg'larly sick after, so
+that we always allowed she kinder turned yo' brain afore you went
+away!  Well! all the while you were courtin' her it appears she was
+secretly married to Jo--yo' friend--Jo Stacy.  Lord! there was a
+talk about that! and about yo' all along thinkin' yo' had chances!
+Yo' friend here," with an arch glance at Grey, "who's allus puttin'
+folks in the newspapers, orter get a hold on that!"
+
+Jim again laughed louder than the others, and rubbed his lips.
+Grey, however, offered only the tribute of a peculiar smile and
+walked to the window.  "You say your father will return in an
+hour?" he said, turning to the elder brother.
+
+"Yes, unless he kept on to Watson's."
+
+"Where?" said Jim suddenly.
+
+It struck Grey that his voice had changed--or rather that he was
+now speaking for the first time in his natural tone.
+
+"Watson's, just over the bridge," explained his brother.  "If he
+went there he won't be back till ten."
+
+Jim picked up his India rubber cape and hat, said, "I reckon I'll
+just take a turn outside until he gets back," and walked towards
+the door.  None of his relatives moved nor seemed to offer any
+opposition.  Grey followed him quickly.  "I'll go with you," he
+said.
+
+"No," returned Jim with singular earnestness.  "You stay here and
+keep 'em up cheerful like this.  They're doing all this for YOU,
+you know; Almiry's just this chipper only on your account."
+
+Seeing the young man was inflexible, Grey returned grimly to the
+room, but not until he had noticed, with some surprise, that Jim,
+immediately on leaving the house, darted off at a quick run through
+the rain and darkness.  Preoccupied with this, and perhaps still
+influenced by the tone of the previous conversation, he did not
+respond readily to the fair Almira's conversational advances, and
+was speedily left to a seat by the fire alone.  At the end of ten
+minutes he regretted he had ever come; when half an hour had passed
+he wondered if he had not better try to reach the Summit alone.
+With the lapse of an hour he began to feel uneasy at Jim's
+prolonged absence in spite of the cold indifference of the
+household.  Suddenly he heard stamping in the porch, a muttered
+exclamation, and the voices of the two brothers in the hall.
+"Why, dad! what's up?  Yo' look half drowned!"
+
+The door opened upon the sodden, steaming figure of the old man
+whom he had met on the road, followed by the two sons.  But he was
+evidently more occupied and possessed by some mental passion than
+by his physical discomfort.  Yet strong and dominant over both, he
+threw off his wet coat and waistcoat as he entered, and marched
+directly to the fire.  Utterly ignoring the presence of a stranger,
+he suddenly turned and faced his family.
+
+"Half drowned.  Yes! and I might have been hull drowned for that
+matter.  The back water of the Fork is all over Watson's, and the
+bridge is gone.  I stumbled onto this end of it in the dark, and
+went off, head first, into twenty feet of water!  Tried to fight my
+way out, but the current was agin me.  I'd bin down twice, and was
+going down for the third time, when somebody grabbed me by the
+scruff o' my neck and under the arm--so!--and swam me to the bank!
+When I scrambled up I sez: 'I can't see your face,' sez I, 'I don't
+know who you are,' sez I, 'but I reckon you're a white man and
+clear grit,' sez I, 'and there's my hand on it!'  And he grabs it
+and sez, 'We're quits,' and scooted out o' my sight.  And,"
+continued the old man staring at their faces and raising his voice
+almost to a scream, "who do you think it was?  Why, THAT SNEAKIN'
+HOUND OF A BROTHER OF YOURS--JIM!  Jim! the scallawag that I booted
+outer the ranch five years ago, crawlin', writhin' back again after
+all these years to insult his old father's gray hairs!  And some of
+you--by God--once thought that I was hard on him!"
+
+        .        .        .        .        .        .
+
+The sun was shining brightly the next morning as the young editor
+halted the up coach in the now dried hollow.  As he was clambering
+to a seat beside the driver, his elbow was jogged at the window.
+Looking down he saw the face of Jim.
+
+"We had a gay talk last night, remembering old times, didn't we?"
+said the prodigal cheerfully.
+
+"Yes, but--where are you going now?"
+
+"Back to Australia, I reckon!  But it was mighty good to drop in on
+the old homestead once more!"
+
+"Rather," said the editor, clinging to the window and lingering in
+mid-air to the manifest impatience of Yuba Bill; "but I say--look
+here!--were you QUITE satisfied?"
+
+Jim's hand tightened around the young editor's as he answered
+cheerfully, "Yes."  But his face was turned away from the window.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's, by Harte
+
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